What I Learned From · Ministry of Sound · Brand Experience
What Tour Managing for Ministry of Sound Taught Me About Marketing Under Pressure
Eighteen years after writing my gig diaries, I can see that the ladders, delayed flights, promoters, DJs and collapsing plans were teaching me something important: a brand promise is only as strong as the people delivering it.
In 2008, I was 23, travelling to clubs around the world as a tour manager and writing down what happened with the confidence, spelling and selective judgement of a 23-year-old tour manager.
Eighteen years is a long time. It is long enough for those notes to feel like both my writing and somebody else’s. The person in them is unmistakably me, but an earlier version: more rambunctious, more impressed by free drinks and rather more accepting of ladders that no sensible health and safety assessment would have permitted.
I originally published the surviving entries on Marketing Made Clear because they captured a period of my life that I did not want to lose. This rewrite does not replace them. The complete diary archive remains at the bottom of the article, in the original voice and with the original stories intact.
What has changed is the perspective around them. I now have nearly two decades of additional experience in marketing, management and business. Looking back, I can see that those nights were not simply entertaining stories about DJs, clubs and travel. They were practical lessons in stakeholder management, operational branding and remaining calm when a plan met reality and reality won comfortably.
The audience saw one night and one brand. Behind it sat dozens of people, decisions and potential points of failure.
What Did a Tour Manager Actually Do?
My job was to make sure the artist could concentrate on performing and that the promoter received the branded event they had booked. I did not arrange every flight myself, but once we were travelling I had to oversee the journey, keep people moving and deal with whatever appeared between the itinerary and the venue.
Remove avoidable distractions
Make sure the DJ knew where to be, when to be there and what was happening, while absorbing many of the problems that did not need to become their problems.
Align different expectations
Work with local promoters and venue teams whose priorities, resources, language and interpretation of the plan could differ considerably.
Make the event look the part
Check that the décor and banners were installed correctly. This occasionally meant climbing ladders, scaffolding or parts of buildings I would now regard with greater suspicion.
Keep the show moving
Delayed flights, missing transfers, poor equipment, sick performers, difficult security and changing line-ups all had to be dealt with without allowing the whole experience to unravel.
The role sat between the artist, promoter, venue, production team, audience and Ministry of Sound. Nobody owned the entire experience, yet the audience quite reasonably judged the event as a whole.
That is recognisably a marketing problem. Customers do not separate your organisational chart into neat departments before deciding whether they had a good time.
Sometimes brand management involved climbing into the roof of a nightclub
In Seoul, I remember cable-tying banners into the top of the club while it was already open. The crowd did not know how the branding had arrived. They only knew whether the venue felt like the event they had been promised.
From Will Green’s tour archive.
The Brand Was More Than the Logo
The Ministry of Sound name carried expectations. People expected a particular standard of music, production, atmosphere and visual identity. Promoters were not merely hiring a DJ. They were borrowing the meaning attached to a recognised club brand.
This is where branding becomes more demanding than communications. A logo can be supplied as a file. An experience has to be produced by people.
Marketing research has long recognised the importance of the physical environment. Mary Jo Bitner’s concept of the servicescape explains how surroundings affect both customers and employees. In a nightclub, the sound, lighting, layout, signage, crowd, staff and temperature all become part of the product.
The banners mattered, then, although it sometimes felt absurd to be worrying about their exact position while standing 30 feet above a dancefloor. They were visible proof that the night belonged to the brand people had paid to experience.
They were also only one clue among many. Perfect banners could not rescue an empty room, broken air conditioning or an event stopped 50 minutes into the set.
The Live Brand Delivery Chain
Looking back, I can reduce the job to five connected stages. Failure at any one of them could alter what the audience remembered.
What people expect
The brand, artist, promotion and price establish a picture of the night before anybody reaches the venue.
What people encounter
Travel, production, venue staff, promoters and performers combine to create the actual experience.
What people carry away
The audience remembers how the night felt. It rarely knows which supplier, department or delayed flight caused the difference.
Customer-experience research makes a similar point. Katherine Lemon and Peter Verhoef describe experience as something built across multiple touchpoints, some controlled by the company and some controlled by partners or the wider environment. A live event compresses that entire customer journey into a few noisy hours.
The practical implication is simple: marketing cannot finish when the promotional material is approved. Somebody has to connect the promise to the delivery.
Three photographs from the surviving tour archive. The glamorous side of international club events was generally separated by airports, equipment cases and an alarming quantity of décor.
Stakeholder Management Before I Called It Stakeholder Management
At 23, I would not have described the job using management language. I would have said I was trying to get everybody where they needed to be and stop the night going wrong.
That is stakeholder management in fairly honest clothing.
The artist wanted the conditions required to perform. The promoter wanted a successful event and value from the brand. The venue wanted an orderly operation. The production team needed decisions and access. The audience wanted a memorable night and had no interest in our internal complications.
Those interests were related, but they were not identical. The tour manager became the connecting point.
“The audience experiences the result, not the chain of excuses behind it.”
What the diaries make much clearer to me 18 years later
The best relationships made everything easier. Zante worked because the promoters were passionate, hospitable and collaborative. Oslo worked because the organisers, artist and crowd created momentum together. Other events struggled because communication, planning or attendance never aligned.
This lesson travelled with me into marketing leadership. Agencies, sales teams, suppliers, retailers, finance colleagues and operational teams can all influence the customer’s experience. Marketing may not manage all of them, but it cannot pretend they are unrelated to the brand.
The audience should not have to know how difficult the night was to produce
Good delivery often looks effortless because somebody else has absorbed the effort, uncertainty and last-minute improvisation.
Staying Calm When the Plan Stops Being Useful
There were plenty of problems.
In Skopje, our original flight was cancelled because an artillery base was on fire. A storm flooded roads, the hotel lifts stopped working, the gig was closed early by security and we nearly missed the flight home after being taken to the wrong terminal.
In Dhaka, flights were uncertain and both dancers became ill. In Panama City, I had to find a way to install banners roughly 30 feet in the air without a ladder. In South Korea, we arrived so late that the décor had to go up while the club was open.
None of these situations improved because somebody looked visibly panicked.
Remaining calm is not the same as being unconcerned. It creates enough mental space to decide what actually matters next. Protect the people. Keep the artist informed. Find the person who can solve the immediate issue. Separate an inconvenience from a threat to the event. Then move.
In business, people sometimes admire the dramatic rescue without asking why it became necessary. The better lesson is to prepare thoroughly, establish trusted relationships and still accept that some problems will arrive without an invitation.
What I Would Tell the 23-Year-Old Writing the Diaries
I would not tell him to become completely sensible. He would ignore me, and the diaries would be considerably less entertaining if he did not.
I would tell him to take more photographs, label them properly and back them up. Losing the Oslo images when the camera wiped still feels unnecessary.
I would also tell him that the work he regarded as sorting things out was building useful professional judgement. He was learning to read people, adapt across cultures, protect a brand standard, take responsibility without total authority and make decisions with incomplete information.
Formal study later gave me better language for much of this. My MA in Marketing Management, and eventually my MBA, helped me organise experience into concepts and frameworks. But the experience came first.
It is one reason I resist separating marketing thought from marketing practice. Theory helps us understand what is happening. Practice teaches us how it feels when it is happening at 3am, the venue is closing and somebody still has to retrieve the banners.
A brand is a promise delivered by a system of people
Communications create expectations. Operations, partners and frontline decisions determine whether those expectations survive contact with the real world.
Five Lessons I Still Use
- The customer sees one experience. Internal responsibilities may be divided, but the audience does not grade each supplier separately.
- Brand standards need operational owners. Guidelines achieve little unless somebody makes sure they appear in the real environment.
- Relationships create resilience. Trusted promoters, artists and venue teams solve problems faster than a perfect document shared with strangers.
- Calm is a practical resource. It helps people distinguish the next important action from the general noise of a difficult situation.
- Memories are built from the whole encounter. The audience remembers the atmosphere and feeling, not the sequence of backstage decisions that produced them.
Those lessons apply far beyond nightclubs. Ecommerce deliveries, retail launches, conferences, customer-service interactions and product experiences all depend on the same basic connection between promise and delivery.
The scenery changes. The stakeholder problem remains.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a tour manager do?
A tour manager coordinates the practical delivery of a tour or individual show. Responsibilities vary, but often include artist liaison, travel oversight, working with promoters and venues, checking production requirements and resolving problems so the performer can concentrate on the performance.
What did tour management teach you about marketing?
It taught me that the brand promise is delivered operationally. Stakeholder management, physical presentation, service quality and problem-solving all affect the experience that the audience associates with the brand.
Why preserve the original gig diaries?
They are a primary record of what I noticed and valued at the time. Rewriting them entirely with 18 years of hindsight would produce a neater article but lose the younger voice that makes the archive useful and, occasionally, revealing.
Were all the diary entries written in 2008?
Most relate to 2008, but the surviving archive also contains a small number of entries from 2007 and 2009. Together they document the wider period in which I was touring these events.
The Complete Surviving Gig Diaries
The entries below are preserved because they are part of the story, not merely raw material for a more polished article. They have been lightly formatted for readability, but not rewritten into the voice of the person I am now.
Open the complete diary archive: 30 entries
21 & 22 September 2008 – Ministry of Sound – Aberdeen with Tony P
This weekend was fun. Two clubs in Aberdeen booked Ministry of Sound, so Tony P and I went to sort them out. I also met Will Mellor, who was staying in our hotel and seemed like a nice bloke.
Both events were fun and full of freshers from the university. I got to relax and look around the city, which was novel. I looked forward to going back some time.
9 July 2008 – Housexy & Smoove – Abu Dhabi, UAE, with Paul Deighton and Skins
It took aaaaaages to set the venue up and I earned an unfortunate nickname, which I will not mention, as I was likened to an 80s pop singer. The club was lovely, but it was steaming hot because the air conditioning had broken, making it a sweaty night.
The DJs were great and really got the crowd going. The promoter was awesome and I tried my best to get back over, but had no luck.
14 October 2008 – Smoove – Bahrain, with Hanif
I spent hardly any time in Bahrain. It was literally a case of picking up the décor, dropping it at the venue, letting the club set up, going for dinner, going to the club, setting down, going to the hotel and then going home. I did find out that the promoter made the staff eat rotten eggs if they arrived late or did not show up.
Bahrain seemed nice and I wanted to go back some time, but preferably for longer than 22 hours.
23 May 2009 – Ministry of Sound – Dhaka, Bangladesh, with Shane Keyhoe and dancers
Having never been to Bangladesh, I looked forward to seeing what the country was like. For a while it looked as though I was not going because the flights were not properly booked. After the epic flight, I arrived and went straight to bed.
The next day I relaxed around the pool in the 37-degree heat before setting up the venue, which took no time at all. The actual night was quite good but poorly attended. The crowd seemed almost too embarrassed to drink at some points, but loved our dancers.
We were meant to fly the following day but instead spent the day chasing new flights for the day after and then went shopping in downtown Dhaka. Meanwhile, one of the dancers became very ill and had to retire to the hotel. Downtown Dhaka was like nowhere else I had seen: very run-down and bustling, but at the same time very friendly.
We were taken to a clothing store where we were given free clothes for modelling them, which made us all very happy. We then went to a bar where I found out that one of our hosts was a huge Pantera fan.
The next day both dancers were ill with sickness, but we had to fly home. Shane and I became baggage men and helped them through all the connections and security. Finally, we got home just in time to see Southampton relegated. Maybe I should have stayed there.
27 December 2008 – David Guetta – Brussels, Belgium, with Tara McDonald, Cozi Costi, JD Davis and David Guetta
Absolutely awesome event. Tara and I had just arrived from the Romanian mountains and were excited to see the set-up and the 10,000-person venue.
After a nice meal, Tara and I went to the venue, getting slightly lost on the way. The backstage area was packed with really nice, friendly and interesting people. All the singers’ sets were fantastic and David was great too.
After the event, we went to JD Davis’ apartment, where we had a great after-show party that lasted until about 5am, when I had to leave to check in for my flight at 5.30am.
Needless to say, I was tired when I got home.
6 December 2008 – MN2S – Cardiff, Wales, with Seamus Haji and Danism
This was one of the most décor-heavy nights I had ever been involved with and I received absolutely no help whatsoever. I drove to the venue, set up, got bored because nobody was around, ate, got bored, went to the club, waited for the DJs, listened to them play, got bored, took the décor down and then went to the hotel.
There was no atmosphere, no crowd, too much décor and not enough pay. The DJs were good, but it is a bit hard playing to 30 people.
3 August 2008 – Ministry of Sound – Split, Croatia, with Danny Rampling
The club was situated off the beaten track in the mountains overlooking Split. The newly built outdoor club had a pool and several dancing areas. However, the club did not have a consistent crowd.
Danny played a great set and we were treated very well by our driver and host. I managed to oversleep when we were on our way to the club, which embarrassed me. Danny was absolutely fine about it.
Work aside, I was most impressed by Split. The fish restaurant by the sea was amazing and the views of the bay were really nice. I recommend going there for any kind of holiday.
11 October 2008 – Housexy – Croydon, England, with Jake Duval and Richard Murray
Earlier that day I had played for my football team and lost to our rivals, so while taking abuse by text I made my way to sunny Croydon.
The line-up was great. Jake and Rich were awesome. However, the crowd were rubbish. A poor turnout meant it became more of a private party for the promoter, which was not exactly best for the brand. I ended up not drinking and driving home after the night. Not one to remember.
25 May 2008 – Clubbers Guide – Edinburgh, Scotland, with Nilesh Parmar
Nilesh Parmar, aka Bass Slammers, played a good set to an average crowd. The Scottish crowd were always up for a laugh, though, so this made up for it. The staff around the venue were good fun too. Everyone I spoke to seemed to have a good night.
I was worried about the décor, so had to put banners where I could see them to prevent them being stolen. It was nice getting tokens for alcohol up front. This could be an issue when tour managing.
The venue, which cannot be named, was a good size and had a good vibe. The monitors were a bit rubbish, but this was always an issue.
5 June 2008 – Housexy – Cairo, Egypt, with Shane Keyhoe and Tara McDonald
My first and only trip to Africa was a mixed bag. A weekend in the heat with good company was slightly tainted by wind, a lack of adapters and some fiery people.
The event was good and in a nice outdoor setting, but the crowd was very small and the high winds made putting banners up quite difficult and dangerous. When trying to get to the venue to set up, my lift arrived half an hour late and then insisted on making several stops on the way, making me late, which the promoter blew up at me about. An argument ensued.
The language barrier made it uncomfortable when trying to sort out some of the misunderstandings, which spoiled the trip a little. The gig definitely was not a success, but not really a failure either. Just a mixed bag.
On the plus side, I met the amazing Tara McDonald, who I later became tour manager for.
23 May 2008 – Clubbers Guide – Paisley, Scotland, with Josh Roberts
This was my first event with Josh and it was fun. I had an issue with excess baggage on the plane, but everything else was cool. Josh played an awesome set, which went down a treat with an electric crowd.
The crowd were mostly students who had just finished their final exams, so it is not hard to imagine how freely the alcohol flowed.
I was staying in a B&B run by a lovely old lass and everything was great in Paisley. I had yet to go back, so looked forward to the opportunity.
22 December 2008 – Ministry of Sound – Glasgow, Scotland, with Mark Knight
This was a fantastic night. On the day Woolworths went bankrupt, I danced into the night with strangers in a packed underground nightclub.
Mark Knight was great. “Man with the Red Face” had come out a few months earlier and it was one of my favourites, so you can imagine my delight when he played it. I met some other tour managers I had been due to work with about a year earlier, so it was nice to exchange some tips.
I definitely wanted to see Mark Knight again when I got the chance.
France – Nice, I think – date lost
I completely lost track of exactly where and when this was. It was an awesome gig and time with the legend that is Paul Deighton. A highlight was Paul trying to pronounce foie gras and getting a baptism of fire in local cuisine.
The nightclub was awesome and there were some seriously intoxicated people – even more so than Paul and me.
23 June 2008 – Housexy – Zante, Greece, with Shane Keyhoe
This was the opening night of the summer events at the club in Laganas, Zante, and it was an absolutely awesome party. Shane did a really good job and the crowd loved him. I was left wanting to come back to the club straight away.
This was the first time I met the owners and promoters, and it was obvious from the start that we would get along. They were extremely passionate about what they were doing and I became good friends with the people there.
7 July 2007 – Housexy – Zante, Greece, with Tom Murgatroyd
Tom’s flight was cancelled, so I had to go it alone. I flew out with the décor, got the job done in an hour and enjoyed the heat.
I had a good time with the promoter, Nicos, on his supercharged golf buggy. I always had a great time there and looked forward to going back for the other gigs.
21 July 2008 – Housexy – Zante, Greece, with Richard Murray and Seamus Haji
Zante is a great place for a party, although this night was not as much fun for Seamus Haji, who bore the brunt of poor planning by Greek airlines.
Seamus arrived in Athens to find that his connecting flight to Zante was heavily overbooked, so he could not travel. The venue’s promoters arranged a taxi from Athens to a port, where Seamus could take a speedboat.
The problem for Seamus was that he was not accustomed to boats, especially the kind that hurtle at high speed through choppy seas in the dark.
Needless to say, Seamus arrived looking quite green and not feeling particularly in the party mood. The rest of the night was great and a good time was had by all the Housexy crew.
8 September 2008 – Housexy – Zante, Greece, with Jake Duval
This was the closing night of the summer events. We had a good time, but it definitely felt like the end of the summer. It was quite sad for me because I had been out so many times and made a lot of friends.
The meal was awesome. We tried all the local dishes at a beach restaurant. The night was good but slightly slow, the cocktails were as good as ever and the staff were as friendly as ever. Great club.
26 April 2008 – Clubbers Guide – Guernsey, Channel Islands, with Nilesh Parmar
If I am completely honest, I was not expecting much from this event. My main association with Guernsey was that one of my heroes, Matt Le Tissier, was from there and that I had met Rolf Harris there as a child – something that reads rather differently now.
Nilesh and I were blown away by a bumper crowd of extremely good-natured, hyperactive people. We were treated to champagne and all sorts of spirits. The staff were fantastic and really friendly.
I was left buzzing, but ended up locked out of my hotel and had to phone the owner at home at 3am to get a code to let myself in. Raging.
P.S. Why am I always pointing at Nilesh?
24 October 2008 – MN2S at Amsterdam Dance Event
The line-up included Ron Carroll, Seamus Haji, Bodyrox, Michael Gray, Joey Negro, Funkerman, Brian Tappert, Danism, Nick Bridges, John Fiasco, Bart B More and Daley Padley.
The event was part of Amsterdam Dance Event and had a great line-up and crowd. The negative for me was that there were three rooms to dress with a mountain of décor. This took several hours to put up and several hours to take down.
Because of the high ceiling, a shady little cherry picker was used, which felt as though it might fall over when 40 feet in the air.
The weekend was topped off by me forgetting that the cakes in the café were hash cakes and eating one with a coffee, leaving me in a world of my own. Space cadet.
Apologies to Dave, who saw the aftermath. I did not realise we were sharing a room and I was on a different planet when he arrived.
23 May 2009 – Housexy – Rotterdam, Holland, with Ricky Rivaro and Yasmin Le Bon
Not a particularly memorable gig, and the Dutch trains did not live up to their reputation. We had a nightmare. I was travelling alone because the DJs were local, so I did not chat to them much. Yasmin seemed lovely, even though we did not really speak.
The promoter was really nice and kept me stocked with drinks. I was tired from working on recent projects for my MA in Marketing Management, so I did not become too involved, but still had a good time.
The trains were awful and I travelled all over the place on a mini-tour of Holland: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht.
18 July 2008 – Anthems – Loughborough, England, with Al Taylor
This time Al and I were joined by Henry Walker, who was training with Ministry at the time. The event was a multi-stage do, with Fearne Cotton and Scouting for Girls also in the line-up.
The promoters were cool and kept us well watered. We had our own cosy little backstage area, which we turned into a private club. It was lovely. I had to revert to my days as a security guard to evict some unwanted visitors.
The night was far more memorable for the ice-cube fight at the end than anything else, but we all had a very good evening.
3 July 2008 – Ministry of Sound – Skopje, Macedonia, with Damian Wilson
This has to be one of the oddest jobs of my career as a tour manager. I arrived at the airport to be told that the flight to Sofia, Bulgaria, had been cancelled because a nearby artillery base was on fire. We rescheduled onto a flight to Thessaloniki in northern Greece and took a taxi to Skopje from there.
On the way to the open-air gig, we hit a tropical-style storm. Traffic went crazy and roads closed because of flooding. The lifts in our hotel were also shut down, leaving me to carry a 30kg case up seven flights of stairs.
The staff at the venue were great and took everything from me to set it up. Damian and I went for a meal with one of the promoters, then returned to the venue and waited for his set.
Damian’s set was going well and the goodies were being thrown out when, 50 minutes into his set, two scary-looking security guards told us to stop the music. The crowd were annoyed, to say the least, and we took a fair bit of abuse. All the bars closed and security tried to usher us out.
We then had an uphill struggle convincing security to let us take down the décor. It turned out that much of the security team consisted of members of a local gang. We were told the event had been stopped because another local gang was jealous that it had not been given the security job and wanted to ensure it did not happen again.
Eventually we collected the décor and returned to the hotel, although people came back to check on us and I still had to tackle the seven flights of stairs.
The next morning, after the several-hour taxi drive, we reached Sofia airport with about ten minutes until check-in closed. The driver took us to the wrong terminal and the other was a 15-minute bus ride away. I had no euros left, so I ran along a queue of taxi drivers trying to bribe them with sterling. The last driver accepted, we reached check-in as it closed and we got home.
7 March 2009 – Ministry of Sound – Oslo, Norway, with Laidback Luke
This was a fantastic event. Laidback Luke was great, the promoters were extremely warm even when the weather was not, and the crowd were brilliant. Laidback Luke and his entourage were good fun and I did not want to go home after the event.
Afterwards, we went to an after-party in some plush flats where many of the promoter’s friends had gone. We stayed until I was unable to remain on my feet, then returned to the hotel.
The next day I walked around Oslo and took lots of photos. Unfortunately, my camera wiped itself and I lost all the photos of the event and Oslo. Gutting.
18 May 2009 – Ministry of Sound – Panama City, with Harry Choo Choo Romero, Behrouz, DJ Rap and Tom Sawyer
I looked forward to Panama because I was a big fan of Prison Break and wanted to see whether I recognised any of the places where it was filmed. Alas, I did not. I had a very good time, though. I spent the first part of the event day looking around the shops and being harassed by a man with a university ID from the 1980s, claiming to be a lecturer and selling Spanish poems. I do not speak Spanish and I am not into poetry. Jog on.
The event was great, but I had to put up the banners 30 feet in the air without a ladder. I used some stage scaffolding and the help of a few Panamanians who did not speak English.
The event began at 10pm and lasted until 11am the next day. I did not leave until about noon, then went to the after-party, which I left at about 2pm. Needless to say, I was exhausted. I slept for several hours, caught some sun and then went to a restaurant overlooking the Panama Canal, ate lots of seafood and returned to the hotel to pass out.
The next day I left bright and early to fly to London via Atlanta, getting harassed by US border security again.
23 March 2008 – Housexy – Skipton, England, with Richard Murray
This was my first event with Rich, and it was overshadowed by the stereotypical warm-up DJ. The DJ booth was tiny and the warm-up DJs insisted on staying in it for the entire gig.
The Skipton crowd reacted only to the big tunes, so it was less of a Housexy night and more Clubbers Guide. It was quite typical of younger DJs trying to impress us lot from Ministry of Sound, although they did not realise that it made them look rubbish.
The night went well apart from that and we stayed around until a silly hour talking about the oddest topics. The drive back to Southampton was a long one the next day.
12 July 2008 – Housexy – Seoul, South Korea, with Paul Deighton
After a cruel flight with two connections from the event in Abu Dhabi, Paul and I were dropped straight at the gig by our driver, “Mr Stevens”, to find an extremely enthusiastic crowd. We had stopped in Doha and Japan, meaning we spent a whole day travelling.
The crowd reacted to every move Paul made, which was great considering how tired we both were. The décor had to be put up while the club was open because we arrived late. The venue was fantastic and had large CO2 cylinders, which looked great when fired at once.
The promoter, Marshal, was nuts in a very good way and spent the whole time trying to set me up with random girls. His method was to pick one and then push you into them. Odd.
Everybody really enjoyed the night and, by the end, many clubbers were asleep on the furniture, which was quite funny.
Looking back, this is probably my most memorable show. I had such a great time with Paul and we ended up in so many crazy places, half asleep and having an awesome time.
17 February 2008 – Housexy – Granada, Spain, with Tom Murgatroyd
One of, if not my first overseas tour with Ministry of Sound. I learned that sitting in transport and enduring uncomfortable journeys would make up most of my job.
Not a particularly memorable night, but I enjoyed a lot of alcohol in a converted theatre. The promoters were cool, especially Christian, but did not speak much English. I felt a little lost at times and ended up walking around aimlessly.
Overall, it was not one to remember for the night itself, but undoubtedly important for my career.
5 July 2008 – Clubbers Guide – Strabane, Northern Ireland, with Al Taylor
Playing to a very messy and rowdy crowd, Al Taylor was on form. Strabane was always fun and had a great promoter. I ended up travelling there at least four or five times. Al had recently lost the top of his finger in a mad end-of-night set-down, but still ripped the place up.
The crowd in Strabane were insistent on trying to steal all the décor at the end of every night, so this was good fun. I caught a bloke and a woman getting together backstage, which was funny. One hallway in the club was full of couples getting up to all sorts. Quite the eye-opener – excuse the pun.
Another good night with the legend that is Al Taylor.
24 August 2009 – Anthems – Sunderland, England, with Josh Roberts
The event was meant to feature Nilesh Parmar, so when Josh Roberts arrived I think some people were confused. However, that did not stop them having a good time. The night was in full swing early and continued that way until the end.
I was training a friend to tour manage at the time, so there were three of us having a proper party. A good night was had by all. Unfortunately, the following day my exhaust fell off the car on the long drive back south.
20 March 2008 – Anthems – Wakefield, England, with Nilesh Parmar
Playing in the back room of a large club, Nilesh “slammed” some bass as only he does. The crowd requested the weirdest music and we were not going to play any of it until Nilesh gave them some of his own remixes, which were extremely popular.
The night was good, but climbing a straight 25-foot ladder with nobody to hold it the following morning was not a particular highlight.
I ended up touring to Wakefield several times. I had one funny incident where I thought the promoter was calling me “Arcade”. It turned out he was calling me “our kid”, but my southern ears were not used to the nickname.
View the surviving tour photo archive: 43 images
Sources and Further Reading
- Bitner, M.J. (1992), “Servicescapes: The Impact of Physical Surroundings on Customers and Employees”, Journal of Marketing, 56(2), pp. 57-71.
- Lemon, K.N. and Verhoef, P.C. (2016), “Understanding Customer Experience Throughout the Customer Journey”, Journal of Marketing, 80(6), pp. 69-96.
- Pine, B.J. II and Gilmore, J.H. (1998), “Welcome to the Experience Economy”, Harvard Business Review, July-August.
- Green, W., original Ministry of Sound tour diaries and personal photographic archive, 2007-2009.
Related reading: Why Global Brands Need More Than Google Translate
