“But I don’t want to be a pirate!” (Band 1) and YES, that’s a keytar.
… and it’s over!
With the support of 25 adventurous musicians we were able to raise about $1,300 for the Ottawa Food Bank with an event I’ve been running for the last three years. I was NOt expecting the amount of support we got from CBC Radio and TV. This year essentially Rock Lotto became 4 events in one (commercial, press conference, band draw and actual event). Needless to say, I’m exhausted from trying to balance all of my work on top of it.
We got coverage in at least 6 major media publications and were featured on CBC’s All in a Day afternoon show (3 hours), 6 o’clock news, in addition to dozens of online , podcasts, community radio and photography sites. The reviews were great too, people were saying it was the “coolest event” they’d ever been to. The club was PACKED and all the music was actually good.
These were all the newly formed bands after we threw them into a guerilla-style photo shoot.
Here is one of the bands performing
Here I am with CBC Radio 1′s Amanda Putz, our host of the evening.
Everyone was having lots of fun at the photobooth between awesome bands…
I am so ridiculously excited to see this film today. I’ve been a huge fan of Baz Lurhmann’s work since I first popped the Romeo and Juliet VHS into the VCR hoping that I would avoid re-reading the Shakespearean play. I was shocked at the use of visual aesthetics and commitment to contemporary music usage.
Same goes for Moulin Rouge, I can oddly recall exactly the place I was when I first stumbled upon it. I think it I was in an extreme punk-rock phase and recall not wanting to like the film. Nope. I loved it. The mix of Elton John songs with U2 ballads and Queen inspired me so. Nicole Kidman’s red dress in the giant elephant was what girls talked about as their dream prom dress. (OK, THIS girl.)
I’ve got high hopes for Gatsby and not just because I can remember whispering Leo’s best Titantic lines to friends in Jr. highschool and that my well-thumbed version sits on my office desk to my right (after 7 years of post-secondary liberal arts school, one would expect it to be so!).
I definitely read this article this morning immediately in a Leslie Knope Voice-
and thought… Thazzza Me!
Sidenote- I think Amy Poehler totally and completely rocks. She and her character of Leslie Knope are definitely inspiring feminists to me. I seriously felt like Leslie Knope at the press conference yesterday. I was nervous to be on the other side of a press conference for the first time ever but it was a big success.
Extreme Leslie Knope momenets consulting with my marketing assistant and advisors the day before and especially debriefing once it was all over.
Talking to the crowd with my speech I rehearsed to friends and the ninja the day before and of.
I didn’t go for waffles though- smiles and kind words from friends did great.
It’s Rock Lottery season again so that means all of my extra time and energy is going straight into making it awesome. Press releases, artist liasons, producing the web commercial, working with sponsors. I’m only one gal and luckily I’ve got a team who are helping me not go crazy, but it’s hard to not try to do everything for myself. My DIY ethic runs deep.
My Saturday afternoon- shooting the web commercial. Launches May 7!
This is what my Saturday looked like. Yes, I doing makeup on a David Bowie impersonating actor was part of it. As was ripping the fishnet tights of our hot rocker chick while she was in them- all in a day’s work! Rock Lottery is just over two weeks away and I’m prepping for the first press conference I’ve ever been on the other side of the podium. Every day there are small victories, Tuesday’s were: we have a gorgeous poster done, CBC’s Amada Putz will be hosting.
In my work-work this week was a battle between Hollywood agents and time differences and bad wifi.
Actual texts from this week’s work.
This is an actual conversation I had with one of my BFFs’ on Tuesday night. I’ll leave it up to you to determine which one got completed…
It’s important to be able to escape from your own invented “Busy-ness.” I was in a grumpy mood on Tuesday and forced myself to get out for a bike ride. I felt so much better!
Biking oasis!
Another important lesson learned: Don’t listen to Jian Ghomeshi interview Trent Reznor before trying to write your own music-related interview article. I get envious that music interviewers like him not only get so much time to pick the artists brains (which is why I first started some 10 years ago by chasing down Alexisonfire). Trent Reznor told one my absolute music journalist heroes Neil Strauss that “Making music is the most difficult things on earth.” That stuck with me.
Exclaim Canada darling Rob Moire and I 9 years after first booking his band.
So did what my old friend Rob Moir tell me last night. “Even if they don’t buy a CD they have to come away with something from you.” He’s making that extra effort to connect and I know he’ll succeed. I booked his old band Dead Letter Department a full 9 years ago and it was really cool catching up with him over dinner before his show. I’ve been talking about this with a few people lately and it’s becoming more apparent that those involved in the music scene/industry as musicians/photographers/writers/whatever are now making it a living at it, and that’s so cool. I like to remind my mother that the hardcore punk music that she hated overhearing from my bedroom now pays the bills. I met Rob when his band played a show I booked in Shawville, Quebec. He’s about to head off on a 65-date tour that will land him in Germany to Australia until October.
I’ve been thinking of calling myself a “Creative Rock Star” to explain what I do. Writing. Journalism. Music PR. Event management and production. Film work. Social media.
Hence why it’s been since 6:30 that I’ve been sitting in my office and I feel fine. The sunshine is streaming into it and encouraging more work to be done.
The Kinks have pretty much summed it up. I’ve been stupidly busy with work stuff and organizing the rock lotto web commercial shoot/casting/location scouting/etc. Which reminds me to take out money for the rental payment… anyways! Listening to my Rdio mix this Kinks song came on.
And when in doubt, I finally fixed up my bike and can take a quick ride over to one of my favourite places in Ottawa.
Been dreaming of getting out here all winter…
Surround yourself with awesome people that inspire you today!
Ottawa Rock Lottery is one month away (less one day!) I put it all together last year in about 5 weeks so I feel like 2013 I’ve got on lockdown… and it’s going to be amazing since I have such incredible people involved and volunteering to help.
Here are some of their beautiful faces!
Rock Lotto meeting #3 this week
Amazing filmmakers and friends devising our web commercial
Meeting with documentary filmmaker – multi-year doc in the works!
This video just makes me smile and gives me so much hope. I used to write grade school class projects on the Beatles and John Lennon as much as possible. I think my career might have been established back then; rebel + activist + artist + pop music = music journalist?
It’s one of those weird things though that even though I was friends with some musical Liverpudlians and it was only about 4 hours away, I never made it the fab four’s original stomping grounds.
I did however make it here to pay my respects… and Yoko Ono follows me on Twitter so that’s exciting.
Hearts a flutter at Morrissey performing one of my favourite songs in my old town of Nottingham, England.
So now that I’ve discovered the Coachella Youtube Channel you can pretty much bank on me not doing much else for the next hour. A bunch of bands (like New Order!) that are playing Osheaga are also up in thur’.
It stemmed for an Aziz Ansari-worthy R. Kelly song (where he performs with Phoenix) but then quickly progressed to my getting a little too excited about “Your Ex-lover is dead” being performed. I’ve written about how much that song means to me before (can’t remember where published) and interviewed the band too back when I was living in the UK but here they are again…
I kinda think Karen-O is the coolest too and definitely pre-ordered this album on Itunes so it’d show up in my feed this morning. She kicks all kinda butt. This NPR clip tied me over for not being able to make it to SXSW.
Having an awesome and super productive week. I might have sat in front of my computer for 15 hours yesterday but I feel like this is in order for balancing stress, sorting out work priorities and getting stuff done.
A lady I look up to a lot, Marie Forleo, put this out recently and I couldn’t agree more.
