Friday, February 22, 2013
BMG Magazine and Radio BMG goes online!
BMG
Magazine and Radio BMG goes online!
In March, after seventeen years
of playing banjo for a living in Germany I finally said goodbye. When I first
moved there in 1996 I had an abundant amount of work as a professional banjo
player and I was working with the numerous jazz groups around Düsseldorf and
Cologne. The first job I landed was three solid weeks, playing eight hours a
day in the Cologne Exhibition Halls (Köln Messe) at a staggering rate of pay.
It was an eight piece band and money seemed no object to the booker. I thought
I had landed in banjo heaven! One of the world’s leading authorities on all
things banjo, Günther Amend, was about a quarter of an hour away from where I
lived and the group he organised, Düsseldorf Banjo Club, met every Tuesday.
They were enthusiastic and welcomed me with open arms. There were three jazz
pubs in Düsseldorf and once I had learned a little bit of Deutsche other bands
called from out of town. The amount of sixty-fifth birthday parties I played at
were a sign of things to come though. Fast forward seventeen years - party jobs
with Dixieland music are rare. Those same people I played for in the late
1990’s are (to put things politely) advanced in age and, like the song, “Don’t
get around much anymore”. All things change of course and we decided that it was
time for us to change too - and head back to my native England.
When one door closes another
opens - enter Clem Vickery and the Clifford Essex Music Company. Clem was an
employee of the original Clifford Essex firm in the 1960’s. They had been in
business since 1904, founded by Mr. Clifford Essex, a famous banjo player of
the Victorian era but had ceased to trade in the early 1970’s. After a thirty year
sleep over Clem re-started the company and the publication it produced, BMG
Magazine (the oldest fretted musical instrument publication in the world) and both
the company and magazine are going from strength to strength. The other
specialist banjo publications in England were now sadly defunct- Julian Vincent’s
“Banjo Broadsheet” and David Price’s “Banjo Times” are regretfully gone, so BMG
Magazine now stands alone in our specialist musical corner. The magazine is
published four times a year and is also offered by e-mail in digital pdf. file
version, offering a full colour copy for a bargain price of ten British Pounds
per year.
I am flattered and proud to have been asked to
work for the Clifford Essex team. The first thing I did was launch a dedicated
website for BMG Magazine. The internet is vital to our survival and on www.bmgmagazine.net we offer a comprehensive
platform for Banjo, Mandolin, Guitar and kindred fretted instrument fans. Among the links on the website are back-copies
to be purchased, a list of teachers, news, a chat-group forum, a picture gallery,
videos, advertisements, artistes for hire and a link to the next project I had in
mind - a dedicated internet radio station called Radio BMG. We also have a page
on the world’s biggest social media site, Facebook. This is linked via the
webpage and we plan to take advantage of all new technology to keep up to date
and be in contact with both seasoned players and newcomers to the world of
acoustic fretted instruments. Young and up-coming enthusiasts of acoustic stringed
instruments say that a paper magazine is something that belongs to the past and
that Facebook is now equally, if not more important than a website as it can be
updated by our members all the time and information is instantly transported
across the world. Like it or not, we move with the times.
Radio BMG is “work in progress”
with music being added to the playlist all the time. It functions rather like a
juke-box. Random selection of music files are picked for a playlist and
broadcasts twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, so you can always be
sure of finding BMG music whenever you fancy tuning in. If you wish to hear a
particular piece of music or would like your recording played simply send me a
CD to the main office Radio BMG, c/o Clifford Essex, 7 Rose Walk, Fakenham, NR 21 7QG (England). We
are also offering advertising at affordable rates and also offer to produce
your audio advertisement. The link to the radio station, which operates on the
live365 platform, is via www.bmgmagazine.net
. If you wish to email an MP3 file please drop me a line first. Be sure to take
a listen to Radio BMG and help spread the word.
We are determined to cement a
solid community of banjo, mandolin, guitar and ukulele players in the UK, Europe
and around the world in a similar way that AllFrets has done in the USA. I hope that next year we can announce our
first Clifford Essex BMG Festival. Having experienced how our American friends
produce their festivals I have some thoughts on how, where and when we can
stage our meeting. I have met some really talented players on my trips to the
USA who have seldom, if never, have had the opportunity to play a banjo event
in England so maybe it would be nice to see some new musical talent coming over
to the UK. We are keen to make ties to our American friends at AllFrets and
Resonator Magazine and offer a nice holiday destination for American players
and their families to meet with like minded people across the Atlantic.
There are a few other projects I
have in mind that will come to fruition in due course but more of that later.
In finishing up, please take time to have a look at our website, listen to
Radio BMG and (hopefully) join our growing ranks at BMG Magazine!
Best wishes,
Sean Moyses.
