Harvey Goldsmith Blog
Jan.3 2010.
03.Jan.2010 12:12
2009 was an interesting year to say the least. For me it was much more travelling than anticipated and a change of direction.
Managing Jeff Beck has been exhilirating.
The best guitarist in the world has blossomed.Jeff was inducted into the Rock Hall Of Fame, was the star of the 25th. Anniversary concert and has now been nominated for a Grammy. He has just completed a fabulous first new studio album for over 6 years and is about to embark on a world tour to promote an album that he is very proud of.
Re starting Yusuf''s live work (formerly Cat Stevens) has also been a great experience.
His concert recently at The Royal Albert Hall was one of the best shows of the year.
Jools Holland and his Rythmn Orchestra continued to enthrall audiences across the UK.
Andrea Bocelli returned to the UK with 4 brilliant concerts and is well on the way to selling out his next autumns shows.
2010 is going to be equally exciting .
Thank goodness, we in the entertainment business can buck the world's financial difficulties and give the public some welcome relief with exciting live shows.
Music is in greater demand than ever before but our whole industry must get together and finally figure out how to monetise it in a fair and equitable way for the fans.
We as promoters and manangers must also have a duty of care to our audiencies by not ripping them off with excessive ticket price addons.
If the Ticketmaster/Live Nation deal is voted through I hope that they will see sense and not take advantage by using their new power to continue with unfair charges to tickets.
We need new blood in our industry and it is time for new artists, managers and promoters to shine through with a different way to give the public value and quality.
I am currnetly in Portugal and the sun has just shone through the clouds. Lets hope our great industry shines for all in 2010.
30th November '09.
30.Nov.2009 11:40
October and November have been extremely busy months.
Jeff Beck agreed to perform with Eric Clapton and his band at the Rock Hall Of Fame shows in New York at Madison Square Gardens on 29 and 30 October.
8 days before the show Eric was taken ill and went into hospital for a minor operation. On the evening of Saturday 24th I suddenly received a call from the producers asking if Jeff could put his band together and perform a set. Well it may sound easy but the band were all engaged on other projects and the crew were all over the place. Finally on Monday 26th I finally managed to get everyone together and we departed for New York on Tuesday 27th. A day and a half of frantic rehearsals followed, including adding Sting, Buddy Guy and Billy Gibbons as guests without a clue what they would play.
On Thursday 29th Jeff rushed from rehearsals to surprise Stevie Wonder by walking on stage and playing
‘Superstition’, a song that Stevie had originally written for Jeff many years ago.
It was a great moment and the audience thundered their applause.
The following night Jeff played his set, with the guests and it went down fantastically well... what a relief! It was so crazy that Larry Crowe our drum roady had to fill in for Vinnie as he could only get to New York on the morning of the first show. For those in US you can see the results that was aired on the HBO special last night.
Back in the UK Jeff went back to the studio and we commenced rehearsals with Yusuf for his short UK tour.
I missed the first show in Dublin due to a family bereavement. It was quite a crazy night with not all of the audience understanding the presentation. We regrouped and redesigned the show for the second concert in Birmingham, which was a triumph. Yusuf ‘s voice was in top form and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the show.
Back in the studio Jeff had a small accident last weekend and is unable to play for two weeks. Fortunately all looks good so we are aiming to finish his album in the next ten days. Personally, I am thrilled with the tracks. You are going to hear some stunning music. Watch out for the release dates in March next year.
Yusuf will be playing Liverpool on the 5th. December and then onto The Royal Albert Hall on the 8th.
Jools Holland’s tour is going very well. In particular the shows at The Royal Albert Hall were wonderful. Jools is the best at entertaining with his big band and guests this time are Dave Edmonds and of course the incredible Ruby Turner .
Andrea Bocelli’s shows in Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow received amazing reviews. He has enjoyed the UK audiences so much and has agreed to return next Christmas. New dates will be announced shortly.
Tickets for Cirque du Soleil’s Varekai at The Royal Albert Hall are flying. It is a wonderful show and tickets will make great Christmas presents. We open on January 5th.
Its nuts in the office as we are working on the ATP Tennis at 02 and the FIFA World Club Cup in Abu Dhabi.
In addition I am putting the finishing touches to Jeff’s world tour which commences in March in Seoul. Then onto Hong Kong, Australia and USA. All this to promote his new album.
Eric Clapton has fully recovered and he and Jeff are discussing their shows together in Feb. Each will play their own set followed by a combined set with Jeff and Eric together. It will certainly be a highlight for 2010.
I am trying to catch up on some well earned sleep, which is proving to be difficult with so much going on..... so much for the recession!
Harvey
Blackberry Hot Tip 5.
12.Nov.2009 17:26
"Seriously, I can listen to music on my BlackBerry?!?”
I think in a previous post I may have mentioned some of the apps available for the music fan (i.e., slacker, Pandora, Nobex and now the brand new 7Digital music store) that are all available from BlackBerry App World; however, every BlackBerry has a fabulous built-in media player for music and video, but how does the average punter get their music on to their BlackBerry and then listen to it? Here’s an easy 4 step programme for every music and crackberry addict out there:
Step 1 – get a MicroSD Card
- one of the great features of your BlackBerry is that you can easily expand your memory instead of only having a finite amount of storage unlike some other less-smartphones. MicroSD cards come in numerous sizes now. I would recommend a card of at least 1 GB which will let you store a couple hundred standard 128 kbs MP3s; however, if you’re like me you’ll want more storage, so I have an 8 GB card that I got for about 15 quid. That’ll be enough storage so that you could play the tunes on your BlackBerry for a couple days non-stop and you’ll never hear the same song twice. If you’re really into it you could even have a (small) stack of cards that have different styles or themes of music. If that sounds fiddly, bigger capacity microSD cards are coming out every day (some BlackBerry phones even support 32 GB cards) and the prices keep dropping, so one decent sized MicroSD card should be enough for most people.
Step 2 – BlackBerry Media Sync for PC & Mac
- this easy to use software helps you easily transfer all the music on your Mac or PC to your BlackBerry – even from your iTunes or Windows Media Player collections – playlists and all. Don’t just take my word for it, get it here for free and try it yourself:
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/media/mediasync.jsp
Step 3 – BlackBerry Media Player
- on every BlackBerry there is an excellent media player that let’s you listen to music, watch videos, look at photos and even make voice notes. It is easily accessible from the desktop on your BlackBerry, just look for the “Media” icon. The music player is particularly great, because you can create custom playlists on the fly, listen to music in the background while you check email, browse the web or play BrickBreaker. While the speakers in the BlackBerry sound pretty f******g amazing compared to most mobile phones it is the stereo Bluetooth option that is it’s number one party trick. Proceed to Step 4…
Step 4 – Bluetooth Music Gateway
- this little device is truly amazing. It is so simple really, but it let’s you use the stereo Bluetooth connection in your BlackBerry to wireless listen to music in your home, office, car or anywhere you want to set one of these little boxes up. It is about the size of a condom package and only ½” tall (the gateway not the length of the condom!). Once your BlackBerry is paired to the gateway it will automatically connect every time you’re in range. This means I can use my BlackBerry at the dinner table to play what I want, change tracks, control the volume, etc. and then as soon as I walk out to my car it connects right away and I can go and sit in traffic on the M25 listening to my favourite music and sending emails instead of actually driving anywhere. Learn more about this nifty little device and how to get music and video on your BlackBerry here:
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/devices/features/multimedia/
http://blogs.blackberry.com/2009/05/wirelessly-extend-music-from-your-blackberry-to-your-car-stereo.html
One other BlackBerry top tip is that they recently launched their device manager software for Mac. So this means if you’re a Mac user, but use a BlackBerry you can now easily synch, backup and update your BlackBerry from a Mac computer. More info at: http://blackberry.com/mac
5th October '09.
05.Oct.2009 14:35
It’s been a while since my last blog... and a lot has happened.
I managed to get a break in the summer ,which was glorious.
I returned to the office at beginning of September to a crazy month of shows.
The Tower Festival opened on Sept 10 with a really interesting evening performed by Nigel Kennedy and The Philharmonia Orchestra. The evening was a glorious mixture of Bach and Duke Ellington and was brilliantly received.
The Festival continued through as per the programme with each night considered a great success.
We had one rainy night which was miserable,but by giving all the audience free ponchos it turned out to be a great success. Must be the Dunkirk spirit!!
The Festival ended with the WOMAD weekend which was also a surprise. The WOMAD people said they had never seen this audience before and were delighted to convert new friends. We lived through zero upfront PR (I think the media wanted it to fail) and no help from organisations like Visit London etc.
Everyone who came to down to the Tower for the Festival had a great time and indeed all the artists want to perform again next year. So that is the best testament one could have.
Jeff Beck and Imelda May and her band played a blinding show at Indigo on 21st September. Jeff basically played tunes from his own record collection from the 50’s and 60’s. The audience had a ball and so did the band.
We have just finished Barry Humphries “Last Night Of The Proms “ tour in Liverpool. The audience really enjoyed both Sir Les and Dame Edna’s repartee. The tour was a spoof on The Last Night of the Proms, an annual event in London, with full orchestra and choir. The show got some strange reviews, but that was probably because they did not understand the show.
Andrea Bocelli kicked off his UK tour at the 02 to great acclaim. Unfortunately Andrea developed a cold and was unable to sing at the second show in Birmingham. It was a great shame as everything was set to go including Andrea who was at the venue. When the doctor came to examine him he told us in no uncertain terms that Andrea was not to sing that night. Fortunately we managed to replace the date for November 4 and I hope most of the audience will be able to make the replacement date. The voice is a finely tuned instrument and when a cold arrives artists just cannot perform.
Since the summer I have become involved with Yusuf (Cat Stevens). I am currently helping him with his live appearances.
Yusuf has written a musical called Moonshadow and we have decided to present a preview of this inside the concerts that will commence in Dublin on November 15. For those that can get a ticket (The Royal Albert Hall concert is already sold out) it’s going to be a treat. The concert will feature many of his hit songs. The set and lighting design is by Marc Brickman who has worked with Pink Floyd, Roger Waters and Barbara Streisand.
The Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck show at 02 on Feb 13 sold out so fast that a second show has been added on Feb 14.
Please read my gripe page this month.
31st July 2009.
31.Jul.2009 16:01
I hope you all enjoyed listening to my Desert Island Disc show on Radio 4.
I enjoyed recording it.
I hope some of you got the chance to listen to my Pop Svengalis series. It was a fascinating story of some of the great people behind the scenes in music.
Last week I went to the TED Conference at Oxford. What an interesting mix of people. Some of the talks were fascinating whilst others were very snooze worthy. Gordon Brown once out of Number 10 gave a fascinating talk on his views on how to deal with the environment and David Deutch enthralled us with his views on parallel universes. My only complaint was that the theatre was boiling hot and seriously uncomfortable, but I guess that goes for all old theatres in the UK.
Dame Edna, Sir Les and Carl Davis are rehearsing for their upcoming tour. Judging from the heaps of laughter outside the rehearsal room, this tour is going to be hilarious.
We are putting the final touches together for The Tower Festival in September, it is a really interesting collection of Artists and Shows in a fantastic environment.
I am even told by the weathermen that September is set to be dry and warm! So if you are in town and want to take in a bit of history and culture come to the Tower Festival. It starts on the 10th September www.towerfestival.com.
I went with Jeff Beck to Canada and in addition to the Montreal Jazz Festival we played at the Festivals in Ottawa and Quebec. Next stop was back to Europe where Jeff played a number of classic European Festivals. Montreux was great fun and an amazing audience. Prince arrived in town and the whole city went mad. Touring finished on the 25th July.
Jeff, Tal and Vinnie then went straight to Abbey Road Studios to record with Herbie Hancock. The session was very long but hopefully 2 great tracks have come out of it for Herbie’s new album.
This week we have announced that Jeff will play a one off show with Imelda May and her band at IndigO2 at The O2, the date is 21st September. In addition Jeff and Jason Rebello will host a Masterclass at the BME at The O2 at 3pm on the 21st September. There are only 60 places available for the Masterclass, so if you want to go get your Amex card out and apply immediately.
This week my dear friend Counsellor Ian Wilder passed away. He was an extraordinary character and a real eccentric who in his own way made London a lot better for Londoners. He helped clean up the West End and pushed really hard to make parking regulations more workable. On a personal note he was extraordinary character, clever and funny. He helped a number of Artists out of the financial mess they were in. finally the image of him playing Mr Tambourine Man on his guitar to Bob Dylan will stay in my memory forever, particularly the look of disdain on Bob Dylan’s face. The worst part of this is that I am going to have to travel through Terminal 5 to get to his funeral.
Have a good Summer
Harvey
7th July ‘09.
07.Jul.2009 10:47
On Saturday 4 July Jeff Beck performed at the Royal Albert Hall. It was a fantastic concert as only can be done at the RAH.
Jeff was joined by Imelda May who sang a beautiful ballad, Lilac Wine.
Then David Gilmour joined to play a new arrangement of Jerusalem.
Finally David sang Hi Ho Silver Lining with Jeff singing the middle verse and Imelda as backing singer.
What a great end to a fab show.
Sunday was a busy day for me.
Radio 4 ran my Desert Island Discs programme at 11.15am. My Pop Svengalis radio show on Smooth Radio ran at 1.00pm. Then I was on my way to Canada for what I had hoped would be an uneventful flight.Well they have done it again.
Terminal 5 probably the most badly designed and inefficient new terminal ever built!
I arrived by train and had to walk about half a mile with my luggage to meet up with Jeff Beck and band at the right check in desk. We duly checked, albeit with a number of bags as we were off to Montreal, Ottawa and Quebec to play three festivals in 5 days. Isn’t that what new Terminals are supposed to handle.... not BA and certainly not Terminal 5.
Of course they lost two important pieces of luggage necessary for our shows tonight.
This is the second time in 10 days that luggage has not made the flight. Could we find BA when we discovered that the bags were missing... no way.
Whilst at the dreaded Terminal 5 we tried to find the lounge.3 BA staff sent us to three different places before we finally located the lounge. We wanted to watch the Tennis finals. Then it took twenty minutes to find the plane. Down three escalators, then to a lift which took us down two levels to get on a train. Then on three escalators to finally get to walk to the gate. What a joke. A moron could design the terminal better! And then of course the missing bags. As of now they have not shown up. I do hope that the concerts do not suffer because of BA.
Their ground staff are terrible.
However I have to say the flight was excellent with a fab crew.
Peter got food poisoning from the food on the plane... but we should not let that stand in our way.
We are now in Montreal at the Jazz Festival.The Festival have created the first Guitar Hero award and have just presented it to Jeff.What lovely people. A fantastic atmosphere with music on every corner.
We have really should have a festival like this in London. Most of the events are free and hundreds of musicians have a chance to perform. The city are totally supportive and make it work. No idiotic beurocracy,HSE and PC people trying to stop it, just a great mood, lots of stages, lots of people all enjoying great music.
Now off to sound check with three important pieces of equipment somewhere in the BA ether.....
Harvey
BA and Terminal 5.
25.Jun.2009 16:12
This morning i was at Terminal 5 to go on a BA flight to Nice..... what a cock up!!!
They lost a piece of luggage that we were not allowed to put on the plane as hand luggage as it was 1/2 inch of required size, so we had to check it in.
When we arrived in Nice there was no luggage!!! It turns out it was still in London along with 10 other passengers!!!
British Airways service and custome carre is just getting worse and as for Terminal 5, what a joke!
Harvey
Blackberry Hot Tip 4-App World.
01.Jun.2009 14:32
BlackBerry App World can be downloaded here by pointing your BlackBerry browser at http://appworld.blackberry.com (currently UK, US and Canada only – more territories coming soon!).
Some of the better music apps are US only: slacker is amazing (slacker.com)! Let’s you cache stations to your SD card so you can take new music with you. It is Free ad supported with a premium service with no ads and unlimited skips (free one allows for 6 skips an hour). Slacker learns what you do and don’t like based on heart/ban buttons and whether you skip a track. It then can recommend new music as you give it more feedback.
Pandora, Nobex Radio Companion and iheartradio are all very good music apps. Pandora is similar to their online music recommendation engine. Clear Channel produced the iheartradio application and it let’s you listen to 100s of their terrestrial radio stations on your BlackBerry. Nobex is particularly cool as it shows you the last 10 songs that played on any terrestrial radio station in North America (~3000 stations!). You can also listen live to about 1000 of them and click and buy the song that is playing. They also have lyrics for many of the songs too (slacker does as well). Watch for some of these apps to come to the UK soon. There is also an excellent music purchase and discovery application from 7Digital launching in the UK soon.
Gwabbit is a soon to be released app that is a simple concept but so useful. It just runs in the background and whenever you open an email that has a person’s signature in it the app pops up and asks if you’d like to add them to your contacts (or update an existing contact if they’re in there already). Brilliant!
Viigo is a phenomenal and customizable on-the-go news reader. Highly recommended.
Goal.com is the app for tracking the footie
Guitar Hero is fun for the wannabe Clapton/Beck/Pagey’s out there
Urban Tours is a restaurant recommendation tool (UK only) that gives celebrity resto recos. A nice compliment might be the Livestrong Calorie Counter (from Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong foundation).
You should check out App World and see what tickles your fancy.
22nd May '09.
22.May.2009 16:54
Have been very busy over the last few weeks and naughty in not doing my blog!
Jeff had the best time in Los Angeles, particularly when Rod Stewart, Joss Stone and John Mayer joined him on stage. In case you are not aware we have added a show in Glasgow on the 28th June at the Royal Concert Hall.
We are working on Jeff Beck’s European Tour at the moment and he is starting working on a new album which will be out next year.
Andrea Bocelli’s shows are selling extremely well so if you haven’t got a ticket, get to the box office before it is too late.
Our Festival at the Tower of London in September is taking shape. We have one more night to announce which will be at the end of next week to complete our line up. We hope to establish this as an annual event and I am very pleased with the way it is shaping up.
Dame Edna is currently organising brand new frocks for upcoming ‘Last Night of the Poms’ Tour. If you want to have a good laugh after all the crap we have been living with in the financial world then this show is a must. See Shows & Events for further details.
Times are very difficult and one thing as you all know which constantly bugs me is how you buy a ticket and the price you pay for it.
In the US on Jeff Beck’s Tour we used paperless tickets and I can not tell you how many people remarked to the local security that even though it was more complicated, they were thankful that someone had made the effort to stop scalpers and the secondary market. Half the time I think it is the representatives of the Artists are just as much to blame as they keep pushing for more and more although not in a transparent way. I guess this is no different from the current disgraceful situation with the MP’s in our Parliament.
If there is anything to be learnt from the financial mess it is for greed and under the table deals to stop. If you want to rip someone off then be brave enough to stand up and do so and at least everyone can see where you are coming from.
The British Music Experience at The O2 continues to get rave reviews. People are amazed at the smartcard technology incorporated into your ticket and how it works when you get home. Go see for yourself and let me have your comments.
Harvey
P.S new blackberry tip to follow
Blackberry Hot Tip 3-Auto Text.
21.Apr.2009 15:32
I think the number one time-saver for me when using my BlackBerry is the amazing usefulness of AutoText.
Let’s say you often want to send people the link to my blog. This means typing out the cumbersome (and tiresome) http://www.harveygoldsmith.com/harvey-blogs.php. And, if you’re like me, you’ll probably miss a couple of letters and make some creative typos and type something that looks more like http://ww.hairygoldfish.con/harvey-bog.pp. Whilst hilarity will ensue it will be fairly useless to the recipient.
With AutoText you simply set up AutoText short codes. So for the example above create a new email on your BlackBerry. Click the BB key to the left of the trackball. Scroll down to Edit AutoText. The AutoText screen appears. Click the BB key again and select “new”. Where it says “Replace:” type hgblog. Below that where it says “With:” (carefully!) type http://www.harveygoldsmith.com/harvey-blogs.php as this is the last time you’ll ever have to type that mess out again. Use the escape key (right of trackball) and select “Save”. This will return you to the blank email. Type hgblog [space] et voila!
Now…some words of caution:
1) I strongly recommend that you create a note in MemoPad on your BlackBerry and track all your AutoTexts by writing the short code followed by a description of what it does. (i.e., hgblog – link to my blog). A real advantage to this too is that not only will you want to refer to it frequently it will also automatically update/backup itself on Outlook for you. If you change devices, your short codes should transfer to your new device and just work; however, if (God forbid) you lost your BB you’d be able to easily recreate your Autotexts. Trust me, these are addictive and you’ll wonder how you ever survived without them.
2) Do not use a real word for your AutoText. If you had just used “blog” for the above example every time you type “blog” on your BlackBerry it will insert your blog’s URL. That said, one click back on your “del” key when typing an AutoText will return you to the original word. You can then carry on typing and AutoText will not insert the “replace with” statement (i.e., in this case your URL). Try it in a blank email with hgblog that you just created and you’ll see what I mean.
