Decisions my wallet hates but unity loves

Demon Smiles:

What a sexy bunch of people!! Also helps that they are good friends and a new start up band.

Not that they are new at being in bands. Just like me they have been in many a band offering before although not together. Unlike me they were VERY good!

Something all musicians have to battle constantly with is the fact that you can only be in a band within other musicians but as a rule, other musicians are a pain in the ass to deal with socially. This can put huge strains on bands that are otherwise great. Be it having one band member who gets more attention, or having members that are not in sync with the rest of the band, or having a bassist/lead singer that is so utterly drunk by the time he goes on to play that he can't remember what a bass is and falls off the stage.... y'know the general stuff.

But every now and then a rare thing happens and people get to meet up who all share a burning passion for the exact same music and a band just spontaneously combusts from their positive energy. That happened when the Demon Smiles gang got together and I think that's goddamn awesome, and I'm a little jealous!!

Although one good thing about having a bunch of friends who are at the same point in a musical career as you is the opportunity for the classic team-up.

 Just like in the comics when your favorite heroes fight together (without the pre-meet punch up) I am always a huge fan of other bands and musicians featuring on other songs. Many of the greatest songs of our times have been epic collaborations between big name artists, and why not start that sort of thing off early when your friends are playing too. This seemed like a brilliant idea to me and I went straight to the DS guys and offered up my proposal which they also loved, because as I mentioned they are freakin awesome!!

I love the idea of unity and community blossoming out of a mutual love and respect for music and there isn't an easier set of people to do that with than those with a nigh on identical musical library as yourself.

Then my eager head started thinking great I should definitely sort the hell out of this recording so we can put a track down together, I already had one in mind so it was just a case of finding somewhere awesome to lay down some recorded stuff. I managed to dig around and find this studio:  http://www.ftstudio.co.uk/
 Which seems to be a great place to record and has some similar(ish) artists that they've worked with.
With this final piece of the puzzle I thought I was well on the way to laying down the final pieces of groundwork I needed to in order to make me feel like I am truly back in the game. Then Mike, the owner of the studio let me know prices and I stopped dead and my wallet sobbed deep wracking cries as it knew it would be hungry for the most of next year!! one of the other huge benefits in having a band rather than going solo like I have decided is that you get to split costs rather than lump it all yourself.

Still I'll just grit my teeth and get the hell on with it because..... well just because I can't imagine doing anything else.

It's xmas so I'm getting the hell outta here. Tune in after the 8th to find out whether I spuffed up the Camden gig... I can tell you right now it'll go either way with how things stand right now!!

Living up to our own expectations

I've been thinking a lot about the people who I look up to musically recently and have been wondering about the fact that I think that all of the people that inspire me to play music are tonnes better at it than I am. Jeffrey Lewis is a new addition to the list of people I think are incredible and actually has a song that ironically ponders this question too....

There are a lot of people who have been a big influence on me musically but I'd like to focus just a little on the three biggest influences in my life (that weren't just a faze thing) and what it is about them that made go "by Odins beard that is just how I want to be". I look up to these people and hope that people hear them in my music. But will I ever be able to live up to them and do they feel exactly the same way about Joe Strummer or the guys that were decking out their record collections as teenagers?

I couldn't say for sure but here is why they made an impact on me:

Mark Hoppus.

Blink-182 were a revelation to me musically. They were the first punk band that taught me the real meaning of punk rock as I see it, that punk is not about being politically minded like the old school and hardcore bands, or being super technical like the offspring and strung out, or even about trying to be punk. It is pure self expression, and that's what Blink were to me. I don't really care about what is going on politically, not that I'm blind to the worlds problems, but when I was 15 I cared about stuff that 15 year olds care about and Blink spoke to me in a way that other bands never managed.

Mark was this super cool guy who "played" bass and "sang" and was the funniest guy I had seen or heard. He was exactly what cool meant to me, the band made funny videos and everything that came out his mouth was hysterical! Also I've been a bass player most of my life and to see this guy who was a bass player and not be stood overlooked at the back of the stage made me realize that I could aim to be where he was one day.

Mike Herrera

I love fast music, the faster the better for me. Throughout my musical education I've always been drawn to stuff that has a tonne of energy and sought out whatever was quickest without losing it's structure. When I heard Life in General for the first time I couldn't even believe what was happening to my ears. 

MXPX represented everything that I wanted a song to be. It was blisteringly fast, but not too technical, it was melodic but the total opposite of poppy, it was relevant to my life but with such a positive outlook and message behind it that I felt that whatever I wanted to do it was right and I could manage it.

Mike was at the center of all of that. There he was, again a bassist but the leader of the band. He was tattooed and pierced and dyed his hair crazy colours and wrote all the songs, and his voice! This anti-melodic gravelly off kilter swaggering tenor that..... good gods...... sounded a bit like mine!!! people would say to me that i sounded like him and that then settled it, I wanted to be him. My second band was called Open Ending and I did everything I could to make it into MXPX mark II. My first tattoo was an MXPX tattoo and still to this day I have retained that deliberate off pitch quality to the way I sing.

Open Ending - Every Six Seconds

Tim Armstrong

Love or hate Rancid, the fact that they are successful is undeniable. In my own humble opinion that's because they speak to that part in all of us that are alternatively minded that tells us we don't belong, and tells that part of our brain "it's ok to not fit in, we don't either too so you can be our friends"!

There is a universality about Rancid that means you can walk up to anyone with scruffy converse, or a leather jacket, or patches on their clothes, or *add appropriate new-school punk cliche* and instantly know you'll have something in common with them. That's a kind of magic that not a great deal of bands can muster.

Tim Armstrong used to be a junkie. Tim is now a multi-millionaire. This spoke to me most of the way through my uni years as I have had some demons to battle myself and looking at this guy who dragged himself out a gutter to do so much really hit home to me personally. It's not just that he plays in Rancid, Tim is someone I admire for being an entrepreneurial powerhouse throughout his career. Having started his own record label and performing in other side projects and having been a producer on albums like P!nk, he made the saying "if you put your mind to something....*don't know the rest of the saying*" feel real and tangible to me. For that he sits pretty close to my favorite human beings of all time, despite what the punk police may say about him "selling out", because at the end of the day, when you're homeless and jobless and your whole life is in a black bin bag you don't dream of staying like that for the rest of your life so you'll appease the hardcore masses. You dream of making it big (or scoring that high paying job) so you can sit on the internet on a Friday afternoon blogging instead of puking blood into a bush outside the pub you're cadging drinks in.

Set lists and the irradication of silence between songs...

Could've been a Doctor!

This gross mass of scribbles is my futile attempt at trying to organise what hell I'm gonna do for my next show. I have six weeks to try and get myself from being a nervous wreck on stage with four songs, shaking legs and no banter to someone who can confidently hold a stage (even just a little one)  for 30 minutes in front of total strangers and come out the end of it looking at least a little pro.

The first trial of this period will be getting my own songs together. there are three new ones which have started forming in my mind and with a little nurturing and effort they should turn into something worth while. My judge these days on whether a song is working is by singing them to Summer, if she smiles at me then it's good enough to me. Fits and crying means it's a no go!

"This one gets 7/10"

That'll bring me up to seven original songs I hope that's enough and my quick bit of maths tells me it should be fine. I also have three covers which shouldn't be much of a problem.

The next bit is going to be trickier.

So I have been playing in bands for a long time but I have never had to worry about the issue of deathly painful silence once a song stops. Usually the drummer will do a few licks, or a lead singer will chat, and if he plays an instrument then another member of the band will chat whilst he tunes and organises himself. But doing the solo thing means there's none of that. If I want to take a drink, or sort a capo out on my guitar, or quietly die a little from an overabundance of nervous energy then it completely breaks the flow of my time up on stage. Back in the day I learnt that the secret to a good show is having it feel liquid, like every piece of the show flows into the next without the audience having realised that the transition has been made. But how do I do this without support?

Well my first idea was to turn the act into a dual acoustic punk/standup comedy routine. There are a few reasons why this was a stupid idea, the first of which is that I am not a funny guy. I am fairly quick witted and have been known to come out with funny observations on occasion but the issue is that it is always accidental. I am never deliberately funny. And I don't have a sense of humour that translates well into standing in front of a crowd delivering a dialogue. So that went out the window.

What I have decided instead is to try something a little more modern, and that's is what I have come to think of as "onstage micro-blogging". I guess I should try and explain that purposefully vague term....

Wise words!

In todays world we like our information neatly packed into bite sized snippets that our brains can process quickly and move onto the next. It is truly an ADD age we are in and more and more the way we expect things to work on the internet is the way we want to deal with things in real life. So the plan is to have a particular observation, doesn't necessarily need to be humourous but I may try, that takes no more than 20 seconds to say in between each song. This will give me (hopefully) enough time to sort my shit out but also will make an audience pay attention to what I'm talking about just long enough for them to want me to start doing something else. It doesn't sound like anything new but I see artists go either way with the "talk between songs" thing, you can ramble, but then you either need to be extremely interesting or have fans that will not care what you're saying. This will be about having something structured to say in a very specific timeframe that will essentially trick someone into listening to me. By the time they realise they aren't that interested in what I'm talking about I'm already playing another song so they don't mind the fact they just had to listen to me talk rubbish at them.

Anyway like I say it's just an idea but it seems to be the most reasonable way to get over my issue....

unless I need to drink.....

Bugger!

Writing Songs..... the ADD way

When I was about 11 and I made my mind up that being a rock star was definitely the right career path for me I glossed over the small print mentioning that poetry is a huge part of making it if your gonna be going it alone or having your own band. I kind of struggled with this idea when I was big into heavy metal and instant classics about kthulu and satan weren't exactly forthcoming. By the time I was 13 I had discovered punk rock and found my niche in singing song just about life and love and pet peeves and stuff that actually happened in my head. Every song I have ever written has just been about stuff that pops into my mind and as much as I sometimes wish I was super politically minded that just aint me and I have over the years come to terms with this.

Now there are two different ways I come up with song ideas and I'm not sure either are particularly productive means by which to write a song. The first and most basic is when I'm in the shower and something is on my mind and I just kind of start humming a tune along with whatever was going on up in my head. you can spot these songs by them being a little more structured than others and generally feel a little more topical. The second and most inconvenient way I come up with songs is that I dream them. Yeah it's a pain and often means I have to jolt myself awake at four in the morning and try desperately to find something to write the fleeting thoughts down on. These tunes are normally a little more vague in content and normally have the words kind of jammed into verses in slightly irregular ways.  On being able to actually remember what was going on I find I like these tunes more, but the problem with them is often I wake up the next morning having scribbled a tonne of total nonsensical bollocks down so more than half of the songs that start life this way are scrapped before anything productive can be done with them.

Out of the innumerable amount of songs I have written in my life I have probably only kept about 40% of all of them due to repeated playing making me decide I don't like them any more. I figure if I don't like one any more then everyone will likely think it sucks too!

I have decided that since I have started this blog then maybe I can use it to help with this process by getting some (hopefully) objective appraisals on songs I'm writing by putting the ideas I have up on the internets for anyone perusing these pages to leave a comment and I'll use the feedback to make a better decision on what is worth developing and what should be left by the wayside. So for your first up is a recent dream idea I had, I think it may have potential so here is the first verse I worked out, I'll put the words here and also you can check the vid to hear the idea for the melody. I realise I may be setting myself to receive a bunch of hostile troll commentary but hey, it's worth a shot.

"Punk Police"

Verse:
I'm sorry I don't give a fuck about the people in power
But as long as I can string four chords together
And provide for my family I'm gonna be happy

And I'm sorry that my hair is just it's natural colour
And I don't own a leather jacket or have a mohawk
But I have my music in my soul and carry it with me......


Yeah so that's it so far and here is the tune:

So this is me in the shed at the end of my garden. It's the only place I have found where I can make noise once Summer goes to bed so This is where I'll be for the forseeable future, freezing my tits off with a flashlight and a digital camera until I can figure out somewhere to play that is a little bigger/warmer/nicer smelling. If you would like to see videos of the tunes that I actually have finished off then let me know in the comments.

First Show Aftermath...

12th Nov
So I have gotten over the fallout from my first show and all in all it didn't go as horrifically has it could have done.
A couple of things happened to me as I stood up on the stage. Firstly I became incredibly aware of the difference in style between what I was playing and what the people staring in my direction liked. As much as I like to think I'm pretty hardcore the truth is that I am and always will be a pop-punk. Now there are some awful bands which fall into that genre but the same can be said about absolutely any style of music possible. I fall into that genre, hook line and sinker, and I have now decided it aint such a bad thing. Problem on the night though was that I was face to face with around 40 or so drunken hardcore Oi punks and I was a little shaken by the revelation!
Secondly came from that number above. Yeah standing in front of 40 plus people who have paid good money to come to a show and expect to be entertained is a little terrifying. Now I have played in bands for nearly fifteen years and together with a band that sort of number would not be enough to put me off, but there is something incredibly humbling about standing by yourself with spotlights glaring in your face, realizing that there is no one to back to up and that every tiny slip is a million times more noticeable and that you are the only one to blame to each time things aren't perfect.
So there I was, standing there and shaking in my biker boots and my mind drew a blank. I couldn't remember the name of my songs, what order I was playing them in (I only did seven) or how to play the guitar that was trembling in front of me. I had a fleeting moment thinking if I just bolted for the door I could probably make it all the way back to london and delete every social media account I own before I could hear the laughter. Although that would make for a quick merciful end to my dreams of building a career back up I decided instead to just close my eyes and see if my stupid scared brain could put itself back together.

And so I did. And I played the wrong chords. Over and over. But not so badly that I totally broke a song, and people didn't seem massively bothered by the muck ups, maybe that was because I did well enough overall to keep myself together and maybe it was just because they didn't care and weren't listening. Either way it went well enough for me and I even had a few claps and the odd cheer. Pretty much ends this in a win for me. I even had a guy ask for my pick and set-list afterwards so if I had been that bad I'm pretty sure that wouldn't have happened.

Now I need to write some more songs. I can't get by on Rancid covers forever and next time I play it probably wont be in front of a crowd that new me from the CJD/Another Day Lost/Valves eras and forgive me for playing things wrong and forgetting lyrics. next time is the real deal. Also I need to record something too, so it may be sometime before I play again.

We'll see.

Upcoming first show...

25th Oct.
So I am preparing for my first proper solo show which I will be playing alongside the ABSO Retards, Matt Black and the Emulsions amongst other special guests. Of course having a 9 week old baby means that most practices have to be played to her. Therefore I have no idea what anything sounds like loud.

I feel like it's a bit of a bold move having written all new material (and even a new Billy Bragg cover) but in my head I feel it's the right thing to do. Even though I could quite happily play Roots Radicals and the old CJD alternate versions for the rest of my existence it's time to step things up a notch and see if this old rum addled brain can still write a catchy ditty.

I tell myself at least once a day that I will re record the songs so I can have a half decent demo ep but being that I am still working quite hard on sleeping properly that will have to wait tll i have some more energy and some actual spare time.