Blunted have recently been helping spread the word of a great music awards “The Indy Music Awards” which takes place tomorrow (Friday 25th April). If you don’t know about the awards what better way to find out then an interview the guy behind it all - Jeremy Glover. Luckily for you, this is exactly what I did.

Jeremy Glover introduction and personal background

15 years in advertising with the last three as Creative Director of McCann-Erickson Belfast. In 1997 I left to co-found internet retail store BlackStar.co.uk (now renamed SendIt.com). I left the company in 2002 and worked on and consulted with several Internet and mobile start ups. I also ran and judged a Battle of the Bands at The Rock Garden for 5 years and have been a promoter at the venue for 2 years. I also have two years experience as an artist manager.

The concept of an award for venues, festivals and promoters alongside live acts is refreshing and original, can you tell us how this came about?

Having promoted and managed artists I learnt a lot about the aspirations of artists at the grass roots level of the industry and the significant role venues and promoters play in helping bands develop.

So many people are involved at this level with very little financial reward, all doing it mainly for the love of it.

The internet and new technologies have helped hundreds and thousands of bands spring up all over the UK and through social networking sites they have been able to reach out to music fans cheaply and effectively.

In such a cluttered market there is no quality benchmark. The old signed or unsigned labels no longer make sense as we enter the age of DIY artists. The INDY Music Awards are the perfect filter for identifying the very best of up and coming artists. Unlike many “unsigned” competitions where bands simply enter we are an awards ceremony so bands must be nominated.

The INDY Music Awards came out of a more low key awards I set up in December 2006 for all the artists that played with me at The Rock Garden that year. The reaction was amazing with 600 votes placed on MySpace within a few days. The artists felt that at long last somebody was taking notice of them and fans were so excited to see their favourite new bands being nominated. I knew than I was onto something so spent the next few months ringing round every venue and promoter in London to see if they wanted to do awards together. That was the first London based INDY Music Awards – 121 venues and promoters nominated 218 artists and we had over 30,000 votes placed on our website.

What does the Indy Music Awards mean to you?

At the moment it means everything, it’s my life from the minute I get up to the minute I go to sleep and it’s been like this for 2 years. It’s a full on 100 hour a week job. I get bogged down with a lot of admin and spend too much time on the laptop. The danger is losing sight of what the awards are all about so I have a photograph of a bunch of fans from the awards show last year that I look at. The sheer joy and delight on their faces keeps me going. And of course popping down to a gig to see some amazing artists put on a great show is just so rewarding.

How is this years awards different to last?

We’ve expanded the awards to cover the whole of the UK and included festivals, which after all are fields transformed into venues for a long weekend. We’ve also included several new categories including 3 venue awards sponsored by PRS and a Promoter of the Year Award and our first Inspiration Award for The Buzzcocks who will be headlining the Awards Show.

The growth in year 2 has been phenomenal in terms of participating venues, festivals and promoters up from 121 last year to 600 this year and nominated artists up from 218 to 700. We have also attracted more significant sponsorship and the awards will be televised this year for the first time on RockWorld TV, hosted by champion of new music Gary Crowley. This extra exposure is great news for the emerging artists and everyone else we seek to highlight.

Being relatively new how do you find the awards are being received in the industry overall?

We have tremendous support from PRS, The Musician Union and AIM who represent over 800 independent labels. Our goal all along has been to ensure The INDY Music Awards are seen as an industry standard for emerging live music with an emphasis on live performance. We have come a long way in such a short time. Even now I am looking forward to next year and working closely with all our partners and stakeholders to explore other opportunities and create deeper more meaningful relationships.

The comments from the judging panel this year was another real boost with such high praise for so many of the artists and a lot of exclamations of “why are they not signed to a major label?” and “I’d really love to work with these guys”

This year the awards has grown and branched outside of London, where do you see the future heading?

I don’t think we want to change what we are doing too much. We’ll want to make improvements here and there to refine the whole process and this will be based on a full review of the 2008 awards and feedback from everyone post the awards show on April 25th.

At the moment we are an events business with the major focus on a single awards night. In the future I’d like to stretch the impact of the awards over a longer time period. For example this year promoters and venues held over 30 showcases for all the artists they nominated. Next year it would be great to see this expand to a hundred or more and have the showcases covered by the media in some way. We’d also love to do a winners tour around the country or even run a stage at one of the festivals. In fact just the other night I was thinking why not have the awards show at a festival and then all the shortlisted artists could get a chance to play over a weekend.

Another initiative I want to explore is to increase the judging panel to over 100 industry figures. It’s a nightmare for most independent labels, especially those that are understaffed and under financial pressure to constantly go out to gigs every night. There has always been a special relationship with venues and promoters tipping labels as to who is impressing on the live circuit. We will never replace these relationships but we can provide a useful introduction service.

At the end of the day everything we want to do boils down to how much our sponsors want to invest in this market and we need to cut our cloth accordingly. We will never be the MOBOS or the Brits and quite frankly we wouldn’t want to be. There is a refreshing edginess and rawness around what we do and it is vital to maintain this – keeping it real and making sure that music, those who make it, promote it, stage it and listen and watch it, always remains the hero and doesn’t get over sanitised and processed.

Any special thanks and plugs?

There simply isn’t enough room to thank everyone who has helped these awards happen but I would like to make a special mention and thank Mike Rutherford, James Walsh, The Buzzcocks, Chas Smash and all the other highly respected musicians and artists who are coming to the awards to lend their support. In an age of celebrity obsessed media it’s so easy to lose sight of who we really should be celebrating and that’s people with real talent whether established, current or emerging.

The awards show is on Friday 25th April at The Forum, Kentish Town, London. Doors at 6.30 and tickets are available from We Got Tickets

Words: Roscoe

the INDY music awards gala ceremony takes place at The Forum in London tomorrow night and tickets are available from www.wegottickets.com. Punk legands Buzzcocks and indie favourites Starsailor will be performing along with nominated artists.