Rafael Miranda
Thu 16 March 2023
What's going on guys!?
It's that time of the week again, and today's blog is about our special promotional performance at the HMV Westfield White City in London on the 18th February 2023.
First of all let's tell you a little bit about HMV.
In a nutshell, HMV is a British music and entertainment retailer, and one of the oldest and most influential companies in the history of the music business in the UK..
The first HMV-branded store was opened by the Gramophone Company on London's Oxford Street in 1921 (yes, this company is over 100 year old!!).
And since then it's been part of British culture and daily life in many different ways:
The HMV name was used for television and radio sets manufactured from the 1930s onwards;
The retail side of the business began to expand heavily in the 1960s;
HMV owned the Waterstones bookshop chain, the music retailer Fopp and a number of former Zavvi stores;
It also branched into live music venue management in 2009 by purchasing the MAMA Group;
In 2019 HMV became a part of the Canadian Sunrise Records.
HMV stands for "His Master's Voice", the title of a painting by Francis Barraud, of Nipper, a Jack Russell Terrier dog, listening to a phonograph cylinder. The rights to the painting were bought by the Gramophone Company in 1899:
So as you can see the company is a giant on many fronts, and it's been implementing expansion strategies in many aspects of the music business, including leveraging the vinyl revival.
And one of their traditional practices is to bring artists to their stores, either to promote new releases and merchandise for their live and local campaign.
We have had the honour of so far having performed in two events, one of them at the HMV Bexleyheath in 2022 and the other at the HMV Westfield White City in February 2023 - a big thank you to the management team of both stores!
The HMV store at the Westfield White City is one of the largest and the flagship store for London:
The electric atmosphere of a vibrant Saturday afternoon at the Westfield White City - an amazingly pleasant shopping centre in West London - with the already exuberant energy of a crowded HMV store, culminates into a truly unique kind of event.
And one thing that is special about this kind of event is that, not only is it open to literally anyone who wants to enter the store as they listen to the music - and they do - but it attracts people of all ages.
From an older gentleman telling us stories about his rock band back in the 70's to all the little kids completely amazed from watching a rock band play live, some of them for the very first time.
And even though playing in music venues and nightclubs is definitely a whole lot of fun, it's a special kind of vibe being able to see whole families together enjoying our music.
We can say without question we had a real blast!
We delivered two sets throughout the afternoon, with a selection of original songs as well as cover versions of blues rock classics.
As always a huge thank you to all those who were there!
We'll be playing at a HMV event again really soon, so stay tuned for more.
You can watch us playing a cover of Back In The Woods by Rival Sons at the event right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35Bil3xxYSw
Check out our Instagram, Facebook and YouTube for some of the videos and pictures from the gig. A new video is uploaded to our YouTube channel every Tuesday, so don't forget to like and subscribe so that you don't miss out on new content weekly.
We also publish a new blog every Thursday, and next week's will be truly one of a kind. So stay tuned, rock on and have an amazing weekend!
Black Wolf Blues Rafael, Jake, Liam & Cam
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