Targeting An ILMC Hitlist

Carl Leighton-Pope’s Talking Shop always opens ILMC and is historically its best-attended panel, but the industry’s most irreverent and ubiquitous agent-turned-orator will be hoping for better luck than when he last appeared at a big live music business gathering.

The Leighton-Pope Organisation figurehead encountered the unfortunate luck in Hamburg at the February 15th German Live Entertainment Awards.

As he walked on stage to make a presentation speech and announce that "Best Promoter" had gone to Marek Lieberberg, he was told the winner and his staff had left the building, obviously miffed that the company hadn’t won "Best Festival" for Rock Am Ring.

Leighton-Pope approached the center-stage spotlight a little more warily than usual, clutching the award and no doubt pondering the options available to someone who’s about to make an introductory speech and present a prize that has very little chance of being picked up by anyone.

Even by Leighton-Pope standards it was a wordy speech, which included a very funny rundown of each of the four nominees, but then digressed to the point that it seemed the only thing left for him to do was show slides of his last summer holiday.

As if delaying the prize-giving moment might somehow be a way of avoiding it altogether, he peered into the lights as he spoke, probably hoping that somewhere among the sea of 500 or so faces staring back at him was one that belonged to someone who worked for Lieberberg.

The LEA bash is held at Fliegende Bauten, close to the Reeperbahn, Hamburg docks and the icy wind that blows off the River Elbe.

Leighton-Pope stuck it out better than most industry talkers could ever have managed, even though he looked as if he would happily swap the spotlight for being pushed naked into the Elbe. He eventually retreated from the stage and handed the award to one of the LEA production crew.

Within a couple of days, Lieberberg let awards organizer Jens Michow know that he had no intention of accepting the honour anyway.

Maybe the gold modern art sculpture that’s shaped like nothing in particular is now perched on the stagehand’s (or Leighton-Pope’s) mantelpiece. Maybe it’s at the bottom of the Elbe.

Despite all the fuss, Guido Neumann from Hamburg Marketing, a publicly funded organization that promotes the city and supports the awards, was very pleased with the way the evening had gone and said it wasn’t anything like the "haifischbecken" (shark pool) he was told to expect.

The Friday afternoon crowd that shows up for Leighton-Pope’s annual ILMC rant shows that it’s at the top of the delegates’ hit list and the first to be targeted when they’re panel-picking.

The rest of the weekend (March 8-11) divides fairly equally between the popular regular panels that are well-supported by agents and promoters, which includes Emerging Markets, Festival Forum and Booking Ring, and the specialist gatherings of the accountants, insurance brokers and techies who look after the nuts and bolts of the business.

The two rarely overlap, except when financial experts Harald Grams and Dick Molenaar explain the tax law changes they’re beginning to force throughout Europe – services above and beyond the call of duty.

It took a couple of years for them to drum up any sort of interest in the subject, as the promoters seemed to be leaving it to their accountants to deal with.

Maybe the promoters eventually decided that listening to Grams and Molenaar was easier than listening to their own accountants.

As the weekend’s theme is "transparency," Nick Hobbs from Turkey’s Charmenko and Peter Elliott from the U.K.’s Primary Talent are chairing a Booking Ring panel with a sub-heading of "Wise Guys Go Straight," which is set to take a close look at show cancellations and how often the party at fault turns out to be the real loser.

Maybe Hobbs and Elliott’s panel will open up the "can of worms" the conference brochure claims.

ILMC conference agenda consultant Allan McGowan, a keen supporter of the "transparency" theme, also has a Sunday Supplement panel, which – according to the conference blurb – will discuss how some companies manage to maintain "financial stability" in "such a volatile business."

It will also raise the question of whether some companies "dabble in other areas" or have "developed methods to balance their commercial risks."

It’s an interesting question. He may have found some of the answers by listening in on the Booking Ring. It’s a shame the panels clash.