The Manchester Masters Blog

I have just completed my first 11 week placement, it has absolutely whizzed by! I was chuffed to bits to discover my first placement was with Ask Me PR, a music promotion / ‘plugging’ company based in the Northern Quarter. I would roll out of bed, in my lovely new free apartment, and stroll in to the city centre to begin work for a taxing ten o’clock start! There were certain perks to this job but despite the slightly later start, the hours were long and I was often required to carry out certain extra curricular activities; its a hard life when one’s only worry is whether the band you are going to see has put your name on the guest list!

My role involved promoting music singles to national and regional radio and television contacts. It is difficult to explain exactly what my role involved without delving in to the inner workings of the music industry, but the basics are to create as much buzz as possible around a band through securing air play for single releases and organising live sessions in radio / television stations. I was fortunate to be able to get involved with other aspects of the company such as band management. One of the most rewarding and exciting tasks involved within this was deciding upon a band’s next single, being included in such a crucial decision was a tremendous experience but also quite nerve racking, after all the future of the band in question can quite easily be decided by the success of their next single.

I want to share a few of the highlights and lasting memories I enjoyed at Ask Me: I was lucky enough to be able to secure and organise an acoustic session for a superb local band called ‘The Vanguards’ for a BBC Introduction session with Sam Walker, a superb experience I will never forget. I was also incredibly lucky to visit Reading festival to look after the regional press for Soft Toy Emergency. This involved setting up interviews for the band and making sure they were in the right places at the right times. Soft Toy absolutely blew the crowd away and were a true highlight of the festival. I will forever be indebted to Team Waterpolo, a Preston based band which gave me the honour of playing lead guitar on stage with them at Rock FM’s ‘Rock In the Park 2009′, even though I can not play guitar! Nice one gentlemen! You can see a snippet of the performance on the below video…..much fun indeed.

Take it easy xx

Chris is one of the ten 2009 Manchester Masters