Franco and the Dreadnought @Nambucca, London

February 13th, 2012

It didn't really feel like the last day at The Farm. Perhaps I was missing beer, but still for 5½ months I always was thinking that the first day was just yesterday.

There's no doubt that I learned a lot during my stay, and I could leave richer with experience and knowledge. Though, some facts I've come to realize has made me think that the music scene is losing hope and musicians can be complete stupidos. However getting results and discovering artists, who could change that way of thinking, made the struggle of just and just not exploding worth while.

I was exhausted of the life in London that I couldn't wait to get back home. However, I will miss the relaxed atmosphere and great bosses and colleagues. I will especially miss the dissing between all of us.

The work day didn't end at 6pm that evening, as I had to head off to see one of our artists, Manchester-based Franco and the Dreadnought performing. Franco (real name John) will also be my thesis subject, when I'll basically be studying social media in a way that we could get him some more recognition and fans. We had quite a good brainstorming session with him and The Farm's American intern, Beth, who just tasted her first Mars bar.

It's good to see that he's one of those musicians, who comes up with good ideas and is very enthusiastic. He's also a good songwriter and guitar player, which I witnessed at the venue. The music was so calming and relaxing, and with the lights dimmed and candles burning, I fell asleep just for a second. In a good way though.

Drinks with him and his girlfriend was a perfect way to getting to know each other better. They're so easy-going and nice people.

Now when I'm reflecting this whole experience, I'm feeling a bit more motivated to do some hard work. But let me watch some Desperate Housewives first.




Ps. Franco is performing at The Purple Turtle in Camden next Thursday at 8.30, so I hope all of my London friends could make it!

Athletes In Paris @The Roof Gardens

February 10th, 2012

It was a 'Farm' night, as people from the office were invited to go see our own Athletes In Paris. The guys were performing at an exclusive club on top of a building in West London. The dress code for The Roof Gardens is 'No effort, no entry'. Knowing me, there were serious doubts of getting in. But I thought if I wouldn't get in, this would have been the great opportunity to say 'don't you know who I am' and 'does effort mean dressing slutty' to the bouncer.

Surprsingly they didn't even ask for my ID!!! I guess being tired and stressed makes you look older.

Marble floor in the elevator, going to the top floor. The garden and the live music area looked really nice.

Athletes In Paris' great show was the best part or actually the only good part of the whole evening, as I'm not a fan of fancy clubs. Just the thought of clean places filled with nasty people. Ugh. And I still wonder how the band ended up playing there.

Anyways loved the band's entry (first band pic above) and singer Matt's semi-dorky dancing. They are definitely worth listening to. Here's their latest video;

Orange Goblin album listening session

18.10.2011

The Animal Farm does many things; artist management, songwriting, publishing, singing 'Friday' and producing albums. One of the latest albums produced is Orange Goblin's newest record to be released early next year.

That's why a listening session for that album was held for long-haired music journalists, who dressed mainly in black, were at least three times bigger than me and talked about bands from the 80s, of which I don't know anything. It was interesting to see how the evening would turn out.

The beginning showed potential of being the best day at the office so far.

I had the image of a listening session to be somewhat of people sitting quiet and taking notes. But no.

And of course at some point something like this had to happen.

Just kidding.

The speakers were turned quite up, but after listening to the album three times + other hard metal, my ears got used to it. Though it did feel like leaving a club after the music turned off.

It was a successful evening all in all. The journalists had fun, the band had fun and most importantly the staff had fun. And when this all is achieved you can expect more likes on Facebook and followers on Twitter. Because everything is defined by that in western society nowadays.

Additionally we learned a lot of Orange Goblin. For example they've been playing for over 16 years now, and they're pretty respected in the heavy metal scene. We also got to know where the band's name comes from. Apparently there are just way too many bands, which have 'black' in their name (like Black Sabbath and Rebecca Black) and someone of them likes Spider-Man? Pink Goblin sounds fairly good too, but for some reason the guitarist didn't agree.

I must warn you that the first song of the new album 'Red Tide Rising' is ROCK. It's so good that I wish Mary J. Blige would do an R n' B version of it. But unfortunately it's not publicly available yet for her to start practising it. However here's an old song of theirs.



Ps. The next morning at the office, someone was still having an after party.

photos by l.lundberg

Champion Sound

12.10.2011

Rememeber when I mentioned that I get to do something really awesome a couple of weeks ago? No? Okey well anyways, now I have time, energy and permission to write about it. One of my favorite bands at the moment, Crystal Fighters, posted on their Facebook that they're looking for boys and girls in London for their next video. This is the positive side of having to have Facebook on at work. The negative side of course is that it easily distracts you, especially if these kind of updates come up.

Being siked of having the chance to finally be in a music video, but not hearing from the production company, until a day before the shooting started, when I called them was really stressful. Apparently some emails had slipped through, but luckily they managed to still get us in. Thank you Saloon Films for that!

Me and Linda went for the second shooting day, and had to wake up at 5.30! I don't remember when was the last time I had to get up so early. They were filming in some kind of warehouse type of cold, moldy building, which didn't matter until we had to dress up in slippers and short-sleeved shirts or no shirts at all and so on. I was lucky enough to keep my trousers on!

It wasn't until 5h later, when all of us had our hair and make-up done and clothes changed that action called. This is more or less the brief for the first scene we did: "You've been raving for 15 days now, and it has to be sensual and dreamy as you walk across the hall".

                                   raving for 15 days                                         or not!

the fantastic luke treadaway

and the beautiful georgina bevan

The second scene we did was us in a half circle watching the band play and being all mesmerized (or stoned). Kind of a pity that I concentrated so much in posing (which the camera didn't even film), than actually enjoying that the band was in a way "playing a private gig" for us.

Then the fun part started.

photos by l.lundberg (excl. pics where she herself is)

It's quite cool that one of the Crystal Fighters' girls used to be at The Animal Farm too. Such a small world. And the band told us so many things that isn't on Wikipedia. Haha.

But hey enough of me writing, here's the actual video, which was released last Monday.



Linda says: "Jaleh you're the second last person to be seen in the video!", haha that's true and so cool! That's by far one of the best experiences I've had. And Linda's become a fan of the band now. And actually Champion Sound had never been my favorite tracks on the album, but that's changed, since I noticed that the lyrics are so beautiful!

When you find that love inside of me. Deep within the heart of me.

Club Fandango

26.9.2011

It was the first time I brought my longboard to work, since we agreed to go longboarding in the Tower Bridge area with Linda. We were super excited about that, but then we realized that iremembertapes. were performing in London that evening.

We got even more excited!

A 20-minute show the previous Thursday left us craving for more from the lovely band. This time they were doing a Club Fandango, which "presents the best in alternative indie music with regular nights across London and the UK". This fandango was at Bull&Gate up north.

There were 4 bands playing, and iremembertapes. started the evening. I'm glad they played 'First Light' this time. It's probably my favorite song of the debut album.

 I also met the girl, who was in the 'Gossip' video. She looks completely different; 1. taller 2. Linda suspected the nose ring to be fake, but no it was real, someone just had punched it off 3. it's amazing what lipstick and hair spray can do to you.


The second act was White Arrows, straight from America, and it was their first time to play outside their country! I guessed they were coming from San Francisco, because of how they dressed up, but the right answer was LA, still pretty close! And they sounded like Swedish Miike Snow. We talked with the singer Mickey after the show, and it was nice of him to show his playlist on his phone, which had a lot of good songs, like Lykke Li. And he started to talk about The Doors documentary, when he saw my shirt, so cool. Also, apparently their manager used to manage Linkin Park or something?

The next to go on stage was Call The Doctor. I just loved the singer's attitude! She had a bit of a punk thing going on. Going to the audience and grabbing everyone. And we got their old EP for a pound. Now that was us being ripped off. Music should be free. Just kidding of course. People please support the artist.

video made from about 2000 still photos shot in a single afternoon on an apple iPhone

The last to play was Retraplayer. They have a song called 'Drinks in Helsinki', which obviously made us go *o/*


it's the first time i saw this video, and i thought they were joking when they said they tried to make it look like helsinki

Apparently they had been working with The Animal Farm before, then we figured maybe that was the reason for the song's name. But no, it was just a random pick.

photos by l.lundberg


All of the people we got to speak to were really sweet. Maybe I should be visiting more indie nights. Still when the bands have time to speak to their fans. And show were they spend their nights.

Last but not least our underground session: