MI Pro

It’s barely gone 9am on a February Monday morning and my phone is ringing. It’s what I call ‘Fuck-Up Day’: the day that the latest issue of Guitarist magazine lands on most people’s doormats. It’s also the day – one of (at least) 13 each year – that I wonder why the flippin’ heck I do such a stupid job.

The caller is, verbally, throwing all his toys out of the pram. I am blissfully unaware of his issues because my copy of Guitarist hasn’t arrived. But you can’t be in my line of work and not expect the occasional rant. You might consider yourself good at your job, an ‘expert’ or whatever tag you want to apply, but when you or your publication messes up – however rarely – you still feel like the anti-Christ. In minutes, long-term, mutually beneficial relationships can dissolve in a heart-felt, justified or not, rant. Oh dear. I decide I need a coffee but before I can leave my desk there’s another call and another (unrelated to the last) problem.

I try and sort out the mess(es) but because FUD falls about halfway through the production of our next issue, time is running out to submit my various parts of the magazine and mess-clearing isn’t exactly diminishing the unfeasibly long list of things I still have to do. After all time is money, isn’t it?

I was recently invited to attend a ‘discussion group’ by one of our leading distributors to discuss their intended new designs and so on. Travel would be paid for and lunch. Now a free lunch… ah, you say there’s no such thing. I suspected a conflict of interest. What if I suggested a design or feature that the company put into production and sent into us for review. I could hardly say that’s rubbish if I’d thought of it, could I? So, I suggested that I was happy to attend but as a freelance consultant and expected to be paid, an offer declined by said company. So here’s a company that would like the benefit of my ‘expert’ knowledge and experience but doesn’t want to pay for it.

Sometimes I think I should get MUG tattooed on my forehead, along with many other journalists. I’m sure we’re perceived simply as conduits for words and pages that are basically free ‘adverts’ for products that, especially with a brand as big as Guitarist behind them, will be helped out of a store with the resounding thud of the cash register.

Last year I heard from a British guitar maker that there was going to be a major exhibition of hand-made British guitars. No-one contacted us. Eventually I did the contacting and the organisers were very keen for us to feature the exhibition. A little while later I headed off to sort through over 40 guitars awaiting placement in it. I had to select 12 or so to shoot, balancing well-known names with lesser, but well-made guitars, and create a mixture of electric and acoustic in as many styles as possible. With the help of the aforementioned guitar-maker and our photographer we got the job done and this free advert for the makers concerned eventually ran over six or so pages in the magazine. But just one maker called – Chris Eccleshall – to say thanks for the free ad.

Grow up, I hear you say, that’s your job. It is, but people being people, some can’t help taking the piss. Last year we ran a feature on hot-rodding your guitar: a way to get a lot of editorial plugs for spare parts that normally are hard to get into the mag. It was a very successful feature but obviously we requested lots of add-on products and then had to fit them to the guitars. So to say I was surprised to receive an invoice for said nuts and tuners (£27) from a company who’d received an endorsement from us is an understatement. After all, for many of our readers, ‘if it’s good enough for those guys at Guitarist, it’s good enough for me’. Did I hear that resounding clunk of the cash register again?

There are no more problem calls for a while. But there aren’t any, ‘nice issue, thanks for the review/feature’ calls either. I guess that’s why it’s called Fuck-Up Day and not Thank You Very Much For Potentially Improving My Business Day. Ho-hum.