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It all started in January 2005. The
Tsunami disaster in December 2004 made Paul feel that something
should be done in Luton to raise a bit of money to help out. All he
knew was music............and that his brother, Stewart, ran The
Exchange.......so within a couple of weeks an all day festival had
been arranged for the end of January. Paul did the afternoon session
covering rock and indi and teamed up with the established bands of
the Luton Town Hardcore scene (LTHC) who provided bands for the
evening session.
As well as raising over £900 the
gig gave bands the opportunity to talk and one of the things that
came out was the need for a venue in Luton to give new bands a
chance to get experience. be treated fairly when it came to being
paid for the gig and being given a professional level of respect by
Promoters....things like sound checks for instance.
By the 1st May 2005 Stewart
had ripped the PA out of one of his other pubs and installed it in
the Exchange, Paul had come up with the ways to put on gigs that met
the needs of the bands and the Promoter and the Landlord and PDM
started as regular promoters with a gig featuring TheStarsHaveFallen,
BaySix and Your Demise.
Since then we have developed a
reputation for professionalism, fairness and value for the
audience's pounds and this has lead to bands that know each other
recommending PDM as promoters.
In February 2007 we reviewed what we
were doing to make sure that we were still delivering our
objective to support new bands to get experience of playing
live as one of those stepping stones to world domination and decided
to make some changes to help us continue to
support new bands.
In
May 2007 we stopped
Promoting at The Exchange. As much as we loved it it wasn't the right
place for us to develop our work the way that we wanted. To replace
those Sundays we took on more nights a month at the Hat Factory,
where the gear is better and
the performers and audience don't have to be over 18.
As well as that we became non-profit making. By choosing to become
officially not for profit we can establish ourselves as a voluntary
or community based service and be able to access funding to help us
continue what we are doing and develop new areas of work.
In
2008 we moved on a bit further and took responsibility for
programming and booking the Rock and Indi Stage at Luton Carnival,
the UK's biggest one day Carnival, and as part of that we arranged
to team up with BBC Introducing... Herts, Beds and Bucks who
recorded the show for broadcast giving all the bands that played a
little more exposure. We also programmed and managed an evening
event as part of the Luton Summer Festival putting local bands on
the main stage that was set up in St George's Square.
In 2009 &
10 we made the Luton Summer Festival evenings available to Rock and
Metal bands only as they weren't represented in other events. This
has been so successful that the plan is to continue giving Rock
& Metal bands the opportunity to play this big open air annual
event.
On
top of all that we've secured grant funding to support bands to
record and release a shared single, released or funded sampler
albums of new local bands, sponsored and managed a stage at LutonAid
for the past few years, developed partnerships with everyone from
the local BBC Introducing show to recording studios, CD duplication
services and the local press to help support local music.
That's
where we are now. Some exciting and challenging times ahead, but if
it was too easy we'd not enjoy it so much.
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