The Downbeat - Only Flams (Luxury Communism)

Episode Date: November 11, 2020

A small solo podcast to update you with the my plans for the future. http://www.onlyflams.com

Oh my God, what the fuck. What the fucking frig shit is up. Oh, he's swearing too much. Oh, fuck. Don't swear. Fucking don't swear. Guess what? Oh, my mum's going to be so furious. There's so much swearing already. How is everyone? There's a little solo. Just a little solo little fucking treat. Oh, swore again. Oh, God. It's not going well, is it? Uh, intro. That song is a song called True Norwegian Jazz Metal, written by Yours Truly on Guitar Pro, handed to Josh Middleton of Architects Silosis fame.

I said, oh, he fucking play this for me so I can do a drum video. That was about 10 years ago. What's up? I'm just doing a little sort of bonus pod to let you know. I actually had a guest cancel, so I might as well just give you some gem. And some of that solo gem That's just like

Oh just me Just me in a room Just kicking it We've launched the Patreon Right that's the main thing here Isn't it, to be honest I'm just trying to sell you on that It's one pound

Ladies and Gents One pound I never wanted to do a Patreon right But I figure if it was one pound And it was for the greater good The greater good Hot Fuzz, excellent movie.

I'm derailing already. Then I would do it. Now I'm going to tell you about my plan for the downbeat, okay? This was always the plan, but I think with COVID, and with me being now Dr. Pleg, if you don't know what Dr. Pleg means, you haven't listened to the Aaron Intervals episode. Basically, I've basically rebranded myself as a plague doctor,

because we've got a plague going on, and I want to shepherd you through it. I want to save you. Save your lives. with a blend of herbs and spices in my beak. Okay, so I said, you know, I'm a plague doctor, sort of hypothetical, metaphysical, metaphorical plague doctor. But Americans can't say Craig?

So can they say plague? So we sort of settled on, I say we, I settled on. They probably say plague, didn't they? Because they say Craig. So I'm a plague doctor, I'm Dr. Plegg, and here I am again, okay? There's a vaccine for Corona. Now, I'm going to talk about Corona in this one because I feel like we're reaching the horizon. There is a vaccine, okay?

And, you know, whether or not you believe there's fucking mind control in there or not, I'll be sucking one down the minute it's available. And the general consensus is that touring, I reckon you're going to see some festivals next summer. And I reckon you're going to see touring back by the end of next year. So what we're going to do with the podcast is we've got only Flams, which is the name of the Patreon. And what we're doing, we want to switch it up to video. We want to move everything. I want to rent a studio.

I want to get all the nice cameras. I want to do it up nice. And I want to do a fucking real-life TV show style downbeat. Not one of these shitty little Zoom meeting ones. Because you know, whether you know it or not, everyone's got Zoom, Zoom PTSD. I certainly have it. The minute I see a fucking Zoom interview, I'm like, fuck off.

You're reminding me of this death. So what we're going to do, we're going to build a studio for video. And until Corona fucks off, what I'm going to do is socially distanced in-person interviews. So I reckon for a while it'll only be UK artists and people. But it means we can have like a lot of the old guests, Will Thompson, coming back for a triumphant third in person, filmed like a fucking Christopher Nolan film. God, he's even funnier when you see his, fucking, just his mannerisms when he's talking about his mental stories. You know, we'll get Sam, we'll get the UK crew.

And what I'm intending on doing, okay, so the studio is going to cost me £625, pounds plus electricity plus the internet so the patreon that tier one that we're looking for is that six hundred and twenty five quid and we're actually nearly there so if you got a quid a month spare fucking please do it um and you know what even if we don't get there i'm going to do it anyway but the more we get the cooler it's going to be i'm going for the nice cameras i'm going for the nice set up we're going to get a jamie in there to do the pulling stuff up and switching cameras, I think that'll be Lyca probably. A little bit of extra eye candy, am I right, guys and girls?

It's going to be super sick. And if we get over the threshold, right, if we get to say like £1,000 a month, which realistically, a shitty episode gets 8,000 listeners, right? And if 10% of you gave it, you know, that's 800 quid. That's nearly a grand. You know how maths works, but in fact, realistically speaking, we've got 25,000 to 40,000 monthly listeners. I'd say 20,000 on a bad month. It's a bit, if you don't all put a quid, you're basically just spitting in my face and saying that this is the worst podcast you've ever fucking heard and you don't want to support it.

So you should probably just do that if you can afford it. If you can't afford it, right, the whole point of it is if you can't afford it, don't do it. and you don't get anything extra. There's no perk at all. The perk is that the content will get better. Everyone that can afford a pound a month is supplementing the people who can't pay a pound a month for excellent content.

If we get to £1,000 a month, because it's going to be in person, I will pay the guests. I'll pay their travel. I'll pay their hotel if they refuse to stay with me. And I'll pay them a little bit of money on top of that. In the age of corona, being able to pay musicians, at anything, especially for press, they should be paying me.

But, like, I think that's going to be cool, like giving something back. I think it's going to be like, I don't know. Musicians aren't gigging. We're all scrambling around for money, hence the fucking Patreon. But to be able to go, like, you know, whoever, do you want to come do the downbeat, I'll pay your flight because I'm in Glasgow, but I'm near the airport. You know, social distance. lockdown dependent and I'll give you some money and I'll obviously cook them a lovely dinner

provided they want a vegan pescatarian vibe that's by the buy okay um I'm really looking forward to it just an example of the guests who have already sort of agreed to do it if it goes to video you got Sam and he's refusing to be paid so what we'll do will give his money to charity so really you are giving to charity as well excellent um Will Thompson haven't asked him, but I can't imagine he's fucking doing much. He's coming. I've decided. Drew from straight from the path has moved to France to be with his beloved girlfriend a short flight away.

We can have him in the new year. Yeah, there's fucking loads of people. Sav from while she sleeps. Potential, you know, I'm going to try and tap up some of the other boys from other bands that I've done. like one member from basically anything is on the cards on the table off nothing is okay i'm a professional broadcaster can't even give you sort of basic i don't even know what that fucking turn of phrase well fuck that and i'm swearing again don't give me your money actually don't give me anything at all i don't deserve it and deserve any of your money i'm like i'm gonna

run you through the whole thing what we got going on so i've already explained there's no tears the whole point of it is it's cheap enough hopefully that if you can afford it and you enjoy the podcast you can sling as a pound and that will supplement people who can't afford it and they those people and everyone will get the same content but at a higher more excellent nurse and that words like excellentness will be you know entered eventually into the english dictionary the oxford dictionary because i am championing new words through this platform um um um and The studio itself will look cool as fuck. It will also be where I do my drum streams from,

but because it will be only my room, I'll be able to fully mic my drum kit up and have nice cameras, maybe multi-cam streams, well, definitely multi-cam streams, because we'll have that shit set up. It's basically going to be a fucking TV studio, guys, and I can't wait. I've explained what we're doing with the money, okay? So I'm quite happy to put the rest on a credit card for the equipment

if we just get to the studio amount a month. The only reason I was going to do this anyway, the only reason I'm asking for it is that with obviously no tour in, I don't know where my fucking, my money comes from the downbeat merch, and I appreciate every single one of you that buys it. But I do live in fear that one day you will stop buying it. And there's only a minimum lease of 12 months on this studio.

So I'm assuming if it doesn't work out in 12 months, for whatever reason, maybe you don't like it. I don't think that will happen. Then I'll just leave. But if we get the Patreon to cover the monthly, then there's no risk where I'm not actually making any money. You know, it might go even more mental than that. We might get way more than the target, which would be sick. And I'll explain what we do with that money. We'll give a little bit to the guests or, you know, add substantial amount to make it worth.

their while to come, which no fucking podcast does. Everyone pays to be on other podcasts for the exposure. We're going to give them exposure and a little bit of fucking money. And if we get to a mental amount of money, because there's a lot of you that listen. And again, I did say, if you're listening to this and you like it and you're like, ha ha, he's funny, he's funny. I'm not going to give him a pound.

You are spitting in my fucking face, okay? also that's very much a character who is angry Craig who's angry at his own fans I did actually send a tweet out last night when I was drunk which was obviously satirical because it was like I'm blown away with the response because I am genuinely I can't thank my comrades enough but also I was like but I can't help but notice we've had 25,000 individual listeners this month and only 300 people have signed up. So does that mean 24,700 of you think I'm a fucking idiot prick?

And the podcast is shit and not worth a pound. And obviously that's just a character, just a character that I'm doing, because I'm very happy and I'm very much enjoying the little Discord community that we got going on. Shout out to my Discord peeps. Today I woke up and I spent three hours on the Discord.

I was supposed to go to the gym. I was late. Just hanging out talking to people. There's a link. It's in the Downbeat Instagram, I think, for the Discord. And if you're a comrade, there's a comrade's only chat. And there's one for Twitch people. And we just sort of hang out and talk about shit.

Let's shout out my mods. Beth, Marin and Charlie, because they sort of taught me. Younger people taught me what Discord is. And now I'm a fucking Discord guru. I can't stress enough that this was going to happen and is going to happen even without your backing. But your backing means that this can happen earlier. The plan is and was that when Corona fucks off, this studio is going to be about 15 minutes away from every major venue in Glasgow.

So I will be looking at who's in town, hitting them up with a little message, be like, you want to come on the podcast before the show, I'll come pick you up, we'll have a little coffee, come back to the thing. if they've got a late bus call, maybe we do it after the show. But it will be videoed. It will be live streamed on Twitch and YouTube, and then it will go up to YouTube later. And that will be the same.

And it will still be on the audio platforms, but that will be the same for everyone. People that pay a pound, people that don't pay a pound. It's luxury communism. We're in it together. So I'm really looking forward to that aspect of it. Like when Bear Tufor in town, me and Caleb did an episode, but I would have loved to have done that.

that on video and it would have been easier because the whole place would be set up. We're talking, when gigs are back and if we get the momentum that we need, like I'm getting to the point now where I'm actually having quite cool people come to me and say, can I be on your podcast? Which is fucking amazing. Which is why I'm like, let's really push this. Let's get this into the video world because we could be doing, because I don't fucking do anything one at my home.

We could be doing two, three episodes a week. Live streamed, so there's no editing, but we've got someone live editing on the fly. So you've got multi-cam. Audio goes up later that night, but it gets live streamed to YouTube. Basically, I'm nicking Joe Rogan's whole thing, but I'm making it about music. And less sort of enabling right-wing crackpots.

Yeah, that's about it, guys. I don't want to fucking, I don't want to take your whole day up. You can probably hear a road right now. That would be gone, because we'll be in the studio. Right now, I'm in my fucking living room. There'll be those nice microphones. SM7Bs, good rejection, oh, it'd be lovely dulcid tones. And then those things that hide the cables and they're on the swinging mounts,

you know how much they are? They're 170 pounds each, 179 pounds each. So we'll get some of those. It's going to be expensive, but it's going to be sick. I appreciate every one of you for listening. I'm sorry this has been boring in one big advert, and I said I'd never do avocers. Oh, that's the thing.

The reason this exists is because I'm refusing to do ads. Adverts. I'm not doing it. Okay. And in future episodes, I will just be briefly mentioning the Patreon, if at all. But it will be, we got ad flea, ad, ad free platform forever. Unless maybe a drum company goes, oh, we'll give you this cool shit you wanted anyway, just give us a plug. Then I'm going to do that. But I ain't trying to sell you a mattress. I ain't trying to sell you the fucking undies. I've been offered, right? I'm not doing it. Fuck that. Luxury communism. www.

Onlyflams.com. Yes, I bought that fucking website. Anyone who's already signed up, you are the fucking best. I can't thank you enough, my comrades, everyone in the Discord. Let's get this fucking Lambo.