Blog: A Meeting of Validators

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Saturday saw me travelling to distant LOUGHBOROUGH, to attend that most hallowed of institutions - the Validators Christmas Curry And Band Meeting. Here is the Executive Summary: it was GRATE!

We gathered in The Organ Grinder, which turned out to be a LOVELY pub. There was much catching up to do and, as Mr FA Machine pointed out, we really should get together more often as there was almost TOO MUCH to talk about, not least because we had a full agenda - or VLADGENDA - to get through.

When I say agenda - or VLADGENDA -I do not mean a vague list of things to chat about, I mean a properly agreed, typed, printed out list of topics which we spent the next 90 minutes working through like the CRACK TEAM what we are. As usual I was struck with the idea that if we ever turned our attention to other matters - some form of business proposal perhaps, or world domination - we would be UNSTOPPABLE.

It began with a presentation of the Financial Report for the year. We have recently changed our funding model to bring in SUBS from each member, as well as putting the proceeds from gigs, publishing and online sales into a central pot, so this was the first time we needed a financial report of this nature. I was glad to have the FACTS verified by Mr T McClure (who'd checked the details on our shared Paypal account before coming out) and the whole report passed as VALID by the assemblage. We then discussed the "You're A Tory Now" campaign, with KEY LEARNING POINTS. It turns out that the old days of getting something all ready two months before release to meet PRINT deadlines are very much BACK, except that now it's Spotify and Bandcamp you need to send press releases too, not NME and Q.

All of this LEARNING was then utilised during the main discussion about what we're going to DO in 2020. We're going to release three EPs, and during the meeting we agreed what tracks we'd put out on each, with Mr T Pattison having a GRATE idea about putting some extra material on the (EXCITING) Bandcamp version. Mrs E Pattison was also persuaded to do some SPECIAL T-SHIRTS for it all!

With that complete we then moved on to Ryan's for CURRY. Alongside Intellectual Discourse and Musical Recommendations we also had a BLOODY DELICIOUS tea. When we went in it looked like it was going to be one of those Posh Indian Restaurants where you don't get to have a Balti, but in actuality it was an EXCELLENT also PROPER Indian Restaurant where you definitely COULD have a Balti AND they brought out complimentary mints and liqueurs at the end. It was BRILLO!

As we said our goodbyes afterwards I was filled with joy from a meeting well met, and also from the prospect of EXCITING ACTIONS to come in 2020. It is going to be AMAZING!

posted 9/1/2020 by MJ Hibbett

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