Becoming a band in London (11/12): Video killed the radio star
Shock 2, was such a blow to our morale that we didn’t do anything band-related until January 2017 when we started Circus to radio stations. We didn’t really have a strategy nor any awareness of band-station etiquette, sending an indecent number of generic, cold emails. We were feeling down and had no hope that anyone will respond to our emails. But someone did: Chat and Spin Radio here in the UK. It wasn’t a massive radio, but it did have a loyal following, and we were happy that they enjoyed our music enough to invite us on their station.
Recurring radio interviews
The Chat and Spin interviews were very interesting experiences, particularly for Andrei, who had been assigned PR duties at the time. Instead of a one-off, they invited us on their morning call-in show on Tuesday and Thursday. Andrei went on and had a great chat with the hosts before they spun ‘Memories of a Past Life’. It was great hearing the track on the radio again, after the demo was aired a couple of years prior on BBC Radio 6. Both interventions were more or less identical, but listening to the track the second time didn’t seem at all less of an event for us, especially in the mental state we were in at the time.
We thought that would be it and we’d have to wait until another album release to get on the station again. But, as luck might have it, they wanted us back the following week, for both slots! And again the next week, until March 31st 2017. We were on Chat and Spin for almost 3 months, 2 times a week, with both an interview and most of the songs off of Circus! How crazy is that? We didn’t really get that many new fans (if any) given the profile of the station’s listener, but it was a tremendous learning experience. It also rekindled our romance with the band in a big way. We decided we needed to do something with Circus.
Aaaaand, ACTION!
Our solution was filming a video for ‘Supernova’. We were always a bit apprehensive about the process because of the huge costs involved in producing a quality video. Thankfully, we stumbled upon a fantastic Black Friday deal on Facebook from filmmaker Jay H. And we do mean fantastic: it was £250 for a full day’s shoot, with editing, color grading etc. included. Doesn’t get any better than that!
The video was more or less a performance of the track filmed in Jay’s studio in Melton Mowbray, with additional footage from the surrounding streets, walking towards the camera or just trying to look cool on a grungy staircase next to the entrance. Never doing this before, we were afraid we’d look awkward ‘on tape’, but Jay did a fantastic job at making us look good. In the end, the ‘Supernova’ video was professional, clean, and exciting for a fraction of what other filmographers were asking.
We didn’t want to waste the rest of the weekend we filmed on, so we decided we’d also do a photoshoot. Again, the issue here was financial, some photographers we talked to asking for £300 for a half day. Not ideal, given our budget! But, thankfully, Antony Weir, whom Cat worked with, came to the rescue! (Thanks again, Antony!) He offered to do a short shoot with us for free! We didn’t want to waste the opportunity, so we picked some visually interesting locations in Birmingham in advance for backdrops and actually bought clothes that matched our music. We were extremely happy with how the photos turned out. While they’re less in line with the music we make nowadays, they did serve an important purpose at the time: building a coherent image for Electric Tuxedo.
We used the photos in the lead-up to the video release and afterwards (up to the first months of 2019, actually). We were looking like a real band for the first time in our history, both in the photos and the video. ‘Supernova’ premiered at the end of March 2017. We were once again pumped about the band. The EP release was botched in the ‘dying queens fiasco’, with the video coming a bit late in the (non-existent) strategy, but at least we put ourselves out there and had something to show for all the work we put into our music in the past years.
Deafening silence
The video was doing well, given our 600 follower social media count, reaching 2k views. We were excited, but that excitement didn’t result in anything productive. We didn’t do anything until the end of May, when, thanks to Andrei’s uncle who sent an email to the Romanian national radio station, we were invited for an interview. Along with it came another fantastic opportunity as part of one of their ‘newcomers’ campaign to include one of our songs in their daily playlist for a full month! We went for ‘Supernova’, as this was our first (and only) single from Circus, and we also had the video online in case people wanted to check us out afterwards. The show went really well and we were happy to constantly hear ‘Supernova’ on the radio. On the 4th of July 2017, when the show’s campaign had finished, we posted an update about it on our Facebook page. It would actually be our final post until January 2019.
To be concluded next Saturday. In the meantime, you can follow our journey on Instagram and Twitter @electrictuxedo. Thanks for reading!
