'whats My Name?'

Of course I have to have a job on top of all this, i have an addiction to shoes, you see. so something has to pay for it.

In real life, i am bar staff. i am the over stressed girl behind the bar of the club your in pouring your drink. I'd sorta like to just rant at you about things i dont like (or do like)about bar work. I was playing this over in my head the other night, while trying to wind down after getting in a 7am. There was a fight, people were rude, we ran out of red stripe, the DJ fell over and broke his ankle, people were taking drugs on my bar, people were shouting at me and while all this was happening i was wondering why people dont have any respect.

What is it, reader, that makes you think i am stupid/slow/incompetent/blind the minute you tell me your order?

I would first like to take a minute to explain the 'Jobs that pay the rent theory'. well here, in a nutshell is the definition of JTPTR.

'to have a shit job that you work your ass of for but dont earn you any money. The supermarket clerk, the receptionist, the bar staff, the glass collector, the maid, the waitstaff - the really shit jobs that the general public judge without thinking'

If you are in a JTPTR then i applaud you. you deserve a pay rise. you are a tank, a unit. you are hardcore. Because you have 2 JTPTR while you do a degree. you get 4 hours of sleep a night and the only way you can go to sleep is if your drunk. your so stressed that you have become accustomed to panic attacks and stress rashes. your a tank. go and sleep.

Honestly.

And you, general public! why are you rude to us? were just doing a job the way our managers want, and the only remotly good thing i can say is 'Im sorry, there is nothing i can do, its a company policy' and that just mkes you worse.
why do you think your better than me?

LIST ONE: The 'dont' list for cutomers of a bar/club/pub

1. Dont wave money at us, we are not that poor that we become hipnotised by your grubby £20 note.
   
2. I will not give you a kiss because its your birthday, you are drunk. and married.
   
3. Unless you know my middle name i will not give you a free drink. i dont care.
4. WE DONT TAKE CARDS. bring cash with you, silly plastic toting airhead.
   
5. NO, that drink is £3.40, not £1. it will never change.
6. Do you want a guiness? order it first.
   
7. if you dont want ice/want a straw or ice/ want hot water in your drink blah blah blah please tell me so.
8. if you notice i am pouring you something you didnt ask for, try and warn me. i dont like wastage.
   
9. you lost your phone/keys/card/knickers/coat/dog/boyfriend i cant actually poof it out of the air, i am not harry potter. the chances are they have been stolen, im sorry. really, i am.
10. I dont remember what your 8 drink round is, i have served 400 drinks since you dribbled drunk on my bar, can you tell me what it is?
11. really, i am very stressed.
12. its not really possible to have a good night while i am at work.
    
13. when i say 'the bar is closed' i want you to take it in, and understand me.
    
14. touch me, hit me, swear at me and i have and will kick you out of the club.

Dont get me wrong, I'm not rude. i love my job and im good at it. i just want to get through this shift with nothing going wrong.

LIST TWO: The 'dont's for if you work behind the bar.

1. When you pour shots do it like this. go and get the shot glass, put it infront of the customer, then go and get the bottle and pour it into the shot glass, dont try and carry 8 shots across a busy bar, it will end up on your shirt.
   

OKAY. i have many more of these. but i am tried, and have to go back to work.
BYE,

Nat

'Mother Fucking Crew'

'God Bless Us Everyone
We Were Broken People Living Under Loaded Gun
And It Can't Be Out Far
It Can't Be Out Done
It Can't Be Out Matched
It Can't Be Out Run'

Linkin Park - The Catalyst

Its been a while hasn't it? its 4:34am on a Saturday morning, i have work muuuchhh later today and today, my trademark blonde hair has gone, put in its place by a directions dye called 'fire'. I was feeling a little childlike. this was the outcome.

i feel like me again, so that's all that counts. I have just found the album A Thousand Suns by Linkin Park and my god, its an emotional journey. there are songs that are depressing things, there are songs that make you feel a million miles tall and there are songs that make me glad I'm in love.

To get you up to date with what I've been up to lately i shall let you peek at my to do list.

• Find Uni professors and email them a pretty please let me on your course
• construct UCAS application
• 1000 words for self directed project
• 700 words for tour management
• conduct some actual research for self directed project
• write some of the content for self directed project

(self directed project is basically a study hall. I've had to choose an idea and actually do it, now my idea involves journalism and I'm not really very good at that, but its basically a band advice and knowledge how to website thing. that's the basic idea. it sounds dumb even to write it down, and yes before you ask it was a morning without coffee that i came up with that idea)

so as you can see my main 3 conquests are: getting into uni for my 3rd year, doing an essay for self directed project and planning a (hypothetical) tour.

The tour is a little maybe-i-have-bitten-off-more-than-i-can-chew-here at the moment, but its getting there. I really enjoy it, so i want to do it right, at least i know I'm going to pass that one, which is good. I'm doing an east coast tour of America, starting at New York's Madison Square Gardens (Capacity 20,000) and ending at Miami's American Airlines Arena (capacity: 21,000). if i were actually doing the tour it would be shitting myself, but I'm not, I'm just planning every tiny aspect of the tour and not doing it. One of my favorite day dreams of the moment is finding out that i really will tour manage a tour as a big as the one i am planning.

Gosh, I've gotten this far and lost my writing bug. Don't you just hate that?

Maybe I'll just leave it at that and wit for the next writing Bug. I might go to bed.

Come for the music, stay for the fun.

I am bored in class, my partner won't talk to me and no one will sit near me as my lunch smells.

I Love Long Titles.
I am nom noming on a tuna pasta salad, and it smells and no one will sit next to me, so please as you read this sit and eat something thats smelly. have some stinky food.
Okay. I know it's been a while. However, i have been a busy bum and i am very proud of myself.
So, last Friday I got a job. It's a work experience 'you will not be paid and i will throw all of the work at you' but it's still something i am very exited about. I am now part of the Quenched Unsigned team. search for them on here plzz? they write band reviews and stuff like that and they do album artwork. i spoke to them about their long term goals and it sounds like they want to just take over the unsigned world. they're in partnership with Kerrang! and T4 and the BBC. so this is good for me right? i am to take care of all the business side of things and my first port of call is to both write a business plan for them and compise a list of ways they can make money. simple, right?

oof. more later. im going home.

I'm like the ringleader, I call the shots,

Hello.

so this is my attempt at actually doing an assignment on time and when i am supposed to do it, instead of doing it 12 hours before it's due in.
GUESS WHAT I DID TODAY?
(none of this happened today, ive been at my parents all day. having a manicure and buying sweets. which made me happy.)
Ive branched out?! oh yes, i am now an event manager.
Kinda.
so yeah, we have to put together this 5 day festival full of educational and fun things for people who cant speak english.
sound hard?
yeah.
i had LOADDSSS of things to put down here, and now i cant remember any of it.
:(
ill post more tomorrow, im really tired and have to commute into Manchester on the train tomorrow.
TEN TO EIGHT CREW FTW!
night everyone.

Nat.

come for the music, stay for the fun.

It's 6am on sunday morning and i have some truths to tell.

Good Morning.
Please disregard anything i have ever said. It has been a lie. a complete and utter lie. and i am sorry for lying to you.

FIRSTLY. this blog has been for the purpose of an assignment and now it isnt. please do not go and look up winterlong, they are terrible. and teriffically useless and unreliable.
i finished the essay on thursday and usually the best bit about finishing an essay is putting the word count at the end, not with this one. the best bit about this one was dropping the band and hopefully having no contact with them ever again, good luck to them i say, 7 years and waiting guys.
7 years.
so.
here are some of the real things that you should know about the music industry.
ONE: lie. seriously. my teacher told me this one. it is easier to lie about ti all, like when your doing PR, Promotions or general pimping. it is easier to lie.
take this sentence: Winterlong are waiting for gigs in manchester and are currently in talks about up coming reviews.
now take this one: Winterlong are due to headline manchester venue SUB61 this week and have just secured several reviews in blog and publications nationally.
which one sounds better? the second one, of course, is the lie. Winterlong havent got jack shit.

SECONDLY: the music industry may as well just say BAA. they are all sheep. thats the worst part. One goes, the others follow. HOWEVER. at the moment, what with record sales going down and the music industry facing a change it is not yet ready for the sheep just do not want to move.
its a simple as looking at a field.
The music industry needs to start taking risks.
now, i know that the music industry has not been hit that hard by all the credit crunch mess that has happened, but it has been affected and somehow it needs to adapt to all of this. Its as simple as this.
you cannot get a job if you have no experience, but you cant get experience without a job. the music industry is much the same and there is not a set way to actually get noticed, it is simply a case of right place, right time and a huge amount of luck.
The book 'Kill Your Friends', about the A&R process puts it very well and, even though it is fictional, it says alot of very well put truth about the music industry. 'There is no formula, no way of knowing if what we do is right, we only have to hope that the general public like it, and then we can relax. for a while.
BAA.
At my paying job a couple of months ago i was talking to the former promotions manager for the famous Manchester nightclub the Hacienda and he told me that you have to have an ultimate goal, he asked me what was mine. I told him that i wanted to make it easier for women to not only make it in the industry, but overcome prejudice.
THIRD: The glass ceiling exists. its not as bad as it used to be. but it is still there. i may be a little feminist about most things but really, this is not my feminist dig at men in power. i respect a great many men who were and are in power, but i can draw on this from personal experience. The industry is a very testosterone driven thing. There is still hope yet though girls, dont go burning your bra and sucking every cock yet. women in men dominated industries tend to be driven, and more hard working than our male counter parts. its true. a man told me. this is because we want it more, and honestly, i thing the cocksucking career woman is now reserved for trashy novels only.
we have power. where it counts now.
maybe its time we used it?

FOUR: dont accept anything less than the most professional. dont ever take on a band that are not professional about what they do. if they treat it like a hobby then why do they have a manager, if they are not going to give it their all then why are they wasting your time? and if you know this then why are you wasting yours?
and if you are in a band then please...dont ever waste the time of someone doing you an unpaid favor, you will just upset alot of people along the way. be professional and give it 100%, always.

FIVE: the best song is always the last one written. The former manager of the strokes told me this one. if the best song is the first one written then people will believe that the band, or you for that matter may be one hit wonders.

SIX: music does trend, to an extent. but you cannot know where music is going untill you know where it has been. study music history. pick up a book that will teach you something.

SEVEN: LEARN TO READ AND WRITE MUSIC. AND I MEAN NOTATION. i am sick of people calling themselves musicians when they do not know what an E Minor and A minor chord is. you are not a musican untill you know what the names are.

EIGHT: thicken your skin. When someone hits you, get up and do it again and again and again, and then maybe one day you wont fall down. ALSO get some fucking balls. no one will believe in you untill you believe in yourself.

More Soon. night night.


Come for the music, Stay for the fun.

7am on sunday morning is the best time to post a blog

I'm taking a break from working, i swear.
Good Morning everyone, welcome to Treble Clef if your new here. thanks for coming.
please read this with a cup of coffee, its that time in limbo between me going to sleep and the rest of the world getting up.

so im working on the mailing list for Winterlong.
PLEASE GO LISTEN
www.myspace.com/winterlong the band.

ive finished pimping now.
HERE IS WHAT I DID TODAY
I found this ace site. its a site that catalogs blogs/reviews etc. go to www.blogcatalog.com. it basically tells you a bit about the blogs. theres a search bar at the top, i looked for 'heavy metal' and it gave me 500 ish blogs, half of them were in different languages (one of them looked like it was written in viking)
go check it out, it saved me about 2 hours in search time.

so yeah, im just working on the mailing list for the lucky people who get to receive a fun email from me that basically shamelessly pimps the band.

Ive basically given up on them though after they told me it was a no to playing sub 61.
what else did i do this week?
ive basically just added to the mailing list. i spoke to danni @ Quenched Unsigned. hes a very nice man, gave me a number for a scotish label who i am to call on monday.

this is not finished, ill do it in class tomorrow.

'If its not ment to come out, then dont force it out!'

Hello.
happy Easter kids.
please nom nom on easter egg while you read this.
i would love to start this post and say 'YES, i have done loads this week'. however, in work terms i really haven't. i have a had a personally happy week, and i have greatly enjoyed it.
I'm not lazy, i promise. i have done some work.

okay, so. here is your most favorite bit.

HERE IS WHAT I DID THIS WEEK.
I sat down with a mac on Thursday night and tried to get my head around HTML. now, i can navigate myself around HTML, but the bastardized version used by MySpace, not the real one. i sat there for ages, honestly, just trying to work it out. Like every 14 year old i loved tinkering around with the genetics of my Myspace page and took great pride when i found a code generator that would enable me to get rid of my comment box and music player (your on my page! you should listen to the music i like), however web has changed and now we have a new and shiny version.
mmmm 2.0
I guess MySpace bastardized this version as a kind of ceremony, 'we ballsed up the first, we may as well balls up the second'.
so, after finding out that
wasn't going to change my line at all when everything that i wrote on the page just ended up being onnee biiigg paaarrraaggrraaapphh i decided to call my friend daffodill, who could practically speak HTML in normal, everyday conversations.
so i found out that its
at the end the sentance that will start another.
silly 2.0
i know that as a very long explanation for a sentence that could have just been 'i learnt how to use HTML' but if i said that you would be really bored and my blogs wouldn't be as beefy and impressive as they are now. :)
SO.
so then i redid the bands myspace as it was all white and you couldnt navigate anywhere. and then i put a press pack together, however the band i happen to manage are actually kinda unreliable.
my memory stick is a little fried, and all the audio for the press packs was on there, so now i have SHINY EXCITING press pack without the most important thing.
balls.
i made a band facebook and twitter. neither of which have any friends.
poor lonely winterlong.
to add clickky www.twitter.com/winterl0ng and for facebook search Winterlong.
thanks. :)
and thats all i did this week actually.

bye bye
Nat.

Come for the music, stay for the fun.

'I Think Your Onto A Winner'

Haaaiiii everyone.
whats with the normal text? for some reason i cannot get the text editor to come up.
its all gonna be the same size! oh dear.
okay, so here's the section that i think i will now call 'HERE'S WHAT I DID THIS WEEK'
HERE IS WHAT I DID THIS WEEK
i got sick. seriously. i just got rid of it.
(and yes, i know this is my work blog, blah blah. BUT i have a perfectly good reason as to why i have told you that i got sick)
so really i havent really done much. but despite not having done much i still got WINTERLONG a gig.
at a band night at sub61. i ran into the booker/promotions guy at rockworld on friday night and i didnt even realise that it was him, BUT he said that yes of course i could put my band in the slots that he has. i sent him the link to the myspace and he actually likes it.
so then i text the singer and told him.
and i got a really gay text back that just said
[INTERMISSION: i just found out why i am on normal text. i was in edit HTML rather than compose. shush you, its 3 in the morning.]
'i am sorry but the band cannot do either of those days. we are going to a gig'
Here's a tip for anyone in a band.
DON'T EVER EVER SAY NO TO A GIG. THE MORE GIGS YOU PLAY THE MORE PEOPLE LIKE YOU.
whats more important?

i am not ranting at all. no.
im just stating some advice. i did say this would be an advice blog.
please take the advice.
OH! and if you are wondering why all this blog is edited properly its because i didnt want to leave the whole thing looking like it was normal. if i didnt edit and put lotsa different sized text in you would get bored.
ALSO.
why do people not take flyers?
ive just been out, flyering for South, and seriously the amount of CAJOLING i had to do to just get someone to take an actual flyer that they probably wouldnt read at all.
do flyers bite? what is so offensive about a flyer?
and also, and ive been wondering this for a while, what makes a club successful? what gives it a good reputation? because i can bet that the flyerers for 5th ave dont have to cajole people.
actually, im really quite angry. im only writing this so i dont have to do it tomorrow. i have 2 and a half weeks of solid WORK ahead of me.
yay me.
so, that is what i did this week.

here, have some quotes.
'I really like them. i think your onto a winner' - booker, sub61.
'most people go to the grave with the music still in them' - Anon
'my dream when i was a kid was the usual dream, i wanted to be a footballer, then i grew up a bit and wanted to be a musician' Shayne Gallagher

so, on that note i am going to play the sims 3.
Bye Bye.

Come for the music, stay for the fun.

Hello. Hola. Commo Esta Mi Bambini?

Good Afternoon.
firstly, a quick explanation.
This is not my only blog, but it is what i will be referring to as my business blog as it will deal with music, and music only. i got sick of ALL those blogs and articles that claim to make it easy for musicians and budding music industry people to get started, however, they confuse me and are usually written by someone who doesn't know a thing about the music industry or by someone who is already firmly in the quick cement that it is.
so here, have some advice/rants/prods/ from an 18 year old girl who is in the same boat.
This is also where i will be mercilessly plugging the band that i represent.
Are we clear now? okay good.

so, hello. I'm Nat.
Ive just finished the press releases for Winterlong's press pack that i will soon be sending out to lotsa people, my poor fingers ache at the prospect of it already. I got told to write 2 releases, one centered around the band that will go into publications from where they are from and one (and this seems so self centered) that will be about me, that will go to publications where i am from and where i live.

(though i don't think the gangsta's of south Manchester will care and I'm pretty sure that people don't let sheep into gigs in Manchester. my hometown is mainly made up of sheep and their farmers)

So anyway, the press releases.
I don't have some of the info on the band by the way, so please excuse my 'insert name/place/road here' thing. :)
Band Centered Press Release

Band Members Names Here are all from Place here and attended College/school here. The four boys formed Winterlong Number years ago and have been performing in and around Nottingham. The band have just been signed to up and coming Manchester label Future Echo and have been released on a compilation that has been sent to South By South West, one of the years biggest music conferences held in Austin, Texas.

Winterlong's fusion of 1990's funk and modern day rock is set to rock the music industry. Winterlong are represented by Manager Natalie Kols and have shows lined up on Nottingham and Manchester .

For more info click www.myspace.com/winterlongtheband, FACEBOOK HERE and TWITTER HERE.

Me Centered Press Release
INTERMISSION - 'Welcome to the music business, your fucked' - Martin Atkins

Local girl Natalie Kols has released a promotional album that has been sent to South By South West, one of the biggest music conferences on the year, Natalie has released the album through Manchester based label Future Echo.

Natalie, 18, from Diggle represents Nottingham based band Winterlong and the band have shows booked in Nottingham and Manchester. Information about the band can be fund at www.myspace.com/winterlongtheband and at FACEBOOK and TWITTER.

Dont laugh at where i am from.

So far, so good. All i have to do now is get a list of people to send this to, along with the rest of the press pack, and also Email all of them with a very boring and very generic email. i really need to look at how the hell i can make a generic email sound better. I'm trying to make it sound professional while making it sound like this band shits gold and burps little kittens.
its surprising how hard that actually is.

i know that i promised this blog would give you tips on the music industry, BUT on the bright side you know what a (badly written) press release looks like now, which you didn't know before. so well done. you can go now, while i write a list of the lucky people that getta receive a email from me.

Ah music, by the all the way through this blog i have listened to Bryan Adams, Rachel Stevens, Sisters Of Mercy, Marilyn Manson and Def Leppard.

Till next time.
Nat.

Come for the music, Stay for the fun.