Memphis Rhythm, but I thought you were from Nashville?

You may notice that this site is called memphisrhythm.blogspot.com, and yes I did grow up in Nashville.

Let me try and spin a little story for you. I'm living in London, and working hard at my profession (chosen by my accidentally taking an aptitude test many moons ago and finding out that I had the skills to be a 'Programmer') when I got a brilliant idea. I had been around music all my childhood, as Nashville is called Music City for a reason. Having badgered my dad to let me purchase a Kay electric pawn-shop special at about 13, and taking a few lessons from the local music teacher, I was armed for rock'n'roll. I had a band in college, not because I was a good musician, just that I knew the words to the songs, and could organize a group pretty well.

I always fancied myself a music impressario, so that had been in the back of my mind. I met a mad South African accountant in London, who was on the fringes of the music business and had a band committed with a letter of intent to sign with him. He had decided recently that (here I want you to choose what you would have considered)
A) he wanted to be generous to someone else and let them have the pleasure, or
B) he did not have or want to spend any money on a proposition that had about a 10% chance of making any money.

So I took the bait, met the band, and Bob's your uncle, I was a music impressario.

A little background about this band is appropriate about now. The lead guitarist/singer/songwriter was introduced to me as Andy Osbourne, which I found out later was his nom de plume. His father was Eric Hobsbawm,a world renowned Marxist historian.

His son was living in a council flat. fiddleing the 'social' as all good middle class kids did in Britain, and did not want to claim any connection to his dad. The bass player was Guy Denning, whose grandfather was the Master of the Rolls, the equivalent to our Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It was only later that I found out I was way over my head.

Anyway the group was called The Tin Gods, and with my input of money we recorded an album (unreleased to this day) primarily at Georgetown Studios with John Brand producing. Cost a packet, I might add.

The boys had secured a musico lawyer, John Kennedy, who later became head of CBS Records, but at the time had a little office in West London. We never did get a contract negotiated by the way. As another aside, John had just negotiated Sade's contract, and I learned that the contract with the record company was for her services only, and the band were hired guns.

One of the songs Andy had written was about an Elvis statuette, and had a line about 'Memphis Rhythm pulsing through his veins', and I thought that was a cool name for a record label, and I called the label Memphis Rhythm Records.

The number one lesson I learned from this experience is that they don't call it 'THE MUSIC BUSINESS' for nothing. I lost my ass.

I have lots more tales around this period of my life, and will leave them for another time, when I'm feeling mascochistic again.