Changing Lanes

The journey of my career path so far... 

(my thoughts on how to change career... many times, and whether it matters)

I went to a talk the other week at The School of Life by John Gray (Straw Dogs) and Alain de Botton (The School of Life). In it Alain asked John what he thought about the two great myths of our time - The myth of career, and the myth of love. John answered that the career was dead, but both "Work & Love are not entirely dissimilar - both show we are of value to other humans".

When i look back on my myth of a career so far, it doesn't make sense in any standard bureaucracy. I can imagine companies receiving my CV and thinking: 

1) Who the hell are Earache Records? 

2) What does this girl want from her career? 

3) How has she worked at all these festivals and done all this stuff, she must be lying? 

4) She clearly doesn't know what she wants to have tried all these different things. 

5) This is not the standard, reliable background / formation I would like our employee to have, lets go with someone with more consistent experience.

(Here's a photo of me giving a weird motivational speech at Uxfest, 

Islington Academy (now o2) in 2006)

(Not in any particular order) I've worked as a youth worker, i ran projects at a children's charity, I've presented rock radio, i have run a french hip hop club, a rock festival, i have a degree in french and European studies, i have managed bands, i have a degree in theatre from a french university, i have presented on Japanese TV, i have been a TV researcher, I've worked in a theatre box office, I managed publicity for a record label, I've worked on festivals in all sorts of places, I've been an artist liaison, I've been a backstage manager, I've done crowd management, i worked at the Olympics, i made a film about graffiti artists that was never seen, i ran social media campaigns, i went back to school again, i discovered a love of painting, i went freelance...

A lot of these things seem similar to me. They have different job titles, but to me, as i was the same person when i was doing all these things, the skills have all been mine and I look at it as just a normal progression. 

I don't want to make this blog about CV writing because honestly there is nothing as galling as writing and rewriting your bloody CV, let alone reading a blog about it. I still find writing a CV the most mind numbing thing on the planet apart from maybe listening to party political broadcasts, BUT i have learnt a few things about having a myth of a career that goes across 'different industries' - 

1. How people like CVs to look is really personal to them. You cannot anticipate the way people like CVs laid out.

2. People do check LinkedIn (even though it is super annoying)

3. Seeking help is important - i was so lucky with two people in particular (Thank you Ewa and Jon) helping me out over the years trying to gather my thoughts, find the right language and to...

4. Break your work experience down into skills

- The skills will really tell you where you're at, where the gaps are and where you can go next...

Anyway, enough about CVs, what i wanted to get to is a lot of people are still surprised that i left Rival Sons last summer (Isle of Wight Festival 2014) and then 2 months later started working for the Zoological Society of London. It seems like a big change... but is it really? If you look at the skill set to me there is a lot of overlap... because i am the same person!

You may already know how much i love Rival Sons. Without overstating it, these guys have supported me, been grateful for my work, been my true friends and generally done a lot more than most bands would for their publicist. So you can imagine that it was a very difficult decision to say goodbye to working with them after being there from day dot. 

John Gray was right, when he said "Work & Love are not entirely dissimilar - both show we are of value to other humans" - I have always felt immensely valued by Rival Sons, but my myth of a career path needed to go a different route. 

Here are Rival Sons on the set of Letterman last year, wishing me Happy Birthday. What a band.

My heart has never really been with music publicity, my heart was with the Rival Sons, with the music, with the creativity. Truth be told at times i disliked doing music publicity. I fell into it and it was never really a career choice i made. After 6.5 years at Earache and 2 years freelance, the other stuff i did over and above publicity, was more important to me than being between rock (n'roll) and a hard place in the no-win game that is music PR. That's not to say i didn't have a lot of fun, and i am very grateful for many of the opportunities i got, but for a long time, for myself, i needed something else.

It seems to me that there are few places to progress to from the role of a female music PR, and i can't understand why anyone would want to be a music PR forever. Even if you are working with the best bands, your existence is dependent on their choices as if you are living vicariously through them. Maybe you switch sides and become a journalist, maybe you tour, maybe you do film PR or similar. None of these options appealed to me.

I needed time to find my own creativity, and to get to what i really wanted and needed. After i left Earache Records in 2012 i began to realise how much i love all forms of art. I was lucky that although my strange myth of a career path was too diverse for many HR managers, it did allow me a spectrum of experience in the Arts, enough that through my skill set i could apply for the job i now have a the Zoological Society of London running their Arts & Culture programme.

What i want to say to people with a real range of talents who have worked in lots of different creative sectors, is - don't think you have to take the direct route in your chosen job. Having multiple strings to your bow actually affords you a strange kind of freedom outside the bounds of the 'myth' of the career path, and a perspective that is so useful to a future employer - and if a career itself turns out to be a myth in future years, as predicted by John Gray and Alan De Botton, then you will be in a much stronger position.

Rely on yourself and your hard-won skills, because whatever job you're in, you're still the same person. After all, your job isn't your identity.

Legacy festival Germany - 2009 festival no. 2

Festival number 2 so far this year. Legacy festival Germany.

I've been to Germany maybe 5 times. One of the first times i went with a French Breakdance crew called CONNEXION to the Breakdance championships, then there was Popkomm, Wacken, and now Legacy.

Unfortuately i dont sprechen ze deutsch. I wish i did. I chose Spanish over German at school, and French overall, and at school i never had the desire to learn German.

Anyway, all i know is that this festival is somewhere near Dessau and that Lucy and i are flying to Berlin, and that we're going to have an adventure.

Just getting there, is going to be an adventure.



This is us with HRH the Queen's declaration that we can travel.

And Lucy looking confused upon arrival.

I think the best thing i can do is take you through this festival in a disused airfield, East Germany, in photos.

So as luck would have it we made friends with some random German metallers. Who all seemed to like folk music and play the flute or the bagpipes. This seems very popular in Germany. Along with Viking music and Celtic mythology. They all had Thor's hammer round their necks.

They helped us get on the right train and sat drinking and chatting with us. I don't know how much any of us understood of what was said.

Later that night its started to rain torrentially. This is the festival site, about midnight, torrential rain and the arrival of the Earache motorhome with Ben and crew to do the merch stall.

I ran around the in the rain. Lucy and i started drinking.

We met one of my favourite Germans - Bjoern Thorsten Jaschinski - he came and met us and plied us with alcohol and we laughed a lot and helped him with the Legacy signing tent. And the alcohol.

I errr.... disgracefully, fell asleep in the back of the motorhome.

But no worries. Bright and early (ahem) as the rain cleared away, the Earache stall was up and running.

And later that night more drinking...

We met up with our German friends from the train:

We made random new friends

We partied with Legacy, with Sabaton, with random black metal bands, with our new German friends, with Nuclear blast, with a piece of grass stuck to the lense of my camera, with stage managers, with Swedes, with Germans, with Romanians.

And then we tried to get Bjoern home to his hotel. Which was difficult. And involved falling over (on his part) and giggling (also on his part).

I got up early and got the train home on Friday - 2 nights in Germany is enough, especially when i'm going back tomorrow for Rock Hard festival!!

I love Germany!

oh my HAMMERFEST!!! - day 1

HAMMERFEST!

April 24-25th 2009

I woke up in the bunk that one of Mutant had so kindly deposited me in when i passed out at the foot of their tour bus steps and realised it was daylight. I didn't really know where i was or what time it was. All i could think about was Some like it Hot. Where was the bass playing Lucy? (she doesn't actually play bass, and it would be the inverse of Some like it Hot, but seeing as its one of my favourite movies and the bunks were just like those on the train, and we'd just got totally drunk, it made sense to me)

So thanks to Sam, who put me in (i believe his own) bunk after making Mike and Ben give me a piggy back round some service station at 3am...

Anyway, wakey wakey rise and shine... the sun is up (although it wasn't shining in Wales) and Lucy and i were probably late for work. But where was she? The whole bus was deathly quiet. I jumped down from the bunk and wandered down the aisle only to find her scrunched up on the front seat asleep. I woke her up, we got our things and snuck out leaving Evile, Trigger the Bloodshed and Mutant to sleep. We must have looked like the creatures from the Black lagoon wandering aimlessly in a Pontins carpark.

US =

And Pontins =

Pontins = a huge amount of brightly coloured canteen flavoured council estate planned holiday camp.

Magic.

I suppose its portrayed that getting into metal is like taking a journey to the dark side, and that its so grim and necro and heavy. Well, the mix of that idea with the happy joy of Pontins is a heady cocktail enough to blow anyone's mind. I love it.

Lucy and i, like everyone else were staying in a council estate flat like chalet. I didn't really know what to call it. I had been warned they were gross, but actually i thought they were pretty rad. I was feeling suprisingly upbeat for the amount of vodka i'd drunk, and pre-9am this is a really bad sign. It means i'm still drunk.

So i phoned Dan-the-man our Earache label manager to see how far away he was, he'd be half hour, so enough time for the swimming bath-like shower and to get my game head on.

By the time we started setting up the Earache stall with the dudes, and for the fact that we couldn't find a cuppa tea anywhere, the hangover started to set in. And oh lord what a doozy. I remember when i wasn't drinking (or not much) last year, and i used to think i didn't get hangovers and couldn't remember the last hangover i'd had... now i don't want to think about it.

It hit Noon and we went to the cateen. The food looked gross. I ordered fish and chips (i really wasn't thinking straight) and ate 5 chips and a bit off fish then stared into space. Lucy and i said we'd take the shift until 2pm so the guys could get some lunch.

I started to get the shakes. This was not good. I felt so sick. Ugh. I was the least inviting person you'd ever want to buy anything from. We must have looked like the walking dead. Sitting and shaking dead more like.

However, i'm never one to be defeated. It was clearly time to raise the game. After shaking and almost puking for 2 hours during our shift we went back to our pad to catch some Zzzz's and try and get it together. That was only round one, i wasn't about to stumble at the first party hurdle of the year.

So i put on Dolly Parton and fell asleep. There's nothing a subconcious Dolly-P can't cure.

Why d'you come in here looking like that? (Like you haven't had any sleep and you'd drunk a litre of vodka between you, pull it together Talita you have to party/work soon) Why d'you come in here looking like that?!

So suffice to say 5pm Friday, Lucy and i are back on our feet. I've back-combed Lucy's hair to epic proportions, she has her hotpants on, we've met up with Alice and the girls and we're ready for round 2.

Evile are awake and on point and i can't wait to see them play again. I'm keen to see Mutant too, and Blood Island Raiders.

We do another couple of hours on the stall - i actually had to miss Evile so that Dan and the others could see them (i'd seen them in London anyway). I saw Blood Island Raiders, by this point i was feeling good... so Lucy, me and the ladies were back on the wagon - after we'd packed the stall up it was time to dance. I love to dance. I don't care what you think. I love it. That dancefloor has my name on it. Yeh ok, i move like a geriatric. You want to judge my dancing? Fine, but you're not dancing and i am. So whatever!

Slayer always gets me going, you can't play Raining Blood and not expect a reaction. And that was it, us ladies were (in the words of Lucy) "throwing shapes" all over the place. So much so that Derek from Sepultura (Lucy's new friend) wanted to take photos of us. "You dirty perv!!" Lucy shouted at him apparently, before he explained that he meant of us dancing. Clothes on.

We were way too busy dancing anyway.

Sweet Savage - a NWOBHM original - added late to the Hammerfest line up. Came on about 1am. Even in a drunken sweaty state we all knew that they were all over the place.

Andreas (Tornado) of Wolf had come to hang out with us. Axeman of Wolf had been promising me that he was gonna get so crunk at Hammerfest with us - promising for the past 2 years - but he was in bed by 11pm! Shame!

It was at this point during Sweet Savage that some drunk guy threw a drink at us, which pissed me off as he'd soaked my White Wizzard tshirt, and i pushed him out the way, as he was bumping into us continuously in a "I'm pretending i'm bumping into you, but actually i'm feeling you up" way - which makes me mad. Anyway, he was wasted.

But at that point another drunk dude behinds me falls over and as i turn round to see what happened TIMMMBERRRR! Lucy slips up on the pool of drink on the floor curteousy of the first drunk dude, and takes a slam into the floor landing hard on her (gorgeous) bottom. Lucy has a long way to fall, she's very tall. And this bum injury gave her pain - indeed is still giving her pain!

So after Sweet Savage, us girls were roaming the venue looking for a party, when we bumped into James (Sikth) and Khaled (Raise the Dead ) who told us they knew where the party was at.

The venue was closing up, and we had to go on a bit of a wild goose chase maze race through the building trying to find it - it was meant to be in the media centre. But when we got up there it was deserted.

Khaled gets a text saying "The party is through the yellow hole."

What on earth does that mean?

Then Khaled got it and we all ran back upstairs to the media centre (which was infact the kids playground) and in the wall there was a yellow tube leading through to the ballpark - and we all crawled through to find The Architects and i don't know who else in there. Party!

Oh, then we got chucked out by security 3 minutes later

"I'm calling response"

Classic.

End of Hammerfest day 1.

The September/October plans

As i may have mentioned 2009 is the year of adventure. It said so in my London Paper year's horroscope. And as that is surely the bible of predictions. So i'm planning on travelling to Tibet. I've dreamt of going there for well over 10 years now. So if not now, then when?
Getting into Tibet isn't simple. You pretty much have to go with a tour operator, and you have to get 2 permits, one for Tibet, and one for travelling outside Lhasa. Which is the opposite to Heinrich Harrer who was trying to get to the forbidden city from the mountains and provinces outside of Lhasa on his flight from India (in Seven years in Tibet)
Anyway, I plan to be in Lhasa on October 9th 2009 - my birthday - and to turn 29 in the Himalayas.
I close my eyes at night and dream of seeing them, and of going there. I own about 30 books on Tibet and i need to finish reading them all before i go, but suffice to say i'm very excited.

However, my ambitious travel plans don't end there. Well, infact they kind of do, but only in that we're actually starting in Moscow. The current plan is to arrive in Moscow on 20th Sept, take the trans-siberian train on 23rd Sept 09 to Ulaanbataar, where we currently plan to meet Badmaa (merci Stephanie!) and then go off on horses into the wilds of Mongolia where we're gonna live with a family of nomads in a Yourte, before leaving Mongolia on the 4th October for Beijing, then leaving Beijing on 9th October for Lhasa, Tibet.

This is an extensive, expensive, ambitious plan.... and my good friend Birgit (of www.kerrang.com fame) and i intend to embark on this journey together. At first i thought i would have to do it alone, but then i found someone who also feels that its time to travel, and is up for this kind of adventure. Hopefully, Insh'allah, we shall do this. I realise we have a long way to go with planning and saving, and getting the time off work (surely i can get work Municipal Waste to nomads you know that market is just waiting to be tapped)
But its a dream i'm following. And why not. Why the fuck not eh?
Single, without kids, turning 29... it seems a good time for it? no?
So anyway, i need to save up (at last estimate) about £2500 by the beginning of September! Hahahaha
Also there's shit loads of planning to do.
BUT watch this space.

gong-da, I just thought i would clue you in on the plan.
ka-lee pay!


tu-jay-chay!