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.