Bassist Bill Keller and I tried to book a studio in Brighton for a Unison Bends rhythm section rehearsal - and gave up after the third one we tried was fully booked. And this was early evening and midweek.
There are obviously a lot of bands in Brighton. But it's more or less the same story everywhere. Unless you book well in advance, you won't get a rehearsal space.
So where are all these bands playing – apart from in rehearsal rooms? Are they actually gigging or just rehearsing?
The number of venues booking bands seems to be shrinking – and the number of bands seems to be increasing. It's always been tough to get gigs, but now it's getting even tougher.
You could be forgiven for asking: what are we all rehearsing for?
Monday 29 February 2016
Sunday 14 February 2016
Final Edition
The Independent was launched as a radical, politically independent newspaper in the UK in 1986. That it survived for 30 years – and through many years of its imminent demise being forecast – is quite an achievement.
The current proprietor has portrayed its demise as part of a pioneering leap forward into the new world of online publishing. Newspaper journalists, on the whole, see it as a deeply sad bereavement.
Dumbing down appears to be the way ahead online – a glance at the Daily Mail online, The Telegraph online, and even The Independent online or the BBC online should make that fairly clear.
Lists, trivia and a paucity of in-depth coverage seem to be what is required. And in the case of the Mail Online, prurient droolings over female 'celebrities' showing their tits and arses. This is the new journalism.
I am glad to say that I freelanced at The Independent for several years in the 1990s, and also again over the past three years. With grateful thanks to fate, I will be in its office on the night we put together its last edition, and say goodbye to a journalistic era that began with idealism and ended with pragmatism – and a sense of dread.
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