The Week that Was -Week notes from 13th August 2010
When this appears on your computer its not a good thing, in fact its a very bad thing as we’ve discovered recently. Hot off a string of attacks on other particularly reputable music firms, a very nasty virus has placed Name Music squarely in its sights.
Many may have read about the fake security trojan virus currently taking large amounts of money from bank accounts under the guise providing the magic elixir to cure all digital infestations. Luckily the Name team are particularly well read and informed on matters of pecuniary pilfering thereby narrowly dodging two bullets but still taking a solid blow in the way of one of our computers completely incapacitated.
The matter remains unresolved as our ‘cultural attaché’ and resident anti-spyware expert is on a scouting trip in the south of France for future Name expansionary plans. As the only French speaking member of our team Dave seems to be the clear choice for our ‘petit reconnoitre’ down the Gaullist coast, he also happens to be the only one with tickets and access to a house there…but he’s promised us unadulterated access soon enough.
As the principle recipient of viral attacks Hugo has found much of his workload somewhat frozen on his computer. But as every cloud has a silver lining he found himself in a position to do other more interesting and varied tasks from once again typing up a press release draft to learning a great deal about Japanese hip-hop he’s currently holding his breath for cyber samurai John to swoop in and perform Battojutso on the virus seprating head from torso.
Having spent last weekend at the wonderful Standon Calling festival (click here to ‘enjoy’ his radio show from the Sunday), John’s been mainly working his way through the 800 or so emails that somehow built up in his 2 day absence. Anyway lots of exciting new projects coming in, including a couple of massive club nights for Soundcrash and Corsica Studios, which he can’t wait to get stuck into, and a new music journalism course that MusicTank are organising. Busy busy busy!
Nat’s week began with The Reclusive Barclay Brothers, being not so reclusive as they released their debut single. The band, offering a cool £27 to 100 randomly chosen people who sign up to their mailing list, managed to get tongues wagging over at the Guardian and The Sunday Times. The rest of the week was spent getting word out about the upcoming Soundcrash night at Koko, whilst Thursday morning’s coffee meeting saw us get a step closer to sealing off sponsorship for Outlook Festival. The end of the week looks set to be spent filing yet more receipts, no duck houses or moats being claimed though as we don’t quite have the budget of the British government.
For the fearless leader of Name it was of course another hectic week running around from meeting to meeting from Croatia’s Outlook Festival for September NEXT year to keeping the lid on very exciting news on the Spotify radio program Playdio. Talking to a journalist friend one afternoon this week Sam also forgot a major rule in dealing with press, anything he say’s can potentially be on the record. The resulting article (found here) painted him in a slightly more antagonistic light than anticipated but in a candid moment the following day he exclaimed “Sod it! I stand by what I said”.
All of us here were pleasantly surprised with the zeal at which our The Reclusive Barclay Brothers campaign was embraced by journalists the world over through online press, newspapers and magazines alike. Well, all except The Telegraph who, owned by the actual ‘reclusive’ Barclay Brothers, were too scared to write about it. The discussions were clearly animated at the news desk as one valiant reporter worked up to ringing us to ‘check that the whole thing was for real’.
In the media scramble we, as their PR company, got an unusual pat on the back from the unfortunately named but clearly astute blogger ‘muppetcrusher’ in an online debate following a Guardian article. Well, when I say we got a pat on the back I mean another random company with no connection to us whatsoever got a pat on the back, as they were credited with our work by an investigative but somewhat less astute blogger. Oh well, apparently all good comes to those who wait…guess I’ll wait for next week.
But ’till then may you all enjoy your weekend.
The Name Team.
