Local Vibe

I am not one to usually bitch and whine about other players in the industry, however I feel that the actions of the person I have been dealing with are severely hampering my ability to provide you, our readers, with the quality information you are looking for. We have had many interactions with the artists themselves and their management teams, and to date have been treated quite professionally and we try our best to return the favour.

I know that The Trews have many fans in this area as I know several fans personally. For this reason I have been trying diligently to acquire access to them for an interview so I can provide something of great interest to these fans, who happen to also be our readers. I made many attempts when they were coming to Starlight Nightclub, both by email and phone messages, with zero response from their publicist with Universal Music. When they were coming back again, this time to Jackhammers in Brantford, I followed a different path with the same result. I once again found myself leaving several messages both in writing and voice mail. This time around I found myself wondering why I was wasting my time trying to give these guys free publicity. The only justifiable reason that it was worth my time is to try and satisfy the wants of our readers.

As the title of this article dictates, I would like to apologize to our readers and Trews fans on behalf of the industry, as you have been let down. Sometimes bands and artists seem to be over-handled and I feel that this may be one of those situations. Not many bands want to or can even afford to turn down FREE publicity and I would like to think that The Trews are one of these bands that truly value their fans. I just can’t confirm it as we have never been given the chance.

Since our humble beginning we have interviewed many artists at just about every level on the success chain, and every single one of them has been grateful for the opportunity to offer something to their fans. We simply try to get access to the bands to ask some questions that might allow their fans to get some kind of perspective on the artists that they may never receive through carefully worded and scripted press releases. Given the recent turn of events, it certainly appears that the Universal Music publicity team for The Trews would rather pay for their publicity and possibly retain greater control of the outputs instead of relying on the publications like ours bringing information straight from the band to you, their fans.

I have spent enough time here explaining this, however I felt you deserved an explanation as we have been asked by many people if we were going to cover these events. I have made valiant efforts to do so, and regardless of the reason, I still feel like we have let our readers down. I cannot say that I will continue to invest, or waste my time working with this management team for this artist or others, so I unfortunately cannot comment on any future interview opportunities with artists under their wings. This may affect how we report on some of the bigger acts that come into town, however we will still gladly maintain our primary focus which has always been the local independent artists that live, work and play around us. We have always been here for them and them for us.

Obviously Universal has many artists that are worthy of being interviewed when they come to town, and we will gladly arrange to do so if they are working with a different publicity team. We spoke with several Universal artists at the 2009 Beat Rocks The Block and were greatly pleased with the way the interviews were addressed and handled. I can only hope that we can have equally pleasurable experiences in the future.