Dr Mike Jones:
Doctor Mike Jones is a lecturer in music The University of Liverpool. He has almost 50 years experience working in the music industry and has worked in various roles within it. His involvement started when he and a school friend, Marcus Russell, began to put on live music events at their local venue in South Wales. Marcus went on to begin a very successful promoting and management career, putting on Siouxsie and the Banshees and Alexandra Palace when he was still in university. When Mike formed his band, Latin Quarter, he gave Marcus his first job in band management. The group went on to have a UK top 20 single and play Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage in 1986. When the group eventually split up, Mike stayed in touch with Marcus who rang him in the early 90s to tell him about a new band he was about to sign called Oasis. Using his extensive knowledge of the industry, Mike decided to work towards his doctorate and eventually set up the first masters course in music in the country. He has a vast amount of first hand music industry experience and has working relationships with not only Marcus Russell, but also the manager of Arctic Monkeys.
Posh Ellen:
The guys from Posh Ellen have only been playing together as a four piece for a few months. Before that they existed as a two-piece consisting of singer and guitarist Dan Page and drummer Aaron Hayward. Bass player Dylan Gibbons joined soon after and the current lineup was rounded off when guitarist Jake Walder joined in mid-2017. They describe their sound as ‘drunk loud music for drunk loud people’ and want to bring back old school rock and roll. They got their first radio air time on bbc introducing in November 2017 and released their first EP in December. The band are becoming veterans of their local live music circuit and are beginning to gain a significant following.
Martin Linch (Massmatiks):
Martin played bass for an unsigned band called MassMatiks. The group met at college in 2011 and played together for 6 years before separating in September this year. The band had amassed a loyal fanbase which was steadily growing and still has over 20,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Attendances at headline shows were consistently packing out small venues and MassMatiks recently supported festival regulars DON BROCO at their biggest show yet. Unfortunately, the pressures of being a young, unsigned band in a difficult and changing industry eventually broke the group up this year. It would be difficult to find anyone with more experience of being unsigned in today’s industry than Martin. I want to find out what went wrong for a band that looked set to finally break through and what it’s like to graft for so long and build a reputation only to see your band split up.
Samee Goosani
Samee is a 20-year-old session guitarist who’s studying for a career in music at the prestigious London music school , BIMM (British and Irish Modern Music Institute). He has played in a number of bands before, but instead of pursuing the dream of becoming a rock and roll star, he instead chose the less glamorous, but more stable career path of a session musician. Alongside his university studies at BIMM, he’s already earning money playing at weddings and events with other musicians, some of whom he goes to university with. I want to know why he made the decision to turn his passion into a legitimate career choice in a difficult industry and why he wanted to professionalise his skill instead of attempting to break into the industry as an unsigned artist.