My friend Chris Uhland is in the hospital. He stayed with us on Saturday evening and on Sunday morning I was on the computer when he said "Something really weird is happening. I have blood in my urine". Making a long story short, he's now in Baptist Hospital in Miami having had a 7lb. cancer tumor removed, as well as his kidney and spleen. They say he had the tumor for about seven years. A pound a year growth I gather?
Some of you may recall the live video feed of the TRMA awards at MOTM that was to take place, but was canceled for unknown reasons, which I mentioned in my last blog? Well, that was Chris "thedigidude" Uhland on the video side of the show, with the A1A Media Group.
One of the things I saw very early on in getting to know Chris, was that he always puts business first. Harry Teaford, of Radio A1A, is the other half of the A1A Media Group.
As the story was told to me, when Harry approached Chris about starting the A1A Media Group, like anything else he does, Chris did some research into this "Trop Rock music" to see what kind of potential it had and frankly, if it was worth his time.
One of Chris' other jobs is with the Keys television station WEYW. WEYW is connected business wise with WPBT up in Miami. In doing research into Trop Rock, Chris was able to access all of the media stats available, via both WEYW and WPBT. In his research, Chris found that according to all the media stats, Trop Rock has over two million fans. Over Two Million fans! After finding this out, Chris felt the A1A Media Group was justified and on solid ground with both Harry Teaford, and the potential growth for video media in this group.
Please keep Chris in your prayers. The energy he gets from prayers, good thoughts, vibes... etc, keeps him going. He's a very energetic guy. Watching him work is like watching the Energizer Bunny in the commercials! He doesn't stop! He's got several months ahead of him, so please don't forget him. He's a great guy, in addition to being a fantastic asset to the genre.
(Chris "thedigidude" Uhland (R) on the set)
With the stage set, first and foremost I would like to say that I'm happy to be a member of the Trop Rock Music Association! The group started off as a fan club for the group Latitude and was then called The Margarita Mafia and was overseen by Latitude's co-head Tom Becker.
The Margarita Mafia started giving awards at MOTM for various accomplishments within the Trop Rock genre. I always thought this was a great idea having a club voting and giving out awards. It keeps everyone in the club active within the club as well. Obviously, it comes as no surprise that a fan club of a band vote members of the band winners of the clubs awards. It would actually be a surprise if they didn't vote them in. A few years ago they changed their name to The Trop Rock Music Association and rightfully so, continued their club awards.
As I say, I'm all for clubs having their own awards. I belong to The Trop Rock Music Association (TRMA), as well as The Southernmost Coconut Castaways and The Key West Parrothead Club. Membership for each is only $20.00 and for myself, it's money well spent. The Trop Rock Music Association is the only one of the three that has awards.
As I write this, The TRMA show 340 members on their website, while their Facebook page has at this writing, 1,225 members. It should be noted that it may be that not all members of TRMA are signed to their website, as well as a number of people who like a Facebook page are not members of a given club.
Lets go back to my friend Chris "thedigidude" Uhland. His research into seeing if Trop Rock would be worthwhile for him to invest his time into, utilizing the media information available through stations WEYW and WPBT's sources, showed him that there are over two million fans in Trop Rock.
Just to underline this, back in August when Dani Hoy and I played at the Sandbox, Danny Lynn of Tiki Island Radio drove down from Tennessee to interview us before the show. Another station, AMI Radio, was going to air our performance live. As it turned out, the weather wasn't looking too good for an out door event and AMI Radio elected to pass. With that, Danny and I talked and decided to go with a spontaneous Tiki Island Radio broadcast of the concert. There was no promotion, as this was right off the cuff. Additionally, the rain held off. We played for a total of four hours, with a break to see the sunset.
When everything was all said and done, the broadcast brought in 28,365 average listeners over the entire show. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but 28,365 was the average. Keeping in mind that there are between fifteen and twenty Trop Rock stations broadcasting world wide, and Tiki Island Radio had absolutely no promotion for this spontaneous event, I think that easily underlines the figure of "over two million" that Chris' media sources gave. For that night Tiki Island Radio had 28,365 average listeners, while the rest of the Trop stations had their listeners as well, and no doubt, the vast majority of Trop fans doing something entirely different on a Saturday evening. So yes, the media figure of "over two million" comes across as accurate in my book and perhaps a bit conservative at that.
With all of this in mind, now lets go back to the TRMA. They show 340 members on their website and 1,225 fans on their Facebook page. I don't know how many members the club actually has. As I said before, someone who signs up, may very well not join their website and Facebook fans might not all be members. Some people have said they have around 600 paid members, others say over 800. Bear in mind, one has to be a member in order to cast a vote in the Trop Rock Music Awards. For this, I'm going to give the TRMA the benefit of doubling the highest number of members of the estimates that I've been given (800), which brings the total number of voting members to 1,600.
For the sake of easy numbers, lets call the media's call on the amount of Trop Rock fans of "over two million", to just plain 2,000,000.
The bottom line here is that 1,600 people voting on behalf of 2,000,000 equals .08%
Yes, that's not a typo, you read that right, .08%
Having said that, if the TRMA does have 1,600 members, at $20 per membership, that's $32,000.00. I have no problem with that whatsoever. Some may argue it, but as I've stated earlier, that's the going rate to join any club and they have expenses, just like anyone else.
Here's where I differ on it. However first I will state again, that fundamentally I support what they are doing. Their intentions are spot on and from the heart.
One of the things that myself, TRMA, and many others are trying to do is to make Trop Rock a recognized genre. At the moment, the artists, clubs, organizations, and radio stations within the Trop world see ourselves as our own genre, but those in the industry do not. They'll just label it as Rock or Country.
Should Trop Rock become recognized, it's a boost for all involved. Our fan base will at minimum, double and more likely, triple. Country star Kenny Chesney, who does a LOT of music that could also be categorized as Trop, has over 6,500,000 fans on his FB page. There really is a lot of potential here.
For a moment lets just pretend that Trop Rock did become a recognized genre. BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, all put us in our own category. You go on iHeart Radio, or Pandora and search Trop Rock and up come choices like Sunny Jim, Dani Hoy, Pup Morse, Jimi Pappis, Barefoot Reggie Starrett, John Friday, Chris Bellamy, Loren Davidson, Renn Loren, B-Man and Miss Behavin', hell, even me, Key West Chris, and the list goes on and on.
What happens with news, such as a new recognized genre, is attention and that attention comes from the media. This is the type of thing that the media would be all over as well! Believe me, that's where our exposure to new fans is at it's hight. Everyone in the media, the music industry, and the fans are all over it.
With the "everyone" that I mentioned, did you notice the first listed was the media? Yes, of course there will be Rolling Stone, the media television shows, and everything else that goes along with all the hoopla that would be happening.... including reporters who report along the same lines as say, the great Mike Wallace.
A reporter like that would have a field day with Trop Rock, regarding the awards, and subsequently the entire genre that was just created. Here's an organization that started out as a band fan club, run by the heads of the band, who won virtually all the awards throughout the history of the organization, then finally, the Trop Rock Music Awards encompass a total of maybe .08% of the entire fan base.
In short, as soon as the genre starts, it's down the tubes from the way an investigative reporter writes. It would make Volkswagen look like the Arch Angel Gabrielle in comparison to Trop Rock. Right or wrong, they will tear us to ribbons. We would qualify as confetti in New York's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
I couldn't say how the TRMA is set up on paper legally, and if it's set up properly, all is well and good. If not, it has the potential of blowing up like a gasoline storage facility hit by a cruise missile.
Again, I think that the intent of the TRMA is very sincere and they put a lot of blood,sweat, and tears (this year particularly) into it. For their efforts both past and present, they should be commended!
On the flip side, unfortunately, it's very vulnerable.
A couple of years ago, Beachfront Radio had a contest where listeners wrote in and voted via e-mail. If memory serves me correctly, they had around 14,000 votes. If those figures are correct, Beachfront is at .7%, up from .08%. Additionally, the voters at Beachfront Radio didn't have to join a club, or pay dues.
Trop Rock has grown quite a bit in the last two years as well. Case in point the 28K+ listeners we had with Tiki Island Radio on a live broadcast one evening from The Sandbox (Thank you Pablo, Diana, Sheryl, Rick, Debbie, and Danny!), was twice the size of the replies that Beachfront Radio received, I believe over a two week period.
Obviously, in my opinion, it's clear things should change from the status quo. I don't think the TRMA should be a by product of a fan club for anyone. Additionally, it's my view that anyone who is a fan of Trop Rock Music, should be able to cast a vote and shouldn't be required to join a club to do so, or pay a fee. This was the thing I liked best about Beachfront Radio's contest a couple of years back.
As it stands right now, the TRMA is a fan club, who self-appointed themselves as the delegation to award those in the genre and in doing so, changed their name from The Margarita Mafia to the very official sounding Trop Rock Music Association. Again, this is a self-appointed group.
I think other options could prove more democratic and farther reaching. One idea could be having all the Trop Radio Stations pool together contests from their own listeners. One of the coolest things about this crazy genre, is that each station plays different artists from one another! The results could be fascinating!
Thanks again for reading! Tell everyone what you think and we can pool ideas! I made a Facebook page to do so. Here's the link:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/TropRockAwardsIdeas/
Sorry, but the bottom line is .08% of Trop Rock fans voting for 99.92% of the fans just doesn't cut it.
All The Best From Key West
Key West Chris Rehm
Update, Day Two
EPILOG:
After over 133,000 views on this blog, an epilog is unprecedented. However, after yesterday's release of this blog, so many have offered information and experiences via messages to me, or posts, that an epilog is only appropriate. After yesterday's feedback, I can only imagine today, tomorrow, and the next few days will be similar.
One question that popped up was with the TRMA was:
1) Does one have to be a member to be nominated?
The answer to this was no. Only members can nominate those for awards though. However, if say Jerome Howard were nominated, he could only get an award if he joins TRMA, and pays the entrance fee to do so.
Opinion: This is obscene, plain and simple. If true, this puts the organization into serious question regarding integrity. Frankly, calling it by it's true definition, this would be extortion. It sounds like something the Mafia would do.
2) A former TRMA winner suggested that the figure I came up with of .08% was being generous. The Media figure of over 2M Trop Rock fans is set in stone. My figure of 1,600 votes within TRMA would therefore be the number in question. As I mentioned above in the piece, I've heard TRMA numbers as low as 600, which would equate to .03% of the media figure of 2M. It doesn't really make a difference in the end however, as .08% and .03% are light years below even 1%.
3) Many are in question regarding TRMA's legal incorporation. Most are suggesting that it is not set up as a legal entity at all, and that it's basically a group of people who have a private club, with no legal incorporation whatsoever. I have no information on this one way, or another. This is however, the general consensus of what I'm seeing from others.
