martes, 13 de junio de 2023

Demo this, demo that

 So… I’m going to write this whole thing in English. Last time I tried that was, I think, around 10 years ago, when I wrote an essay on Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes director, a movie you should definitely check out) that I was supposed to submit to Total Film or Empire or SFX in order to… get a job?! Story of my life, looking for a job. Actually, that should be MY JOB, looking for one. I mean… I’m very good at that. Finding it? Not so much. Looking for it? That’s my jam! (can I use “jam” in this sentence? I honestly don’t know, so please be kind, rewind… and forgive all the errors, typos and grammatical inaccuracies you may, and you will, find in this newsletter). Ready? Brace yourselves (and myself), here we go!

A Spanish man. Writing in English. Oh shit.

Writing in English, checked. An actual point or theme or one of your little funny anecdotes to be written in English? … checked! I’m not changing course here, I’m gonna keep chronicling (I’m sure that’s not a real word) my triumphs (ha!) and failures until I find my dream job, and I have a new one for you. A new failure, that is. Some weeks ago, let’s say three, I started working like crazy on a little project of mine. I woke up everyday at 6:15am and arrived at a bar (different bars, I was trying to avoid some people and distractions… long story, maybe another time) around 7:00am. Then, for almost two hours, I devoted myself (due to the magic of HEADPHONES) to the editing and creating and mixing some kind of demo for the radio. You see, demos were pretty popular back then, bands used to record a track or group of tracks in their… I don’t know… garage?, they will polish/embellish it a little, then they would send such demo to radio stations and/or music companies in order to get popularity/contracted. You know this! Come on, don’t make me tell you about the music industry in a foreign language! (I don’t know either!). So… I was doing a demo myself. “But Juan… are you a rock star? You dream so big that you want to perform at Madison Square Garden with, say, Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran??!” First of all, no. Second of all, it would be Carly Rae Jepsen. And third of all, I dream big but I dream big in my own “bigginess” (come on, you must concede me this one…). My demo was not me singing (I had enough rain in Ireland, thank you very much), my demo was me… broadcasting???

Thanks for reading Estoy buscando de lo mío! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Many moons ago, I worked at a radio station. And one of the things I did was go live, with that frightining (and also liberating) red light on, and tell my stupid stories, jokes and/or tv audios that I had decided were worth your time while you were driving on your way to work or on your way to college or… on your way to a garage to record an actual demo. I was in charge of some segments of a radio show. And I loved every second of it. I wanna go back. We have to go back, Kate!, as Jack would say on Lost. I HAVE TO GO BACK. I have to. So in order to do that I worked on this amazing demo for about three weeks, recording and re-recording myself to get my lines correctly, adding film quotes, music, funny effects and everything I could think of to make my demo funny and fast and furious (no Vin Diesel, though) and flexible enough to make it look desirable for your radio show. Or the radio show where one of my old colleagues is working at the moment, to be more precise. After those three weeks of passion (although I came up with the idea for this “segment” way before that, even before returning to Spain), I emailed it to my pal. The email was good enough but the demo itself? I think it’s good. Solid. Maybe not brilliant, it’s not “hire this guy inmediatly so all Spain get hooked on radio shows again” good, but solid. It shows, I think, that I can do this.

… Well, my ex colleague didn’t agree. Ok, it’s not that he replied “disgusting stuff, please refrain from sending me utter crap” (he said the demo was fine but they were fully staffed -he is the anchor, the producer and the big boss of the show-), but a no is a no. And a no I got. I swallowed hard, replied something funny hiding my true feelings (always do this, that’s my advice) and moved on.

Moved on to numbness and rejection land. Where I am right now. Hi! How are you?


All by myself…

No hay comentarios:

Publicar un comentario

Nota: solo los miembros de este blog pueden publicar comentarios.

Doctor Sleep no quiere que durmamos

He vuelto a ver Doctor Sleep , la película de 2019 que hace un doble combo desconocido hasta entonces, corregidme si me equivoco: es secuel...