Hi Jason! You seem to be one of the busiest movers'n'shakers in rocknroll, what with all your input into the Get Ready To Rock! website and the ClassicRockNewswire etc. How and when did it all start, and what inspired you to start it? I started the ClassicRockNewswire as I found there was so much news on the web about bands, but you had to keep going all over the place to find it. So I thought why not do an email newsletter with selected highlights, to save people trawling all over the web for news about their favourite bands/artists.
GRTRock! started after I emailed a few of the "10 Questions With..." interviews to David Randall at The Music Index to see if he could use them. He said yes, and suggested building a small website around these - adding retail links relevant to the Music Index, and also a few competitions to entice people into the site. Since then it has grown and grown, and now there are more than twenty regular reviewers worldwide, plus we invite people to submit their gig/CD/DVD reviews for publication on the website.

You went right in at the deep end, contacting many big-name musicians for the "10 Questions' interviews. How daunting was that, and what was the response like? I tried a few by email to see if any would reply and amazingly Fish and Don Airey were the first! After that I just started going down the list of bands I liked, and tried to set up a 10 Q's with them by email. Don Airey was a true gent as apart from sending his answers really quickly, he wished me good luck with the Newswire and even better, when the Newswire celebrated its first birthday he was more than willing to do another updated 10 Qs. I was really pleased to get his replies as I've long been a fan of his keyboard work - my all time favourate 'air keyboard' song is 'Spotlight Kid' by Rainbow!
The Rising Stars idea came about as a way to plug new bands, and one of the first to reply was the Scottish Van Halen covers band 'Van Hielan', which still gets hits to this day - mainly I suspect from Van Halen fans with poor spelling! I'm always chuffed that GRTRock! got the second ever online interview with the Darkness (mind you they soon vanished!). Justin Hawkins replied very quickly to my email, which I sent after seeing them support Def Leppard at London's Brixton Academy. I was very impressed by their whole stage show and of course the main man Justin Hawkins, who is hardly a shy man on stage! His solo career and the Stone Gods, who feature three ex-band members will be worth keeping a eye on in the coming months. I would still love to get a 10 Q's with anyone from Queen, Jeff Lynne, Roy Wood, Judas Priest and Paul Rodgers.

Which was your favourite GRTRock! interview, and why? And which were the not-so-favourites (and why!)? Rick Wakeman was my favourite, without a doubt. It was face-to-face and he talked so much he filled up my C90 tape! He is such a natural raconteur and has you in stitches with his rock 'n' roll tales. Phil Mogg of UFO was also great, especially as he was my first phone interviewee and despite all the interviews he must have done through the years he still sounded interested. Finally, Bill Ward of Black Sabbath, a very gentle man and one with some great stories to tell.
Blaze Bayley was hard work as he gave yes/no answers and only got enthused about BMX bike racing. Mind you I don't like his singing and was not mad keen on interviewing him!
Michael Bruce from Alice Cooper's band was fun! It was my first face-to-face interview and I took along my good friend Nikk Gunns to help out. We arrived at the Borderline and approached a likely looking rock 'n' roller at the bar (leather trousers, slight beer belly) as wed been told to ask for a Carlton from the record label. Needless to say this wasn't him and it later transpired was Michael Bruce himself. He was a lot of fun to interview - mind you, he did think we were from Classic Rock Magazine, bless him!

As a reviewer, what have been the best gigs you've been to, and what made them so? The best gig I ever went to was a Freddie Mercury tribute, although that was way before CRN/GRTR! I never got to see Queen live and as a big fan this was the next best thing. That gig and Pink Floyd at Knebworth back in the late 80s were the ones I've enjoyed most. Of the gigs I've reviewed I'd say the best was Styx, as they were so full of energy and put on a spectacular show - something US bands do much better than UK rock bands. Magnum this year were pretty damn fine as well, playing two sets and still sounding as good as when I first saw them back in the mid/late 80s.

Tell us about the shows you promoted at The Stripes club at Brentford FC, i.e. the highs and the lows of promoting, and any horror stories. Jeff Scott Soto was the best gig I witnessed there, and it was a decent turn out as well. Mind you I think he was surprised to play in a bar with a carpet! Looking back it is amazing what bands we got into Stripes, such as Lionsheart, Gary Barden's Statetrooper, John Otway (everyone should see him live!) and then newer bands like Dustin's Barmitzvah, the Good Shoes and the Holloways, all of whom have gone on to chart success. These gigs were put on by Keith Anderson and his Way Out West team. He has a great knack of spotting up 'n coming bands. These nights were great but very 'lively' shall we say.
It is amazing how we managed it as each gig had to start from scratch - assembling the speakers, sound desk etc - and this was all done by Tim Collinson, who had to put up with rock bands all wanting to push the guitars up more, forgetting they were playing a small venue with decent enough acoustics to start with. I blame Derek Smalls and Spinal Tap!
Sadly though, Stripes is now The Hive and puts on acoustic gigs only, due to sound issues/complaints from neighbours.

Promoting is hard as you can never do enough, plus the average Brentford fan is more into mod, Madness, the Jam etc than rock or folk music. We promoted gigs on the web, local papers and radio, in the matchday programme, and flyered gigs etc. A thankless task at times but you can't beat the night of a gig and seeing people having a great time listening to live music. Blues bands never did well there though - I think four people was the lowest attendance. Locally these blues bands can be seen for free in other pubs so getting someone to pay £5 to see them is a steep ask!

Continuing the charity theme, you've also done a lot of fundraising for the Parkinson's Disease Society, Diabetes UK, and more recently for Nordoff Robbins \music Therapy. What motivates you to get involved so actively with all these excellent causes? I've always tried to raise money for charity since back in the 1980s when my granddad had his first stroke. I did a local run to raise money for the heart foundation charity. I guess like many people I am motivated by helping the charities that have helped people who are close to me. Since then I have tried to do one charity event each year if I can.

My latest two fundraisers have been for the Parkinson's Disease Society, where I raised my biggest ever total to date - over £1,100 - via a 19K race in the summer.

For my fortieth birthday in February 2008 I'm doing two fundraisers. One is a gig, so everyone can enjoy a top night of music whilst raising money for four charities, namely Beartstock 3, a charity gig for Diabetes UK, the Parkinson's Disease Society, Crossroads for Carers and Beesunited Community Trust. The gig will be on Sunday
3rd February 2008 at The Hive, at Brentford Football Club.
MC is the author Robert Rankin and musicwise we have Swill Odgers (of The Men They Couldn't Hang), Robb Johnson, Sacred Heart, Rhode Island Red and more. It's all acoustic, it's only a fiver, and you can read more HERE.

Secondly, throughout 2008 I'm raising money for the Nordoff-Robins musical therapy charity. The idea is to get forty bands/authors to plug this website to their own fans either at a gig (like Bernie Torme & GMT have) or on their websites (like UFO, Waysted, Ten Years After, Chris Singleton etcl have). Hopefully some of the fans will donate or at least check out the other artists. I am still after some more bands to take part, so if you're interested please contact me via the Just Giving page. For me, the real stars are those who donate either their time or money to good causes.

You also put your campaigning genes to good use when your local community was threatened with losing many of its leisure facilities - and as always, you generated a lot of support from people in the music business and beyond. Were you surprised at how many well-known names got behind your crusade? How much help was that in bringing it to the notice of a wider audience? With my co-organizer Caroline Hunter we took on Surrey County Council who had frankly rushed into the decision with not much forward-thinking as far as we could see. Luckily the public were of the same view and soon made their feelings known to the council, local press etc. Plus we got local bands like Hard-Fi and The Heal and the broadcaster/astrologer Russell Grant - who is Lord of the Manor for Ashford - to get involved. I set up an online petition and used the BBC's campaign website, and trawled the net contacting other youth clubs in Surrey which were facing a similar threat. Plus we used posters in local shops to drum up support and raise more awareness.
It was a real eye-opener to see how local government runs, as attending a few local council meetings you see lots of bickering and councillors trying to score points off each other, rather than getting down to solving/answering local people's queries. But there are some wonderful local councillors who supported us publicly - and there were even some who had started out toeing their party line on supporting the youth centres' closure, but then realized the strength of public opinion and did an about-turn and started to support the campaign. The end result was more of a reprieve than a victory, as more than two years later we still don't have a definite guarantee that the local youth centres will be safe. But it was worth the fight to win the reprieve!

All these projects add up to quite a hectic schedule for you. How do you manage to juggle the fundraising and the daily music newsletters and the websites around your work and family life? Family comes first, although my wife quite rightly thinks I am a mad music fanatic. You can't beat the quality time I get with my daughter and more so now my new(ish) job is based nearer to home. Luckily my daughter sees through shallow musical tripe like 'High School Musical' and instead loves listening to ELO, the Feeling, Farrah (a great locally-based pop rock band), RHCP, the Foo Fighters and err... James Blunt.

Who are you top five favourite bands, and why? (1) Queen - after first seeing 'Bohemian Rhapsody' on Top Of The Pops back in 1975 at the tender age of seven. I've been a fan ever since. Freddie Mercury was the best singer and frontman in rock IMHO.
(2) ELO - never a 'hip' band to like but I love the Jeff Lynne sound - big harmonies, strings, catchy choruses - perfect pop rock to these ears.
(3) Magnum - after seeing them live at the Monsters of Rock back in 1985 I became hooked on them. They're the band I've seen most live - at least ten times I think - they rarely disappoint and their latest album was a real return to form.
(4) Journey - I ave very varied tastes in music but my main love is melodic rock/AOR, particularly bands like Styx, REO Speedwagon, Toto, Survivor, Night Ranger - the classic 80s AOR/melodic rock sound. But the pick of the crop has to be Journey and the vocals of Steve Perry. Melodic rock doesn't get much better than this.
(5) Judas Priest - Rob Halford is the best metal singer around and the band (bar two iffy albums with Tim 'Ripper' Owens) have produced some real metal classics through the years. For me this band define heavy metal.

Give us your views on the way the music business is heading, re radio-play, magazines, downloading, MySpace, X Factor etc. Everyone says that CDs are on their way out but I think they will be around for a while yet, as people still like something in their paws when listening to music. However, I do think the album may disappear as a concept, as with ITunes etc you can now pick and choose the tunes you want - so now bands can't make filler tracks anymore! It will help bands in the long run though, as they can realize less music, but with more frequency - rather than taking two years to build up an album's worth of material.

Which of the 'newer' bands do you think have got what it takes? One is Glyder, a great rock band who meld classic rock influences of Thin Lizzy with a more modern rock sound.
Then there's Chris Singleton, a singer/songwriter who pens very catchy pop rock tunes and is amazing at getting novel ways to promote his music, such as playing on an open top bus in London and busking on the Underground.
Two great metal bands are Power Quest and Intense, who are gaining more fans each time they play live and are for me two of the best new metal bands out there. Forget the widdly boredom of Dragonforce, these two are miles better.

GMT (Bernie Torme, John McCoy & Robin Guy) - the bandmembers are not exactly new to rock, but with Bitter & Twisted they produced one of the best 'hard rock with a punk edge' debut albums in many a year.
Also, Eden's Curse - one of the better melodic metal bands out there, and in singer Michael Eden they have a star in the making.
Sacred Heart - they're all tireless pluggers of their music online and live. If they got a support slot on say, a Thunder tour, I'm sure they would step up a level in success, and rightly so.
And last but not least, Waking The Witch - female folk rockers with an indie feel. But sadly they are calling it a day next year. Go catch them live whilst you can!

What are your ambitions, both as an ordinary person (yeh!) and as Mr.ClassicRockNewswire? As an ordinary person... just to see my daughter have as good a childhood as she possibly can and enjoy herself! Newswire-wise it would be to top 1,000 members on the Yahoo group, and to get to interview someone from Queen, Paul Rodgers, Steve Perry and Rob Halford.

© Get Ready To Roll - 20th December 2007