The end of the year is rushing towards us, and what a year we here at RACP UK have had!! We’ve had some real disasters, but also some real triumphs ...so it has more than balanced itself out as far as we are concerned! So, because this has been a very busy and exciting year for us, we are going to split it in half, don’t want you all to have to spend TOO long reading do we ;) but we really would like to share some of the high and low points with you...we hope you enjoy our year as much as we have !!

So...January was the very first of the Rock Against Child Pornography UK gigs!!! Two whole days of music spread across the weekend at The Marlboro Club in Ilfracombe, North Devon. Ray Williams, the clubs promoter, was the man who put it together, because at the time Carmen and Keith were the only two members of Team UK!! The bands were excellent, as they have been at every single gig we have held since, and although attendance wasn’t brilliant, maybe only 50 or 60 across the two days, thanks to a couple of very generous single donations and the charity buckets being in shops, garages and the tourist information office for a week before the gig, financially it was a success and £853.38 was handed over to the charity!! And of course, Carmen had her first go at getting on stage in front of an audience, and came up with what is now our slogan “ We don’t want your money, we want change!!” and it bought Ray and his lady Jackie onto Team UK as well...and then there were four!!!

It was just after the gig that yours truly here became involved, and around the time Carmen Ray and Jackie were invited to attend a meeting in London with CEOP and the NSPimg-CC, and the first time I got to do some writing for the team! The upshot of that meeting was that the group were being noticed...and our name was not quite what officialdom were comfortable with...but then you can’t please all of the people all of the time can you ;)! I had come aboard Team officially as Counsellor and our numbers carried on growing as Tobi joined up....and then there were six!! We also began to the long and very complicated journey towards becoming a registered charity (more on that one later).

It had also become a habit of Carmen and I to propose different ways to do damage to Ray, because every time he phoned it was to say that he had booked another gig ! Now, here is where you have to remember that we are all volunteers, most of us working full time, sometimes overseas, and doing all the RACP work as well, all the gigs were booked for a Sunday, and everyone except Ray had work to go to on Monday! Getting venues, no problem at all...getting bands to play...ditto, although last minute changes to the line up became as much a part of our side of the gig work as getting the posters and promotions sorted out for the pages!! “Leave it all to me” Ray would say in his laid back way “All under control, venues bands and promotion all taken care of!” and since Ray was the man with the knowhow, and of course we had more than enough of our own work to be doing, we did just that!! And so we ended up with eight gigs to do in six months, a little daunting, but we were willing to give it a go!

The first was in Ipswich, and beset with problems right from the start ! The venue ray had booked shut down ten days before the gig with no notice to us, the bands were dropping out all over the place, but Ray found another venue, and filled the play list...no matter how many drop out, there are always at least ten waiting in line to take their place, because the support from musicians has been phenomenal!! So, we turned up, the bands turned up, just a shame it was the same day as a huge festival in town, complete with live open air music and the cup final, so no people turned up, other than the family and friends of a couple of the bands! The venue was great, the bands were brilliant, even the ones who played to an empty venue which we were completely gutted about because they all deserved better, and overall we still managed to raise £182, £50 of which was a single donation from one of the bar staff, a mum herself who was really behind what we are doing!

But it was a learning experience for all of us, and we met some great people who were really interested in our work, got loads of flyers out when three of us went into town to hand them out, and I got my first experience of what goes on behind the scenes, so to speak! Work on page was picking up fast, the amount of research and writing up on news stories was huge, 08 was a bad year for the children as far as we here are concerned, the counselling work I do was really needed, and bearing in mind that we personally answer every message that comes to the inbox, check every page that puts in an add request and then send the welcome comment, no automated software on Team UK my friends, unless you count us of course ;), and we have the page covered sixteen hours a day between us you can see the amount of work involved...which I hasten to add we are all very cool with doing! And so it was time for the Glasgow gig before we knew it! Only three of us were able to attend, work commitments dictate that we couldn’t be in Glasgow Sunday night and at the other end of the country Monday morning ready to work!! Disasters for this one included the headline band breaking up just before the show, another pulled out at the last minute, the fact it was a holiday weekend full of funfairs, shows, and brilliant major headline gigs in most of the venues in town, we had been given NO promotion at all other than one local paper about four months prior (and that was done by the band that broke up) and it was the hottest weekend in local memory !! We did manage to collect £65 though, and once again, the bands were amazing, really nice people who were there to show their support of our work, and again, although most of were playing to an empty venue, they gave us everything!!

It was about this time that we began discussing cancelling some of the gigs, because as much as we wanted to be getting out there and getting the message out, it was a little pointless if there was no-one there to hear it !?! And the amount of work we were doing that wasn’t concerned with the gigs was huge, a lot of it to do with the registration process, preparing media promotions, and of course the friends list just kept on getting bigger...our major achievement this year has been the amount of support we have received from all of you, our friends, who have joined us, written to us, commented on our blogs and bulletins...we say all the time we couldn’t do this without you, and we really DO mean that!! It was also around this time that we first had contact with Tracy and Geno, who foolishly asked if there was any way they could help us...and let slip that Tracy was a Geek!!! Now, if you knew Carmen you would understand that even using the word “code” around her makes her break out into a cold sweat and start shaking!!! So the thought of having someone who actually liked doing it, and could produce what we needed when we needed it was wonderful ! And then there were eight!!! It was about this time that the friend list tuned the magic 20,000 mark...the point Carmen and I had said meant we would have to have a party to celebrate....still waiting on that one by the way...but in not quite a year since setting up Team UK, we had 20,000 people on our list, as well as those on the photography page and music page, our webpage was under reconstruction, and all on the non music side of the work was going better than we could ever have imagined!!!

So, the second gig at The Marlboro Club was upon us...August in Devon...what could go wrong? Shall we start with the monsoon that decided to hit the west coast and go from there !! Holiday weekend, so many locals were away, a circus just outside town, and weather so bad that even the ducks were running for high ground!!! We were a little concerned that the water coming through the roof of the club was going to electrocute anyone on the front of the stage at one point , but the evening passed with no injuries thankfully! Once again, the musicians were without exception magnificent, many of them having extremely long journeys to get to Devon and home again, and STILL giving us everything, even if to once again an empty venue . We raised a very sad £30 that night, but the lovely lady from the charity was very understanding, and every penny helps after all.

It was at this gig that Ray and Jacky first mentioned that maybe they would be leaving us, because work pressure was getting huge on Jacky, neither of them are in the greatest of health and schlepping up and down the county doesn’t exactly come cheap with fuel prices, and Ray said the UK live music scene is not brilliant, no-one is going to live gigs anymore. Bit of a blow to be honest, since the gigs are our way of getting the message out, and here was the man with 30 years experience in the music business telling us the live music scene is pretty much dead ! So, we decided to have a very serious look at our plans based on that information...  

And then there was Nottingham !!!

Nottingham was always going to be the highlight for us since we not only had a great Belgium band, Doncker, coming over to play for us, but members of both Team Belgium and Team Holland were coming over as well!! It was going to be the first time that anyone other than Carmen had met Sandra and Robert, and since yours truly had got to know Sandra in cyberspace I was really looking forward to it! Ray had as usual organised everything, including sorting out with the venue about accommodation for not only the whole team but the visitors as well, and we were all so looking forward to it...and then we got a message from one of the bands who were due to play asking why the venue wasn’t promoting the gig !!

So, we decided to send out a few messages, just to check details because it was only a matter of a few weeks until the gig and with all the let downs we had suffered from with the other gigs we thought it would pay to just make sure everything was as we had been told, and we had the Belgium’s coming over, all at their own expense, as well as several bands who were travelling to play for us and needed overnighting as well, and with the really poor turnouts we had so far experienced, we really wanted to make this one the best yet, especially since the whole team had agreed that it would be our last gig of the year. It took a few messages between the main page, the venue and the charity we were collecting for, the NSPCC Childline, to find out the arrangement the venue had in place with the local hotel was no longer there, so no accommodation for anyone, the charity would not be able to supply anyone to actually attend the gig as it was the weekend of the Nottingham Marathon and they had several major events going on all over town, including a huge open air free live music concert and as an added bonus, there would be major road closures due to the Sunday race !!

Well, as you can imagine, we were all a little gobsmacked to say the least !! One of the team said straight away that we should cancel...but the rest of us were determined to make it work, no matter how much work that would mean for us! And so despite the fact that we had never interfered with the gig side of the work, Ray had always insisted that he be left to get on with it, the rest of the team threw ourselves into this one, sending letters and emails to every hostel, hotel and bed & breakfast place we could get addresses for, working with the NSPCC press office on getting releases out to all the local newspapers, whom we also sent our own press packs to, and then starting hitting the local radio stations, free papers, and even managed to get a street in place who leafleted the whole town for us the week before the gig !!

Three weeks of solid emails, phone calls, follow ups, telephone interviews with press people, and we had no fingertips left from the amount of time we were spending on the machine and were beginning to forget what the sleep thing was !!! The back and forth of mail and follow up mail, corrected posters, poor Tracy, she was forever changing that one since bands were dropping out like flies...to be replaced by other bands who then dropped out as well...and I could carry on for another couple of pages with the amount of work that was thrown into this gig, but let’s just say that the weekend before the gig, we had beds sorted for everyone that needed them, three newspapers had printed good articles about RACP and promoted the gig...posters were up all over town, and flyers were in all the local music shops, cafes, and pubs!! And on top of all that...Carmen and I had been invited to do not one but two radio interviews...the first of which was live !

Now, the media liaison work, as much as we both have it within our job description, I don’t think we had actually thought it through properly, because we were both gibbering nervous wrecks!! But with the aid of a pint of good stuff , the wonderful support of the team, including Trace and Geno who we were meeting for the first time in the real world and the very welcoming and calming manner of Steve Payne, the DJ at Rock247Live who was doing the interview, we soon settled into it, and although we have both the since cringed and buried our head in our hands, and of course gone through the “Should have said that!” or in my case “Shouldn’t have said that!” (In response to the question “How do you cope?” stupid here replied “I drink!”...none of the team has let me forget THAT one !) We actually didn’t make a complete mess of it, and it does mean that we will be working on our interview skills...a lot!!!

We were also in the process of writing, and producing, promotional jingles for radio, and these have been playing across quite a few Internet radio stations, the first of which was the afore mentioned Rock247Live…Thanks Guys … for a while now, and I will hold my hands up to a tiny bit of personal pride here since I write them, and being able to get such a huge message across in a 30 second time slot is not easy! And we have some brilliant recordings…you will have to have a listen sometime…but don’t remind the rest of the team that I haven’t recorded one yet, we are all supposed to do them and I have thus far avoided hearing my dulcet tones on anything except the radio interviews!!!

But I digress…back to the gig …and the gig was brilliant!! Our best yet, and what a way to end our gigging year ! We had a few more drop outs, and step ins, one literally at the last minute when Ali, the promoter at the Salutation, called in a rather excellent young man who had made regular appearances at the venue to cover for the band that told us as we were driving to the venue that they would not be turning up! But it all fell splendidly into place, and although we had a slow start to the day as far as attendance was concerned, by late afternoon we had quite a crowd gathering, and they all stayed until the end of the day, so by the time the last three or four bands hit the stage, we had a great audience for them!! In fact, everyone was having such a good time that we actually overran by about half an hour; no-one wanted it to end ! One lady even came over from the hotel across the road as she had heard the music from her balcony and enjoyed it so much she wanted to hear more!!

And so our year is drawing to a close...we have lost two team members, Ray and Jackie are no longer with us, and we truly wish them all they deserve, but we have gained two new members who have bought new skills into the team!! The work on page is of course carrying on, as always, the Friend list has topped 21,000 and all in all, we feel that this has been a good productive year for us...