Back in September my friend Rowan Gormley said a couple of things worth remembering in his hilarious talk at our EADIM seminar in Brussels.
1. Never fall for other people’s bullshit
2. Never fall for your own bullshit
The first comes in handy when some Iconic/Legendary/Superstar /Wunderkind (delete whichever doesn’t apply) promises all you have to do to get disgustingly rich while you sleep is buy a course/set of DVDs/be “mentored”/attend a seminar etc., etc.
The second comes in handy whenever you start feeling pleased with yourself, which happened to me in Warsaw this week. It was at the leading Polish business school, and apparently I got the biggest crowd they’d ever had.
This was not because of me – but because three students did a great marketing job. So I don’t feel that smug, but I do feel grateful. Thanks, Kamila, Rafal and (I never got the other name – shame on me).
Rowan, by the way, is the man who set up Virgin Money, Virgin Finance and Virgin Wines with Richard Branson. Besides being a brilliant speaker, like many good folk he is also an excellent copywriter. But I’m biased.
On an entirely different topic, yesterday my partner cooked an amazing meal. It is a speciality of Puglia: mussels with cannellini, tomatoes and garlic. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
Over dinner I heard a recording of Moody’s Mood for Love by Amy Winehouse. I was once very unkind about her in this confessional. I apologise. She may be a foolish, sad girl, but she sure can sing – and she knows her jazz.
Moody’s Mood is fiendishly difficult to do. I first heard it in 1964, sung by King Pleasure – a forgotten name who was one of the pioneers of vocalese – singing words to well-known jazz solos. Another great exponent is Annie Ross, of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross – incredibly, still singing in her mid seventies.
I will never forget when I was about 18 I went to hear her sing in the local dance hall in Ashton under Lyne. She sat and talked to me right through the interval when she wasn’t on. God, she was beautiful –and how kind to spend time with star-struck teenager.
Funny how thoughtful gestures like that stick with you all your life.
“buy a course/set of DVDs/be “mentored”/attend a seminar etc., etc.”
You’re correct on all of these, of course, which is why it’s good to have Genuine people like Ken come over… and get people like you to talk at his seminars.
It is difficult to figure out who the genuine articles are when there’s so many about.
Maybe you should start a mentoring program. I’m sure it’d be very popular… unless people really do live in cloud cuckoo land and believe the hype out there.
I know I lived there for a while… and it wasn’t nice.
Aside from everything else, I never had you down as an original mod – King Pleasure I do declare!
Just adds another reason to take what DB has to say seriously!
A mod? I am so old I was pre-mod. King Pleasure was hardly to mod taste – that would be more ska; the James Moody sax solo I am talking about was bop if anything.
I remember almost everything from the seventies, but you guys have just lost me.
Did you ever personally know a guy called T. Rex?
King Pleasure and James Moody – both still tearing up modernist dancefloors.
Hard bop, fed into Modern Jazz via Blue Note, geniuses like Tubby Hayes etc. Ska and R&B came much later. I'm talking '58 ish here and original mods, not the parka wearing, Who loving brigade of much later.
Can't beleive, I'm arguing jazz semantics and subleties with my marketing hero, but isn't that what makes the internet great?!
Ha, anonymous, try harder. You are deaing with a man whose first experience of modern jazz (after listening to C. Parker/D. Gillespie at 16) was seeing the Ronnie Scott Band, featuring Tony Crombie, Lenny Bush, Victor Feldman and Benny Green … and who spent an hour drinking with Tubby Hayes in a Yorkshire pub. I still rmember him saying, “Man, every note I blow has a soul.” And yes, I was down in Brighton the year the mods and rockers clashed.
That you spent an hour drinking with Tubby Hayes (and are still here to tell the tale!) impresses me more than your marketing guru creds!!!
Seriously though, I bow to your impeccable credentials, we should mount a campaign to get the mighty Mr Hayes the recognition he deserves.
I shall consider while I am being measured for my (round) midnight blue mohair suit!
Ronnie Scott’s band had rather terrifying verging on royal blue mohair suits and vivid red, very narrow ties. And yes, I did see Thelonius Monk, Gillespie, Miles, Blakey and all those people.
Doesn’t get any better than that for me.
Just to have seen Miles would have been enough, but the others as well – hat’s off.
Any views on Georgie Fame? Caught his session on BBC4 the other night, and he sounded on top form to me.