Saturday, 16th December 2006

Starting to close down now for the Christmas Holidays. Had our "office lunch" outing at a local hostelry yesterday, with crackers and EVERYTHING!

It's actually nice and clean and tidy this year with Christmas being on a Sunday - it's sort of easy to work out that everyone closes down on the Friday and comes back on Jan 2nd.

Katie is taking her family to a warm, sunny place as a surprise this Christmas. In the New Year we'll start in ernest, writing and gradually starting to record the third album, to be "delivered to ourselves" by end of June for September release. Can't wait to get on with it.

Lots of Aggro in Copyrightland at the moment, with Andrew Gowers having published his not-very-clever review on IP matters, commissioned by the government. I found myself writing a measuredly angry letter to the Financial Times in response to an article by a Professor John Kay who has supported Gowers, and reckons recorded music copyright should not be extended beyond the current 50 years. For those who aren't familiar with the subject, recorded music is in copyright (ie, you can't steal it, change it or otherwise defile it, and have to pay to use it) for 50 years after the recording date. That's often while the artist is still alive, quite old and living off what has often become a meagre trickle of income from the hit they had in the 60's or the one violin concerto they ever recorded. We in the business have been campaigning to have that period extended to 95 years, in line with the period they have in the USA. Gowers says the government shouldn't extend it. But THE FAT LADY HAS NOT YET SUNG! I'm a bit of a hawk on copyright. I've often said ­ if you build a house, the government don't confiscate it after 50 years and donate it to the National Trust, do they?
The same should apply to records. When you make a record, you should be allowed to sell it to people and require them to make a payment for owning a copy. Composers/songwriters have a period that lasts for their life plus 70 years. This enables them at least to pass something from their efforts down to their children, but probably not the grandchildren. That's not bad. If I had my way, copyright would never run out, but if that were the case I wouldn't have been able to write "Minuetto Allegretto" based on Mozart's "Jupiter Symphony" without haggling with some cantankerous little old Mozart great-great-great grandson! The Public Domain is fine, but all in good time!
Most recording artists and songwriters are medium to low income earners.
It's not enough to say "Sod Paul McCartney and Sting, they've got enough money already!" Because that would be like taking a swing at your Sainsbury's checkout girl because you think Lord Sainsbury earns too much, or more graphically, not having a National Health Service because some people can afford private heath care.

Enough, already!

Went to see my daughter, Hayley performing in her school production of "Summer Holiday" last night. Good fun. (Funnily enough, containing songs by my mate Bruce Welch of the Shadows, whose records come out of copyright in two years' time, while he's in his sixties!). Oh, I thought I'd changed the subject!

We've been re-editing the Hunting Of The Snark concert TV special for DVD release soon, and Zero Zero, the TV Special from 1982. The Snark thing was recorded in 1987 when it was a 40 minute concert piece, so it's not representative of the full show, which wasn't written until about 12 years later, but it's quite fun to see it as a costumed concert from the Royal Albert Hall. Watching the "younger me" makes this me feel fat and old. Hey, maybe that's because I'm fat and old! The copyrights of my early records will be expiring soon. Oops! Sorry.

We are also fine-tuning the mixes of my so called "new" album - "Bright Eyes At The Railway Hotel". It was available through the website for a while, but I never released it on CD, so I'm re-mixing it, taking some reverb off the vocal and being much more sparse with the orchestra ­ and adding my own new version of "The Closest Thing To Crazy" for good measure.
All the above will be part of a "Mike Batt Archive Series" which Dramatico will release in the first half of next year - but not until I've lost two stones in weight so I won't mind being on telly and promoting it! If only I were a foot taller I wouldn't be overweight.

Accidentally trod on a slug yesterday.

Had our annual SODS (Society Of Distinguished Songwriters) Ball last weekend. King SOD this year was Tony Hatch ("Downtown", "Don't Sleep In The Subway" and thousands if not hundreds, well tens more) and Petula Clark was there to sing those very songs. Tony did a great job. SODS is a club for songwriters who consider themselves to be distinguished. You have to be elected. The only rule is that it's totally SELFISH and we don't do anything for charity. In other words there's no auction or raffle. The idea is that we all (hope) we do enough for various charities and this is just pure decadence. I've been King Sod a couple of times. You meet three times, just the lads, (it's very chauvinistic) then in December we have "Ladies' Night" when we invite our wives, girlfriends and friends. We do our own cabaret. There's no shortage of hams to get up and sing their own hits.
Members include Tim Rice, Don Black, Guy Chambers, Errol Brown and about thirty more.

Gotta stop now; places to go, people to meet. Have a great Christmas and New Year.

Love

Mike

Thursday, 9th November 2006

Hi All.

Just got back from a good trip to New York, with my assistant, Rosanna, plus our MD, Andrew Bowles and THE SINGER. Lots done, including liaising with Emma, our VP of Everything, plus appointing a Head Of Promotion who must remain nameless. (He is being Christened next week - weird because he is Jewish).

Katie did her usual round of promo and enchanted all she met. Sang some seriously good stuff on live radio. I was tweaking the décor at my apartment (where we Dramatico bods stayed) and have to say it really is a lucky, God-sent pleasure to be looking out over Central Park every morning. Had meetings with our friends at Universal Distribution and they are behind Katie from Doug Morris (President) down. They really believe in her and our insistence on a completely independent relationship with them (they press and distribute) only enhances the thrill for all of us.

Funny thing happened "on the way to the airport". We were called about an hour before leaving to go to JFK and return home, to be asked if Katie would sing the end titles to the Weinstein movie "Miss Potter" (Life and Love of Beatrix Potter) and because it is sung only accapella by Ewan McGregor to Rene Zellweger in the film, any chance of me writing a lyric for a girl, and turning it into a song, and going straight from the airport (LHR) at 6.30 am the next day, arranging a rhythm section then a string section, and then recording them at my house (in the living room) and then adding Katie's voice (once four people had approved the lyric) and delivering it by 3am the following day so that my pal Haydn Bendall could mix it in 5.1 surround the following morning for final inclusion in the movie the following day (Thursday). Of course we said yes. Why would you want to sleep and rest?

What a silly idea!

So the next day was a real adventure, and I finished the lyric AFTER the string section had left and two minutes before Katie recorded it - brilliantly, I may say. It's a joy to listen to - and actually a superb film in the English, period way. Might make a good track for the next album.

Then on the Thursday we all had to be at Pinewood Studios where Katie was (sadly) duetting (for a Prime Time BBC Christmas Special) with the late Eva Cassidy on "Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Cassidy was Katie's inspiration to come into our business, but it was all the more poignant because only four days earlier we had lost our dear friend Pauly Walters - the man who, as Wogan's producer, undisputedly broke both Eva and Katie who would still remain unknown even now had it not been for him. He died after a fight against cancer of the esophagus. I just wish he could have lived another week to see and hear his two protégés (one, posthumously on film) sing the song that broke Eva. What a guy - and what a sad funeral it was a week later (this week). A great man with a terrific personality and a real nose for something special.

Still, we move on. Katie is now in Canada, where she is breaking very nicely out of the French-speaking sector - slowly but surely after breaking France.

Gotta go now. It's late and I've finished my boiled egg and marmite soldiers.

Love to all. Stay cool, etc. Don't enjoy yourselves too much.

Mike

Sunday, 15th October 2006

A sunny Sunday in Surrey. (Alliteration unintentional). Mist across the valley at Batt Control gives a great, diffused light, and cut-out lines of tees going into the distance, the further away the lighter the grey. Preparing for a short trip to New York with four of us, Katie, me, my assistant, Rosanna and Andrew, our M.D. The mission is to plan strategy for Katie' s next few months re USA and also for her to do some publicity stuff. Hoping to get some 'quality time' to discuss and advance album three a bit (due for release NEXT September). I' ve always thought the expression 'quality time' was a bit odd. All time is quality time, isn' t it? People seem to use it for parental moments like doing jigsaw puzzles or going to the zoo, but travelling in a train or taking out the rubbish is also quality time, surely? Who cares, and why is he crapping on about this, I hear you say.

Mixed blessings. A good friend of mine is very ill in the final stages of cancer. My 18 year old son and 16 year daughter are playing a great rock ‘n' roll track in the control room of the studio at home, her on bass, him on guitar.

I was invited to the musical 'Wicked' by Radio Two a week or so ago. Loved it. Some didn' t, and I believe it was mauled by the critics, one of whom (Mail On Sunday) gave it no stars out of five. That' s just viscious and ignorant. So there was no talent on stage, the costumes and set weren' t even a bit good? Actually the costumes are among the best I' ve seen and the stage overflows with true talent. It' s the story of the witches in The Wizard Of Oz, and how they got to be the wicked one and the good one. The songs need to be listened to attentatively to be appreciated, so that probably rules out some if not all critics. All in all a good way to spend an evening and you' ll only hate it if you are a miserable sod. I also saw a preview of 'Dirty Dancing' which you' ll like if you are a girl out with the girls, mad keen on dancing but not bothered about acting, or a huge fan of the movie, or if you are a bloke who is red-blooded enough to be happy to spend two hours watching the tall girl with the legs that go on forever - which takes the edge off the boredom if you would otherwise be bored. Apart from that, t wasn' t my cuppa, but I enjoyed it through the eyes of the girls I was with (my wife and daughter) so enjoyed the evening. It' s booked out for months, will be a great success, but great art it isn' t.

Later today I am going to finish off the piano/vocal arrangements of the sheet music book of 'Piece By Piece' so we can get it out for Christmas. Tedious work but it has to be done. We are setting up a direct sheet music publishing operation, distributed by a major distributor but originated edited and printed by/through us. As well as 'Piece By Piece' we are doing a 'Best Of' ' my own songs and a 'Hunting of the Snark' piano folio soon.

Also spent some time this week compiling and uploading my 'Holst: The Planets' classical (conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra)
album to iTunes. It will be in their store in a couple of weeks. Why anyone would want another recording of the Planets Suite I' m not sure, but I' ve got it so I' m putting it out - along with 'Elgar: Pomp and Circumstance No 1' and my own 'Dublin' Overture. Simon Rattle must think they need another Planets because he' s just done it with the Berlin Phil. So now there are two, and – be fair, whose would you rather hear? (Yeah! Thanks for your vote!). 'Berlin Phil' would be a good name for a singer, wouldn' t it! (No?) OK then.

Well, I' ll write more soon, depending on your definition of the word 'soon'. Ask General Sir Richard Dannatt, who says he thinks our troops shoud be out of Iraq 'soon'!!! but honest, I' ll try my best (to write, not to get our troops out of Iraq).

All the best,

Mike




14th May, 2006

Dear Anyone,

I know it always comes as a shock when I write a newsletter. Can't think why I leave them so long - I really quite enjoy writing them. I guess I used to enjoy it more when the software was simpler. I'm OK with HTML but this template-based software is a pain in the butt and I can't easily attach pictures.

Anyway, so here we are in the middle of May. I'm just about to jump on a plane to the States to start the long process of helping Katie to break a bit bigger in the States, with the release of her album" Piece By Piece" on June 6th. We are very pleased with the album's performance in the UK and the rest of Europe, where it had achieved in six months what the first album had achieved in total. (3m sales in Europe by March). She has now been the biggest selling female singer in the UK for two years running, and Dramatico had the 9th biggest market share (of ALL record companies, not just indies) in the UK last year. Sorry if that sounds cocky, but we're a tiny company and it's nice to be proud of the good things that happen.

We put on the best live show we could, using a big screen behind Katie, and a set of four projectors hanging from the front lighting truss. As a "student" and sometime designer of projection projects this was a thrill for me. These new American projectors (D2) are smaller, more powerful than anything else sensibly tourable (anything more powerful is the size of a bus) , can move, have internal intelligence to correct something called "keystoning" - the distortion of the image due to the angle of projection - and can double as cameras as well. We haven't even scratched the surface of what they can do yet - I'm looking forward to developing them in a theatrical application. Anyway, I digress. All this production effort did nothing to distract from Katie's magnificent performance. She seemed to grow a lot on this tour, both in maturity and technique. We shot a couple of the gigs for TV and will be doing a DVD repackage of the album in September - like last time - a "free" full length DVD in with the album.

So we've just got back from the European tour (I didn't make all the gigs now that I have sacked myself from the band (in favour of the brilliant Jim Watson on piano) and need to spend more time on admin and other, creative duties. Dramatico is settiing up a New York Office. I have been there twice in the past month, looking for premises on Broadway, and have now appointed key people. Our German office (Dramatico GmbH) , run by Sven Meyer and George Garcia has developed into a fully fledged Dramatico company, so now we have -albeit small, modest outposts, in Munich and New York. We have always operated independently anyway, and do not license our music to overseas record companies. We do direct deals with distributors, usually building up our own freelance promotion and marketing team in the territory, as we do in the UK.

I know you would have prefered my recipe for Duck Soup to the foregoing account of the way our record label works but perhaps next time.

We have now got all my old solo albums up on iTunes after a long period of negotiation with SONY who hadn't had them out for ages , except as compilations ("Best Of" type collections). We are going to get them all out on remastered CD as soon as we get a moment. See www.dramatico.com for more. I suppose it's partly vanity publishing, but then I guess if you've spent your life making solo albums that have been sometimes overshadowed by other, more successful projects (for which I am eternally grateful) - you can be forgiven for wanting them to be available. The modern, digital age is bringing great opportunities for artists and writers to make their work available. Of course with it comes the huge volume of competition because everyone else is doing the same, but at least it redistributes the power formerly held by the senior executives of a handful of major record companies.

Incidentally, congratulations to Dramatico artist Robert Meadmore, whose number two album, "After A Dream" (UK classical charts, 2005) earned him a nomination for "Best Album" at last week's Classical Brits. It's great to have a hit record, but a nomination like that really does make you feel good, and it's well- deserved.

Having a small indie record label is a huge buzz. It takes all the schlepp out of trying to get a record deal for each project, but of course it is hugely hard work, can be very risky and dangerous. Just my cup of tea then! I've always wanted to do it. Mind you, I wanted to be a yellow dumper truck driver when I was six, and never made it - so at least I'm realising SOME of my ambitions.

I'm going to stop writing now before it gets too interesting. Mustn't spoil you.

Hope to write again soon - stay cool, boogie down, hang loose, swing low and don't spare the horses.

Mike