As music conference go, In The City Manchester, UK, founded in 1992 by Yvette Livesy and Factory Records, Anthony Wilson, is an important UK-based music festival and gathering of Europe’s music business leaders. Livesy and Wilson are planning on taking that success across the pond to New York City with the launch of new music conference, In The City Of New York, on June 13-14, 2007.

In the late 1980’s through the first few years of the 1990’s, the New Music Seminar was the premier music industry event in the United States. Generally held at the Times Square’s Marriot Marquis hotel, the conference faded away around 1992/93. Most newcomers to the music industry have no idea the event even existed. Today, CMJ holds the reigns as the top music festival in New York, but it doesn’t represent the larger music industry and is generally focused on independent music and college radio.

The most important new music conference and festival in the U.S today is the Austin, TX based South by Southwest, where many new bands are discovered. You’ve got the yearly National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM), which has to impacted by the closings of many mom and pop and chain retailers, including the recent shuttering of Tower Records. There’s also the Billboard conference and awards for Hip Hop, Latin, Country and Dance Music. You’ve still got the Winter Music Conference covering dance and electronic in Miami Music 2.0, Digital Hollywood, and Digital Media Wire are the most heavily attended digital music events.

This new conference sounds pretty interesting. It remains to be seen how Livesy and Wilson will fare stateside, but we’re optimistic it will be a success. Hopefully, they’ll be a place for dance/electronic music within the structure of the event.

XLR8R.com reports the M3 Summit will not take place during the 2007 Winter Music Conference 2007. The M3 Summit was born out of DJ David Prince's Miami Master List. The list had modest beginnings a few years ago as a simple, yet effective text email citing all the relevant parties taking place around the WMC. David's list grew to the point that after a few years, it became an HTML email with graphics, and shortly thereafter, a web site component was launched that supported the list. There was also a guide that began circulating through all the shops and at the parties one could pick up for free (not sure if it was related, but I think it was).

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It’s 5:35 a.m. I just cleared security at Kennedy Airport’s Terminal 6, where Jet Blue will take me to LA for this week’s Music 2.0 conference. I’m looking forward to connecting with other digital music executives. This year’s gathering seems to be a bit more heavily attended by the music digerati than the conference I attended last summer. The conference will take place at the on Jan 31-Feb. 1, 2007 at the Bel Age Hotel, Los Angeles.

As I was sitting down to write this blog posting, a flight attendant with an Apple Powerbook G4 asked me for help trying to eject a disc from her CD-rom drive. Fortunately, Jet Blue offers high-speed web access. I was able to Google for help and found a link to an Apple Support Guide for that specific 15-inch model. There seems to be a manual eject button inside the drive slot, which you can’t see. It takes a bit of probing with a paper-clip, but once you catch the button the right way, the CD is supposed to eject.

We got to talking, and it turns out that her father is a jazz musician who used to invite legends like Dizzy Gillespie to her house for jam sessions. As a young girl, she thought, “boy, these old men…I gotta get out of here.” Today, she has such fond memories of the music that shaped her youth.

We reminisced about the good’ol days of funk. She’s got a friend who still plays with George Clinton’s band. As a flight attendant, she said told me that her friend travels more than she flies for P-Funk gigs all over the world. She laughed, thinking that George Clinton, at 61-years-old, is still funking it up. We also talked about Cameo, Rick James, Bootsy Collins, The Crusaders, Lou Rawls (who she knew personally), George Benson and many other greats.

It was nice to reminisce with her. Talking about the music of my youth made me think back to my childhood, growing up in Boston. I asked her if she knew who Randy Crawford was. She sang my all-time favorite, “Street Life.” We got on the subject of Larry Blackmon from Cameo, who’s early hit, “Shake Your Pants” was a roller skating favorite. She said there was a recent where are they now show, which tried to get his group back together. I remember how I used to listen to the late night slow-jam radio shows on WMBR (MIT) or WERS (Emerson College). The DJ would play Cameo’s “For You” back with Confunkshun 7’s “Straight From The Heart” and Stacey Lattisaw’s “Love On A Two Way Street.” Of course, I can’t leave out the sexy Rick James and Tina Marie classic, “Fire and Desire.” Whew…my new friend brought back so many memories.

It’s been over 25-years or more since many of those tracks hit the airwaves. It gave me pause to just reflect on my music industry career. How far I’ve come since those early days, listening to music in my bedroom, wondering about all these musicians and artists and thinking about how cool it would be to work in the music business. Today, my life is filled with music. From my job at StarStyle and Netmix going strong, I thought about how amazing it’s been to have lived my dreams and achieved success. Although I never became a musician, in some respects, I think what I lacked in the ability to play the guitar or piano, I certainly made up for in my DJ skills. There were so many people who wanted to see me fail. I shake my head now and think, why would anyone waste the effort to dissuade someone from living their hopes and dreams. You only live on this planet once. People forget that. It’s time to remember.

Well, it’s almost that time to board my flight. Gotta sign-off now. I’ll report in from LA once I hit the ground.

Tony Z.