Sometimes after gigs people come up to me and ask "Do you make a living doing this?" Sometimes they say it with barely suppressed disbelief, but sometimes they seem to think it is actually possible, so I do my best to disabuse them of the notion calmly without, if at all possible, SCREECHING with laughter and then bursting into tears.
For LO! I very much don't - in fact most things I do tend to LOSE money. Yes, incredible as it may seem, not enough people a) come to gigs b) buy my records to recoup the EXTREMELY MODEST expenses they involve i.e. my visits to the Ibis, rail travel, and essential nutrients hem hem BEER. However, every now and again something comes along which DOES pay out more than I or we have put into it, and when this happens it is a time for great celebration. Examples of this have been That Time We Played A Wedding, That Time I Wrote A Song For A Viral Advert Thing and, of course, That Time We Recorded The Soundtrack For An Online Sitcom. These have never ever been life changing sums of money but it's sometimes been WEEKEND changing money and is all the more enjoyed for that! This week however we have received more money than EVER BEFORE. Again, it's not going to involve moving house, but it's definitely a BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND changing amount of CA$H and it's for something we had pretty much NOTHING to do with.
Several years ago The Fighting Cocks released a song called "Hang Up The Moon" which featured a tiny sample of the instrumental version of Dino At The Sands from the end of WE VALIDATE!. Being a decent sort Charlie From The Fighting Cocks gave an eighth of the publishing of the song to ME - he didn't have to, but he seemed determined to do it and I was very grateful for the 18p or so that I subsequently got for it via the PRS.
However, some time later the song got picked up by a credit card company to maybe be used in one of their adverts. Sums of CA$H were spoken of, lots of negotiations were gone into, a Major Hollywood star was brought in to do the voiceover, a video was made and mixed... and then at the very last minute the advertising agency picked a different song. So near!
A little while after THAT, however, someone noticed that the version of the advert with The Fighting Cocks' song on it had been put onto the interweb. I guess someone just uploaded the wrong file, but nonetheless there it was online, and NEGOTIATIONS were re-entered, ending up with the various publishers of the song getting some Compensatory CA$H.
We got the aforesaid EIGTH of it, which I completely forgot about until this week when John The Publisher sent it on to me along with this year's PRS money, and LO! great joy did spread around - joy which was IN NO WAY DIMINISHED, indeed probably INCREASED when I remembered that this share of an eighth of the total wasn't all for me and that I had to ... I mean, was lucky enough to be ABLE to share it with The Validators.
I couldn't really complain about sharing it out though - after all, this was money for a sample which doesn't appear on the part of the track that was used, in an advert which was never really shown, which I had done absolutely nothing towards making happen! Even more to the point, there's a weekend coming up which will definitely benefit, when The Validators are all together in Congelton for Going Up The Country in June. When that occurs we shall definitely be raising a pint to The Fighting Cocks. Who knows, maybe even a pint of CHAMPAGNE!*
