Full name: Jared Mark Wilson (aka Jared LeftLion)
Age: 27 (born 20.02.1979 in Sherwood, Nottingham)
Other stuff you may not know about me: – I was Student President of the University of Exeter for a year from 2000-2001 (I actually got paid to do that!!).
– During that year I helped to set up a music festival called All Together Now that still runs down there each summer.
– I won two national student media awards in 2000 from the Guardian and the Independent newspapers for my writing on the Exeter Uni Student Newspaper.
– I’ve interviewed people including: Ice-T, Liam Howlett (Prodigy), Cypress Hill, Howard Marks, Dizzee Rascal, Jonathon Ross, Caprice, Natalie Imbruglia and… erm Westlife.
– I am a tragic Notts County FC fan.
How did LeftLion start and what were its aims when it first started out?
LeftLion started out just over three years ago in the Grosvenor pub beer garden (or car park as it is really). Alan (Gilby), Timmy (Bates) and I sat down, had a chat and decided we wanted to do something cool as well as our day-to-day jobs. The idea for a Nottingham magazine was something I was thinking about as I’d trained as a journalist and worked on a few different publications before then and always believed that there was room in Nottingham for something better.
We launched the website launched on 1 September 2003. After a few months some great people started coming aboard and in October 2004 we decided we wanted to launch a magazine and so we worked hard to get the money together to do it. For the first issue we managed to interview Shane Meadows (who had just finished Dead Mans Shoes) and C-Mone (who had just finished working with The Streets) and things have kind of snowballed from there for us.
Do you think the local culture and artists have improved and more people have become aware of it since you started out?
Artists have certainly become more aware of us and we don’t have to go looking so hard these days as interesting people come and find us all the time now. The talent that is in this city is certainly more obvious and in our face these days, but they may have always been here and not had a platform before. Take OutDaVille for instance. They were an amazing hiphop group, but found it hard to get industry or media support in Nottingham and never made it when loads of people with less talent have done. Hopefully we can help to bridge that gap in future.
Roughly how many contributors does LeftLion have now and what range of things do you cover?
Over a hundred people have contributed words or photos to us since we started. Anyone who wants to contribute to us can do. There are some experienced writers such as ‘Nottingham’s Mr Sex’ Al Needham (When Saturday Comes, Daily Mirror, Cosmopolitan) Tom Hathaway (author of Full Bacon Jacket), Miles Hunt (The Wonder Stuff) and myself (I’ve also written for DJ Mag, Knowledge, Hiphop Connection and The Independent don’t ya know). The visual side of our team is also very strong with Mr Reason in charge of design and David Bowen and Dom Henry running a large team of photographers (as well as being bloody brilliant at it themselves).
Then there are loads of people who are not trained writers and photographers, but just want to contribute to our culture and build up their own experience. It’s a really great thing when you see their work improving over time. Everyone has to start somewhere and many of them have enough talent to make it as professionals in the media. But it is a hard world out there and we make sure they know that too. Our youngest contributor so far was fifteen and our oldest was sixty-seven, so that gives you some idea of the range of Nottingham people involved in this.
LeftLion has started putting on its own gig promotions for a while now, how did that start, how have they gone down?
We’re all big live music lovers and we thought it would be a good way to get our magazine out there. We started the nights in late 2004 and had Sam ‘Blues Man’ Lindo and Rapunzel Map at our first gig at the Malt Cross. Since then we’ve had the pleasure of putting on dozens of the best acts the city has to offer.
We now do two live music nights per month. LeftLion Unplugged at the Malt Cross features stripped-down acoustic sets and is run completely by Meg Rowell on our behalf. The Orange Tree is a more ‘anything goes’ night, with the next few months featuring everything from punk (Weeble and Sheriff Fatman), to Psychedelic rock (The Henry Road and The Ardency) to Breaks and Hiphop (The Elementz and friends). Pretty much every event we’ve ever done has had a near-capacity crowd, but they are free nights and we have the resources to promote them well.
We also do a weekly pub quiz every Wednesday at the Golden Fleece, which is a bit of fun and a good place for us to meet really. At that we play loads of good music, ask a few questions and drink lots of beer. Come join us one week. It’s fun!
Which bands have you been impressed with in Nottingham and who would you recommend people check out?
For me personally The Hellset Orchestra, The Magic Heroes, Urban Space Lab, Old Basford, Will Jeffrey, First Blood, Karizma, Kids in Tracksuits, C-Mone, Cappo, Rapunzel Map and many many more. It’s great to see people like Dealmaker Records getting stuff together and putting it out with such a good collective ethos behind them. This city has loads more talent than even we realise… the culture just keeps growing!
What events have LeftLion got lined up in the future?
We’re doing a stage at the Detonate’s Rock City bash at the end of April. For that we’ve lined up some some of the biggest Notts acts we’ve ever been able to book like Crazy P and Bent, as well as old favourites like Vaccine, Urban Space Lab and Deep Sound Channel. We’re also organising a stage at the Orange Tree for this years Drop In The Ocean festival. Then there’s that LeftLion/ Saggy Pants crossover gig for us to sort out… ; )
LeftLion magazine has gone from strength to strength in the last year and is now well known through out Nottingham. What would you like to see happen in the next year and what can we expected in future issues?
In terms of content for the next issue we’ll be interviewing Jon Collins, the leader of Nottingham city council in our next issue and we’re quite excited about that! We’ll also hopefully have a piece by the former Editor of Grandslam and Big Daddy Magazine (which was the coolest mag to come out of Notts when I was growing up).
In terms of the city I’d like to see the people with money and power support us and the general culture of this city more. Everything we have done as LeftLion, we’ve done off our own backs. We’ve never received funding from anyone (though we have applied for it and failed in the past). All our revenue is from commercial advertisers and we need more to keep it going and pay for some of the hours we put in. We’ve recently taken on a full-time member of staff (Ben) to get out there talking to companies, which should spur us onto greater things.
We’re also looking to take on some of the glossier magazines out in Nottingham who are basically doing very little for Nottingham, except for funding their Lace Market haircuts and cocaine habits. We mention no names, but they who they are…
Any projects, artists or anybody else you would like to thank and give a shout out to?
Firstly I’d like to big up the whole LeftLion team for taking us this far. It’s amazing getting to work with such a talented crew of people, particularly as they all do it for the love and not a lot more. The people on our internet forum are hilarious and always inspire you to carry on… respect to Nathan (NJM) for moderating it all. Alan LeftLion deserves a special mention too. He’s put up with my crazy ideas for long enough now to deserve a knighthood and is basically the technical brains behind our whole operation. Also thanks to our advertisers as without them we couldn’t afford to do any of it.
Big love from LeftLion generally to anyone out there doing stuff off their own backs because they love it (that goes for the Saggy Pants crew for sure). It’s people like you that make the world a better place and if we work together we can accomplish anything! Rock on!
www.leftlion.co.uk
Photo -bophoto.co.uk
