What a bollock of a year. From a musical point of view 2020 was a write-off.
Anyone who knows me knows I own my own business with my wife but this year floored us to the point of nearly going insolvent. At the beginning of Covid, we were already coming out of a bad winter. Our main direction is (was) a focus on the tourism industry so a busy Easter is critical for the health of the business. Of course, by Easter this year, tourism had all but vanished and a large part of our client base did exactly the same.
This year has been a battle like no other most of us have ever faced. I can’t remember a time I’ve had to constantly work 14 hour days, 7 days a week just to try and cover the basic bills. And largely fail for a large part of the year! We’re still in debt from it and not sure what’s coming next year either!
Fuck it. Horrible year. Has been for everyone.
My enjoyment of music has suffered this year.
I normally have tunes blasting around my office while I work. It keeps me positive. Always has. This year, silence has been in order.
Usually, silence in the office is due to an intensive job or large website launch. But very rare and just a few hours here and there. Silence usually means something serious or intense is going on. This year, that’s all we’ve had. Serious, intense, hard graft with no relaxation time or room to have a bit of a laugh. I’ve even questioned my own sanity and ability to keep it together once or twice.
It isnt carrying on into 2021. Not a chance!
After the best part of a year watching the political Covid show, hoping for normality to re-appear, I’m kind of over it. I don’t think normality is coming back in 2021. And I honestly think waiting for normality is damaging to many. I’ve got projects that have been shelved for coming up to a year. I’ve got businesses that cant launch or grow due to Covid restrictions.
How long do you wait?
A week of delays is annoying, a month is enough to scupper the best plans. But almost a year with no real end in sight?
For me, it’s time to suck it up and adapt.
My breaks and tablism project NORT is going back to basics.
NORT was a purely Turntablism and hip hop thing for the best part of 20 years. It was never big but it had a definite focus. When we took NORT to Facebook, we had a great time but in order to gather a local following, we had to branch out into 4Beat and general dance DJs. NORT lost its way and I lost my vibe for it. At some point, NORT will be coming back with its roots as the focus but it’s not a priority for now.
Live-DJ is being trashed completely.
I’ll still be providing the live-dj solution from one of my design companies (30web.com) but the individual project is an overhead of time and resources and costing money just to be shelved. I’m keeping the live-dj.com domain though because it’s a belter. If you’ve any ideas on what to do with it let me know and we’ll grow a baby.
As far as music is concerned, my main focus for 2021 is to simply enjoy the decks and grow this brand new blog.
Keep it simple.
I’ve already added a radio station to the blog and I’ll be getting fully licenced so I can play my playlists, set lists and fave DJ sets all day every day in my office with no more effort than switching it on. That’s a good first positive step forward towards getting music back in my life on a daily basis.
Since November I’ve also been getting more and more jam time in. The pressure is still there from all the crap, but I seem to be acclimatising to it all. Probably not a great thing but it is what it is and I’m happy to be able to enjoy sticking the headphones on disappearing for an hour or two here and there.
So yeah!
2021 is tomorrow and normally I don’t do new years resolutions but this year feels a little different so I’ve made 2.
1, Continue to grow my business.
2, Get music front and centre in my life where is has been since been a kid.
Hope you have a great evening tonight and here’s to 2021! Happy New Year Folks!
Cheers for reading.
Matty England! xxx
