To listen to James playing live and being interviewed, and also read the feature on BBC Radio WM’s site simply follow the link

Thanks to Brett Birks at BBC WM for sorting the interview. 

Enjoy

TEAM INVIABLE

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Some of you were kind enough to give me CDs to listen to and/or URLs to check out. I’ll endeavour to get round each of these in turn and let you know my thoughts via email.  

If there are any specific questions that arose from the discussions then please feel free to post them here and maybe we can discuss them together. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I’ve generally got an opinion (be it right, wrong or otherwise!)

Thanks once again for the kindness and welcome, and the very best to all of you.

Craig 

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Thank you to everyone who bought CDs and said nice things.

Here’s a video of Friends of the Stars from their Sunday set. This is a tune from their forthcoming/soon-to-be-recorded/Yeah, whatever new album. It’s called “Foreign Muck”

Enjoy

x

Friends of the Stars - “Foreign Muck” - Moseley Folk Festival 2008 from Craig Hamilton on Vimeo.

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The 2008 Moseley Folk Festival starts tomorrow in the lovely Moseley Private Park, Birmingham. The festival, now in it’s 3rd year, promises to be the best yet with performances from The Accidental, The Bees, Waterson:Carthy, The Destroyers and many more, including headline slots from Seth Lakeman and Jose Gonzales.

Commerically Inviable artists James Summerfield & Friends of the Stars are both playing sets this year. James plays the opening night tomorrow (Friday) and Friends of the Stars help kick things off Sunday with an afternoon slot. For more precise stage times see the line up info on the festival site.

To celebrate the festival we are offering both the Friends of the Stars and James Summerfield albums for a special, one-off festival price of £12 (including postage). Click here for more info and to make your purchase.

Festivalgoers can also purchase either album for £6 - or both for £10 - on the site itself across the entire weekend by visiting the Polar Bear Records stall. 

Alternatively, and if you see us any of us hanging around, why not stop for a chat and a haggle…

Enjoy the festival!

Team Inviable

x

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Friends of the Stars are playing a show with their old friend Danny Wilson and his new band this Sunday at The Kitchen Garden in Birmingham’s Fashionable Kings Heath. It would be great to see you there.

Doors 7pm

Tickets £6 advance, £7 on the door

Danny and The Champions of the World features the aforementioned Danny, along with members of Goldrush and The Electric Soft Parade, who have been wowing festival audiences up and down the UK this summer with their ‘celebration of a collective yesness!!’.

See you there. Yes.

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It seems there is a slight problem with our ordering system that will not allow UK Paypal account holders to complete their purchase. We’re working on fixing it at the moment, but the good news is that there is a work-around….

On the CHECKOUT page, instead of selecting ”Delivery” please select “Pick Up”. This will allow the transaction to complete.

Once the transaction completes you will receieve a confirmation email and we will receieve one from Paypal that contains your email address. We’ll be in touch pronto to get your Delivery details.

Please feel from to email us - info@cominrecords.com - with any issues with ordering

THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE, FOLKS

Team Inviable 

x

PS - Do you think that Coldplay or Justin Timberlake or Metallica have hacked our system to sabotage our sales? They must be worried about us and our global reach…..Nah, on second thoughts…maybe not….it’s probably just a glitch. 

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5th August - The Island Bar, Birmingham

7th August - The Firefly, Worcester

11th August - Songsmiths @ Mr Wolfs, Bristol
If you’d like more info on any of the show, please get in touch

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After an 11 month layoff, Friends of the Stars are back in the podcast game and we’re bringing you the newly minted episode 4 before it’s even released via the FOTS site.

This new 41 minute episode follows the same tried and tested format seen in previous episodes. Commercially Inviable Records very own Executive Producer Robson is grilled by a member of the band and asked to offer his thoughts on the world. The results are sometimes informative, often startling and absolutely peppered with industrial language. To break things up there are a few lovely tunes, this time there are songs from both Friends of the Stars and James Summefield.

Listen:

Download audio file (FOTS-POD4-From_Robson_To_Eternity.mp3)

DOWNLOAD (55mb MP3)

Tracklisting:

Two Hands - Townes Van Zandt
Spinning on this Rock - Ramsey Midwood
Cuddly Toy - Harry Nilsson
False Hearted Lover - Levon Helm
What Went Down (That Night With You) - Ronnie Laine
Love is like a Butterfly - Dolly Parton
Hard Road - Friends of the Stars
Don’t Look Back - Teenage Fanclub
Paper Bag - James Summerfield

Enjoy

x

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We need a bigger digital footprint and towards this end we’ve embarked on a lackadaisical campaign to bring Commercially Inviable Records to the good, the bad and the ugly social networks to see what happens. There are many benefits to having a presence in such a variety of places, not least the fact that if there must be bullshit, then you should create your own.

On a very broad level, users of these sites should be able to easily find us, listen to the music of our artists and, if they like it, share this experience with their friends. Moreover, our various profile pages will provide those sufficiently interested with a route back here, where they can find more music and more information, also easily shareable with online buddies. Additionally, and for those so sufficiently interested that they wish to part with cash in exchange for musical artefacts, there will be links to popular places online that can make such transactions happen.

So far, so obvious…and, on paper at least, all very easy and beneficial. Since over 30% of the traffic we’ve received thus far has come from the links on our personal pages in fabulously hip internet places such as Twitter, it seems that taking Commercially Inviable to the social networking rodeo may be an approach worth pursuing. There are, however, in the short term at least, more immediate problems than there are potential benefits…

Beyond the glaringly obvious ones, identifying which sites we should be using and prioritising is something of a minefield and, as ever, we are indebted to Andrew Dubber for his advice on this matter. We’re starting with a reasonably small list and will grow it from there.

Setting up profiles on the various sites is also proving to be time-consuming and occasionally frustrating, but since we’re pretty much entering the same photos, music and information onto each one it’s really a case of understanding what each one does (or doesn’t) do and then jumping through the hoops provided.

The biggest problem, or perhaps question, is deciding how much of our meagre and precious time we should be dedicating to the individual communities we are joining. Is merely having a presence enough (we doubt it), or should we be actively growing our network on all fronts? Is throwing snowballs at virtual strangers on Facebook really a better use of our resources than, say, contacting radio and press on behalf of our artists and releases? Can these two things go hand-in-hand somehow?

All of this remains to be seen. We’ll post a partial list of links to our new, online second homes shortly. In the meantime, we’d welcome your suggestions, comments and recommendations on this subject.

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This offer is limited to 50 copies only, and each will be signed and hand-numbered by James. The CDs will be posted way ahead of the planned release date.

Click here to order James Summerfield “Count To 10 & Start Again” now.

Hurry now…

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