Category: music

an appetite for destruction

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I’m sitting here listening to a mix of a new song and something strikes me.  The music industry now exists in the internet age.  Now, there are plenty of topics that I could write about with regard to the changes that the music industry and all those involved have had to endure, but I want to bang on about the one that I am playing out today.

So I’m sitting here in my little studio listening to the new song – and I have to say it sounds great – but there’s a problem.  I grew up watching documentaries about the recording sessions for great albums.  There’s a film out there about the recording of Imagine, any of the Beatles behind the scenes clips, in fact any of those great grimy old clips about old hoary rock bands recording classic albums in the midst of pure, unadulterated self-destruction.  I love watching the atmosphere in those old recording studios.  The intensity of everyone clashing.  In fact you can even see it as recently as Some Kind Of Monster.  It was very rarely a bad thing… okay, some bands split… but on the whole you’ve got a lot great music to thank that old studio system for!

So what have we got now?  Well, now there are a trillion more bands/artists – and they can pretty much all own a studio.  Seriously, when it comes to the recording of music, we have never had it so good.  I have more ‘power’ in my little studio than anything the Beatles ever had at their disposal.  By a factor of hundreds!  So why do I hanker after what I see on these documentaries?  To see John Lennon leaning back in his chair with a drink and shouting at someone who’s played a wrong note.  And what was Jim Morrison up to in that vocal booth during the recording of Touch Me? I think the fact that it was originally titled Suck Me might be a giveaway.  But the point is that music used to be such a communal activity.  Everyone would get together and play the song they had been practicing – together.  And then they would sit together and dissect it – and then smack each other in the teeth and quit the band.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for multi-track recording.  We wouldn’t have any modern music without it.  But I just yearn for the sights, the smells, the sounds of a hard-working rock and roll band.  Ha ha.

So, I’m sitting here in my little microcosm.  No cigarettes.  No cigars.  No hookers.  I have been drinking Pepsi though!  I’m off the JD in the studio.  It’s banned!!!  I just wish I had a Producer to kick in the bollocks when he messes up my tune.  And I want someone filming it.  Oh and I want to go to India and hang out with the Maharishi – but, hey, that can be a story for another day!

the eleventh hour

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Genesis.

The birth of a new musical collaboration. The Eleventh Hour is a brand new project emanating from the fusion of two artists with the same vision.  Where We Go Next was the “found sound” piece I worked on with American musician Bill Ryan a couple of months ago.  Well… the collaboration has continued!

We have just completed a fresh song.  Mean Machines  carries  forward the themes and direction of the previous effort and has led Bill and myself to one conclusion…  we must make this permanent.  This combination of thoughts, experience and musical expression will now exist forever.  Like the blocks of Stonehenge, our music will endure.

For what is essentially a side-project for a couple of already established artists we have chosen a name.  The Eleventh Hour.  Although we will both obviously continue with our own works, we feel that The Eleventh Hour is worth full commitment.  We aim to complete an album and to be honest, with two tracks already laid down, this is coming pretty easily.  We feel we are onto something – a special something – and through this Confession of the Whole School site you can sneak a little peep through the door and stay ahead of the game!

You will now observe another option on the top menu bar – The Eleventh Hour.  Click on this at any time to listen to the songs, view the artwork, in fact anything we choose to add.  It will hopefully provide an interesting deviation from the rest of this site which is, of course, still devoted to Confession of the Whole School material.  Rest assured that new Confession songs are on the way and ALL MONSTERS AND DUST will get a release!  I won’t abandon you!  But I also know that you’re gonna love what Bill and I have got in store for you.  This is clever music for clever people.  New music for new ears!

memory

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Had this photo sent to me today:

This certainly sums me up nicely.  I have a terrible memory.  Not a great thing to admit… but I have to make of it what I can while I can!  Music can benefit from a lack of memory.  It’s hard to be a copy-cat when you can’t remember what you’re supposed to be copying!  My intention is to always create the most original, heart-felt music I possibly can.  Unusually, the source of my inspiration is rarely pre-existing music.  I’m more influenced by film and tv – and most of all – comedy.

My all time hero is Tony Hancock.  A very troubled individual, but a stone-wall genius.  If you don’t know anything about him then you really should stop reading this right now and get some of the early Hancock’s Half Hour DVDs.  No, strike that, YouTube him right now!  His character is archetypal English.  Misery incarnate.  The episodes that remain are absolute works of art… true gold dust!  I say “the episodes that remain” because you should be aware that back in the day, we’re talking the 1950s here, the BBC would routinely wipe tapes clean in order to record a new show.  For that reason early episodes of Doctor Who and Dad’s Army have been lost forever.  Also, with Hancock’s Half Hour, a lot of the early stuff went out live and recording for posterity hadn’t really been considered.  Anyway, this guy was a legend.  I get more inspiration from an episode of Hancock than I would a thousand Radiohead albums!  But that’s the point.  Rather than be out there copying stuff and slinging it on the interweb along with a trillion other bands, I’m trying to stay on the good ship “originality”.  So, okay, it is probably the case that it’s pretty much impossible to actually create a new sound… you can count those bands on one hand – your Nirvanas and your Sabbaths – but it is also the case that striving for an original sound is a great mission statement for a band.  I’m not necessarily talking ‘experimental’ here!  Whilst I could easily post 5 minute interludes of silence all day long and freak out naked with some hippies round a fire waving vuvuzelas I would rather stay in the realms of the pop song.

You can still be original and yet be entertaining.  It’s not such a fine line.  You’ve just got to not lose your head.  You have to stay true to what turned you on in the first place.  Now, you see, I apparently have a bad memory.  I’d like to think it’s a bad short-term memory! So while this means I can’t remember what the Kaiser Chefs last had a hit with or who Amy Whinehorse is currently screwing I can remember what it takes to write a good song.  I remember the first time I heard “The Sun Always Shines on TV” by a-ha.  You may laugh (and some of you won’t even know who I’m talking about), but I think that song has stayed with me through the course of my ‘music career’.  Even when I didn’t know it!  I would have dis-owned it as a stroppy punky teenager.  And I would have dismissed it when I was being an arty indie kid.  But that song has all the hallmarks of ‘epic’ that I have always been aiming for.

The moral of the story – get hold of some good comedy, listen to Take On Me and stop being a sheep.  You don’t have to listen to coffee table music.  And if you must listen to coffee table music, why not listen to songs about coffee tables!  Has anyone done that yet?

Now, I’m rambling… I came on here to post something important.  What was it?  It’s on the tip of my tongue… … no… it’s gone.  Nevermind.  Tomorrow’s another day.

a collection of found notes

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Isn’t a song a great thing?  You know the feeling… when you’re young and you’re hearing all these great sounds for the first time – whether it be rock, Britpop, punk, dance, dubstep, whatever particular era you have connected with.  I’ve had a few ‘eras’ in my time!  Ha ha.  The beginning of an ‘era’ I remember very fondly was hearing “Babies” by Pulp for the first time.  Do you remember the first time?  I certainly do.  I was very much into rock at the time… and then this amazing geeky, glam style band comes on Top of the Pops (or something similar) and blows my mind.  It sounded fresh and spectacularly weird.  But intensely catchy and emotional.  Little did I really understand at the time that they were just tapping into a style that had been and gone long before – it didn’t matter… it rocked my world.  Led me into my ‘indie’ era very nicely.  I had a band at the time.  We had previously been tapping into my indie/punk/pop past… but the whole Britpop thing really swept the nation’s bands in a wave of new thinking and eventual mediocrity.

The song is an amazing thing isn’t it?  I mean… what is it?  As an entity what is it exactly?  It is a collection of sounds that can move people – make them laugh, cry, dance, get them angry (Henry Rollins I’m pointing at you!).  Some of you out there (in fact most, if the amount of dross on the net is anything to go by) are in a band these days.  Or solo.  Or a ‘dj’.  Whatever.  So… what is a song?  How does it come to be?

Paul McCartney likes to claim that ‘Yesterday’ came to him in a dream.  I can kind of believe it.  There was a time, long ago, when I had a dream that I was in a band and we had written the greatest ever song.  And in the dream I had it all, the verse, chorus, lyrics, tune, everything.  And it really was great!  When I woke up, for a few minutes I had it in my head… and it was really special!  But a cup of tea later… gone.  All of it.  Gone.  That could have been my ‘scrambled eggs’ – I mean ‘Yesterday’.  The point being that a song can come from no-where.  Absolutely from no-where. And then I phoned Jack Black and told him all about it!

So, what is a song?  One minute you have nothing.  A little later, after a bit of tomfoolery in a studio you have something that never existed before.  I sat down today with my acoustic guitar and just let my fingers stroll around the fret-board.  I pressed record on my studio desk and within 5 minutes I had the foundations of a new song.  It didn’t exist while I was out for Father’s Day earlier… but now it does.  And it may exist for evermore (if it goes on the album).  A song is such a random event.  If your favourite artist hadn’t picked the guitar up that day.  Or if Lady Ga Ga was washing her hair that particular evening.  Or if the Wombles had been tidying Wimbledon Common like they were supposed to be in the 70s rather than hanging out with Mike Batt.  You see what I’m saying?  A song is a tragic chance of a missed opportunity.  The greatest song I could ever have written may have been conceived a couple of days ago during that dire England match.  But I chose to watch the overpaid sock puppets rather than pick up my guitar.  Thus… the song does not exist.  What is a song?  Is it something that occurs when someone can be bothered to write one?  Thank God Jimmy wasn’t going to the Post Office to renew his car tax on the day he wrote “Stairway to Heaven”!

What is a song?  A song is a hit and miss, random, never to be repeated, one-off event.  Blink and you miss it!  Blink and you miss the hit you could have written.  So what are we songwriters left with?  We are left with a collection of moments.  A collection of ‘found notes’.

A collection of found notes can change your life.  Alter your attitude to life, shape your character.  The emo kids in town huddled under the trees.  The club girls out on a Saturday night dressed as fairies complete with skimpy underwear and wand!  The metallers… the indie kids… the punks. Everyone.  Everywhere.  And all because they once heard a collection of found notes that struck a chord (literally) with them.  Found a route direct to the heart.  Formed their being.

That’s not to say you can’t then be influenced by a new collection of found notes.  You see, with Brit-Pop, although the first of the bands found a collection of notes, the bands following in their slip-stream didn’t bother.  They just re-used those notes… again and again.  And hence Brit-Pop was over.  You can also assign political reasons to the collapse of the music… but really, all music is just waiting for the ‘next big thing’ to come along and knock it off its perch.  Nirvana destroyed Hair Metal.  Oasis destroyed Rock (before then becoming it).  Something is always there to destroy something else.  Now pop is the king again.  Everyone is trying to find out what Lady Ga Ga has hidden in her pants.

What is a song?  A song is an Easter egg hidden for the kids to find.  And everyone knows the kids are alright!  When that first human first strung some sounds together little did he (I’m gonna assume it was a he!!!) know the influence he would have on the world.

What is a song?  A collection of found notes.  If someone else finds them before you do then I’m afraid you can kiss the hits goodbye.  You will be forever playing Wonderwall outside the shopping precinct.  Come on buskers… find some DIFFERENT notes!!!

epicness

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Just watched Part 1 of the Doctor Who series finale.  In my humble opinion – really great stuff.  Universe scaling, balls to the wall tea time tele!  And a reminder to everyone that being ‘epic’ is pretty much always a great thing.

Crossing the road… not epic.

Making a cup of tea… not epic.

Knitting a new scarf… not epic.

So what is epic?  I consider epic to be something on a colossal scale.  Something that takes your breath away.  So, what’s this got to do with music?  Well my little Confessioners… if you take the time to listen to the music that your mentor is creating for you you’ll hear the journey towards epicness.  The aspiration to fulfill the perfect ‘epic’ song!

How do you make a song epic?  Well, let’s forget about how YOU make it epic, let’s talk about me a bit more!  I love epicness.  There, I’ve said it (well, typed it… but it’s the same thing really and not worth pontificating).  I digress… I love ‘big’ songs.  Always have done.  Whether it be ‘Janie’s Got a Gun’ or ‘Kashmir’, there is something ‘above and beyond’ about a song which has its sights set so high.  There are many musical methods to create an ‘epic’ song.  I suppose the easiest way (and I say ‘easiest’ with the hugest pinch of salt) is to use an orchestra.  This leads me to the next term.  CINEMATIC.  This is a word I have used to describe my music for a long time.  But what does it actually mean?  Well, I would consider a song that paints a picture in your mind a cinematic song.  Some songs are throw-away songs.  Catchy they can be… but do they linger?  Do they make you weep?  Do they make your day?… make your life???  I ‘feel’ a cinematic song.  It is a statement of intent.  The writer has a passion for a subject and they want to inject it straight into your heart or your brain.  How much longer must we endure the average?  The mean?  The mode?  I live for the epic.  Listen to the ending of songs such as The Comedy is Over, Fall or Where We Go Next.  These are songs that make you want to set fire to your furniture (then cry as you realise you haven’t even paid for that damn sofa yet!).  I want emotion.  I don’t want emoticons.  I want the real thing.  I want Coke!!!

Um, anyway… Yes, I watched Doctor Who tonight.  An epic episode.  I like epic!!!

back to the notepad

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No… not a belated sequel to a Michael J Fox franchise. I’ve got the notepad out again and I’m sketching ideas for a new song. Where we go next was a great success and therefore I’m trying to get that lightening to strike the same place twice (a clock tower perhaps?)! I shall again try to get the skeleton of the song jotted down in my cool little notepad. This pad will be worth a fortune one day! People will queue to touch it!!! Ha ha!

The new song already has a musical motif. A strong tune and a driving drum beat. I shall keep you all updated with the progress of the piece. I would have liked sites such as this when I was growing up. To have been updated about the ins and outs of the songwriting process as it was happening with my favourite bands/songwriters would have been a total insight. I’m not necessarily saying I’m a songwriter anyone should admire (well… I am), but I certainly think the creation of a song is sometimes just as interesting as the final product. I was always one for “making of”s and “behind the scene”s. Ha ha, maybe I’m the only person who listens to all the commentaries on a DVD! Let’s be clear… I’m not saying anyone needs to know what a song “means” – I’m all for ambiguity. I just think it’s nice to be included on the journey. In this case… as it happens. Over and out fellow confessioners!

hear all about it

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Yay!!!  News day!

Okay.  I am officially unveiling the title of the CONFESSION OF THE WHOLE SCHOOL debut album.  It will be called “ALL MONSTERS AND DUST “.  There are many reasons for this name and I’m sure they will become apparent over the course of future posts.

I am also very pleased to announce that the “found sound” song that I have been working on since the Africa trip is finally finished.  If you remember, this was a song that was built upon a foundation of wine glasses, a tube of Pringles and a box of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes.  I have collaborated with renowned American musician Bill Ryan to really bring you something special!  The song is called “Where we go next ” and it really is a monster of a song.  It has fully lived up to and realised all expectations!  Enjoy!!!