It’s been a hectic week or so at Stove – and it is with sadness that we wave goodbye to DMC for another year. It’s been insightful, exciting, wild, engaging and fantastic. Having landed at a music conference with very little music background, there was an initial concern of being the cuckoo of the flock however, he Dumfries Music Conference kicked off last Wednesday, with a showing of LCD Soundsystem’s Shut Up and Play the Hits, a beautifully shot, poignant film about the band’s last ever gig in Madison Square Gardens. I decided to avoid googling the band beforehand, and went in with no knowledge of them or their music – and left with a new love.
This buzz carried into Thursday – with a seminar programme, relocated back into the familiarness of the Stove. It kicked off with Born to be Wide‘s Getting Started in Music – which included a panel of industry experts who gave inspiring but honest insight into the contemporary music scene in Scotland. Grassroots music Popcop blog was represented, as was Bar Bloc and the Wickerman, as well as Keren McKean of We Make Music Work – and covered everything from managers, getting live gigs, to pluggers, promoting and marketing your music. This was followed by Gary Aitkinson who spoke about the story of Document Records, and it’s in-depth archive and back catalogue of musical gems.
Up to pace. Friday saw the Stove taken over by aspiring song writers who landed to join Music Plus in learning from Robert Shields of Finding Albert, who worked from a music composition base, and gave some inspiration into his early career within the music industry and Findlay Napier of Findlay Napier and the Bar Room Mountaineers – a self proclaimed folkie who had all participants writing a song from scratch in less than 30 minutes… Say cheese, say please sounds set to become a chart topping success!
Quick change over and the Stove transformed to Dumfries’s newest intimate live music venue. Chris from Bar Bloc mentioned during the seminar night that remote and unusual venues are often the most atmospheric, and we couldn’t have imagined how great it would be when first Honeyblood, at the end of their UK tour and just about to head for the States rocked up and gave the Stove it’s first live set. Followed up by the mind-blowing Hector Bizerk, Glasgow based hip hop group, who really blew Dumfries out of the water. Local lads Barstow Bats led the Stove into the night, and the whole place glowed.
The DMC team didn’t disappoint on day four, and another quick costume change for the Stove saw it re-invent itself as a retail outlet hosting Rebecca Vasmant’s record fair, featuring DJ sets and sellers both local and down from the big city. Congratulations go out to the DMC team for a fantastic programme, thanks to everyone who was involved and thanks to everyone who came to our events – we hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did! To see more of the photographs taken at DMC head to our flickr site here
