*idiomatic expression (literally “by the face”),
doesn’t exist in English and it means “for free”.
When I was asked to find an artist or music band based in Valencia to manage for free, I leapt into my FB searching for information.
Before then, I had never thought about the number/amount of bands that I could have added to my account, and certainly it would have been very useful to have a tool to order all by location and genre. (This is a call to all you App Developers!!)
The fact is, that after a thorough analysis of almost all my contacts and likes regarding music bands from Valencia, I had a total number of around 30 bands (including solo artists). This, in addition to the fact that -I am an organizing junkie and I don’t like to mix football and politics-, I have two FB accounts, one professional and one private, it’s been a big challenge to conclude this investigation.
So, from my personal view, most local bands play indie or rock; you can also find a growing number of punk, experimental and new wave bands, and let’s not forget electronic music: Valencia in the nineties was for a few years the most important place for electronic music in Europe.(If you haven’t heard about the legendary Ruta del Bacalao – the techno movement of the 90s – just wait for my next post!)
Going on with my research, I realized that finding an artist with talent, knowledge of the industry and willingness to take advice and work with a team of Music Business students was not as hard as I could have imagined. Or maybe we were just lucky! We talked with 8 different artists and all of them were really keen on collaborating. The hardest part of this story was to choose one of them.
From this experience I could know better the local music scene and the compelling need of almost all artists that play music in this city, that no matter if they are interested in making a career in music or just want to play for fun, to have:
more exposure
promotion and
a press kit
And I guess, this experience can be extrapolated to other cities, since LOCAL is the new GLOBAL.
