Geoff Wilkinson – Personal Sanctions

The Transcript:

Stuart H: Welcome to Get Shirty, the podcast where we ask our guests about the things in life that just never fail to irritate and get them all shirty. The chat focuses on home, work, and going out, but could go anywhere. And it’s not all doom and gloom as each guest gets a made to measure shirt, which they design. So we talk about that, too. Funny that, us being tailors. Hello. our guest this episode is musician, music producer, and founding member of the band Us three, Geoff Wilkinson. Not only did us three score a platinum worldwide hit with the million plus selling Cantaloupe, which happened to use samples from the Blue Note back catalogue, but Geoff also did the title track for the smash hit movie Get Shorty with John Travolta. Notice the little link to us there, along with multiple albums for us three. Also, as you will hear during our conversation, Geoff talks about how instrumental he was in setting up some pretty incredible gigs back in the day. We, have actually spoken to Geoff once before, but as can happen, we had a few issues with the audio and we had to re record. But this did give us the opportunity to go on our second podcast, road trip. And we went to see Geoff at home. So thanks to him for letting us re record.

We decided to do a final questions about things that get you shirty

So here we go. One guest, two mics. Just two tailors this time. And a host of irritations. Let’s get shirty. The hat.

>> Speaker B: We forgot the hat again.

>> Stuart H: We forgot the hat again.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Damn it.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: You know what I was going to do? I was going to dig out the seven inch single that I sampled for get Shorty. It must. It’s in that pile there, so I can find out.

>> Speaker B: Look at that photograph.

>> Stuart H: Yeah, look at that. but. So you were pre hat? Yeah, you were pre hat.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Tell me about the hat.

>> Stuart H: So we decided to do a final questions, because when we spoke to you, we did a talk, about things that get you shirty, about work going out and home, the work rest and play. And then after that, we said, oh, we should do an off the cuff because it’s get shirty. So we’ll have little bits of paper with stuff already written on, that people can then take out the hat or whatever and go, all right, it says this. Well, this is driving. This is what gets me shouted about driving, or this is, you know, so it’s a completely, off the cuff thing, but we couldn’t think of. So I think Adam Buxton was the first one, I think, who we did it with, but we just wrote them all down, put them in, screwed them up, and put them in a hat. A bowl of hat. We had an old bowl of hat, but then we thought we’ll think of another way to do it later. And Adam Buxton suggested putting them all on a shirt cuff and you can pull one off the shirt cuff. We were like, oh, that’s quite a good idea. And then we decided, because we’ve talked about it almost every podcast ever since, that, no, we’re just going to leave it in a hat. So we’ve just got a bowler hat with these things in, but it’s off the cuff from the hat. It doesn’t make any sense but it’s sort of like one of those things that we like. But again we forgot the hat. Geoff, welcome to get shirty.

Alex Horn has just finished a project with an 18 piece horn section

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Thank you.

>> Stuart H: we, I have a confession to make in that this is a re record because we had some issues with the audio last time, so thank you very much for talking to us again.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: No problem.

>> Stuart H: And I’m delighted that the first time we spoke it didn’t put you off.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: And then you were happy to see us again. No, and thank you for coming all the way to north London to interview me as well.

>> Stuart H: That’s our pleasure. We like a little road trip, don’t you? Yeah, another road trip.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Is this the first time you’ve been on the road?

>> Stuart H: Second.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Okay. Yeah.

>> Stuart H: So you are in an exclusive club now, it’s just you and Alex Horn. You’re the only two people that we’ve travelled away from the shop.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Flattered.

>> Stuart H: Yeah, well and as you should be quite rightly, we’re very famous podcasters now, you know, not. But have you been since we saw you last one?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah. Good. Just busy, busy, busy, busy, permanently busy. I’ve just finished a project with an 18 piece horn section. No one knows about this so I wasn’t going to talk about it. So I don’t know what this going to come out in the name of, and I’ve certainly never done anything with such a big orchestrations kind of, you know, so it’s quite a departure for me. It’s not, that’s not a library music project, that’s something that I want to be released so haven’t got a deal for it so watch this space kind of thing.

>> Stuart H: Yeah. exciting.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, it is, yeah.

>> Stuart H: So there was that recording live, so we’re all 1818.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah. it’s done in a specific style, I’m not going to give too much away actually. but it’s modern kind of as well. with a sort of, it’s still a mixture of jazz and hip hop, really, which is what us three is always about. What I’ve always done, really. But it is different.

>> Stuart H: Yeah. Oh, very exciting.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: That’s all I’m gonna say.

>> Stuart H: Yeah. Good.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: It’s a sequel.

>> Stuart H: I like that. That’s sort of like we’ve got, like a half teaser.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yes.

>> Stuart H: A little bit of an exclusive. I like that.

Let’s talk about the shirt because. You made me a shirt. It’s my best shirt now

>> Speaker B: Let’s talk about the shirt because.

>> Stuart H: Oh, yeah.

>> Speaker B: Just got your shirt now.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yes. You made me a shirt. I’m probably the first person you’ve actually interviewed after I’ve got the shirt. How about that for a first?

>> Stuart H: Yeah, that is a first. And you’re right, actually. You’re right. Has it. Has it had an air in? Have you worn it out?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Oh, yeah.

>> Stuart H: Have you?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah.

>> Stuart H: Excellent.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: It’s my best shirt now.

>> Stuart H: Is it?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah.

>> Stuart H: So, yeah, superb. We like that. That’s. So we got the fit right and.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, I didn’t have, a nice, crisp. It’s kind of Brooks brothers style white shirt.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, it looks lovely. It’s exactly what I wanted. Great job. Thank you.

>> Stuart H: Hey, look, that’s a pleasure. We’ll clip all of that and put that out as an advert.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, that’s fine. That’s fine. As an endorsement, I’m happy.

>> Speaker B: I expect you to answer the door in it.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Oh, yeah. I should have done it.

>> Stuart H: From a kit. Shirty point of view. that’s the shirt done. And nice, to talk about one we’ve already done rather than one that’s on the go.

Mixing an album with 18 horns was a challenge for you

but let’s start with, the work side of things. Have you got any work? Get shirties. What are the things about? Was there anything about any recent recordings that you’ve had to done that you thought, oh, you know, these are the irritating things about what I have to do?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Well, the project that I was just talking about that, was the first time I’ve ever mixed something so big with such big orchestration that was giving me a bit of a headache. Mixing just the spatial arrangement of 18 horns was kind of. As well as the other instrumentation. Just getting all that to fit nicely in the mix was, a challenge, but that’s the sort of challenge I like, really. So, I did normally, I kind of do a mix and pretty much that’s it. Cheque it indoors and if I need to go back and tweak anything, I’ll do that. But when I started mixing this, I went backwards and forwards so many times, I had to leave it alone for a long time. Before I could go back to it, because it was just making my brain explode. Right. but once I’d got it, I kind of made a template of how to deal with it. Right. And then it was easy to do the rest of the tracks.

>> Stuart H: It sort of sounds a bit like sort of wrestling an unruly, you know, thing into, sort of how you want it. That sort of getting it to sort of submit to it was trying.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: It was a bit of trial and error, to be honest, which is always a good thing as well. M but you just gotta have the patience to go through that process.

>> Stuart H: Yeah, I see. I think that’s where I’d struggle.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: I did struggle.

>> Stuart H: That sort of attention to. It’s all about, to go, oh, that’ll do. There is no,

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Otherwise it’s just not good enough. That’s not good enough. You can’t do that because, Especially if it’s something that’s gonna be released, you know, then you’ll have to live with it. If, you know, there’s a mistake there somewhere, then you’re gonna have to live with that. yeah.

>> Speaker B: Although.

>> Stuart H: And that must be.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: That is terrible. Yeah. Yeah.

>> Stuart H: So that’s a good. That’s a really good get shirt here, I think, you know, like having to release something where, you know there’s something still in there that.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, that’s happened in the past when you’ve been under pressure from the record label to finish something and you think, oh, it’s okay, and then you just end up regretting it forever. Just listen back and think the hi hat’s too loud or whatever. Just little things.

>> Speaker B: Do you ever go back and change some of those things?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: No, I never have done. No. I mean, some of the old stuff has been remastered, like, I remastered hand on the torch, for the 20th anniversary, release of it. But that was. It didn’t go back to the original tapes or whatever. It was just remastered to make it sound a bit more beefier. Because that’s what. What things sound like now, rather than back in the nineties, you know, it was over 30 years ago, that album.

>> Stuart H: Wow.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: But then, music hasn’t really changed that much since then. But if you went back 30 years, from 1993 to 1963, there’s an enormous change in music.

AI generated music is a bone of contention with the music industry

Well, the whole thing at the moment is AI, isn’t it? AI generated music.

>> Stuart H: How do you feel about that?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: I do use some AI. There are some AI assisted things in mixing stuff that have been out for quite a while that I do use in the studio. So I think it’s all about how you use the technology. But I don’t think that AI generated music, it’s never really going to take over from humans, is it, really? I mean, the men bone of contention at the moment with the music industry, with AI generated music is what they’re training the AI models on. Should they be allowed to use my music to train a, computer to make music like me sort of thing? How would I be recompensed for that? so that’s where it’s a bit of a grey area at the moment. It’s a bit like the Wild west at the moment. The rules have not been determined, if you like, which is why it’s a bit disturbing. Yeah. I mean, the music business has been through things like this before. you know, you probably about the same age as me, can probably remember the home taping is killing music kind of campaign. When was that? In the eighties or something like that? When cassettes were. And it didn’t.

>> Stuart H: No.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: So, you know, I remember in the nineties when we came out in versus three album sampling was very controversial. at the time, a lot of people were saying samplers are going to put musicians out of business and stuff, which obviously didn’t happen, but I suppose.

>> Stuart H: And that’s a bit like how you’re using AI now. You used it as a. Use it as another tool, as another instrument, really.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah.

>> Stuart H: And, rather than it being the thing, it became something that was brought into the bigger picture, rather than it.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Being the picture itself, it’s about using the technology, really. You should be able to use the technology to get what you want out of it, as long as you’re not infringing someone else’s copyright, which that was also an issue with sampling. But then, you know, I’ve always came out and said, I think it’s disrespectful. There were people who were putting records out in the early nineties when it was a bit like the wild west regarding sampling then, who were saying, oh, yeah, we’ve sampled so and so artists from the seventies out of respect for their work or whatever. And, maybe they were a genuine fan of that original artist. But still, if you’re not clearing the sample and giving them a slice of the publishing because you’ve used that sample, that’s the ultimate disrespect to me because.

>> Stuart H: You were with us three, you were lucky in that you got access to a lot of.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Still an unprecedented thing, really. I don’t know about getting lucky with it because I asked them for it, in the first meeting that I ever had with them. I suggested that they let me and Mel, my, former partner in us three, that they let us use the blue note back catalogue as a sampling resource. and then all the original artists would get paid because they’d all be cleared. And, yeah, I was shocked that they agreed to do it, although they didn’t agree straight away. I think they thought it was an intriguing art. And in many ways, it was a very kind of blue nut type thing to do, because they were always at the forefront of new developments, certainly in jazz, in the music industry. And, here was some sort of young upstart, asking to use their back catalogue to create some new tracks. And to be fair to them, they embraced it. I should mention Bruce Lundval at this point, who was the president of Blue Note. And at that time, Bruce was in charge of signing new acts to the label. But he was also in charge of the reissue policy because they had a, quite strong reissue policy reissuing the classic blue Note albums, from the sixties. So he would decide which ones to reissue and also decide which ones which new acts assign. So he had a holistic view of the label. I have done some demos. I haven’t really talked about this before, actually, but I have done a similar thing for other labels, which they then decided not to go through with it, both labels, for kind of internal politics, really, which was extremely frustrating. But I did get some money to chop up the stacks back catalogue at one point.

>> Stuart H: Did you?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: And I did do that. I did quite a lot of demos. They gave me quite a bit of money to do a lot of demos and then just decided that was quite complicated because the stacks catalogue was. You get to 1968, and half of it now is owned by Concorde and post 68. It’s owned by Atlantic. so that was tricky because there’s big hits on either side of that dividend. but that didn’t work out. So I’d already was talking. I already had met people from Atlantic through that. So then I said, well, you know, the Atlantic black cat’s pretty good. So they gave me some more money to chop up the Atlantic, back castle. But they said you can’t use certain, things like Led Zeppelin, for example. It wasn’t all jazz. They said, you can’t sample Led Zeppelin. They’ve never agreed to any of it before. They just won’t agree to it.

>> Speaker B: Would you ironically see how many people they ripped off?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: I’m saying nothing very diplomatic. but then they decided not to go through with it, which I thought was a real shame.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Ah.

>> Stuart H: So then what happens to that? So you’ve done all the demos and the work. Do you hand them all over and that’s it? See you later? Or have you still got those that you can.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: I’ve still got the tracks, but they’re never going to see the light of day because they’ve all got big samples in. But I cut up things like Aretha and stuff. I mean, the thing about the blue nose stuff was that none, of the stuff that we sampled then was hits, you know, wasn’t but chopping up the stacks back catalogue and the Atlantic back cattle. I was sampling things that had already been hits.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: So it was a kind of a bit of a no brainer. It was much easier.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: With the jazz stuff, you kind of. We were making things that weren’t funky in the first place. Funky, yeah. but that wasn’t the case with the later stuff. So it was such a shame that that didn’t come off. I also spent an incredible amount of time effort doing it.

>> Speaker B: Why do you think some artists are against it in that way? The likes of Led Zeppelin and Eagles, for example. Why do you think they’re so.

We wanted to sample the horns off John Coltrane’s blue train

>> Geoff Wilkinson: I don’t know.

>> Speaker B: You can only repopularize their old music.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah. I mean, there was only one thing we got turned down with hand on the torch, which was wanting to sample the horns off John Coltrane’s blue train and Alice Coltrane, his wife, didn’t, want that to happen. so we didn’t do it. You know, it was just out of respect that, she didn’t want us to use it. So. Fair enough. We didn’t.

>> Speaker B: It’s the why that interests me, especially.

>> Stuart H: With a big band like that,

>> Speaker B: Can only be bigger. Great. There’s a story about grateful dead that they have become one of the most, held onto music. People can’t play it, can’t sample it, can’t do anything with it. Yet they made it big by selling their own bootlegs.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah. That seems like a double standard to me.

>> Speaker B: Yeah, it is, because that’s something I know. Deadheads used to buy their bootleg tapes that they were selling at their own concerts.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Speaker B: Now they weren’t. They’re like the eagles in Queens and you can’t do it in their music.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: On, on the second of three album, I’d sampled a Horace silver track and, he rang me up. He must have got my phone number from Bruce. And, that was a real shock because he’s my favourite pianist.

>> Stuart H: Right.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Wow. I just answered the phone and a growly voice said, is that Geoff? And I was like, yeah, it’s Horace Silver here. And I was like, he, was concerned that, anyone, doing a cover version of the original track would do it. Like the US three version when, I’d only sampled like a couple of bars of it or something. Just a little loop, you know. So it wasn’t the full, it didn’t resolve the full phrase that he played. and I said to him, that’s not the point, really, you know, I mean, cantaloupe didn’t harm Cantaloupe Island. Cantaloupe island. The Herbie Hancock track we sampled really became a jazz standard, which. It wasn’t a jazz standard before we’d sampled it, but there are about a billion versions of Cantaloupe island now. Everybody plays that, you know. so I just explained, I had to sort of explain to him what sampling really was. Yeah. and he was fine. He was cool. He was like, thank you. That was really informative, sort of, you know, so, goodbye. And he cleared it because he’d kept hold of his, his own publishing, so he had his own publishing company, which extremely sensible thing to do back then.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: so he cleared it and was fine.

>> Stuart H: I bet that was when you put the phone down. I bet you were a bit like, did that really just happen?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, breathe out. Yeah, yeah, I, put the phone down. Thought, I wish I’d kept talking to him now. Yeah, I should have asked him this. I should have asked him that.

>> Speaker B: Yeah, we do that every podcast.

>> Stuart H: Yeah, we do. Funnily enough, actually, after the last time we spoke to you, you were like, oh, that was. We didn’t ask about this and we didn’t ask about, you know, it’s pass away now.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Then.

>> Stuart H: I’m going to put you on.

>> Speaker B: The spot here, Geoff. Be on the spot. What would you think of our music for the podcast?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: I thought the old music was really good.

>> Stuart H: Yeah, that was proper putting on the spotlight. I’ll cut it out if you’d have said, oh, I don’t like it, cut that out.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: And I was disappointed you didn’t use mine. In the end, it all came down to budget. Yeah, yeah, I understand that. when you first contacted me, that was to use the theme tune that I did for the movie get shorty.

>> Stuart H: That’s right. Yeah.

>> Speaker B: That was our original plan.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: I knew because, it was on a major label and it was a major theme for a major Hollywood movie that wasn’t going. Wasn’t going to be cheap.

>> Stuart H: Yeah, yeah. And that’s, Yeah, it’d be lovely to be able to, use exactly. Exactly what.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Unfortunately, that’s just out of my control. If they own the rights to it, they can ask for whatever they want.

>> Speaker B: And then, of course, your licenseable music was also available, as you said, that we nearly went that route but came down to budget. Then Harry said, oh, well, I’ll have a go. So he had to go listen to your albums. He did a good job, was inspired by your music. He came up with what we’ve got, sir.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Good man.

>> Speaker B: He’ll like it that you think it was okay.

>> Stuart H: Yeah, he will. It’s good. Yeah. And it’s,

M got a high budget movie and suddenly there’s your music

I don’t know if we talked about this last time, but I’m a massive John Travolta fan.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Oh, really? I think you did mention it, yeah.

>> Stuart H: Massive John Travolta fan. So, like, I was like, oh, you know, you’ve asked us before whether we were like, huge jazz fans or whatever, and I’m not a massive jazz fan, but I was geeking out over the fact. It’s like, oh, there’s the music from the John Travolta, you know. And obviously I do your other stuff.

>> Speaker B: I’m a bit of a jazz fan.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Okay. Yeah, I was really gutted about that. About, I thought there would be like a red carpet event for the movie when it came out here and they didn’t do that, obviously, they did it in LA. I didn’t get invited to that. How rude. but I thought they would do it in London, but they didn’t. They just had like a press screening.

>> Stuart H: Right.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: it was a cinema on the hair market, but I got about ten tickets, so I took a load of mets.

>> Stuart H: Did you really?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: When my tune came on at the beginning, we all cheered. Everyone looking around, what’s going on?

>> Stuart H: That must have been a great moment.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: M. Yeah, absolutely.

>> Stuart H: Big screen. M got a high budget movie and suddenly there’s your music.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, I’d had one before me. and Mel did the theme, did the closing title credits for the Flintstones.

>> Stuart H: Oh, did you?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, the live action one with, trying to think.

>> Speaker B: Yes.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: John Goodman. Yeah, yeah, cheque that out.

>> Speaker B: Yeah, cheque that out later.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: But the music supervisor for that was Arthur Baker. right. He famously made planet rock. And, meeting Arthur Baker was like, he came around to my flat in Camden. It was before I’d got any royalties or anything. I was just living in a tiny little one bed flat in Camden with my girlfriend at the time. And Arthur Baker was in my living room. Just kept staring at him. Is that really you? That was amazing.

>> Stuart H: There was some great music as well.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: In that, the director of, get Shorty was Barry Sonnenfeldt. but he was a big jazz fan, right? He rang me up. So I spoke to him. He was a massive Jimmy Smith fan, right? The organist Jimmy Smith. And he said to me, can you sample something by Jimmy Smith? I’m a massive Jimmy Smith fan. So that’s why, I did what.

>> Stuart H: It came to be.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah.

>> Speaker B: I’ve got prehistoric music facts.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Speaker B: Gravel Finns are BC 52s.

>> Stuart H: BC 52s, that’s right.

>> Speaker B: Stereo MC’s, my life with the thrill kill cult, Shakespeare sister and Holy Ghost. Big audio dynamite.

>> Stuart H: Wow.

>> Speaker B: us three. I’ve never heard of them.

>> Stuart H: Yeah, us three and Def Jam.

>> Speaker B: So it was us three.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Def jam. Def Geoff.

>> Speaker B: Oh, def Geoff.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Sorry. Arthur Baker said to us, I showed a caveman, who do you want to rap on it? And at the time, def Geoff had just released an album which I was really into. So I said, can you get Def Geoff? And Arthur Baker was like, I can get anyone.

>> Speaker B: So, screaming blue massage, crash test dummies, green jelly. It was not was weird Al and Dave Newman.

>> Stuart H: Because that song for you has sort of took you around the world, really. I know it’s not just that song. It’s very easy to sort of focus on that. And I know you’ve got a big.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Body of work, but, yeah, it’s still my calling card, really.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: I mean, it’s just been synced out for a major advertising, in America, which starts in a couple of weeks for sausages, of all things. Really? Yeah. I’ll probably get some barracking for that, I think. Never mind. It was a lot of money. yeah, 30 years after the event, to be getting big sink deals for something is quite amazing.

There have been complaints about politicians using artists’ music for political purposes

>> Stuart H: And do you, with things like that, do you get to go, I know, I don’t want it used for that. You know. Do you get some sort of sand or.

>> Stuart H: I think if your red line had been sausages. No, I don’t advertise.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: We did have a red line when we signed our, initial publishing, deal. We did put a clause in saying, if there’s any requests for it to be used for political causes or alcohol advertising or tobacco advertising, that they have to ask us permission from us otherwise they could do what they want with it, really. So. But I know that in the States, there’s been a bit of a hoo ha about, say, for example, Donald Trump using various bits of music or whatever. He wouldn’t be able to do that with us.

>> Stuart H: No. Well, and there’s been quite a lot of artists who have said, well, I wasn’t asked for permission and as far as I know, none of our people were. So you.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, but if then they’d seen put a claws in, right from them, right from the word go. I don’t. If you can really stop that anywhere, you can make it known that you’re happy with it, which a lot of artists have, but legally, I don’t think they can actually stop it if they didn’t get a, clause in, you know, in the first place.

>> Stuart H: That’s interesting.

>> Speaker B: Didn’t Phil Collins have a problem with his music for a Tory party or something?

>> Stuart H: Yeah, it could have been later time.

>> Speaker B: Actually seem to remember the genesis of Phil Collins. A song was used for a campaign that he didn’t like, they didn’t like. I might cheque that out.

>> Stuart H: Ah, he was all right with the Cadbury’s gorilla, though. Yeah, that was all right. In fairness. That’s such a great advert.

>> Speaker B: Well, that made it. Made the song popular.

>> Stuart H: Yeah, it did. Did, yes. Incredible. And do you actually. That’s a good question, actually. So when, when, it gets used for something like an advert like that, do you suddenly see a, spike in your Spotify?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: There will be a bump? Definitely. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Because it just kind of reminds people of it. Oh, yeah. And then they go and play it on Spotify or whatever. So, yeah.

>> Stuart H: It’s funny, actually, because one of our other guests, I think I mentioned it to you, I don’t know, but a, chap called Tony, Rod, who was a, master chef finalist, got his own restaurants and things like that. And, I said to him that we’d spoken to you, this must have been just before. And he said, on service that day, he said, oh, he said, cancel. Anyways, in his usual song, playlist, he said, but for service, they just put their hand on the torch on and just listened to it all through service that night. So it had a little resonating to our other guests, which is.

>> Speaker B: Can I just jump in quickly?

>> Stuart H: Of course you can. Yeah, go for it.

>> Speaker B: in fact, Phil Collins was one of the people that didn’t want Donald Trump.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Right.

>> Speaker B: Using their music along with lots of others.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Practically everyone.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Speaker B: He issued a cease and desist order after the unauthorised use of in the air tonight, rallying Des Moines and a lot of people. That’s a big list.

>> Stuart H: So from.

Brent hates gardening, so he has a plastic lawn

So we sort of work. We’ve done, work. What about home? Now, it’s a bit different for us because we’re in your home. Have you got git shirties about being at home? Or. You know, we’ve had, not enough records. Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: My current one at the moment is largely to do with the garden outside. You probably noticed that I’ve got a plastic lawn.

>> Stuart H: I had noticed, actually.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Oh, really? You couldn’t tell? Well, I had it grown about ten years ago, and there’s a weed membrane underneath. And they did say to me, weed, Brent brain will last for ten years, which is all very well at the beginning. And now it’s ten years. There’s loads of weeds coming through, which is not good. It’s only just started.

>> Stuart H: So what’s the plan?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: I hate gardening. I’ve got two brothers, and when we were kids, when we were little, if we’d been naughty, my dad used to make us do the gardening. So I’ve always associated gardening with punishment, which is probably why I’ve got a plastic lawn. But I’m not going to be able to get away with it now because the weeds are coming through. So I’m going to have to weed the plastic lawn, which is a bit odd.

>> Speaker B: That’s a bit of an oxymoron.

>> Stuart H: Yeah, it is. It’d be nice if, like, plastic weeding.

The get shirty podcast is going live on July 4 at Tunbridge Wells

We have exciting news. The get shirty podcast is going live. Yes, you will be able to see the podcast being recorded live for the very first time. And it’s all part of this year’s Tunbridge, Wales Fringe Festival. It’s going to be on July 4 at the old auction house just off the Pantheils in Tunbridge Wells. It is a ticketed event, just three per ticket, but numbers are limited, so booking sooner rather than later is advised. And you can do that by going to twfringe.com and just search for git shirt. We’ll be announcing our guests soon on one of our social media platforms. Or all of them. Probably not just one of them. And, we obviously can’t wait to see you all there at the Tunbridge, Wales fringe festival. So, July 4, the old auction house, Tunbridge Wells. French. Don’t forget to book soon, otherwise you will miss out and you’ll have to get all shirted. Thinking about that. you associated gardening with punishment. What was it when you were growing up? That was the other way with things, where you went, actually, can you go? That’s what made me want to be a musician. Was there a point where that sort of light switched on for you?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: That’s a good question. It was probably a bit later. I didn’t think about that when I was a kid. But when I was a student, that’s when I started djing.

>> Stuart H: Right.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: so I was 20 years old when I started djing in a club, which was in Huddersfield, where I was a student. And, there was a guy who used to dj in a pub called West Riding, which is sadly very derelict now, called, Chris Denton, who’s still a really good friend. and I didn’t know him at the time. I was a student. He wasn’t a student, he just worked in the town. he used to dj every Sunday night in the west riding. And I used to go in there and he’d play, like, really upfront stuff that I didn’t know. so I was always, like, running up to him saying, excuse me, what’s this called? Something, you know, being that irritating little punter kind of student, nursing a pint in the corner of the pub. but one night, I must have been there early and he was late, and he came rushing in and he dropped all his records as he came in, so I jumped up and helped him collect his records up. And then we got to be friends after that. And not, long after that, he said. He told me that he was starting to do a club in the town, not just a pub. So I started nagging him, saying, will you let me be a warm up dj or whatever? I never djed before in my life. I just completely blagged it and he let me do it. and that’s how I learned. He basically taught me how to dj. You know, we used to go in the club during the day.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: And he’d teach me how to use the decks or whatever, and it was fantastic. Friday night just took off straight. Sorry, the Saturday night took off straight away. It was so busy that we opened on a Friday night as well.

>> Stuart H: so that’s like your sliding doors moment, then.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: If he hadn’t dropped his records, maybe, yeah. Ah, maybe.

>> Stuart H: So that sort of, like, could be.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: That sparked off a friendship that’s still going on. That’s been going on for 40 years now.

>> Stuart H: Wow. And, Chris. Did you say Chris?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah.

>> Stuart H: Did Chris go on and do stuff in the music industry?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: No, he’s still, Well, he’s retired now.

>> Stuart H: Right.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: but he was. We used to call him the fish boy. In fact, I say on. If you look at the sleeve notes on hand on the torch, it says fish boy. You started this.

>> Stuart H: Oh, really?

>> Speaker B: Wow.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: That was for Chris. All right, I’ll have to make him listen to this. He’ll be laughing. But he worked for fishmongers. That’s why we called him fish bunker. and, so he worked from, like, six till two or something, so I sometimes used to meet him in a pub in Huddersfield for a drink in the afternoon. And it was always very easy to find him because there was no one standing anywhere near him because he stunk at.

>> Stuart H: Yeah, and that’s a particular smell, isn’t it? My mum worked at a fishmonger’s for a while and, yeah, she’d come home from work and it’d be like, you know, you need.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: I don’t think he noticed it, because he was in it all day. Yeah.

>> Stuart H: Oh, great, great, though, that. Well, one that the friendship is still going.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah. But he ended up owning the company. He worked his way right through the company, owned the company and just sold it out and retired now.

How long was the gap between those two things? Oh, uh, ten years

>> Stuart H: So how long between that and your, you know, you starting or getting a deal was. How long was the gap between those two things?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Oh, ten years.

>> Stuart H: Oh, right.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Quite a long time.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: But when I moved to London, I kind of knew that I wanted to work in music, so I did all kinds of different jobs in music. I worked in our price records for quite a long time.

>> Stuart H: yeah, when it still had the high counter, did it? They used to. Or certainly the one in Tunbridge, Wales did. Used to have a really high counter. When you went and talked to them, they all sort of every stood. You had to, like, look up and go, I’d like this. You know, I thought that must have been a thing across all our prices, but perhaps it was.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Just remember that, I saw an advert in city, limits magazine. Remember that? It was kind of like time out listings magazine for an assistant events organiser at, ah, CNd, right. And, I’d. We’d put on a few bands in, Charlie’s, which was a club in Huddersfield that I worked at with Chris. so I applied for that. I’d had experience, I’d worked in rough. I’ve worked in the roof trade warehouse for a bit as well, and met some other guys there. We used to put bands on on a Saturday afternoon at, Subterranean, which used to be the Aklam hall underneath the westway in Labbrook Grove. so I had some experience of putting bands on, knew about hiring equipment and stuff. So I went along for this interview with CND and they told me that every year they applied for a music licence in Hyde park. Every year they used to do a, demo where they’d walk through central London and end up with a stage in Hyde park where they just have speakers on. And every year they’d apply for a music licence. And every year they get it turned down. Hyde park is a bit of an odd one because it’s not owned or run by any local borough. in London, it’s owned by the Royal Parks Commission, so you have to apply to them. There hadn’t been a gig in Hyde park since 1969. It was the infamous Rolling Stones one. And this year they’d applied for it. This was 1985, they’d applied for it and they’d been granted a music licence. So then they suddenly panicked because Ross, who was the national events organiser, had no experience organising anything musical. So they ended up taking me and a guy called Tony Wheeler on. And, we helped organise it. We couldn’t advertise that there was going to be any music on, but we basically were given a free hand to, choose who we wanted, really. So Gil Scott Heron was playing at Ronnie Scott. So I managed to persuade his management to get him to do it.

>> Stuart H: Wow.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Which was fantastic. We put together. There was quite. There was a bit of a. I was going to say ragbag group, but it wasn’t really rag bag group. It was. It wasn’t like a normal group. Billy Bragg did it. I also got the London community gospel choir. but there was quite a few people that turned out to be. Do you remember Red wedge? There was a thing called Red Wedge, yes. it was like Paul Weller and Steve, white playing drums. I think, the guy from Bronski beat did something as well. And Jerry. That might have been the first time I met Jerry Dammers, actually. So it was a really interesting build, you know. and there’s about 100,000 people there because they were all the people on the march and they got a load of music which they weren’t. They didn’t know about. So that was great. And, because that went off really peacefully, maybe because nobody knew it was going to happen. me and Tony got headhunted by the anti apartheid movement because they were planning on doing a big festival, on clapham Common in 1986, which happened in June 86. So we got involved with that. We, ended up working for the anti apartheid movement. Jerry Dammers at that point, had an organisation called artists against apartheid. So Jerry put the bill together and me and Tony did all the production work. About a week or two weeks before. Before that happened, it was in June 86, that state of emergency was, declared in South Africa. It was like the political hot potato at the time. So it was on the news. It was like the first item of news all the time. So the demo was absolutely massive. Yeah, we ended up with about 250,000 people on Clapham M common for this free gig. But the Bill Gerry had put together was phenomenal. It was like Sting, charde boy George, big audio dynamite, Hugh Masakayla, Gil Scott Heron did it again. It was just ridiculous. Anyone who was anyone. Elvis Costello. Yeah, that was a phenomenal thing to be involved with. And I got really tight with Gerry then because we were working closely with him, obviously. Yeah, great guy. Really phenomenal guy. But it was overrunning and the police didn’t want it to go into darkness. So we had. We literally drew lots backstage to tell each artist that they were going to have to cut a set down from. I think everyone was only doing 30 minutes sets anyway. But literally from 30 minutes to ten minutes, I got Elvis Costello. How does that go in? I had to knock on his door in his, porter cabin backstage and go in, and he just took one look at me and said, oh, here comes a man with a worried look on his face.

>> Stuart H: Oh, really?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: And I just explained to him that we were massively overrunning and the police didn’t want it to go into darkness. And Woody cut down his set, to ten minutes, and he just said, yeah, no problem. He was super duper nice.

>> Stuart H: That was a relief.

You managed to get three albums out in ten years through no fault of your own

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah.

>> Stuart H: What an incredible thing to be a part of.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, that was amazing. So, yeah, I djed at a riot outside the gates of mopping once, which was quite bizarre.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: yeah, did all kinds of things. we did a lot of gigs around the country for various things. The highlight of which, undoubtedly was putting Curtis Mayfield on at the usher hall in Edinburgh, which is such a beautiful venue. I was in there about three or four weeks ago, actually. It’s a classical gig, but that was amazing. I took him out for a pizza.

>> Stuart H: Did you?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Me and Curtis, just the two of us. He was hungry, so me and Keltis Mayfield went for a pizza. A bit gutted because he kept calling me sunny. I was young then. I was in my twenties then, but that was amazing. And the venue was only about half full. That was an anti apartheid gig. Yeah. Which shocked me.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: For a legend like that. and he was fantastic on stage.

>> Stuart H: But how do you even go about having a conversation with somebody like that? you know, that’s. That’s, you know, that’s.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Well, I knew all these, you know, I was a huge fan. Probably thought, oh no, not some fanboy again.

>> Stuart H: When you did, you had all these questions taking you back to the dj times as well. What was that you were playing? Why did you do this?

>> Speaker B: What?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah.

>> Stuart H: Oh, wow. Well, that’s. That’s a pretty big claim to find.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: That’s pretty amazing. Yeah.

>> Stuart H: There’s a bit of a theme running actually, through your career. It’s like people said, here, I’ll have that. and see what you want to do with it.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: If you don’t ask, you never get. Maybe I learned something subconsciously from that. yeah. But I think what I’ve been good at before is coming up with some wacky ideas, kind of, and then following through.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: You know, that’s. I think I got known before the halo three things happened. I think I was known for being quite reliable in terms of, producing events, if you like.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Ah, yeah.

>> Stuart H: And from the sounds of it, doing what you say you’re gonna do. Yeah, you know, it’s. A lot of people talk a very good game, but then when it actually comes to the following through and. And doing the thing that they’ve said they’re going to do, they’re perhaps not quite so good at that.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: And that’s the most important thing, really, actually doing it. Not talking about it, but doing it. I used to like working on events, festivals, gigs or whatever, because it was kind of like, if you did it in a graph, it goes like, it start out slowly and build up to a rush and you get busier and busier and busy and busy and busy and then to the day of the event and then it just drop off and then you’d have a bit of a crash, you know, but then start working on the next one, it’d start again, which is very much like making an album, right. You know, you kind of make an album, then you go out touring, tour it, and then you come back and there’s a bit of a downer before it all starts again. This is going back to another get shirty thing about the music business. the first ten years of us three was incredibly frustrating because I only managed to get three albums out in ten years through no fault of my own. That was all to do with the ridiculous revolving door of personnel that major labels had then. And every time someone left within the company, it was like you had to sort of rebuild your relationships with the new, new people at the company and.

>> Stuart H: Pitching it all again and sort of.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: And, it didn’t seem to matter that we’d been successful. It was just, you know, whoever the new guy comes in has got his own pet projects that he wants to work. So you go to the bottom of the queue.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: so I never got into that. I know a lot of bands complain about being on an album tour, album tour, album tour cycle. I never had the luxury of doing that. So every time I release a new album, certainly for the first three albums, it was a bit like starting afresh. Every time. When it happened for the third time, when the guy left the third time, I just thought, that’s it. I nearly swore then.

>> Stuart H: You swear all you like.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Oh, yeah, fuck that. I couldn’t handle it anymore. So I was introduced to someone at an independent distributor and decided to go independent. That was in 2004. So over the next ten years of us three, I managed to put six albums out independently and, really did get on an album tour album sort of thing then, which was really good because you do build up momentum.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

The music business is incredibly frustrating, says George Michael

>> Geoff Wilkinson: The music business is incredibly frustrating. You have to be very thick skinned in it, kind of, to keep going.

>> Stuart H: Yeah, well, it sounds. Anybody who I’ve ever spoken to who’s been in the music industry in any way, shape or form, it seems to be a constant travelator of negotiation. You know, too many cooks, as you said before, too many chiefs and. And everybody’s got their own agenda and they’ve all got their own thing. And I suppose to a degree, they’ve all got their own person whispering in their ears, saying, this is the next thing. You don’t want to worry about that.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yes.

>> Stuart H: You know, so there’s so much self promotion that you’re constantly having to do just. I suppose just to be in the mix, let alone the person that gets pushed to the front.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah.

>> Stuart H: That must get tiring.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: It does get tiring.

>> Speaker B: It’s entirely run by non musicians.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, yeah.

>> Speaker B: Not interested in music at all.

>> Stuart H: Yeah. Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: How sad is that? it seems. Yeah. I’ve got a name for them. I call them well meaning idiots.

>> Stuart H: I was smarter than I thought it was going to be when the Dublin came out.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: I think they mean well, but there’s a lot of people who aren’t very good business people either in the music industry who think they are.

>> Stuart H: You’re somebody who doesn’t particularly listen to anybody else, and you’ve got bad taste, but you think you’ve got good taste. All of your decisions are pretty much gonna be bad decisions.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Ooh, I’ve come across people like that before giving no names.

>> Speaker B: Yeah, but how many stories are there been of bands who’ve been turned down so many times and gone on to be successful? It surely proves that, which proves they don’t know what they’re talking about.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: A and r men, well, nowadays get shirty beef about the music business. It’s just going on and on and on, isn’t it? Nowadays, a, and r men, now, all they do is just look at social media figures. You know, if you haven’t got the right amount of followers on Instagram, on Soundcloud or whatever, they’re not interested. They won’t even listen to the music. They don’t listen to the music in the first place. It’s not the first thing they do. That’s incredible. Yeah, that’s incredible.

>> Stuart H: It is. And, ah, there’s something exciting about being part of something that has its own, like you were saying earlier about that album tour. Album tour. And that it gets momentum. And you can feel that momentum, you know, you can feel it even within a business like ours. When you have your first year and you do okay, the second year, you do a bit better, and then suddenly you realise you’ve had a few more customers and that customers talk to that customer, there’s a swell that happens around your business, and if you are dealing with people who are just looking to be at the top of that wave, and they’re not worried about being part of what was pushing that wave up in the first place.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah.

>> Stuart H: Where’s their interest? They’ve got no skin in the game. They’ve got no sort of desire to be part of what it is. They just want to, monetize what it’s become. And then that’s like a, that’s a horrible sort of route.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: I remember my accountant saying to me a few years ago, he said, it’s the first time he’s ever known that, acts who’ve been independent initially and have built up their own momentum, through touring and social media and releasing their own records, whatever, eventually, and it all started releasing their own music, that then get approached by major labels that, are then turning them down. They don’t want to sign too much major because they’re doing fine as they.

>> Stuart H: Are, ah, without the interference and without somebody else trying to steal being locked.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Into them as well.

>> Speaker B: And it all stole them, which is what happened.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: I don’t know if you remember. this was quite a long time ago, about 20 years ago, maybe more than that, actually. Maybe it was in the nineties that George Michael had a bit of a court case against Sony. And the reason for that was his a and r man had left and he’d got a new a and r. man, he wasn’t getting the same attention there and, he was trying to get out of his contract and he was. Their argument was that music, business contracts are a restriction of trade. And his lawyers made a comparison between the music industry, the way the music industry treats its artists, and the way the film industry treats its film stars. Because film stars are not signed to a, film production company or a studio or whatever for eight films. That just doesn’t happen. It’s done on a film by film basis. Why shouldn’t the music business operate the same way?

>> Stuart H: Control.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: You know, if you sign now, if you’re like a teenager, if you’re like 19, you’re hot or something, and a major label offers you a lot of money, you might be tempted to sign to them, but then you might sign an eight album deal, which is practically your whole career. Yeah, that’s really dangerous. I think that’s what we got.

>> Speaker B: Taylor Swift’s and people like that making their own stuff.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah.

>> Speaker B: Keeping their own stuff.

>> Stuart H: Well, and re recording the stuff to get it back. To get it back, yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Because, the deal was possible to get the rights back to the agency.

>> Stuart H: You can’t get that, those recordings and the rights to those back. You know, I’ll just rerecord it.

>> Speaker B: That was closely shows other people.

>> Stuart H: I suppose if you’re Taylor Swift, you’ve.

>> Speaker B: Got a resource to be able to.

>> Stuart H: Do and someone’s gonna, ah, even if you haven’t got the resource yourself, which of course you have, but someone else is gonna back. That somebody else is gonna go, yeah, well, help you do it.

>> Speaker B: It shows other people that I can do it. They don’t have to rely on UMG and Sony and people like that.

>> Stuart H: Yeah. But I’ve seen quite a lot recently about how they’re all starting to swallow each other up now, all the big. Trying to buy each other out.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: And it wasn’t very long ago that people were talking about the music business was in crisis, or certainly record labels were in crisis when, the digital thing came in, when MP3 s were the big thing, because MP3 s was so easily cloneable. A hundredth generation copy of an MP3 is exactly the same as a first generation copy, a digital copy, that was causing the majors huge problems and they became much less profitable with streaming, they become much more profitable. So streaming has saved them. Damn.

>> Stuart H: How dare it?

It’s really hard to make it in the music industry now

Yeah, it’s really, yeah, it’s, it’s quite frightening that sort of how quickly the power dynamic shifts with that.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, yeah.

>> Stuart H: I mean, if you’re a new artist now, you can’t make any money through being on Spotify or.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: I think I said that to you guys before, like, I wouldn’t recommend, I think you said to me, what would you recommend to someone starting out? I said, don’t do it. I would say, get a real job. It’s really hard to make it in the music industry now. You know, the streaming rates that artists, ah, get paid are a joke, really.

>> Stuart H: And that’s one of those things where it’s turned upside down again, because, like, I know Spotify rates are so bad, unless you are Taylor, Swift or Ed Sheeran or Adele, they get paid a higher rate because they bring people to the platform. So their basic rate of what they get per play is so much higher than somebody starting out. And you would hope that somebody like that will go, no, let’s flip it. I’ve got loads of money.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Take my, take some of my life works.

>> Stuart H: Is it? But if it did a little bit more, think about what that would do to the industry in terms of new talent coming through. it would only like we were talking about Neil Young a while ago, you know, might take it all off the platform. Don’t want it on there.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah.

>> Stuart H: And it’s great for somebody like him to make that stand, but it needs somebody who’s going to hurt them a bit more.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, I think if someone, if like, in 50 years time or whatever, when somebody writes a history of the music business, they’ll see that, when major corporations got involved in the music industry, that’s when they fucked it all up, basically. I can’t think of another industry that was, in control of distribution of its own resources when physical products was being sold, cassettes, records, CDs, even when it went digital, really. Apple stole a march, a computer company stole a march on the music business and all of a sudden a computer company was controlling the method of distribution of all the record labels, the entire industry. You know, Apple took over the music industry, but then they got usurped by Spotify. But why didn’t the major labels set up their own download facility, which they could have done or set up their own streaming sites. So if you wanted to listen to a Sharde album or whatever, you go to shardet.com. But really it’s Sony. is the engine room in the back. But then you have to listen to it through shardet.com. It’d be much more direct.

>> Stuart H: Yeah. Who tried? Didn’t Jay Z try it with. There was a collection of artists that got together and went, we’re launching our.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, tidal. Yeah, Tidal is fairly big.

>> Stuart H: Is it still going?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah. The thing about Tidal, it’s much better quality.

>> Stuart H: Right.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Okay. And Spotify. And that does pay quite a bit more.

>> Stuart H: Oh, does it?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: To its artists.

>> Stuart H: Okay.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Artists in general than Spotify does.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah. The music industry, a mess.

>> Speaker B: Some people still do it. Harry still wants to do it.

>> Stuart H: Yeah. But I suppose that’s. Is that because Harry wants to create?

>> Speaker B: Yeah, I’m gonna.

>> Stuart H: He would do it anyway. You know, that’s. I suppose that’s one of the litmus tests, if you like. It’s like, if there was no audience and it was all taken away, would you still sit there and make your own music for your own, enjoyment of making it? If that’s the case, then you’re gonna do it anyway. Then you might as well find a way of getting it out there. Do you still like the fact that you’re part of the industry, you know, or do you. Is it just what you do now?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: But it’s. But it’s still frustrating. Like, for the last ten years, I’ve just been making library music, really, which is like music for background use, mainly on tv, movies, m things like that. for library music companies who are companies who just stock libraries of music for that use. Yeah. the thing about that is, because it’s not for sale to the general public, so you don’t have to do any promotion, you don’t have to go out, do it live or whatever. So I’ve become a bit of a lab rat, you might say. I’m just in the studio, but like I said earlier, about the fact that I only managed to get three albums out in ten years, that was, from a creative point of view, I was almost unbelievably frustrating.

>> Stuart H: Yeah, I bet.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: so in the last ten years, I’ve had over a thousand tracks released of library music, which is great. And I’ve got to work in lots of different genres, which the music industry, per se, doesn’t really allow you to do.

>> Stuart H: Pigeonholed.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yes, exactly. And once you get pigeonholed that’s it. The industry as a whole doesn’t let you get out of it. It’s not like being an actor, where you can do different roles or whatever, but being. Doing, library music is more like being an actor because you can try different things out, like in lockdown, during lockdown. One of the strangest things that happened for me was I got really into electronic music and started listening to loads of tangerine dream, for example. And then I found myself making bubbly electronic tangerine dream like stuff. And, I’ve had about six albums of that released on library music companies now. 15 tracks an album. That’s quite a lot.

>> Stuart H: Yeah, it is. It really is. I suppose as well with that, is it’s to a degree more about the music.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Absolutely.

>> Stuart H: Rather than about the person who you think, you know, who’s doing the music. You know what I mean? It’s like, it doesn’t matter what the band name is or.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: I’ve always had quite a wide ranging taste in music anyway, so, I mean, even with those three, I had, there was elements of all kinds of different stuff in there on different albums. Bits of drum and bass, bits of latin music, bits of indian music, bits of african music.

San Francisco musician criticises restaurants that serve hot food on cold plates

yeah, but I get to really indulge those kinds of things a bit more doing library music.

>> Stuart H: it’s really interesting. I think we’ve all got our preconceptions of what the music industry is. And you forget there’s other areas of the music industry.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: It’s almost like a parallel industry to the music industry that everyone knows as the music music industry, really. But what we were saying about a and r men a while ago, that, a and r men now sign things based on social media figures. none of that makes a jot of difference in the production music world, because they’re just interested in the music, you know, because there’s going to be no promotion to the public. so the a and r men actually do listen to the music. That’s fantastic. Maybe that’s why I’ve had a thousand tracks signed, because I know that what I’m doing is good. That’s proof to me that I know what I’m doing, because I’ve had so many tracks signed to a vast range of companies around the world. Cantaloupe is still my calling card, kind of. Everyone knows that. but, yeah, I love what I’m doing now. I get to do some quite wacky things, really, which I would never have been able to get away with in the real music industry, because you would.

>> Stuart H: Have been constantly told to go back into your lane, because that’s where your value is to us.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yes, absolutely.

>> Stuart H: Whereas your value is your output, not what they think they can say, which.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Is, there’s a difference there.

>> Stuart H: yeah, that’s great. Have we, covered off all the git shirties we didn’t do going out so much, but. Well, we have.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: I remember one that I said, which is a big bone of contention still with me, is, restaurants that serve hot food on cold plates.

>> Stuart H: that’s right.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: That absolutely kills my head.

>> Stuart H: And you’re right, that is. That is a no no. Even at home, I can’t.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, I like the place. Yes, I always do that.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: It’s so easy to do. But, there’s a really good pub within walking distance of here which does really good Sunday lunches. But I’ve stopped going there because I’m sick of sending. I always ask them, can you warm the plates? And they never do. So I just send them back.

>> Stuart H: I send it back.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: You could just have a sink full of hot water or just in the oven for a minute. It’s not like, it’s not rocket science, is it, really?

>> Speaker B: You know, they do have plate warmers. They stack them.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Speaker B: Keep them warm.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah.

>> Stuart H: Now that’s quite rightly, that should.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: By, the time they bring the food out to you, it’s gone cold.

>> Stuart H: Yeah, yeah. That’s bad.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Hot food on cold plates. No, no, they really don’t.

>> Stuart H: Yeah, that’s, and it’s, well, we were talking about this. We’re not specifically plate warmers, but like, those little details, it’s just such a small thing, you know? And if you said it out of context, like, oh, I won’t eat somewhere that doesn’t want the place. It sounds a bit. A little bit, but when you actually think about what it is, like you said, my food is cold.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah. Would you rather.

>> Stuart H: So it’s not how it’s intended for it to come to me.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: So it’s not about the plate, it’s about the food.

>> Stuart H: Exactly.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: The food goes cold straight away.

>> Stuart H: Such a small detail for them to do.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yes.

>> Stuart H: And to not do that. You know, it’s like it’s poor, bad service.

>> Speaker B: And not listening to the fact that you’ve told them a number of times either.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Stuart H: It is poor.

>> Speaker B: This guy keeps sending it back. Why is that?

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Speaker B: Plates comfortable? Let’s warm them up. Maybe we’ll keep him as a classic.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: The answer is an economic embargo. Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I’ve done.

>> Speaker B: Sanctions.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, that’s my personal sanctions.

>> Stuart H: Yeah. You should go in there one day, warm a plate at, ah, home, take it in a, one of those pizza bags that keeps the food hot, walk in with it and when they bring your food out, slide it onto your hot plate, go see a plate that I’d like to see. We could, it, we could arrange it. Yeah. Now that is, that is a fair one though, actually. That is a fair one.

>> Speaker B: That’s good.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Well remembered.

>> Stuart H: It is well remembered. Yeah.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: It’s well remembered because it’s a bug bear. yeah. You say?

>> Stuart H: Yeah, yeah, I can’t because I must confess I didn’t go back and sort of have a listen through because I wanted to come and see you today and have it sort of like a new conversation and see where it went. But that’s worth putting up again.

There are only three major labels now, according to UMG

>> Geoff Wilkinson: That was the only one I could remember.

>> Stuart H: Yeah.

>> Speaker B: And the music industry, obviously.

>> Stuart H: Well, you know, the thing with the music industry, it’s such a behemoth, you know.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: It’S become incredibly concentrated now. like you said, just like I think there’s only three major labels now. Yeah, there used to be about eight or something before, you know. yeah, it’s become much more concentrated.

>> Speaker B: Which is, I think UMG own something like 80% of the music. Yeah, UMg, Warner and Sony, I think.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah, but they’ve been, the big ones have been buying up small labels for ages and now I think it was just because they were in a like little battle between themselves for market share, really, that’s all it was about. But now that streaming, has made them profitable, all the things that they’ve reissued or whatever on those smaller labels, they’re collecting from that. So it’s about volume and that’s what. Why they become profitable.

>> Stuart H: Yeah, yeah. I think there was a thing a little while ago where I think it was Warners was trying to buy, I can’t remember, one of the others and it went to the monopolies commission and all that and they sort of blocked it because just sort of had too much market share. I don’t know the details, obviously that’s passed me by.

So are we going to do a virtual off the cuff out of the hat

>> Speaker B: So are we going to do a virtual off the cuff out of the hat?

>> Stuart H: Well, if you’ve got a random, random word generator, then what?

>> Speaker B: We need my brain?

>> Stuart H: yeah, it doesn’t. I don’t know how we do that.

>> Speaker B: Well, you came up with it randomly in the first place.

>> Stuart H: Well, I came up with a load.

>> Speaker B: You remember some of the things you came up with?

>> Stuart H: Oh, there were all sorts in that hat. Ah, I just sat. I sat down and wrote a big long list and then just snipped them all up.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: What type of thing?

>> Stuart H: It was like from, sports. Yeah, sports. The pub. I don’t know, staff stuff like jumpers, you know, it’s like anything I could think of, I just wrote loads of random words.

Shopping. For clothes. I do a lot of shopping online

>> Speaker B: Shopping. What about shopping? So they tick you off about shopping.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Shopping for clothes. For clothes. I do a lot of shopping for clothes online, to be honest.

>> Stuart H: Now, you see, and there’s the thing about shopping for online for clothes, which is similar to tailoring, I think, in that, what people don’t want to do is trait round shops go in lots of different changing rooms. Try this on. Have a look at that. Go through all the racks, hang it back. You know, people don’t want to do that.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah.

>> Stuart H: If you order online, it just turns out you can try it on at home going, I don’t like it. Send it back.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah. I very rarely send stuff back, though.

>> Stuart H: Oh, really?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Yeah.

>> Stuart H: is that because you can’t be bothered to send it back or you’ve got your online shopping down?

>> Geoff Wilkinson: A bit of both. I mean, I have kept things that I’ve thought, oh, no, I wish I hadn’t bought chicken. Not quite that bad.

>> Stuart H: Yeah. What’s. What’s been the worst online purchase, though, that you’ve then gone, oh, I, should have sent that back now. Still got it.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: That’s a good question.

>> Speaker B: My favourite online story is friend Joe in the band. He said to us, we’re out having a carriage. He said, I, bought a record. I was drunk and I bought a record player on eBay. So we’ll have a record player record party. You bring Yvonne around, we’ll have a party about four nights. Eight of them said, that was a dream. I thought I bought a record. I didn’t.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: If I turned out it was a dream.

>> Speaker B: So we were all geared up with our records for his party.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Was he actually waiting for it to be delivered?

>> Speaker B: He’s waiting for it to be delivered. And I realised it must have been a dream.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Oh, dear. I, confess I don’t play my vinyl anymore. I know, stew, so.

>> Stuart H: Alright, good job. You were sitting down, Stew.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: You just say that in public.

>> Stuart H: We can edit that out just because. What? How come.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Spotify’s easier? I mean, as much as I complain about Spotify, from a consumer’s point of view, Spotify is incredible.

>> Stuart H: It’s hard to beat.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: From an, artist’s point of view, it’s a nightmare.

>> Stuart H: On that note, I think we’ve come full circle going back to the nineties. I think that’s more or less where we started. I think we’ll, say thank you very much for, letting us invade your. Your lovely home and for, allowing us to re record when, when you’d already kindly come to see us before. So thank you very much.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Geoff, thanks for coming.

>> Stuart H: That’s right.

>> Geoff Wilkinson: Appreciate it.

>> Stuart H: Who would have thought that picking up a few records would lead to such an amazing career? So, thanks to Geoff for being such a great guest, not once, but twice. And, also for making a, rather lovely cup of tea when we went to see him. Thanks also to Stuart Wilson, as always, for editing and producing the Get Shirty podcast. Thank you to Dathazza for the music, and of course, to Sam for keeping things ticking along. So until next time, do try not to get too shirty.