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have got a shelf life in terms of impact of about four months, after that it stales, quite often you
don’t get your money back, but we eventually
did get our money back on ‘Nothing to Lose’. I
contacted the IBBA people just a few weeks ago
and said hey, it’s two years now since we were
number one and I just offered copies if anyone
wanted to listen to it or I could send them
digital copies and the response I got, there was
maybe new people presenting programmes this
year, compared to two years ago. So Peter
contacted me, he says oh yes, I wouldn’t mind
listening to that and of course as you know it’s based on the numbers of plays you get and we got
into the charts, yes.
BiTS: I’m a founder member of the IBBA and when we first started a few years ago there were I
think about 12 of us and there’s now over 60.
GS: I gathered that, yes. And I tell you what I think is great about the IBBA. I didn’t know you were
a founder member. When did you found the IBBA or when were you involved in the founding of the
IBBA? What year?
BiTS: It was, let me think, about eight years ago.
GS: Right, so that’s in line with what I was saying about when the band re—emerged there was
more of a structure. First of all, there was the online radio programmes emerging, then there was
the likes of the IBBA and there’s the UK Blues Federation now and so there’s much more of a
structure. Much more of a blues scene and that falls in line with what I was thinking. Yes, I think it
does a wonderful job in, first of all, encouraging people to be involved in producing radio
programmes and makes them part of something and then the monthly chart, it helps everyone. It
helps the programmes, it helps the artists, it helps the music. It’s part of the projecting of the music
and I think that you do a great job and also one of the things that you’ve got, which I think is
absolutely wonderful, is that email address where you can contact everyone. That’s fabulous, that.
BiTS: That’s a fairly recent innovation. We only started that maybe a year or so ago.
GS: Right, absolutely wonderful doing that.
BiTS: I visited your website, George, before I came to talk to you and there was a mass of gigs the
year before last and a mass of gigs last year, you’re clearly in the COVID trap along with everybody.
Is there any sign of movement again?
GS: No. There’s two things going on with me and I
work very closely with George Lamb. Obviously, we
love to gig, we’re both retired. We’ve got the time, the
energy and the band as well, so we broke into France.
We started getting gigs in France. The last gig we did
just about was Brussels and then everything closes
down, so I think there’s going to be a restart that we’re
going to have to involve ourselves in, which means
because I do all the contacting of gigs and things. We
don’t have the agents or managers or anything like
that, so I do all of that, it will take a while to get things
off the ground again but we also, in terms of putting
something back, we also organise gigs. We have a
weekly speakeasy which has been going for about