Before I start, here’s the important info:
I’m DJing this Friday (13th January 2012) from 9pm for Get.Tronic with Normski at City Arts & Music Project (CAMP) on City road by Old st station. Before that the whole team will be at Electricity Showrooms on Hoxton Square from 6pm for Hoxton Live with The Preshaah. Both will be broadcast live on Hoxton FM and repeated the following week. You are welcome to listen or come along.
Tune in to Hoxton.FM and get involved if you want. Don’t be afraid, we don’t bite….well, not hard enough to break the skin anyway 
I write this blog at 6:25am having been up all night working on Hoxton.FM shows, edits, servers, scheduling, website front-end and more. It’s all mind numbing and not exciting stuff to be doing, there is a lot more of this that goes on than I would like to admit. I didn’t get to work on my remix for Deep London Records despite it being due a week ago. The team has been amazing, but if I don’t start delegating more soon I think something inside me will break (insert bent already joke here).
The station is doing amazingly. We have well over 900 unique listeners in under 4 months, a growing family of talented presenters and DJ’s including the likes of Normski (who I grew up watching on TV and now try to keep up with when partying), offers from advertising agencies for exclusive sponsorship deals with their clients, broadcasts from a plethora of bars, clubs, cinemas, shops, shopping malls and studios. I even interviewed Dizzee Rascal, a Hackney councillor and a lingerie model in under 20 minutes…I could (and often do) go on.
Video – Dizzee Rascal Gets the Hoxton FM Treatment
The thing is (and I am most certainly not moaning). I don’t have enough time to do everything and yet I am the one sacrificing everything whilst (quite rightly) everyone else is holding down their 9 to 5 employment, paying bills and dedicating all of their free time to this project. I’d rather be penniless and pursuing my ambitions than earning good money in a depressingly death enhancingly soul crushing job….i’ve already done it.
Something is going to change very soon and I have a good feeling it’s the opening of revenue streams that will secure our foundations for the future. We all deserve to keep making this happen. I say “this”. We are essentially acting as a force to make creativity, talent and passion within music, art, fashion and culture a meritocracy. By that I mean we really do allow the cream to float to the top. The blaggers have come and dropped names, figures, forecasts and all sorts of other made up stuff at our feet. The team together act as a very good barometer. Whether it’s a sponsor or a venue, a record label or DJ/Presenter, the four of us never all get sucked in. If one member does we challenge them and then drag them back out, dust them down and refocus on working with good, honest, genuinely creative and exciting people. You know the ones who you meet and wonder why they never made it? It was because some prick who appropriated other people’s ideas (often botching them in the process) went around shouting about how their suede MacBook covers and corduroy mud guards are already taking over the east end and soon the world.
Essentially we act as a counter balance to the Dunning-Kruger effect. We find genuinely innovative and creative people, or (as is increasingly happening) they find us. We nurture them into our broadcasts to showcase their talents. It doesn’t always work and we don’t expect it to. Our diverse experience enables us to help in a powerful combination of ways that have a greater impact than one person working alone. We don’t do everything for people, far from it. We enable them to do things for themselves with the station. We are a megaphone to publicise fresh talent and innovation but we have to be held the right way round and spoken into at the right end (and in the right way). I actually hate the word talent because the road to “success” is often interpreted by those observing as being an effortless journey.
Perhaps that is why i’m writing this. Sharing the fact that I am dedicating my life to something that I love, that I believe in, that I think is a good thing and will help generate a lot of positive things for all those who contribute. It gives me an excuse to engage with incredible people, each dedicating themselves to their own creative journeys and expressing something that is within them.
I know what you’re thinking as you read this. Your thinking “What a whiny bitch he is. I bet he’s out every night with girls getting wasted”. Well, that’s only Fridays and perhaps Saturdays and Tuesdays actually. The girls are great, except the one that has been stalking me for 3 months (online, phone, house, events, everywhere and now the love has turned to hate…remember the end of Layer Cake?) and the ones that realise i’m always skint (“You ride a bicycle? Why?”) or stereotype DJ’s or get jealous when I talk to anyone else or don’t understand how much it takes to truly pursue your passion. The nice ones are too nice and lack any dynamism, whilst the ambitious ones are actually so focussed you realise your 3 minute window already expired. In a capital city it takes money to be accepted, or so the idiots seem to think.
A good time consists of good people, good music and good surroundings, in that order. Hoxton FM is providing that aurally and soon visually. This is not just a radio station, it’s megaphone for every format in every format.
And it’s 7:37am, time for bed!
