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The Jukebox Jive Show 22nd - 23rd October 2011

Here Digger talks to Katie Gale who is the energetic and enthusiastic driving force behind the new Jukebox Jive Show to be held near Heathrow in October.

A mix of Jukeboxes, rock & roll and retro & vintage, The Jukebox Jive show features live bands, makeovers, jiving, memorabilia and clothing dealers and, of course, Jukeboxes.

Katie has started from scratch with this show - gone are the greasy burger bars and tired-looking anonymous bands of other Jukebox shows. Katie has high expectations and has set herself high standards for this new show, bringing in lots of new attractions and events. Ladies can have hair and make-up makeovers (book early!), there are jive lessons, you can sample the delights of a reproduction of the famous 2i's coffee bar and listen to a variety of authentic and original rock and roll live bands.

We discuss Katie's background and the background to the show and what the public and potential exhibitors can expect at the show. We also hear some of Katie's plans for the future of this new and innovative event.

Katie

Digger: Hello Katie. Please tell us about your background.

Katie: The whole rock and roll and vintage thing wasn’t at all what my mum was into when I was growing up. She was a Michael Crawford fan, so I literally grew up with no sense of musical taste at all. (Digger laughs) And I’m quite happy to say that, because I know my mum would agree with that. She doesn’t have any ‘outside the box’ musical tastes.

Digger: So she likes Michael Ball too?!

Katie: Everything like that. The variety CDs. So I wasn't introduced to rock and roll at a young age. But my grandmother was a dancer when she was younger so I did grow up with the musicals and saw her dressing quite glamorously when she was on the stage. It was before I was born when she was doing this, but she would show me some of the photos and take me up town and show me some of the places. She used to work in a music shop in Hounslow, Lampton Road called EJ Long which used to sell instruments and so on. And they had quite a lot of stars coming into the shop. It was run by my great Aunt Margaret Wood. My Nan has a rich background in musical theatre and I just loved talking to her about it. I was at stage school for a period so I was into all that and the way people dressed and the look but not really into rock and roll thing until much later. When I was twelve I got arthritis in my joints. I was thinking today that it’s actually quite a retro thing to have because it was something that was seen then as an old person’s condition back then!

Digger: That’s a very positive take on arthritis – seeing it as a retro ailment.

Katie: It’s something that was very difficult for me and a lot of my life had to change. I couldn’t really walk that much and I had to stop dancing and doing my ballet.

Digger: How is it these days Katie?

Katie: It’s controlled by drugs these days and I can do as much as I can. But because of what happened when I was younger- and it was whilst I was growing- when you stop doing things that your body was doing you can’t go back to that really. It was impossible to go back to enjoying what I was doing before.

Then I met my partner Paul when we were at college. He has grown up with rock and roll music and soul music pretty much from the word go. His dad Bob is a record collector and organises the Soundbite Record Fairs around Surrey and South London.  So his family has been the reason why I’ve got into this.

Digger: They were instrumental in it, if you’ll pardon the pun.

Katie: Yes.

Digger: Has there been any cross-pollination the other way? Do they now love Michael Crawford?!

Katie: (Laughs) No. I would never do that to them. I respect Paul’s musical tastes and they do vary completely from the contemporary to a bit of rock and roll. Our household has a big range of music from rock to Latin.

Digger: When I was a lad (!) there was a certain snobbery about music and you weren't able to move between genres very easily as it was seen as almost disloyal. So you had the situation where my sister had to hide her copy of Electric Warrior because T Rex weren’t seen as cool by her contemporaries who were ‘hairies’. Move forward twenty five years and it’s totally cool. In fact most things are cool these days – Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, Rolf Harris, Matt Monro – you can play them all alongside your Led Zeppelin or your James Brown.

Katie: I think it has changed a lot. When you talk to people who don’t really understand the music business and where it’s been, I mention Cliff Richard and they say “He’s so cheesy!” and so this, that and the other. But they haven’t thought about his career when he first started – he was a rock and roll God!

Digger: That electrifying intro to Move It.

Katie: Exactly! Then somebody told him he had to appeal to a wider audience and so he went down that easy listening route. So people don’t always understand the rock and roll history these days. I always say you can’t really understand music today if you aren’t prepared to dabble in music of the past – is the cornerstone to how everything has progressed. On an iPod you can have some Jerry Lee Lewis but also some other genres as well – an eclectic mix.

Digger: That’s what I’ve got. It’s good not knowing what’s coming next on the playlist.

Katie: Yes, I do enjoy that.

Digger: Where did the Jukebox Jive Show come from?

Katie: It was a lot to do with the Jukebox Madness Show, which has now closed down. I started helping out Bob at the Jukebox Madness shows in 2008 and I was behind the stall helping him sell the records and getting immersed in the whole idea of it. I was talking to the organisers – the Winward family and getting to know them and some of the dealers as well gradually.. And in 2009 I helped out and also had my own stall for Cancer Research UK. I sourced a load of vintage items from their shop and other charity shops. I also sourced a load of items from other vintage shops and sold them for a profit for the charity keeping cost price for myself.

Digger: I might sound a bit metrosexual here (both laugh) but charity shops are great. I go past my local one on my daily walks and they always have a different display in the window. It must be quite interesting for the staff because there’s a big turnaround.

Katie: It is fantastic and when I used to work in the Wimbledon Cancer Research UK branch (in voluntary terms) I used to work weekends on their vintage section and I would help them sort the wheat from the chaff. And a lot of what I’m wearing these days is from the charity shop but also from vintage. I buy everything I can from charity shops, whether my size or not, and I’ll keep it in the cupboard and sell on eBay. It’s marginal what you can get on eBay these days because there’s so much stuff.

Digger: Yes. Weird Al Yankovic called it the Worldwide Garage Sale.

Katie: It is true, but then if you’ve got a good piece… I had a pink Laura Ashley dress similar to the one I’m wearing now and it just didn’t quite fit me so I put it on eBay. I bought it for about £10 from a charity shop and I thought I would sell it for near enough the same amount because it was a really good style with a nice neckline. But in the end there was a bidding war for it and it ended-up going for £45. So it just depends on what you get and when you get it and the people on Ebay.

Digger: It’s the old auction thing –right people on the day.

Katie: Definitely. When I did the Jukebox Madness Show we sold some really good items and we made about £900 for the charity - it was a really good show. We had a fantastic 1930s Harrods fur coat which was really well-made and we sold it for £95. We clearly had the right people there on the day to make the purchases. It was a fantastic coat and although the show was 40s and 50s it did blur the lines between that.

Digger: A lot of people do blur the lines these days don’t they?

Katie: They do. My new show is about the forties and fifties and I try not to go any further back than that.

Digger: Or any further forward?

Katie: Yes, a little bit because the sixties was a golden era for music and that’s where a lot of what we love now was developed. But not much further than the sixties. So I did the Jukebox Madness Show and then I thought “So what do I do next year?” And at that point the people organising it had handed it over to their daughter Rebecca and I said I’d like to help out doing some flyering and coming to some gigs with her and getting some good people on board. I had some ideas to get some good bands, because the thing it was lacking was a spark. We had bands there but they were people that nobody had really heard of and they were playing three or four times on the same day. It needed something different for people to be aware of and to get excited by. People would go to try and make a profit and talk to some of the dealers  and get a bit of networking going but it wasn’t exciting. We did work together but in the end she went with the same kind of people. The event itself was alright but it didn’t go as well as planned and had a very low footfall for the Sunday and it was a real shame. She and her team had worked hard and they’d been going for 22 years.

Digger: Yes, to establish a brand like that is hard…

Katie: Yes, it was a big brand and even across the pond as well there were people interested from America. And also from Europe with people coming over especially for the show so it was a big operation. Rebecca worked hard but to develop something like that it needed to be thought of more as a business and the prices were never developing – some exhibitors were paying the same prices as they were paying in 1984!

Digger: So you have learned some lessons from others mistakes?

Katie: Yes, absolutely. In terms of shows, I have been to a few over the last few months and noticed things I would do differently. I also know some of the issues the exhibitors had from past JBM shows and so I am able to address these with mine. I’m not saying it will be perfect by no means in its first year but I know what it needs to look like and how it needs to be run.

When the JBM Show was ending, Rebecca did offer me to buy the brand. But I was working with Colin at Sound Leisure at that point and he is very supportive and he said perhaps at this stage it’s better to start from scratch. Because people know too much about something and sometimes knowing too much is a negative thing.

Digger: Good advice.

Katie: So I turned down the offer but said to Rebecca I still wanted to have a good relationship with her.

Digger: "Give me your client list!"

Katie: I wasn’t able to have that unless I paid for it but obviously the exhibitors from previous years are all pretty accessible from old show guides and so on. Once you talk to one person you get other contacts and people have actually started to contact me about it as well.

Digger: Have you been in contact with the Brighton Show?

Katie: Yes, in fact we did an ad in their brochure saying we are coming. One of the bands who played down in Brighton were interested in playing at our show – The TTs, although now we’ve actually gone in a different direction. It was good that there was some swapping and cross-over and relationships, although the Brighton Show is very different from what I’ve got in mind. I have a very clear vision. 

Digger: You seem very determined what is your biggest inspiration to keep motivated?

Katie: My mother has been very influential. My mother is fantastic. I also have a little brother now who’s six who I adore – my mother made a fantastic life for herself and me. I always owe everything to her– my drive and so on because she was driven. She was eighteen and had a child and it would have been so easy to say “No I can’t do this.” But she had two jobs in order to support us and I was looked after by my grandmother which is why we are so close. 

Digger: Is she still around?

Katie: She is. And actually I recently bought her a laptop and have been teaching her how to do it. It was frustrating the first month because she’d ring me every ten minutes and say “I’ve done something wrong” and it’s so difficult to visualise it over the phone because she doesn’t know the right terms. But now she’s on Facebook even and we've really moved on to such a good degree. It’s good for her because granddad's got Alzheimer's and doesn't really know what’s going on and so she could be a bit isolated but now she’s got something to do. The family unit is such an important thing for me. And I'd like to think I have a bit more street knowledge than most, especially some young people I see today who don’t seem to be aware or have the knowledge or tools to face life.

Digger: When they showed old episodes of Top Of The Form on TV recently it was amazing how knowledgeable the youngsters were in the fifties and sixties compared to now. The kids these days would just say “What? Whatever.” I’m sure that people are clever within their fields but even on University Challenge they come up with some really stupid guesses which betray their lack of a fully-rounded education.

Katie: You think how would they survive if they were put somewhere? – socially, mentally and emotionally. I think it is almost more about that and that’s how Paul’s family and I have grown so close. Because he came from a completely different background to me – he went to a private school and was very well educated and Bob was able to supplement income by doing record fairs and so on and that was a big thing for them. So I think it does complement it well because I bring a lot of grounding to him and his family. And he and they have been a great help to me.

Digger: How do you see the show? You’ve got three months – you’ve obviously got a lot of people booked in already?

Katie: Yes. We have 40 Exhibitors booked in so far and the Beauty Salon and Cupcake Cafe

Digger: You said you’re expecting a footfall of 2,000?

Katie: If I got 2,000 I would obviously be very happy because it’s the first show. If I got more than that I would be ecstatic.

Digger: It’s at Heathrow? Is that so people can fly in? (Both laugh)

Katie: Yes, It was funny really – it’s so political where you hold a show like this! I wanted it to be close enough for all to attend and Heathrow seemed a good place. We looked at Gatwick hotels as well. It is also important for a large car park and there is plenty of that around the Airport. The hotel is very accessible and I am in talks with the company who run the Hoppa Buses to see if we can get some discounts for members of the public travelling by public transport. – If you don’t ask you don’t get! 

Digger: You are visibly very happy and excited about this.

Katie: What’s great is that we will see whatever we want the show to be. And I say 'we' although it’s only me so it’s the 'royal we'. And I know what I need to please the customers because I’ve spoken with just about every one of the exhibitors who have ever exhibited at previous shows and I know what issues they’ve had and where things could have been done better. I have taken that all on board, so in management speak we have 'stakeholder engagement'. So I want to make it more professional and more of a business. Even when people have booked their stands I have sent out terms and conditions, which never really existed for any shows before. I have made sure people understood what they were booking. The way I’m working it now is that all exhibitors will get monthly updates about what I’m doing and where the show is going to be advertised – any news updates.

I do have my whole family down to help on the show and Paul is the accountant, so it is a family affair!. We want to see how things work this year before developing a lot of ideas but I did bump into a representative from Cath Kidson who chatted to me about developing a ‘Rock and Roll’ brand in the future....

I have started to ask if they want advertising space in the show guide. (£65 for full page and £35 for half a page) The programme will be a lot different to other shows – I will be doing a lot more interviews in it and people will want to buy it, not because it has a load of adverts and details of the show layout and exhibitors but it will have interesting articles. I'm including one about my Nan and when she worked in that music shop. She’s trying to remember it!

Digger: Hopefully she can do some research on The Internet.

Katie: When I first originated the idea of the Jukebox Jive I was on the Jukebox forum and they are people in the business and dealers on there. A guy called Peter May from Classic Restorations runs the forum and he said "Let’s start up a discussion about the show. "It was surprising - I had so much negative feedback to start with – "It’s never going to come to anything, you’ll never make it work, you don’t know anything, you’re only 26." And I thought “Okay, that’s fine”, because that worked the wrong way for them and means I worked a lot harder in order to achieve success! It does the opposite with me, but Colin was very supportive and posted what we were doing on there and so Peter keep things going now. 

Digger: How much space is left for exhibitors?

Katie: I still have some spaces for people to book although I am trying to make it look a lot more spacious for people who are coming and also more visual and interesting – we have the jukeboxes all over the back end of the room and I already know what it’s going to look like. In the middle of the room, there are going to be the record dealers and that kind of thing and then we do have clothing dealers at one end. A lot of repro 50s clothing. But also some people who've never done this sort of thing before and wanted to see what the market is like. We do have a foyer space as well so lots of areas for the public to seek bargains!

A lot of my thinking with the exhibitors is that I didn’t want to overbook and cram everybody in so that it ended-up nobody doing well because there was too much going on. I want to make sure that everyone gets a fair crack at the show to make some money. My stall prices are very competitive because this is the first time and nobody knows how it is going to turn out. So I am working closely with them. I’ve made it very clear this year that it is on a business footing and so people have to pay the going rate. And it’s also their responsibility as much as mine to make sure people know about the event. Every email I send to the exhibitors I remind them that they need to advertise it too. I received some calls from possible exhibitors saying they used to advertise the Jukebox Madness Show and got free or special deals as a result. I said “That was very good. But you won’t be getting that from me!” Advertising is a prerequisite of having a stall space as far as I'm concerned.

Digger: I think it’s crazy that people wouldn’t also promote the event.

Katie: So that’s why I have decided to move with the times and start afresh with new terms and conditions. And with an entirely new event and venue. There are youngsters out there who are a little bit intrigued but not really sure about this type of retro, so I wanted to create a show that was accessible to everybody. We have a good balance - bookings for retro memorabilia, record dealers and clothing and the only ones we might still like on board who are not already are jewellery and hats.

Digger: I know some of those sorts of dealers and will mention it to them.

Katie: Thanks. We have Lipstick and Curls who are doing a make-up parlour at the show - they are going to be performing makeovers and people can book in advance for that which is really useful.

Digger: How much is entrance to the show?

Katie: You can book tickets online with a discount via Paypal. £6.50 for an adult for a one-day ticket and £5.00 for a Child – although under 7’s go free. Tickets are also available on the door.

The event is from 10:00am to 6:30pm on the Saturday and 11:00am to 5:00pm on the Sunday. We’ve got some really good ideas for food and drinks – we were hoping to do a cocktail bar and are re-thinking that. We’re going to have a little diner – we wanted to recreate the 2i’s café so I’m doing a little bit of investigative work at the moment to try to find out what it would have been like inside. Although we can’t do it completely, it would be nice if we can put a sign up saying the 2i’s café. And we have the bands in there and the bar and a diner where you can order some hot food and a tuck shop. We’ve actually got two bars that are going to be open as well.  No burger vans or anything like that – that’s not the way I work and we don’t want greasy food.

Digger: Making sure your visitors get their five a day? (Laughs)

Katie: I’m a bit of a health freak like that. We do have an exhibitors' after-show party on the first day as well with the band playing.  We have done a deal with the hotel, so for £100, two adults get to stay at the hotel and to enter the show both days and the party as well. I’ve sold some of those already which is really good and there’s been a lot of interest in that. We have got a weekend pass available online and that’s £20 - you can come and go the whole weekend. I am expecting ticket sales to pick up now as we’re only the start of August and the event is in October. So when people start thinking about Christmas and once the advertising campaign kicks off in mid-August. It’s always good to get people out there talking about the show.

Digger: Thanks Katie for letting us know about this new show and I wish you the very best of British.

Katie: Thanks David.

Send Katie an email