Needlessly provocative thread title about MC Nomad, etc.

plastician · Post by **plastician** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 7:49 pm

1. Ammunition / FWD have nothing to do with anything you're talking about.

2. Why is "MC Nomad" mentioned in the topic title? Was that because you thought nobody would take any notice if you titled it "Charles Holgate"? What Charles does on the mic and what he does in his dayjob are 2 seperate entities. Fair enough its the same person but it seems to me you're just staging what seems to be a comprehensive attack on his person, not his freelance press work. He keeps the two very much seperate.

3. I have known Charles for over 10 years so its difficult for me not to sound biased, but he is probably the most straight up honest person I know. I also know how hard he works for all of his clients and I'm surprised that nobody from this forum has posted here to back that up. He's worked on pretty much every successful press campaign in the history of dubstep and a lot of grime too. Not every press campaign is as successful as others but this does not mean he puts less effort into what he's doing. His job is not to ensure people get good press or good reviews, it is simply to inform magazines and newspapers of any upcoming releases his clients wish to advertise, which involves being contactable, informative and organised on the subject of any campaign he's working on.

I just wanted to say my bit. I don't know the details of the campaign in question but Charles is a very hardworking and honest man and I think there's probably a lot more than meets the eye on this topic.

dj cal cutta · Post by **dj cal cutta** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 8:05 pm

Plastician wrote: His job is not to ensure people get good press or good reviews, it is simply to inform magazines and newspapers of any upcoming releases his clients wish to advertise, which involves being contactable, informative and organised on the subject of any campaign he's working on.

At no point has this ever been implied in this thread or that blog post. In fact, Jace made it quite clear that his issue was, in fact, getting no response at ALL that any real contacts had been made with the journalist community to get exposure at all(good or bad...).

edit: And frankly, I do see the point of him airing this out in public. He made it clear in his blog post that he tried to handle this dirctly w/Nomad and he got fucked around. Time quotas came and went, and Jace still gave the dude 5 extra weeks to try to clear the situation up. As he said in his blog, he wants other artists to know they may get scammed(and it seems to me Rupture has every justification to claim he was scammed in this situation), if Nomad really did put those promo cd's out to journalists, and they just didn't "care" to respond(and frankly, let's get fucking real about this, does ANYONE remember how much hype Gold Theif Teeth and Minesweeper Suite received?!?!? Our memories aren't THAT bad, are they?), then it's his job to contact those journalists, get that response, and relay that info to DJ/Rupture. And unless people want to put blinders on...the chances of that scenario being true are so fucking fleeting that I'm laughing as I type this.

seen · Post by **seen** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 11:33 pm

Plastician wrote:
What Charles does on the mic and what he does in his dayjob are 2 seperate entities.

3. I have known Charles for over 10 years so its difficult for me not to sound biased, but he is probably the most straight up honest person I know.... Charles is a very hardworking and honest man and I think there's probably a lot more than meets the eye on this topic.

it is very close to guttersniping his character, im glad you offer a feasible defence.

having said that this situation does sound dire, and from the info presented it looks like he straight did one....but maybe more info will come to light.

i didn't mind that amunition is mentioned in such a detailed way, tbh it's quite informative.
yes they are a growing company
but you have to remember that have good solid roots and do deserve to grow.
and that charles doings should not reflect upon them

feral witchchild · Post by **feral witchchild** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 11:39 pm

Is it because DJ/rupture is from NY? lawl

miscreant · Post by **miscreant** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 11:49 pm

and he turned me into a newt!

spooKs · Post by **spooKs** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 12:04 am

don't know about all this but he's one of my favourite MCs, check out his performance on the Drunk Freestyles tune on Joker's myspace:

www.myspace.com/thejokerproductions

hackman · Post by **hackman** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 11:15 am

sorry but whether or not hes a good mc has nothing to do with this, if you fuck around your going to get called into account for it, if you lie and give no good explanation of yourself your going to be suspect
if hes been givin many many chances to sort it out and still hasn't he should probably stick to the microphone

godflesh fiend · Post by **godflesh fiend** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 11:19 am

I hope Charles explains himself here as he really has been tarnished with this. Either that or I hope he contacts the guy that started this thread and sorts shit out.

taliesin · Post by **taliesin** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 2:58 pm

i dont really know if the forum is the appropriate place to for Charles to mount some sort of defense- but id certainly like to know what the deal is ESPECIALLY because hes done such tremendous work with some many of the scenes most important artists...... maybe a combination of UK journos not being interested and Charles slacking the fuck off and thinking he could dick some stateside folks? but for a few thousand dollars- I sure would like to know exactly what the fuck went wrong and why this dude dropped the ball so hard.

surface_tension · Post by **surface_tension** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 3:15 pm

incyde wrote:The fact that you let it drag on for that long with no results and believed his bullshit for that long is partially your fault too. You could've hired someone else to do a simple mail-out within that six month time frame. (maybe there was a reason he "left" his previous PR company, maybe?)

But you're completely in the right to let everyone else know what happened, that really sucks.

I agree with this.

--- to the point of the original post though ---

I'd also note here that a publicist is not only completely unnecessary within such a small niche genre. I'm sure it helps somewhat to have someone else doing the real work of running the label for you, networking for you, etc... but honestly if your tunes are good and you make an honest effort to hit up every music forum that allows you to post about releases, give away a few promotional CD's to radio stations, hit up the standard taste makers in the scene and radio show artists... you don't need a publicist at all.

And at 1000-5000 dollars per month, you have got to be fucking kidding me. Even if you're selling 1000 records per pressing on average that's pretty damn steep. Way to hand over all the profits to someone. After all, they did all the actual work lol.

uncle bill · Post by **uncle bill** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 3:27 pm

I have nothing to add to this thread except that DJ / Rupture is awesome.

surface_tension · Post by **surface_tension** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 3:30 pm

Plastician wrote:I don't know the details of the campaign in question but Charles is a very hardworking and honest man and I think there's probably a lot more than meets the eye on this topic.

For this very reason I pray this thread stays unlocked.

georgedallas · Post by **georgedallas** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 5:59 pm

yeah but he is a sick mc, he always cracks me up wen he's on the mic

fairieswearboots · Post by **fairieswearboots** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 6:08 pm

[quote="Taliesin"]i dont really know if the forum is the appropriate place to for Charles to mount some sort of defense- quote]

therefore, is this the appropriate place to launch an attack?

paul updat · Post by **paul updat** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 6:09 pm

Surface_Tension wrote:
--- to the point of the original post though ---

I'd also note here that a publicist is not only completely unnecessary within such a small niche genre. I'm sure it helps somewhat to have someone else doing the real work of running the label for you, networking for you, etc... but honestly if your tunes are good and you make an honest effort to hit up every music forum that allows you to post about releases, give away a few promotional CD's to radio stations, hit up the standard taste makers in the scene and radio show artists... you don't need a publicist at all.

And at 1000-5000 dollars per month, you have got to be fucking kidding me. Even if you're selling 1000 records per pressing on average that's pretty damn steep. Way to hand over all the profits to someone. After all, they did all the actual work lol.

But that's not really the point. The point is if you are paying someone to do a job for you, you should probably expect them to actually do it. A publicist's work should involve more than the "real work of running a label" too man.

plastician · Post by **plastician** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 6:24 pm

I am pretty certain Charles won't post a reply on this forum, or on radio or anywhere public for that matter.

surface_tension · Post by **surface_tension** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 6:30 pm

Paul Updat wrote:The point is if you are paying someone to do a job for you, you should probably expect them to actually do it. A publicist's work should involve more than the "real work of running a label" too man.

At this point, it's an accusation, not a proven fact in my mind. I have no dog in this fight. All I'm saying is that making those connections is the best part of doing this, IMO. I guess I just don't mind hustling our own wares.

@Plastician: he might not want to respond here, or at all, but seeing as how his reputation is openly in question here for better or worse, he may want to get his... ahem... publicist to take care of it

plastician · Post by **plastician** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 6:44 pm

Surface_Tension wrote: @Plastician: he might not want to respond here, or at all, but seeing as how his reputation is openly in question here for better or worse, he may want to get his... ahem... publicist to take care of it

He doesn't feel the need to. Enough people who use these forums have worked with him in the past and have been very pleased with his output, as have many other labels who have nothing to do with dubstep.

surface_tension · Post by **surface_tension** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 6:54 pm

As an example, there are plenty of producers who made beautiful tunes originally... like I listened to them for years and all of the sudden they started to fall off. They had credibility, and then they lost it by making some shit tunes. That didn't mean I wouldn't at least check out their new releases, but I didn't just buy them on sight anymore...

the moral of that story, is that nobody has enough integrity to just trust, but not verify. Not you, not me, nobody. He very well might not have done anything wrong, maybe it's a smear job... it could happen. But if it's true, it should be public knowledge so it doesn't happen again yea?

mshadetek · Post by **mshadetek** » Thu Mar 19, 2009 2:24 pm

Here's the thing. Charles "Nomad" Holgate may be a great guy, great MC, honest, good publicist etc. but in this case he took a bunch of money and turned around and crapped on everyone involved. Rupture, the artists on the CD including myself, the label, and the fans who would like to know about it.

You can be an honest nice person up until you do something dishonest and not nice.

Having been involved with the CD since before release I'd just like to point out a few things.

1) Charles was completely unable to document any work on this release. As a publicist it's important that you do that. He should have sent spreadsheets detailing where he had sent copies and then updated those sheets to say "This journalist didn't like your CD and declined to review" or "Didn't return any follow up communications". Without this, and with no press at all, negative or positive appearing in UK, while the release gathered strong reviews in the states from places like Pitchfork and the New York Times, suggests that the work wasn't done.

2) As it seems clear that he didn't do the work, or only partially did it, or that something somehow went very wrong, Charles could have owned up to it. He could have said, I tried to get you some press, no one was interested (which he later said) and it didn't work out. Instead he said "I'll send an update tomorrow" for WEEKS AND WEEKS and tried to claim credit for things that other people had generated (later confirmed by speaking to the journos in question). Only when Rupture put this post up 7 weeks ago did he start communicating again. What does this look like?

3) Ammunition and Sarah Lockhart's involvement is that Charles was working as an independent publicist and just as he took this project on, went to work for Ammo and the project got dropped. These are all facts, not innuendo or supposition. Charles is an employee or contractor for Ammo, ironically doing public relations, and if he shits on someone like this, I'm sorry, it does splash back on them. If they don't like it perhaps they should be more thoughtful about who they hire.

And for those who say "Oh you're mad and ranting" or whatever, if you just let people shit on you and take it quietly, that's all you. If someone shits on us, it is a problem.

Needlessly provocative thread title about MC Nomad, etc.

Who is online