
- no summer festival, in fact no FdM gigs at all - it took a good few months before I realised how much I miss live music, meeting FdM friends, drinking decent beer...ok, so that's not a good thing, so what else has there been...?
- it's all for charidee...two wholly out-of-character acts of generosity with the 'We Are The Cellar Bar Resoration Society' LP & CD set which raised nearly £3,000 for the Cellar Bar, and 'The Darkest Voyage' which has generated £2,000 for the Red Cross Disaster fund; thinking about it, it was your generosity, not mine, as you bought the CDs and vinyl - ah well, I'll claim credit for anything
- new friends of the fish...one of my resolutions this year was to work with a bunch of new artists and I reckon I passed this challenge with over 30 acts new to FdM appearing on full-run FdM releases and a dozen or so more 'freshers' featured on members club compilation CDs
- the long and the short of it...the 'Darkest Voyage' 6CD set included three tracks that would each have happily filled two sides of an LP, while 'Life of Stanley' is a one-sided 7" with a total of about 2 1/2 minutes of music - talk about a rip-off
- talking of Professor Stanley Unwin, how many labels can claim to have released exclusive recordings by the good Professor?
...and then have a track on an Orb compilation put together by Dr Alex himself! Bloody ridiculous, eh?
- and how about getting Maxine Peake to lend her voice to a track on 'The Darkest Voyage'? Max has been a lovely fan of the label since I can't remember when and this was icing on the cake
- surpise giveaways? Not so easy this year as we had no FdM gigs where we could dish them out - but there was a Band For All Seasons jigsaw as a members club competition prize, we threw in a few unannounced posters and stickers along the way and there was something unexpected for anyone who ordered two sets of 'Head Music 2' from me; but must do better in 2021
- but then there's the sheer quantity of music released this year - on vinyl, on CDs, on Friends of the Fish projects - I reckon something around 30 hours of music that hadn't been on the label before - it must be our most prolific year ever; I hope you feel the quality hasn't slipped - but 2021 will DEFINITELY be quieter round here (even though it starts with another triple LP set!)