Nicci Rae-Jones

Stopping The Unstoppable By Nicci Rae-Jones The year was 1992 and I was working for a little known label that produced hit compilation albums – and pretty good ones too. The job brought with it a terrible salary, long hours and a fair to middling amount of stress – but it wasn’t all bad. Daily contact with some of the country’s biggest labels offered unlimited blagging opportunities including free records and gig tickets. And so it was that on a murky summer’s evening, I found myself – along with my partner – trudging my way to the Brixton Academy to

A Bad Seed – But A Good Egg  The day that I met Nick Cave makes me relieved and regretful in equal measure that we didn’t have camera phones – or indeed mobile phones at all – back then. It was 1989; a time when London was all about the music and the Abbas and the disco divas had been kicked to the kerb to make way for more edgy artists.  I was 17 and working for Mute Records, having reached the lofty heights of General Assistant. The label, at that time, was best known for Depeche Mode and Erasure

Going Underground Nicci Rae-Jones When I first moved to the big smoke it was amid the ashes of the 1980s – a place where the ghosts of the 60s were still evident on Carnaby Street and the spirits of fag smoke lingered on the buses. For the millions of us that used the underground five times a week, the soundtrack to our lives were the tube station buskers – grizzled blokes with beards playing guitars, flutes and violins – often badly. These underground maestros had missed out on Opportunity Knocks and were still decades away from the X Factor and

Going Underground  Nicci Rae-Jones   When I first moved to the big smoke it was amid the ashes of the 1980s – a place where the ghosts of the 60s were still evident on Carnaby Street and the spirits of fag smoke lingered on the buses. For the millions of us that used the underground five times a week, the soundtrack to our lives were the tube station buskers – grizzled blokes with beards playing guitars, flutes and violins – often badly. These underground maestros had missed out on Opportunity Knocks and were still decades away from the X Factor