My name is Mark Christopher Lee and primarily a musician in the indie pop band The Pocket Gods. The band have been going for 25 years during which we have had 10 Guinness World Records and slightly infamous for our campaign for fairer royalties from the likes of Spotify and other streaming services.
Why Infamous?
Well in 2015 after reading an article by US music professor Mike Errico on the history of recorded music where he challenged bands of today to just write 30 second songs – as this is when Spotify etc pay out a royalty in full and as it’s so little why write longer songs? We madly decided to take up this baton and went away and recorded the world’s first album of 100 songs all 30 secs long called 100X30 – this led to the first of many Guinness World Records.
How did you get into film-making?
Basically I wanted to tell my story and the story of the band and our journey from indie no hopers playing gigs to 4 dogs and a piano tuner to having meetings with the head of Spotify about bringing real change to a broken music industry. The only knowledge of film making was from cobbling together low budgets music videos for my band so I decided just to throw myself in there and tell the story.
So What’s the film called?
Ok it’s called Inspired The 30 Second Song Movie – basically as well as telling to the story of our campaign and the band’s chequered history its also about how to change your life in a positive way by acting on inspired thought. I am heavily influenced by US author Jack Canfield who is famous for his Chicken Soup Of The Soul books but also wrote about how you need to act when you’re in step with the universe and you get these inspired thoughts. Well I got mine that day back in 2015 after reading this article about song-writing in the Independent. It was a kerching lightbulb moment……I had to record an album of 100 songs all 30 secs long to start this campaign – most people would just dismiss this crazy thought and carry on with their lives but I decided, no matter how crazy and hard it was, to go with it and see where it led me.
Well 10 Guinness World Records later – interviews on BBC World News, ITV, Sky, Channel 4 and features in WSJ, Billboard and more here I am now making music and films full-time after a lifetime of under achieving.
How did the campaign go?
I guess we technically finished it last year with the release of our last album – Vegetal Digital – which we put 1 copy on sale in our local record shop in St Albans for £1 million! the idea is when we sell it we will use the funds to set up our own ethical streaming service where we pledge to pay artists at least 1p per stream (currently Spotify pays around £0.002) – but we did have a meeting with Spotify’s head of music which Daniel Ek arranged and there they said they would increase subscription rates to pass on to artists – and seeing the news this week they have just done that!
Are you making anymore films?
Yes I have just finished a feature documentary called God Versus Aliens about the impact of first contact on the world’s religions. It actually has some key UFO figures in the world in it including Nick Pope (ex UK MOD), Seth Shostak (SETI and was also adviser on the Jodie Foster film Contact) as well as top Harvard astro-physicist Avi Loeb who claims in the film that alien AI might bypass humans altogether and contact our AI…this quote in itself has got the film worldwide media attention – see below – so hoping it will do well!
Are you a fan of the paranormal?
Yes I actually have also produced and presented a new TV show called Nub TV which has been called – Waynes World meets the X Files – basically it’s 2 guys chatting about weird stuff like in the pub and with music videos but it’s taken off in the US and doing well on Tubi. See sizzler link below:
What are you working on next?
Well need to try and look for more distribution and development opportunities for the films and tv show but I’ve already started work on a new film called Searching For The Divine – it’s actually the title of one my band’s songs but it will be exploring what God and the Universe mean for different people all around the world and will try and get to the bottom of life….like Alfie once said:
“What’s it all about?”
Thank you for having me and because of the excellent training and courses provided by Raindance I now feel confident as a film-maker and producer in going out into the world and making movies.
“Genius out of the box thinker.” – Billboard magazine
Born – not so recently in a Northern mill town where he studied Classical music at the renowned Huddersfield School of Music – eventually escaped to the glorious south of England and found solace in indie pop and after a short stint with morose Scots band The Jesus And Mary Chain he formed his own band The Pocket Gods in 1998.
Some 25 years later, and 76 albums and 5,000 songs later, the band have gone from playing gigs to a couple of dogs and a piano tuner to obtaining 10 Guinness World Records, millions of streams and have brought real change to a broken music industry.
High profile champions along the way have been John Peel the legendary BBC Radio 1 DJ who loved their track Ballad Of The Peshwari Naan and more recently Tom Robinson of 2,4,6,8 Motorway fame.
His campaign for fair royalties from Spotify led to them changing their playlist rules to allow 30 sec tracks on them and also led to them increasing their subscription rates which hopefully will be passed onto artists. He has also given evidence to the UK parliament in their investigation into the economics of music streaming.
He has been interviewed by Wall Street Journal, Fox News, BBC World News, BBC 5 live, TalkTV, ITV, London Live, The Independent, The Times and many more.
Decided to start making films in 2019 to tell the story of his band and then to make tv so that he could explore his love of UFOs and the paranormal.
