Unpublished Events Department Archived notes from March 2023. It’s 8th February 2024, and I’m adding some images while proof reading, Events Department thoughts…

I’m writing this on the first weekend of March 2023, Women’s Month.

We’ve a long way to go, (hi, festival bookers!) but let’s keep going there.

Perfectly imperfect, the interdependent music industrious who drive this tale are, nevertheless, pro active in making the world a better place.

The artists, through music and performance, the audiences with support, word of mouth and reaction, media (DIY or mainstream) with the oxygene of publicity and allies like the grassroots, independent gig circuit and all who sail with it.

Despite this dystopian, physical/mental health-fighting era, Music, like air and water, still cares about social justice, environment and a future. We each have differing tastes and politics, but most appreciate the huge economic, educational and reputational potential of new music. We argue about loads but we don’t go to battle about it, on line or in a festival field.

At the end of 2022 TheZineUK doc focused on independent venues, Sheffield Leadmill, The Ferret in Preston and Manchester’s Night & Day Cafe in an article. This tapestry weaves formidable talents and their spaces.

In the first quarter of this year we’ve witnessed scary scenes like there’s a nazicentenary jigsaw to complete by the 1930s. Nah mate, sod that. No wonder Spiite-Wing politricks steals good music for their rallies (rebranded as “party conferences”).

The angels have all the best tunes, the devil just asks without taking.

Music World Advances Humanity

Music is a sharing blueprint lifestyle of Nature’s scientific sequences. The human animal is made of music. The arts are our (r)Evolution boost as we adapt at the rate of the tech we can get up our local shops.

Uni Verse translates as One Song. In conjunction with the celestial skies made of the same Nature as the living globe, is a consistent serendipity that lifts the Islands and Isles just off the European landmass. We need it, we’re literally jailed by a barbed wire fence of sewage. Yeah, you bet Musician, Feargal Sharkey is a leading figure in the fight to put things right, there, too!

Also known as leader of 1970s onwards Derry lifetime-legends, The Undertones, a band whose loved-by-rock music generations anthem, ‘Teenage Kicks’ sealed their music culture heritage by happy (phew!) accident. Bassist, Mickey Bradley, is a music world hero giving airplay to newer wave rock star potential on his BBC Radio show.

Small, independent venues have built the barely visible Irish British dots on the globe to centuries of international giant reputation and achievement. Some balance to the English colonial bollocks of a nation whose new generations are all for saying “sorry”, “thank you”, whatever but the fash fossils ain’t having it.

Entertainment arts power has been especially potent from the second half of the 20th Century as media possibilities bloomed - and owes very much to working class power which is also where the most diversity (and therefore possibility) remains.

Grassroots music circuit is where the next industry is creating itself. Obviously. Heck, artist/journalist, Dizzy Spell (TheZineUK’s Editor) bio is Situationist Roma Activist and I don’t know if it’s a queer thing or not, but I (Caffy, Events) am a vintage Black rock chick with a long time career as a Love Pirate on a parallel dimension (Planet Water). Along with the cast, cats and crew (Zeenagers) our tales of the playing class prove what is seeding under the radar to be worth investing time, energy and cash into.

The Newer Wave Punx of Normal Island

Fast forward to all backgrounds fusing to create playing class friends, while music education and venues feel systematically shut down by design.

Some genuine cult classic songs or even bi-stage worthy live sets grace intimate safe spaces. Affordably. I feel like I’m stepping home to Planet Water from the Maximum Mad Max Mayhem of Planet Earth, when I walk through the doors of a small venue.

The fact that so many faces from our pages are surely living a reality that they could initially only dream of, is a beautiful thing. We mean it when TheZineUK states the #FertileEnvironment as a “despite everything” reality. Blue Meanies, tories, can stick their hostile environment up their austerity hole.

2023 started colourfully

#BigInThisFeeling: Our gigging year started at another iconic music tourism space - The Water Rats in Kings Cross - being thrilled by Alien Blaze, Alice SK, Colour TV (James Brookes from the Soccer Six crew was beside himself after their set), Darlings - and more at This Feeling’s Big In 2023 show. (I also loved hearing SHADE in the between sets club sounds).

The Zone travelling circus of rock n roll brings crowds to the circuit and increasingly sells out in advance. Like this evening did. In the crowd were Zone Rangers, Louise Schofield and Jean Genie, multi tasking music women who move and shake new pop worlds.

There’s always a mix of artists, industry and media in “The Zone” and various of the events that we regularly attend and document. “Something Must Grow” (Patrick Jones, TheZineUK original inspiration). What makes the newer wave work is the mutual recommending, staging and witnessing that is outside the boundaries of mainstream manufacture. If it doesn’t grab us, we can’t be arsed to pretend it does. If it does though, uniqulture has a healthy rivalry to keep most of us raising our game, but with respect.

Interdependent Circuit Of Recommending Promoters, too

This Feeling, Decolonise Fest, Kick Out The Jams even TheZineUK’s own music socials, where would our next shows be staged without the Music Venue Trust. Genuinely the closest that our dimension of civilisation has to a government that cares about it’s people and their necessary spaces.

Own Our Venues is a people powered initiative. The Independent Venue Community look after and unite the spectrum of local people. The Tonic Charity is one of the mental health charities looking after the music world.

I found Tonic via the Music Industry CUP Soccer Six (whose crew includes an environmental Professor, Mark Maslen) and has included Women’s Football for over two decades (ambassadors Rowetta, Abbie McCarthy, Louise Schofield, Megan Wyn, Katie Owen are Ents world sparklers, on and off the pitch!)

The name Love Music Hate Racism speaks for itself. Forget Westminster on the North West bank of the River Thames. South EAst London has a Ministry Of Sound where Music Venue Trust were originally based and the ace n awesome Featured Artists Coalition still reside.

That’s a short walk from the Temple Of Art And Magic where I ended February 2023, on the night of a "Hmmm, War?” kinda day catching Kosmic Troubadour and friends pulsing PEACE through music with songs like ‘I Believe In Love’. I arrived home humming “We can do it, we can save the world”. But actually, we CAN.

Follow all the above and below - a supernatural magick will manifest.

With a couple of actual wizards (Gavin Monaghan of Magic Garden Recording Studio - The Wizard of Wolvo - and wordsmith, punk legend Bruno Wizard) in our collaborative cast, cats and crew of creative charismas. Lisa Knight PR is one of the bewitching black cat owners of the music world (hi Molotov!) who, like ourselves, offer assistance affordably to help spread the word of emerging acts into ACTion.

Hi £-rich people, there’s enough official data from these and more organisations for worthy investment proposals. Who can help? Help sufficiently and break more than even. (see organic DIY growth reports). Also, Stop eroding and gate-keeping the potential pipeline! Please and thank you. Credit where credit’s due: Appreciation to the access angels.

Add Nature’s Science to the arts for amplified public entertainment and we become united by a song, an individual or a group - often like a family extension. Fact - many of the people above meet each other on the future-making smallest venues biggest stories trail. It’s in our Sixth Sense of instinctive Nature.

The Force is strong via music.

Come with the MusicPeopleParty that is ALL happening!

TikTok Tales of January 2023 included at TheZineUK (@thezine.uk) | TikTok

14 March 2023 - Music Tourism Report Research began at the British Music Embassy in Texas

14 March 2024 - Music Tourist Board FOR THE PEOPLE is go! This is a situationist documentary, so no previews are currently available but it will be planned simultaneously as it unfolds.