Blog 3

Finally we were able to announce my ‘king genius idea that I had in the early hours of one morning.

Poor Norman, sometimes wakes with me peering at him, with excited eyes.... goodness knows what he thinks, but he smiles and says “Okay, what is it this time?”

I was very excited about the idea, because it fitted so well with what we do and who we are.
Once I explained it to him, he looked at me and said, “ I’m not sure that will work”, but I did that thing that I do, which is try and find a way to show him that it will work, by just talking at him a lot.

Luckily, I have a few Tog friends who I can phone and ask what they think, I ran it past them, and they all liked the idea.
Even more luckily we were due to have lunch with Sir Terry Wogan the following week and I ran the idea past him. He loved the idea, but didn’t like the name. This is where my lovely Norm is the genius, within a few minutes Oldie Composers was born.

We then had a few months of going through red tape and various hoops to work out if we could actually do this, and finally, we were given the go ahead by Barnardo’s.

So, what is it, I hear you ask..... It is a songwriting competition for the older generation.
We are of the older generation and so are most of our friends, and we felt we really wanted to cater for them. PLUS having worked with the TOGs raising money for Children’s charities for 11 years, I know there are a lot of the older generation who like to help disadvantaged youngsters.

So how does it work.... well the simple answer is, oldies are invited to pay an entry fee to enter the competition, and they then have until the closing date of 30th November to write a song. They can collaborate with others, they can go to our Facebook page Oldie Composers and ask to collaborate via the internet. We have given them plenty of time to network with people. We may even hold a bit of a workshop at the Togs convention in September (www.togsconvention.org). Oldies don’t have to be able to write music, just get it recorded on to computer or onto a CD and send it to us.
We will be posting hints and tips from various people over the 5 months on our website and on the Facebook page, so just keep watching, or follow me on twitter @hellenbach

The top four songwriters, will be invited to a top London studio (we went to Mark Knopfler’s British Grove last year) There will be a house band for use if needed, or if the songwriter has a band, there will be support. Our producer will be there will ideas and hints and tips. Those four songs will be recorded and filmed, and put on iTunes and YouTube and on our website for download and viewing.
How exciting is that??

What I find so wonderful about this project is, that the more I spread the word, the more people get involved, the more money is raised and the bigger the competition can get. So it really is down to me and Norman to make it work. We have so much support from TOGs and Facebook friends and Twitter chums, that I feel it can’t fail. All we need is people to be brave and have a go, knowing that they could end up in a recording studio, and maybe even have their song played on the radio, the world is their oyster.