Everyone in radio is a failed musician he points out
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"Everyone in radio is a failed musician," he points out.He came to KCRW in the spring of 1998. There he has become champion of what one rock critic calls the "semi-popular". In LA, the entertainment business listens to Morning Becomes Eclectic. Harcourt takes pleasure in the fact that he's very often the first to play music that becomes popular and, even if it doesn't become popular in the mainstream, wins critical approval.
He was the first in America to play Norah Jones and Coldplay on the radio; he played Damien Rice, Sigur Ros, Jem and David Gray when they were unsigned.One of the best examples of Harcourt's star-making is Dido. Her manager gave him a copy of her demo CD; he played it; the TV drama Roswell included one of her songs; Eminem heard her and sampled her for "Stan" and she took off. "I found out when I got there that it wasn't actually there anyway."It was in Woodstock that Harcourt's own frontman aspirations finally petered out when he got sober and started choosing other people's music to play on radio. In a very British way, he simultaneously puffs up and demurs at attention and praise "Let's face it, it's fun being an English guy in America.
I'm a lot more exotic than I was when I was in Birmingham." At the same, he says, "You still have to deliver."Harcourt left school at 16 and soon enough became a singer in a post-punk, pre-New-Romantic band called The Red Cassettes. The band got as far as bringing some demo-tapes to London and no further. In Australia, too, he had a band, an avant-garde outfit called Kissing Frogs. His rock dreams lived on into the years in New York State's Hudson Valley, itself a virtual retirement community for has-been and never-will-be musicians. "When I arrived, the only thing I knew about Woodstock was that there was a festival there when I was 12," he says.
Cochrane cruelly claims that BBC4 has become "very turgid" and that viewers have come to expect "some old man talking about Tolstoy... with subtitles".She then quickly amends her comment to say: "That's not to say we don't want to be catering for intelligent minds."All the agencies that pitched for the More4 account were aware that the "territory" was a campaign about "grown-up telly", says Cochrane. DDB came up with the winning idea the night before the pitch and promptly ripped up its previous proposal. Cochrane says: "We really liked it because it was incredibly clear and immediate."As part of the launch, five million More4 magazines will be delivered inside Sunday newspapers (not the red tops, mind), clad in a black wrapper saucily "warning" of the "adult" nature of the contents inside. The Mail on Sunday has refused to accept the wrappings, taking the view that Middle England would not appreciate the gag."It's a way of getting people's attention," says Cochrane of the three-week period between the sleazy promises of adult entertainment and the revelation of the actual content. He is stopped in the street by young musicians offering demo CDs and courted by labels trying to get their acts the prestigious Harcourt endorsement.Harcourt, it's clear, enjoys every second of it.