Adam Kidron
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Adam Kidron is a British-born ex-music producer, serial entrepreneur, and the ex-chief executive officer of Urban Box Office, a reggaeton and urban Latino record label, and Yonder Music.
Record producer
Adam Kidron began working in the record industry in 1978. He worked in record production for the label Rough Trade Records, as well as Stiff Records, where he worked with artists including Davey Payne and The Blockheads. He produced the debut albums of both Scritti Politti and Orange Juice (band). In 1984, Adam Kidron and his then-girlfriend, Lizzy Mercier Descloux recorded the album Gazelles, with a band made up of leading Sowetan musicians.In 1984, while recording Nina Hagen in Ekstasy Kidron had a near-fatal motorbike accident. He went on to produce Mercier Descloux's One for the Soul — a collaboration with jazz trumpeter Chet Baker, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1985. In 1994 Kidron was the music supervisor of the movie and executive producer of the soundtrack for "Jason's Lyric" with George Jackson, Doug McHenry and Sam Sapp. In 1995 Kidron co-executive produced the soundtrack for Mario Van Peebles, Panther In 1996 Kidron, along with Sam Sapp, Kenneth Edmonds and Antonio Reid executive produced The Rhythm of The Games, the official soundtrack of the Atlanta Olympic Games.
TV producer/''Catwalk'' (1986–1997)
In the mid-1980s, Kidron became partner in Crossbow Films Ltd., a UK-based independent producer of syndicated television. At Crossbow, Kidron developed television formats with Henry Winkler and Ben Elton, George Jackson and Doug McHenry, Clarence Avant and Quincy Jones. In 1990 Kidron left Crossbow to form his own production company, Marvellous Pictures, Inc.In 1991, Kidron and partners Steve Waterman and Jeff Franklin, begun production of Catwalk in Toronto, Canada. Catwalk was a syndicated television series based around the struggles of an urban band trying to hit the big time. The series is best known for launching the career of Neve Campbell, discovered by Kidron while she was a performer in the Canadian production of The Phantom of the Opera. Catwalk also featured Lisa Butler, Christopher Lee Clements, Paul Popowich, Kelli Taylor, and Keram Malicki-Sánchez. The show was based on a six-minute mini-movie Kidron had produced in London's docklands, which had featured Kate Moss.
Business ventures
Urban Box Office Network
The urban Internet portal UBO was co-founded by Kidron, along with the late film director/producer George Jackson and lawyer Frank Cooper, in 1999. The company aggregated websites such as Latinflava.com, Soul Purpose, Support Online, Hiphop.com, Urban Music Matrix, UBO Sports and Womanhood. Latinflava, previously a Spanglish e-magazine, became UBO's own in-house label. In less than two years, Kidron, Jackson and Cooper raised over $40 million of venture capital for Urban Box Office Networks, Inc. Kidron became the CEO of the company. It went bankrupt in December 2000 with analysts and former staffers describing it as collapsing "under a morass of bad management, bad luck and an unrealistic business plan".Urban Box Office
Urban Box Office was set up as a different company to take over the music component of Urban Box Office Network. It released its first album in 2004, and in 2005 it had several Latin music releases, including Bachata musician Andy Andy, and some reggaeton compilation albums, three reaching the top five of Billboard music’s charts. UBO's strategy was to sell low-priced CDs at five to ten dollars each through non-traditional stores, such as bodegas and hair salons. Urban Box Office went bankrupt in 2006.In 2006, Kidron produced "Nuestro Himno"—the controversial Spanish-language version of "The Star-Spangled Banner". Kidron presented the song at a concert at the former immigration processing centre Ellis Island in May 2006.