Current mood: MINISTRY
Category: MINISTRY Music
The major companies wanted to cash in on this new dance market, but they didn't know how. In fact, the answer was starring them in the face.
A decade previously, Peter Jamieson had been head of EMI in Greece and Spain. For years, he'd been hooked on the idea of putting together compilation albums with the same sort of flow as pop radio, but no-one had ever managed to get the idea off the ground.
When he was put in charge of EMI in London in the early eighties he looked at the idea again.
Jamieson's problem was that, individually, even major record companies were unable to provide enough variety to produce compilation albums, and they were unwilling to co-operate with each other.
One day John Webster from Virgin turned up in Peter's office and proposed the very same thing. EMI and Virgin linked up on the project and within a year pop compilations had become the mainstay of the industry.
Jamieson was not only the man behind the world's most successsful compilation series, he was also the person who gave it its name. 'When I was a kid I would be playing the latest Beatles record or whatever and my dad would come home and put on Richard Crook's 'The Holy City' and say 'Now, that's what I call music.'
When we were preparing the first compilation album I was sitting in Virgins office and I saw a poster on the wall by the Danish Bacon Marketing Board which said 'Now that's what I call bacon' I decided it was fate - so the series was named that way. But in the end, we put the emphasis on the word 'NOW'
From then onwards, the major companies sold their music like bacon - specially selected and shrink-wrapped. But the compilation albums they were selling were mainly pop songs. They should also have been doing the same thing with dance music.
At the end of the eighties when dance music went overground, the majors were wrongfooted. While they floundered, an independent company grabbed the opportunity and headed for the big time.
That company was Ministry of Sound
(C) Simon Napier-Bell 2001 Pub Ebury Press
 | Currently listening :
Arular
By M.I.A.
Release date: By 22 March, 2005 |
1:55 AM - 8 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove
No comments:
Post a Comment