The end of an Intern and the start of an exciting future

Back in June 2008 I left Lincoln and relocated to Birmingham in the space of six weeks to take up a job as a Christian media intern with freelance Journalist and Broadccaster, Mike Rimmer. Throughout the year I’ve broadened my skills in writing and production, and become a better, more interesting broadcaster. Also this year has given me a great insight into the Christian music and media industry. I’ve met loads of people great musicians and professionals throughout different levels of the industry and heard countless stories from people like the legendary Tony Cummings.
Recently I hosted a Press Conference with Graham Kendrick and other top artists at the ‘Big Church Day Out’ in Worthing, also interviewing artists who played on the second stage at the event. I’ve just returned from a weekend in Scotland training broadcaster’s for a new community radio station in Dumfries. You can find out more about that by visiting their website www.aliveradio.net

I’m continuing to work with Mike as his assistant, as well as the continued production for Cross Rhythms programmes and a new show we’re pioneering for American radio we’ll soon be looking forward to this years RSL at Grapevine celebration in August and creating more oppertunities for media work.

How NOT to promote your next album

If a producer or presenter discovers you on Myspace or anywhere else and requests a CD here’s NOT how to handle it;

1) Ignore the request or leave for months by which time you’ve been forgotten about

2) Ask the person to buy the CD or download it from a website, we don’t always have time to download things and we personally listen to 90% of the new music we get on CD in the car.

3) Send the CD without a case, trackisting or short bio with it. (some presenters/producers get hundreds of CD’s a month, they will need reminding who you are)

4) Send the CD if it doesn’t work!

Most of this advice  comes courtesy of a band who posted me their EP this morning. Unfortunately because it doesn’t work it went straight in the bin

What NOT to call your next album!

If your looking to record a new Christian album then you might want to read this because having worked in Christian music for a year now and looking through a whoe library of CD’s there tends to be a lot of repetition in Album titles and you may want to pick something more creative and original. So here’s the list of most popular album titles;

“Amazed” – Lincoln Brewster (2002) Brown Bear Music (1997)

“Beautiful” – Amanda Faulk (2007) Ryan Farish (2004)

“Best of/very best of” – … goes without saying dozens of mainly compilation albums with this name

“Blessed be your name” – Matt Redman (2005) Tree 63 (2008)

“Brand new day”

“Breathe”

“Chronology”  – Brian Haworth (1989), Third Day (2000,2006)

“Closer”- Dan Helen Mallarkey (1999) Sherwin Gardner (2004) Simon Godall  (2002)

“The Collection”

“Demo”

“The Early works/ The Early Years” – Don Fransisco, DC Talk, Keith Green, Seventy Sevens

“Gold” – Albums from Keith Green, Nicole Nordeman, Crystal Lewis, Sonicflood, CeCe Winans, Meet Jesus Music

“Grace” – Grace (1997) Joy Rose (2006) Margaret Becker (1996)

“Greatest hits” – Album titles of at least 19 artists

“Live/ Live in…” – Similarly to above this name has been over used

“One” – dropknee (2000) Indigoecho (1999) Paul Colman trio (2003)

“Revolution” – Used by Yfriday and many other youth orientated bands

“Shelter” – Love Justice (1986) Gary Chapman (1996)

“Treasure(s)” -

“Ultimate Collection/Under the influence”

Independent: Sherri Youngward

Independents’ day showcases music from Independent artists from around the world and can be heard on Cross Rhythms radio, Saturday nights from 11pm GMT

This week’s featured artist is: Sherri Youngward

Sherri Youngward is an American roots acoustic artist. She became a Christian when she was 18 and has recorded nine albums since 1997 including the Christmas album “The Sky can Still remember”, a beautiful mix of acoustic songs, some traditional, some original. The album that we’re featuring this week though is her 2004 recording “The words that you left me”.

Read the Cross Rhythms Review

Go to Sherri Youngward’s website,. http://www.sherriyoungward.com

Alive Radio

Location: Dumfries, Scotland this is a group of churches broadcasting on aliveradio.net

Vision: To launch a 24 hour station early in 2009 after having produced restricted radio broadcasts over the last three years.

Impact: There’s currently no official measure of how successful the station are, but to have been granted a full time licence and have been working at it for three years from scratch means that there they must be a team of promising and committed broadcasters.

To find out more go to http://www.aliveradio.net

Email: mail@aliveradio.net

Join the March of Repentance

A new Christian initiative is being planned in London for July 18th called ‘The march of repentance’. The aim of the march through London to the House of Lords is to “Repen of our own lack of witness” and “Pray for courage to end our silence”.

The march is the vision of a friend who I trust and admire greatly. To me this feels like it will have a cultural impact just like March for Jesus did in the early 90’s and the Make poverty history campaign rally did a few years ago in Edinburgh.

You can sign to the event through facebook and take a look at all the details at the website www.repentuk.com

Interesting link;

How metrosexual is the worship leader in your church?

http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2008/06/269-understanding-how-metrosexual-your.html

I’m glad to say that I only score +3, although there are certain lifestyle changes i’d like to make that would make it higher but I don’t think i’m in any danger of being metrosexual

The answer to Jade Goody’s legacy? donate to charity

London rapper, ‘Triple – O’ is working on releasing a single called “Dear Jade (A rap tribute to the late Jade Goody) to raise money for a cancer charity (likely to be Cancer Research UK) You can see the visual tribute via youtube;

The youtube video has had 12,000 hits within a few days. Incidently you can also find more information on this via the facebook group ‘Dear Jade (A tribute to Jade Goody)

The audio single is likely to be released withing the next few days. Check back soon for more details.

This week on Rimmerama

The news this week is that there’s now behind the scenes video footage of the Cross Rhythms studio and how we put the show together, If you have any photo’s or video’s of Mike or Cross Rhythms please add them to the group.

We’ve also got a Youtube channel which we hope to keep uploading stuff to aswell so have a look at that and become a subscriber if your on youtube yourself http://www.youtube.com/rimmerama

Here’s info on what’s coming up this week,

TUESDAY

Paul Woolley from the public theology think tank Theos will be talking about Darwin and evolution

American music artist Patsy Moore will be talking about her new album, her fight against cancer and her life as a renaissance woman.

Irish worship leader Eoghan Heaslip lives in London now and recently released a new album.

WEDNESDAY

American folk singer Kathryn Wehr

Cross Rhythms music editor Tony Cummings playing brand new music and digging out oldies.

second part of Eoghan Heaslip interview

THURSDAY

American cultural commentator Dan Merchant talking about how the economic downturn affects art and creativity.

singer songwriter Paul Bell live session in the studio playing songs from his new album

final part of Eoghan Heaslip interview

PODCAST – www.crossrhythms.co.uk/podcasts or on itunes

On this week’s podcast German artists Samuel Harfst, Ed Einsiedler from the band Spincycle and Esther O’Connor who is the daughter of a Wet, Wet, Wet, guitarist.

The Gentlemen’s first national airplay

Rock band, The Gentlemen, from Sheffield were played on Terry Wogan’s breakfast show this morning. It was their first national radio airplay in their campaign to hit the charts with their forthcoming album which will be released at the start of May.

They’ve already released their first single from the album ‘Sendinig Cards’ which, although is a tight, catchy little number, it failed to chart. Their next single to be released will be ‘Something you can’t regret/I’m not leaving due to be released April 27

Find out more at www.the-gentlemen.co.uk