PRESENT: Mark Hibbett Robert Fleay Matthew
Whitaker
APOLOGIES
No apologies were necessary
MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING
Passed as VALID - minutes had been forwarded to all members prior to the meeting, as agreed previously.
MATTERS ARISING
Reports were heard on the following items:
GIGS
The Artists Against Success Presents night was going ahead as planned on August 27th, featuring Sienna and Pala. The meeting agreed this was a Good Thing, and Mr Hibbett passed 14 copies of the single to Mr Fleay for selling to The Kids. There would have been 15, but one had been given to an Agent of The Man, to allow him to know his enemy and QUAKE.
Mr Hibbett reported that he was also playing on the 27th in London, at the Garage, and that he and Mr Fleay would be performing on the 8th at the Abbey Park Festival. Smart.
CONTRACT
The revised contract was presented to the meeting, and passed as VALID.
A&R
STUMBLE/LAZER GUIDED
Mr Fleay reported that Lazer Guided were mixing their side of the single, "Devotchka", even as we spoke. Unfortunately Stumble had had to postpone the mixing for their song, "A Magazine for the Like-Minded", until the 16th. There was some concern that this was very close to the date of the cut (i.e. the night before) but Mr Fleay asserted that he had spoken to the group about the perils of missing the deadline, and that all would be well. He also passed on details of the correct credits for each side (i.e. "A Magazine for the Like-Minded - S. Battelle" and "Devotchka - Lazer Guided") for the centre label to Mr Hibbett for printing.
MJ HIBBETT
Mr Hibbett was gleeful to report that he had recorded and mixed two songs for his single, copies of which were presented to the rest of the board, and that the final track would be mixed soon. The cover was also ready for printing, and everything was cool.
PALA
Mr Whitaker presented a draft costing for the Pala single, which was agreed as valid, but with some discussion about the issue of printing. Pala wished to have a black and white cover, as the CD version would be black and white anyway. Mr Fleay strongly stated that the original plan of identical yellow bannered covers should be followed, and Mr Hibbett suggested that the vinyl single be done in this way, possibly tying in with another future release to reduce the cost. Mr Whitaker agreed that this seemed fair enough, and would put it to Pala. From this the board moved onto the idea of the collectability of cover art. They agreed that the vinyl singles all carry the same look, though we could be flexible with regards to CDs because, let's face it, the kind of people who'd get excited about collecting a series of similar looking records are the sort of people who refuse to buy CD's.. God Bless them every one.
OTHER A&R
Much to the chairman's surprise, there were several other new A&R possibilities, which were detailed as follows.
SIENNA
Sienna had spoken further, and were keen to do another single, possibly early in the new year. It was posited that this would be perfect for tying in with the reduced-cost printing for Pala, and that anyway, another Sienna single would be GRATE. Mr Fleay to talk to the rest of the band and bring back more concrete news next time. ACE.
JOHNNY DOMINO
Mr Fleay had also been in touch with Johnny Domino, who had a new CD all ready to go, which would be perfect for AAS. He doubted whether they would be too keen on getting the AAS banner on already completed artwork, a point which only reinforced the previous agreement vis a vis restricting collectable company "look" to singles only. Again, he would speak to the band and bring back some more in-depth proposals for the next meeting.
WIGWAM AND THE REEF PEOPLE
Mr Whitaker had been talking with said combo, who were in fact members of Twinkie who quite fancied the idea of doing their own single which, as is the way of such things, they were probably going to do anyway. It was agreed, as with other proposals, this was a Good Idea and that Mr Whitaker should make every effort to bring further details to the next meeting.
EUROPA
Mr Whitaker reported that his own combo, Europa, were likely to be creating another Number One Hit Single in the near future, and that he would be hoping to use AAS as a vehicle for this, which the meeting agreed was another Good Idea.
SCHEDULING
There was a wealth of discussion, grimacing, and heavy thinking about the practicalities of scheduling the next two releases, with regards to getting stuff and paying for it, the results of which are as follows.
Costs for each release would be (approximately) £160 for the cut, £85 for the labels, £340 for the pressing, £75 for printing the covers, and £15 for record bags, giving a grand total of £675, with the £200 for plugging and other miscellaneous costs to come later. Most of these costs would be incurred during the week of the cut, and so getting the money together was essential.
The cut was booked for August 17th, and would be attended by Messrs Fleay and Whitaker, with representatives of Stumble and Lazer Guided also. They (the funders) would take £160 cash to pay for this, with Mr Hibbett giving Mr Fleay a cheque for the same amount well in advance, so that he could pay cash for his cutting. Both sets of DATs should, obviously, be taken too.
After the cut Messrs Fleay and Whitaker would move on to The Printers, with each funding group taking £75 each to pay for this - Stumble/Lazer Guided to take cash, Mr Hibbett to give Mr Fleay another cheque. Again rather obviously, cover and insert art would be taken. At this stage Mr Whitaker clarified that, even by doing 2 sets of covers on the same sheet, we would still have room for colour inserts too, which was very cool.
The labels could be sent to the Label Printing Place, along with a cheque from AAS for the £170 required (£85 for each set of labels). This money was in the account at present, and so the funders need not worry about it for a few weeks. However, they should worry about putting an extra £340 each into the AAS account, so that a cheque could be sent to the pressing plant.
Mr Fleay stated that, since he had a Cool New Car, he should be able to get down to London fairly easily to pick things up. Mr Hibbett said he'd be able to do some bits on the 28th after his London gig, and would be more than happy to ride in Mr Fleay's Cool New Car to help get stuff and share petrol, and not at all because he likes going to the Big City.
Mr Whitaker would contact Shellshock soon to ascertain precise release dates. Mr Hibbett raised the issue that it might possibly be easier to release both singles at the same time, but the rest of the Board set him right - not only did it look better to release on different days, it also gave each release breathing space and allowed each to get sufficient attention from pluggers, distributors, and, indeed, Artists Against Success itself. This was passed as VALID, with Mr Fleay to ensure that copies of Stumble/Lazer Guided were sent to Shellshock, and Mr Hibbett to do the same with his own tape.
Mr Hibbett would contact Umbrella in the very near future to sort out bar code stickers so we can, like, BREAK THE CHARTS. More based in reality, he would also contact Overground to OK plugging for both singles, and would thus require tapes of both singles to send to them too.
Finally, when we know when things were all going ahead, everyone would make a concerted effort to get some gigs sorted out - there were several possibilities in the air which would be pursued, not least of which was a London gig, which Mr Fleay was on the cusp of doing.
COMPANY SONG
After all that, it was nice to go through the Company Song. Both Messrs Fleay and Whitaker had had a go at some lyrics, although neither were completely finished, and these were sung to the representatives of Lazer Guided and Stumble, who had recently arrived. They were obviously very impressed. Mr Hibbett to take them away for welding together into the finished article. It was agreed by all that the singing of the Company Song at the recent John Sims/Twinkie gig in Derby had been A Beautiful Thing.
ANY OTHER BUSINESS
PO BOX
Mr Whitaker put forward the idea that we might get our own PO Box number. Mr Hibbett had done some research and found that this would cost us about £50. It was agreed that, though this was a very good idea and would doubtless serve us well in the future, it was a bit costly at the moment. Mr Hibbett was happy to report he had not yet had any loonies knocking on his door (or at least none he didn't know already) and so was willing to maintain his house as the mailing address. This idea to be reviewed in the future.
MEETINGS VENUE
It was agreed that the Vic was often a Bit Noisy, and Mr Fleay put forward the idea of moving Derby meetings to the Brunswick, where the beer was very nice and the atmosphere was good. On this note, the proposal was accepted as VALID.
RECORD BAGS
Mr Whitaker was happy to report that the £30 refund deposit for pressing had been returned to him, paying him back for buying the record bags for the last release.
SIGNING CEREMONY
Although representatives of all bands were present, and contracts were available, it was agreed that it would be better to have a signing ceremony when the Board could get dressed up, show off, and have their pictures taken. To this end it was agreed that the ceremony take place LIVE ON STAGE on September 3rd, when Lazer Guided and Stumble had a gig. Yes, this would be after everything had been paid for, but who cares? It'll be GRATE.
DATE OF NEXT MEETING
The next meeting will be at 7.00pm August 26th. It would take place in the Durham Ox, Leicester, unless there was a practical need to have it in Derby. On that note the meeting ended, tired but happy.
