Daniel Scully! AS Media!: 2010

Tuesday 23 November 2010

Planning for my Magazine Contents Page!

This is a sketch of the structure of the structure i will try to use in my product.

Planning for My Magazine Front Cover!

This is a sketch of what i hope to be the structure of my magazine layout.

Saturday 20 November 2010

Written Article

Title: Hey, Hey Scousebrick! From their song Hey Hey Housebrick
Big Quote: “We played with The Who in front of 35,000”

Hot Club De Paris are an indie three piece from Liverpool known for their angular guitar pop, stop start time sigs and barbershop harmonies. The band consist of brothers Matthew Smith (guitar and vocals) and Alasdair Smith (drums and vocals), and their vegan friend from Frodsham, Paul Rafferty (bass/baritone guitar and vocals). They are signed to Moshi Moshi Records, who signed Hot Chip, Kate Nash and indie legends Bloc Party, and released their debut album ‘Drop It’ Til It Pops’ in 2006. After a very busy year, in which they released two EP’s and toured Europe I was lucky to catch them in Liverpool, where I was blown away by the witty banter, and bandmanship on display. Before the show I got the chance to speak to lead man Paul Rafferty.

Before HCDP, Paul, Matthew and Alasdair were in slightly less motivated bands based in Liverpool, and not really going anywhere. But it was one fine day in 2004, when Paul got a job working behind the bar at a race course... a race course that was also employing Matthew Smith. Nature then took its course and Paul simply said “We just got really fucking drunk, and, y’know played some music” in a rock ‘n’ roll sort of manner. I asked Paul for the story behind the name Hot Club De Paris, and instead of a memorable band anecdote, he simply educated me on a jazz group called “Quintette du Hot Club de France” on the way he admitted to liking a bit of Stephen Grappelli and Django Reinhardt, which produce cheap jazz records sold in the UK and he said, “we thought we would turn our band into a joke”

The band, despite not being a household name, sit on several prestigious achievements, including tours of India, America and Europe, where they played respected festivals like South by Southwest in America and The Camden Crawl. However, Paul admitted that his highlight was when “we played with The Who in front of 35,000 people” , he went on “it was ridiculous. We thought someone was having us one”. It’s not like this band was born into fame, they had to work their way towards the top, “like playing on the floor at a pub or like, playing in a cricket ground, it’s just dead interesting seeing how many people are involved in the process and how it all comes together, so that was pretty amazing!”

From listening to their unique style of music, in which Matthew doesn’t play chords, it’s quite hard to pin point where this bands influences are from. “It’s like Led Zeppelin records and The Who records, all that sort of stuff, like those bands are completely out of their minds, they keep writing like such crazy music, you know, write like throughout their whole careers, and some people just think that’s just what stopped like rock music, like we are really into that stuff”, controversial however, true. Although there are definite traces of classic rock in their latest EP Paul carries on “ Then you hear of some many other bands like Jet… and they sound like fucking dickheads”.

Nowadays, bands can get a Facebook page or a MySpace page, where they can upload music, get in touch with venues and promote themselves from dawn til dusk. Being a band that formed in 2004, becoming a part of the internet generation, I wondered how important the internet had proved to be in Hot Club’s musical career, he admits “First thing I do when I get home these days is like you can check your emails and correspond with people in that way”.

As a fan, you may have already noticed, but for those of you that haven’t, Hot Club’s quirkiness doesn’t end at their instruments, with their bundles of creativity, Paul does the artwork for posters and albums, and they have grown an obsession with writing long, confusing titles. I asked Paul about their latest EP ‘The Rise and Inevitable Fall of the High School Suicide Band’, and where the inspiration sparked from, when we told me “I was reading up on suicide clusters…”, and I began to plan an escape route. However, we went deeply on revealing “It’s like a metaphor for a group of guys who are just sort of giving up, and they are realising they had this like pact when they were kids and that kind of stuff…” At the ripe old age of 30, I doubt Paul will have to be, in his words, “putting records in the loft” anytime soon.

Why should he? Surely Hot Club will release more albums? So, I asked Paul whether the next year will be as busy as the one gone, “Yeah, we’re in the middle of recording our third album at the minute so, yeah that’s err, yeah just that. There’s nothing massive. The two EP’s we put out last year, they are getting bundled together as a CD in Europe and America, there coming out in January, we’re touring Europe and America”. So this won’t be the last time you hear the name Hot Club De Paris.

Friday 19 November 2010

Research on Interviewed Band, Hot Club De Paris!

Hot Club de Paris: are a band of two brothers and a mutual friend. Alasdair Smith (drums & vocals), Matthew Smith (guitar &vocals) and Paul Rafferty (vocals, bass and baritone guitar) signed to Moshi Moshi Records in 2005 and have since released a string of 7" singles and two critically acclaimed albums (Drop It 'til It Pops, 2006, Live at Dead Lake, 2008). They toured both albums extensively, playing hundreds of shows across the UK & Europe, Scandinavia, the US and even India. They are proud to have played alongside the likes of Joan of Arc, Battles, Jamie T and The Who. They're besotted with mid-era Don Cabellero, old Billy Bragg and any period of their hero Mike Watt's back catalogue.
In the first half of 2010 Hot Club de Paris released two 6-song EPs, called "With Days Like This As Cheap As Chewing Gum, Why Would Anyone Want To Work?". Their second EP called "The Rise And Inevitable Fall Of The High School Suicide Cluster Band" was released on the 24th May. A CD compilation including all the tracks from both 2010 EPs is planned to be released in October.

Albums/EPs

Date Of Release	Title
2006	Drop It 'til It Pops
2008	Live at Dead Lake
2010	With Days Like This As Cheap As Chewing Gum, Why Would Anyone Want To Work? (EP)
2010	The Rise And Inevitable Fall Of The High School Suicide Cluster Band (EP)

Friday 12 November 2010

Pictures of Hot Club De Paris gig!

These are the photographs i took at the Hot Club De Paris gig in the Liverpool 02 Academy.

Thursday 11 November 2010

Transcript of Interview with Paul Rafferty

This the transcript of the conversation with Paul Rafferty from Hot Club De Paris, certain parts will be included in my Double Page Spread article.

How did the band form?

Well, like the way every other band forms really. Meeting people that you have loads in common with and playing music together. I met Matthew when we were working behind the bar at a racecourse, and then just got dead drunk and played some music together.

Where did the name “Hot Club De Paris” come from?

If you want to buy a jazz recording the UK it’s the cheapest record you can actually buy. Basically it’s a compilation of the work of Stéphane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt who were in a band called “Quintette de Hot Club de France”. So when their compilation of work came out in the UK, it came out as, Hot Club De Paris, which we thought was quite funny and so we turned our band into a joke.

I read that you have played Camden Crawl...

Yeah, we’ve two I think; I can’t remember that much about it. Yeah I think we ended up doing two shows over two nights. Its like, all those kind of street festivals are cool as long as you can get a good venue and stuff, sometimes, the venues are really packed but others aren’t. We were really lucky, it was a really busy show, and everyone sort of went off their heads. So it was cool …

What was your favourite gig?

I don’t know, it’s always difficult to decide that sort of stuff, because we’ve done like really fucking huge stuff like, we played to like 35,000 people with 'The Who'. That was ridiculous, the gig came through. We thought someone was having us one. Stuff like that is amazing like even you know, it is just another gig but at the same time it doesn’t seem like different levels. Like playing on the floor at a pub or like, playing in a cricket ground, it’s just dead interesting seeing how many people are involved in the process and how it all comes together, so that was pretty amazing, Other shows have been awesome, like we got to play in India, which was absolutely out of this mind and then juts touring Europe amazing because you get fed well.

Have you played America?

Yeah we’ve played America few times, we have been there twice. We went to play a South by South West and then we went to Chicago to record a record, so we did some shows while we were there

Who are your influences?

Like were really into the who now, we weren’t so obsessed at the time when we actually played with them, which a real wasted opportunity because I wish we could of spent some time with them, even thought it was so difficult, because there were bodyguards everywhere. But, yeah I do really like the 'The Who', really into them. I like kind of quite new, cool British stuff like that, especially stuff that used to be seen as odd and is now somehow considered cool. It’s like Led Zeppelin records and The Who records, all that sort of stuff, like those bands are completely out of their minds, they keep writing like such crazy music, you know write like throughout their whole careers, and some people just think that’s just what stopped like rock music, like we are really into that stuff. Then you hear of some many other bands like Jet, or someone who gets into that sort of stuff, and it’s just sounds like fucking dickheads. All that sort of stuff and then a lot of experimental American stuff like indie rock stuff like Owls and Don Caballero and stuff …

I was wondering whether you have a certain Ryder at venues?

Well, in a vegan so I don’t eat any dairy products or any meat products, and being in France is difficult because all you can really eat is bread and fruit.

Tell me about your worst gig...

The thing is like; you have to be quite thick skinned about worst gigs and that kind of scenario. If you can come off stage, and say to each other that “that was terrible”, then you haven’t really got anything to continue for. Like us, if a gig is going that bad then you just take the piss until it’s funny, like, but if a show is going really well then we won’t say a word, and if it’s going really badly then you just collar the guy at the back of the room with a pool cue and just sort of rip piss out of him, until it’s fun to be there.

Your latest EP was called “The Rise and Inevitable Fall of the High School Suicide Cluster Band”, tells us about your long song name and EP names...

I was just reading up about suicide clusters and then, like that whole EP like the writing and stuff on I is kind of based like the second coming of age like the suppose a man has, like that whole kind of cool thing. We you are 18 19 and you decide you are going to do a bands and behave in that sort of way. But there seems to be like a second coming of age, when you hit about thirty and all your friends start getting married or having kids, you know they put their records in the loft, I was just writing around that. That and the idea of like a suicide pacts and suicide clusters. It’s like a metaphor for a group of guys who are just sort of giving up, and they are realising they had this like pact when they were kids and that kind of stuff

Tell us how important the internet has proved to be your musical career

Yeah, it’s ridiculous like, I spose we have been in the situation were we have done bands before the internet and stuff. I think that people of our age, the last generation to really understand before and after of what the internet is responsible before. First thing I do when I get home these days is like you can check your emails and correspond with people in that way, like it never used to be like that. Yeah so when I speak to new touring bands like 9a band) they remember a time when you’d like book a tour on like, before mobile phones, I can’t imagine how the fuck that’d work, you turn up at a venue and find a payphone that you would call someone’s house with, it’s just crazy. The internet has made making music so much easier in the way that it’s so much easier to keep in contact with venues

Facebook and MySpace?

Yeah I think they can have their downsides like, because there is so much media, everything’s like intensely saturated that you have to sort of have to like prove to someone that you are doing something all the time , like they want a blog post every three days, you know a photo of you being whacky or something. It never used to be like that, it used to be about making a record then fucking off for two years while you write the next one. So yeah, it has its good sides and its bad sides, and the good side being that, yeah it’s easier to operate for a touring band, the downside is that for some reason your band has to be this transparent sort of all-encompassing organism.

Any bands that you tip to be successful in the near future?

I don’t know about new people being successful, I’ve never been able to spot that stuff, but erm, I like loads of Liverpool punk bands like Cold Ones and I still love SSS, well, I suppose they’re on their third album now. Yeah that sort of stuff, new band in Sunderland called Cold train who are really good, they’re sort of hanging out with The Futureheads and recording with the guys from Field Music and that, they’re really good. They used to play in a band called This Ain’t Vegas. But yeah there is a mixture of things going on.

Have ‘Hot Club’ got coming up I the next year?

Yeah, we’re in the middle of recording our third album at the minute so, yeah that’s err, yeah just that. There’s nothing massive. The two EP’s we out last year, they are getting bundled together as a CD in Europe and America, there coming out in January, we’re touring Europe and America.

In the UK, or just Europe?

No no, just Europe, we’re going to have something we are going to sell, but it’s going to be quite limited in the UK, we don’t really want to like put it out here because we’ve already put out an EP and we don’t want to rip people off. We don’t want to sell the same records twice because that makes us like Kings of Leon or something, I don’t even know if they do that, but it’s the sort of thing they would do

Wednesday 10 November 2010

Production Plan!

FRONTCOVER COVERLINES:

SOUNDwaves. - the rise of surf rock.
The Who? - Who 'The Who' used to be.
Evolution of Indie - We look through the timeline of influences.
Interview with front cover model- solo or band.... (EDITTTTTTT)
'Hot Club De Liverpool'- a SOUND exclusive interview with jangly, scouse trio Hot Club De Paris.

PHOTOGRAPH FOR FRONT COVER:

PHOTOGRAPH FOR DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD:

Tuesday 2 November 2010

Publication Plan!

TITLE: SOUND
POSITIONING STATEMENT: THATS SOUND!
PRICE: £2.30
DISTRIBUTION: NEWSAGENTS, SUPERMARKETS, GIG VENUES, INSTRUMENT SHOPS.
FREQUENCY OF PUBLICATION: FORTNIGHTLY

RATONALE: The sole purpose of this magazine will be to inform the reader about bands producing new music, however, in order for the magazine to attract more buyers i will need to include interviews and reviews of big bands.

STYLE: My magazine will be informal and willing to offer strong, and sometimes controversial views on certain topics. The magazine is going to be very informative, however must be able to be understood by its target audience, so i will use simple vocabulary and syntax. My articles will be written in short paragraphs, using humour to entice the reader to read further, slang and colloquialisms.

REGULAR CONTENT:

Reviews of highly anticipated albums, and of albums made from bands that are not massive in the public eye
Gig reports- look through the fortnights gigs, ratings and fan opinions
Editors letter
Competitions (Quizzes, crosswords etc)
end page- member of band, recollecting his favourite memory of his/her career and perhaps an anecdote.
Fan mail
Independent album chart. (1-20)
Venue Page- a page with the gigs of every 02 academy, and then big arenas
Rewind- a look back into the lives of a famous band from another time.
picture page- pictures from the fortnight of gigs around the country.

FEATURED CONTENT:
Examples of featured articles that will appear in the magazine:

Interview with 'Hot Club De Paris'
Album review of 'Kings of Leon's' highly anticipated 'Come Around Sundown'
Rewind- article on 'The Who'
The Evolution of Indie- look back to other indie bands, where it started, then compared to now etc.
end page- this fortnight its Damon Alburn.
evolution of guitar- from early 50's to now.
Venue page- this fortnights focus is Manchester: MEN and The Manchester 02 Academy, including interview with the manager of the academy, explaining his every day life and how he gets bookings
Sound!WAVES!- the rise of surf rock!
Interview with band (front cover model)
Interview with Joe Donnelly (front cover model)
Poster
Festival Rumours

HOUSE STYLE :

COVERLINES: IMPACT
HEADLINES: IMPACT
STANDFIRST
CAPTIONS
FEATURES FIRST PARAGRAPH-
NEW FIRST PARAGRAPH
BODY TEXT
CLOLUR SCHEME

Monday 1 November 2010

Results from Questionnaire (Audience Research)!

All these questions were a part of a questionnaire that was given to twenty people, who were within my target age range.

How much roughly would you be willing to spend on a music magazine?: This question came back with a the majority of people saying that they would be willing to spend £2.00 - £2.50, this could change depending how often they buy their music magazines. NME is a magazine that is within ny audiences ideal price.

How often do you buy music magazines?: There were three responses that were a quarter each, weekly, fortnightly and annually, using this data it would be sensible to release a magazine fortnightly.

How do you Obtain your Music?: This data shows that my target audience are more likely to download music rather than buy CD's.

How Often do you Attend Gigs?: This data shows how important gigs are to my target audience, more than half of the people asked attend within every month.

What Colours do you associate with Indie music? The main colours i received feedback for where blues and greens, some people also added with bright.

What three words come to mind when you think of the word indie? The three most popular words where underground, vintage and new. I could use this data to come up with a title for my magazine.

Is there anything you dislike about the current magazines? There were two responses; the prices and the lack of information on local gigs. Looking at this feedback, i think it would be sensible to show in depth information on gigs in a lot of areas.

On a scale of 1-5, 1 being important and 5 being irrelevant, how do you rate the following aspects of a music magazine? In order of significance:Use of images, Featired articles on bands and albums, information on gigs, free gift and then Competitions.

Wednesday 20 October 2010

Questionnaire!

Tuesday 19 October 2010

Analysing a Music Magazine Double Page Spread!

Analysis of Music Double Page Spread! on Prezi

Saturday 16 October 2010

Analysis of Magazine Contents Page!

Analysis of Magazine Front Cover!

Friday 15 October 2010

Codes and Conventions of a Magazine Double Page Spread!

Larger image covering full page- sometimes bleeds between pages, linking two pages together
Drop capitals- show the reader where to start
Standfirst introduces the article and i positioned under the headline. Contains journalist's name and credits the photographer.
Other techniques; blod text, slightly biggegr textsize, capitals for the first few words.
Quotes are taken out of the article and enlarged somewhere in the article, this is to break up the page and make it seem like there is not that much text, Also the quotes could be positioned under the headline or by the picture to anchor, or in the stand-first
Laid out in columns, always 2 to 4. It is only occasionally set out in columns of 2.
Simple colour scheme (colours kept to a minimum)
Headline of the article
Name of the artist who the article is about.
If the article is an interview, the photograph will be taken in the studio
Sometimes the picture is across the whole DPS with all the text on the picture
Headlines sometimes use stylised fonts, dependant on the target audience. this is used to draw the reader in but not give away what the article is about
By line- who wrote the article/photographers credit
Strapline at the top- subject matter of the article
The article is usually written informally and allows the reader to get an insight into the writers personality.

Tuesday 12 October 2010

Researching the Music Magazine Market Place!

NME- New Music Express!

retails for £2.30
contains 70 to 80 pages
indie rock and new music
the magazine is published every week
regulars consist of album reviews, crosssword,ON REPEAT, news, Radar and LIVE!

This is an example of a regular article in an issue of NME (showed by the stand-first 'the sounds rattling around the skulls of the NME staff this week'). It is exactly what i would like to be doing, as it is about bands that, i regard as, not being as advertised as they should be, that relate to the target audience.

features are basically in-depth interviews with different bands every week, sometimes on a certain occasions like a music festival or on their tour.

Initial Ideas for Music Magazine!

The type of music magazine i will produce.
Indie

The target audience.
People aged around 14-22, who want to read about indie music, and be introduced to new music.

Evaluation of School Magazine!

After the production of my magazine I realised that, although some of the criteria mentioned in the codes and conventions of this media is present, I had overlooked some of the vital points. I had included a medium close up of a student, as my brief stated, a barcode, the issue date and number, and an appropriate masthead that anchored the image. Furthermore, I stuck to a simple colour scheme, of white and blue, that related to the logo that I created, and everything on the pages where original and either taken or made by myself.

On the other hand, my product lacked and sometimes deviated away from the codes and conventions of this media, my model for the front cover was not looking at the camera when the picture was taken. Also ,there are not many cover lines and the ones that I have made venture too close to the models face, distracting the focus to them and not the model. I noticed that the bar on the bottom of the front cover is yellow, like in my logo, however, it is not the exact same tone of yellow, making my wrong cover look less professional.

I used Adobe Photoshop CS3 to create my front cover, on this used basic tools like ‘Text Box’ and ‘Rectangle’ to set out my basic lay out. After this I used ‘Stroke’ to give my cover lines an added effect and this allowed me to interpret a certain colour scheme on to my cover.

My contents page was created using QuarkXpress Passport, I set a page to A4 and added three columns, this allowed me to be able to not worry about getting my pictures and text all in proportion. After this I used a combination of the ‘Text’, ‘Rectangle’ and ‘Picture Box’ tools to create my product.

My product looks slightly unprofessional, as some of the text is positioned poorly, stands out to much and does not fill the page, however I believe that the contents page is set out very well.