Cellartapes

Dear Sir/Madam, 

I am writing to you as a prospectively-employed person, in the hope of using your facilities to meet musical people who are currently unemployed.

In the current economical climate, it has become increasingly unrealistic to expect commercial entities to hire people. Conversely there are many people with unutilised skills, who simply lack the connections to make something of themselves.

My music recording project is notional at present, although it has helped me to keep from getting bored it has not yet been a money-making concern.

I would like to change that. If I can meet enough like-minded musicians and people with similar interests, then I could someday create a new commercial entity for entertaining people.

Although businesses are not presently confident enough to spend thousands per month on employees, individual human beings will still be prepared to spend £5-£10 for a night out away from the stress of work. However poor people feel, they still need to 'get away from it all' once in a while, and so I consider live music to be 'income-inelastic', so people will still spend on it when their income is reduced.

The major sources of income for bands are merchandise and liveplay, and playing live is also the best way to get exposure for new bands, however as I am a solo musician creating music for several instrumental parts it has so far been impossible for me to arrange a live set. Milton Keynes is a very tough place for musicians to meet, as there are few and infrequent music-shops about the town and I believe that none of them operates a cork-board meeting facility, instead musicians are redirected to the concrete chaos website, however it is almost entirely devoid of activity.

To create a touring or gigging musical entity would not only make 5 or 6 new jobs and slightly reduce queueing numbers; we would also need to find people to handle front of house, mixing desk, road crew, security, drivers, promoters and PR people, making the whole crew potentially 20 people.

Furthermore, there is enough original material composed here for more than one group delivering different styles of music (examples can be heard at various myspace sites), so numbers could be higher even than this...

I was advised by one of your front of house staff to write this letter, and I hope that there will be some way that I can get in touch with potentially interested parties who may have the time to spare for getting this together.

Many thanks for your indulgence in reading this far. I do hope to create a financially rewarding concern for all involved parties and so reduce, in the first instance, your own queues, but also hopefully to inspire similar programmes to be undertaken at other job-centres around the country.

If this country can be seen to have ongoing commercial activity during these hard times, then perhaps the overall spending mentality of the nation can be rescued from the stagnation of fear-based saving.

I look forward to hearing from you on this matter.

Yours faithfully, 

James D Cornell
(Cellartapes)