Nomen est Omen.

Why did I choose the name LALACHOUCHOU? It is quite simple, lala stands for music, for singing, my kid used to tell me to turn on the lala and my mom says I did the exact same thing, so it was a logic consequence. And chouchou means sweetheart or darling and music has always been my life, so it just fit.

As I mentioned before, I grew up in the music business. My parents founded their concert agency about 35 years ago and so I was always around music, surrounded by music, went on tour with my parents and several artists and got to learn the language of music.

Music nurtures most of us, helps us cope with bad times, helps us underline the good ones, tells us stories and gives us advise, it can annoy us, but in general we cannot live without it. To me it is not only an inspiration, it is also my passion and it is my skill. I call myself a truffle pig, because I claim to be able to differentiate between a good song, that has a hit potential or at least radio play potential, or is just a great song and on the other hand, a song that does not have a lot of potential. I am saying this quite carefully, as music is art and art always has its audience, sometimes you just personally do not get some of the pieces. You cannot ask yourself to understand everything though!

I have met many great artists during my life, some of them are still on stage, some are retired and some have been gone too early. Some of them have become friends, most of them have become lifetime companions, we have shared many laughs and most of the very well-known artists are more down-to-earth than some newcomer artists nowadays.

When I was born the band Tokyo played a concert for my birthday, when I turned 13 Luciano Pavarotti sang a birthday song to me in Paris. Those were very special moments, although I do not even quite remember the first one. I was lucky to make many great experiences like this. Being on tour and hanging out backstage with the artists and crew was mostly fun and the time between the get in/ set up for the show and the actual start of the concert was filled with table tennis, soundcheck and always with games for me.

I have to say that these times have been different though, some things have not been as professional as they are nowadays, because they were optimized through the technical evolvement, like ticketing for example. Remember how easy it was to duplicate tickets and I remember my parents talking about how many tickets must have been duplicated for shows as too many people were in the venues. There have been many ideas on the way to stop the black market and one was through special tickets. I remember this fan ticket that was an actual cd, which you could play. It was a Genesis tour. (You can find a picture here: http://soenner.com/images/music/genesis_calling_all_stations_shape_cd.jpg)
I am glad that the ticketing companies have finally found a way - or realized that they had to find a way - to print fan tickets again with the artwork of the artists, as it saddened me to think fans would not be able to keep their ticket as a memory anymore the same as they used to. Tickets used to be a piece of artwork, they used to be designed in order to fit the artwork of the poster or the tour theme itself, sometimes being an addition to the poster. Needless to say, I am happy they are going back to the roots in some sort of way.

The black market however has not been stopped yet, not all tickets are forgery-proof and secondary ticket market has become a big subject to the industry. There are companies buying tickets at a regular price and selling them for a fortune! Although this is not good for either the audience, nor the promoter/ artist or anyone actually involved in the show, companies who speculate with tickets have become quite popular. The only way to gain control again would be to avoid buying tickets from them. But I might get into detail about this at a later post.

So, as I said, I call myself a truffle pig. A talent scout. Someone who finds new music that might become a hit tomorrow or just has something special to it. If I look into music, I am always looking for something that captures me. It may be the voice, the special timbre, the special sounds used in the production, the mixture of genres, the song itself or a combination of everything. It just has to kick me in some kind of way, it has to give me goosebumps, bring me to tears or just set off my emotions. Another song I just recently found who does exactly this, is this one. So please enjoy!