Progress Report One

So I feel I’ve finally got to a point in making my radio documentary where I can sit down and have something significant to write about. It’s coming up to the final week in November and I’ve completed two of the four interviews that I want to include in my final documentary. Honestly, I hoped I’d have at least three done by now and with December on the horizon I feel increasingly anxious to get everything I need in the bag and get cracking with the editing process.

However, with this said I’ve really enjoyed the two interviews I’ve done already and I’m happy with what I’ve got. My first interview was with Samee Goosani, a young session guitarist studying at British and Irish Modern Music institute (BIMM), and my second was with Martin Linch, a former member of the exciting unsigned band MassMatiks who sadly split up recently despite beginning to gain some momentum in the industry (read more about all my interviewees on the Interviews section of this blog).

I felt both went really well. I’ve known Samee for a long time but it was really interesting to understand why he chose to go down the route of ‘professionalising’ his significant skill on the guitar, so to speak. I went to visit him at his house in Kent and recorded the interview using a new flashmic I’ve bought myself and unfortunately there were a few teething problems, but luckily the best parts of the interview came through in good quality.

I’d originally intended to do the same with Martin, this time meeting him in Morden, South London, but regrettably he wasn’t able to make the date in the end and I had to record the interview over the phone in the studio. What he had to say was really eye opening. I’ve been in bands before so know how hard it is to do well, but listening to him speak about some of the added pressures that come when your band starts to build momentum was really interesting. I’d never really considered that moderate success can sometimes hold a young band back in some ways. MassMatiks were going for over half a decade as an unsigned outfit so I feel that it’s important to be make Martin’s experiences one of the major points of my documentary.

My next step is going to meet a band on the opposite end of the experience spectrum to MassMatiks, a group called Posh Ellen from Southampton. They’re relatively new but they’ve just been featured on BBC Introducing so I’m expecting them to be far more optimistic about the industry than Martin was. I’m going to spend the day with them in Southampton and watch them perform in the evening to try and experience ‘a day in the life of an unsigned band’, if that’s not too cliched.

My one major concern is that I’m still struggling to find an industry expert willing to talk to me for my fourth interview. I’ve contacted plenty of journalists, bloggers, writers and promoters but none have got back to me in a significant way. I've got time so I'll keep trying.