Category: song discussion

a lost song… a lost soul

Posted on Posted in Dorian Gray, music, song discussionTagged ,

Okay fellow confessioners, let me tell you what’s currently on my mind. I have a song. It is a great song. It has been years in the making. It is catchy, intelligent, powerful and is just a really epic song. It was started so long ago that musical genres have come and gone since I laid down the first beats. The song has eaten emo and spat out its quivering soul. It devoured the Arctic Monkeys for breakfast and still had room for 3 Shredded Wheat! This song is seriously good. But here’s the problem… it is my ‘unsingable’ ™ song.  So that is my question… does every singer/band have their own ‘unsingable’ ™ song???

Here’s how it goes… Every couple of months I load this particular song up in my studio and take a stab at singing it.  And every time without fail I end up in a sweaty heap on the floor with a throat like sandpaper.  This song beats me!  It knows my weaknesses and pounds the living daylights out of me.  But I wrote it!!!  It’s all my fault!  It shouldn’t be difficult, it’s just a song.  Maybe it’s the knowledge that if I get it right – this song will probably be the best song on the album.  Hmmm.  No, I don’t buy into that at all.  The problem is more likely the sheer speed the lyrics have to be sung at and the lack of gaps for breath!  I just can’t get any air when I’m singing this thing.  I think I need to enter one of those reality shows… Operastar UK; Britain’s got no talent; Pop star, you know the sort of thing!  They always seem to have breathing exercises for the troops.

Do you know what makes it even worse?  The fact that when I’m not actually recording, I can sing it perfectly.  Now this really winds me up.  No word of a lie, when that red light isn’t on – it’s like I’m a Jeff Buckley or a Thom Yorke.  With the red light on however I’m more like Worzel Gummidge! (google it).  Come on… be honest now… do any of you musicians/singers out there have this very same problem?  Come on… there must be one of you???  Just raise a hand.  No, raise your fist and yell!

Then to cap it all off, I actually do have a vocal take already on the track.  It was the ‘guide vocal’.  Let me explain a guide vocal to those of you not on the ‘in the know’ bus.  A guide vocal is when the singer of the band sings the song in the studio just so that there is a version of the vocals caught on tape.  This then allows the other band members to know where they are in the song and generally makes everything a little easier for all concerned.  Then, at a later time, the singer re-records the vocals properly.  Hence you have a pristine final version which usually has  no resemblance to the pitchy, rushed, sung whilst nursing a hangover ‘guide vocal’ take.

So… I have actually sung this damn song through before – and it sounds pretty good.  But I just want to make it great.  Make it perfect.  But I’m currently stuck with the guide vocal.  And I can’t move on.  Nothing comes close to the bleedin’ guide vocal!  Arrrghhhh.  Perhaps I could actually get a Girl Guide to sing the guide vocal.  Maybe that would help?  Or maybe just having a guide dog in the studio while I try and catch the perfect vocal take?  Seriously,  this would be like Van Gogh cleaning his brushes on an old rag – and then realising that the paint on the rag has formed the most beautiful image.  An image he struggles to recapture for real on a canvas… but can never quite attain it.  Would it drive him mad?  Mad enough to remove an ear?  In fact, maybe that’s what happened.  Hmmmm, I should be a history teacher!!!

So I’m sitting here typing this… in a pool of sweat.  The song is laughing at me.  And it’s such a great song.  I know it, and the song knows it.  And this has been going on for years!  This song sits on the studio hard drive.  Just sits there.  I’m getting older, and all the while the song is sitting there chuckling.  If the song had a face it would have a constant smirk!  I’m going about my everyday life getting older, writing other songs – but never completely moving on because this song is sitting in the wings… in the shadows… haunting me!  If I hadn’t already named this song I would be tempted to call it “Dorian Gray”.  In fact, I may well just do that anyway.  I will keep coming back to this song because it has a hook in me.  I cannot escape it.  I know it is a classic song.  But so far it’s a classic song that not another soul in the world has ever heard.  And there is the argument that says that perhaps that is the way it should stay.  A lost song.  A lost soul.

a post with lots of ???s

Posted on Posted in music, song discussionTagged , , , ,

Maybe I should start work on the ultimate song?  What do you reckon people?  The perfect song.  So, what would be your perfect song?  Would it be the song that you most enjoy listening to?  Or would it be the song that you most respect?  Heart or brain?  Perhaps that is the eternal conflict for any songwriter.  To be (clever) or not to be (clever), that is the question.

What is the ultimate song?  Is it short and sharp?… or is it an epic?  – a song of such scale that it obliterates all who dare to look it in the face.

My favourite songs?.. off the top of my head… typing at 100 miles an hour, with the radio on.  Hmmm… let’s see: actually… after typing a list of my favourite songs I have now deleted it.  I don’t think it’s something I should publish.  It would influence your opinion of my music.  Anyway… a quick tot up of the list revealed that most of the songs on it were pretty short.  For every Bohemian Rhapsody there was an Ever Fallen in Love With Someone You Shouldn’t Have and a Babies.  So… my conclusion… the perfect song does not have to be a rock opera.  In fact it is likely to be a small, insignificant work which nevertheless brightens your day, and then your life.

But I like my Kashmirs, my Sympathy for the Devils, my Achilles Last Stands, my Day in the Lifes, my Cry me a Rivers.  I love my Stairway to Heavens, Ballard of Dwight Frys, Rime of the Ancient Mariners, Everyday is Like Sundays… these are songs I would consider epic, not only in content but also in technical sophistication.

So, I am going to attempt a truly epic work of art.  I’m gonna try to complete a song that will take your breath away in its sheer outrageous scope.  The most cinematic song I have ever undertaken.  A work of total bloody-minded epicness.

Okay… I admit I’m typing this whilst drinking a bottle of red wine… but you’ve got to set yourself goals.  And when I complete the song I will point you all back to this post and say “told you so!”.  And, okay, it doesn’t help that I’m watching a documentary on Freddie Mercury!  Ha ha.  It’s bringing out the ol’ rock whore in me!  But my whole music life has been about trying to outdo the last song.  What could outdo the last song more than a 13 minute rock epic???  Hmmm.  Maybe I should watch Spinal Tap again for the millionth time.  Saucy Jack?  No, an epic from me would be well worth the wait!  How long have you all got?  See you in 2020?!?

songs are the footprints of a gigantic hound!!!

Posted on Posted in pitfall, song discussion, television, the eleventh hourTagged ,

Sherlock didn’t disappoint.  One thing in life that is always difficult to do is to surpass previous achievements.  This is true in the worlds of TV, film, art, the list goes on.  Was John Cleese nervous when he was (co) writing the 2nd series of Fawlty Towers?  I would expect that he was.  Perhaps that’s an unfair example as I would guess that John Cleese felt he could do no wrong at that point in the 1970s… but, for a normal person, the difficulty of living up to past glories can be a burden.  It drags some down, notably some of my heroes such as Tony Hancock.  But for others it can fire them up, fuelling something special.  John Lennon managed it with Imagine.  Kubrik rarely faltered.

In the rock world it can be difficult to forge fresh metal when you have been involved in previous tin can alleys.  I’m one of those musicians who finds the challenge to topple previous works  a driving force behind my art.  I like to write a great song… because I know the next song will have to be even better.  Okay, sometimes little rays of sunlight glisten in the creative haze and cause problems with the ever upward steps towards “the perfect song”.  In that respect I feel that Escape Plan was a gem that could have been very hard to equal, let alone surpass.  But Bill and myself, as The Eleventh Hour, have tried our best!  The result is a song called Pitfall.  It is a very different beast to Escape Plan, and is certainly a contender for first single.  Please give it a listen and see what you think.  The plan of action for The Eleventh Hour – the mission statement if you will – is to produce the best music we can.  That may seem like a simple, pointless statement… but if you really try to adhere to such a grandiose boast it can be a drain of the senses!  The quest for the ultimate song can eat at you from the inside, can fill your mind and consume your day.  We are not your everyday common or garden people us songwriters.  We are the supreme beings.  Remember that, especially if you ever meet me at the bar!  A songwriter expects to be bought a drink!  And a packet of dry roasted peanuts – and then my friends… and then… we may share with you our world. 😉

Oh, and roll on episode 3 of Sherlock.  Damn fine TV! 🙂

If you see SID, tell him

Posted on Posted in gaming, music, pitfall, song discussion, the eleventh hourTagged , , , ,

So I power up the studio. My little studio is like the control room from Forbidden Planet.  A variety of old switches – clanked into position – the hum of PoWeR. …and you sit there looking blankly at the equipment. Where is the next song going to come from? Then the spark. That magnificent spark of inspiration:
“It takes just one little spark to set me off… and just one small dose of you is more than enough.”

The sounds of my youth always provide me with some context to place a song. Now, I’m gonna go back into the deep, dark wilderness of time with some of these references, so those of you the ‘jealousy-inducing’ side of 20 will read this as a proper history lesson.

Video games have always been of a source of great inspiration to the more indie-centric musician. Ha ha… I’m not talking Bon Jovi or Simple Minds here! If I hark back to my ‘golden era’ of gaming I’m talking Atari 2600, C64, BBC, Electron, Spectrum, Amiga, SNES, Megadrive. Computers and consoles that had internal sound chips and produced what would be described today as ‘bleeps and blips’ music.  The composers of the day had a really limited pallet to work with, but they produced classic music. Take the time to youtube Forbidden Forest on the C64. Classic chip music. And check out the date! Ha ha. Listen to recent rap and hip-hop, Timbaland for example. This style of (SID chip) music is timeless.

So I decide I’m gonna make the next song a nostalgic blast from the past. And if it’s a blast from the past… why not wrap a few old skool BLAST sound effects into a rhythm. There… simple, the bed of the song. The song quickly takes shape. When I get an idea between my teeth I gnash at it until it’s in tatters!!!

Computer games were often conceived and programmed by one solitary person.  He’d be responsible for everything, including the music.  Eventually you had composers who would work specifically on the music.  The most famous of the 80s era was arguably Rob Hubbard.  Although knowing his name probably seems a little geeky, so many modern producers are using the methods he perfected – mentioning his name lifts you a rung above the average muso.  Smarter than the average bear in fact!

The youth of today (has to be said in a sneering “old man’s” voice) know nothing of chip music.  Ever since the mid 90s and the introduction of the Playstation, consoles have been able to stream ‘real’ music from the CD. I remember playing the original Wipeout and marvelling at hearing The Chemical Brothers and Orbital while I raced.  It really did seem revolutionary.  In hindsight, perhaps a little part of me died.  Ha ha.  Anyway, perhaps what goes around comes around.  Nintendo have always been on board the ‘chip-wagon’ and the DS is certainly doing its best to keep chip music in the public’s ears!

So… now we’ve established that I only like chip music and I hate ‘real’ music in games – I’ve just got to leave this website for a second.  Just got to have another play on Beatles Rock Band!  Then I’ve got to have discussions with some video game producers about getting some songs on their latest titles.  You see… garlic bread, nope, I mean Video Game Music – is – the – future – of – Real – Rock!!!

… just one more thing

Posted on Posted in music, song discussion, television, theatreTagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Any Columbo fans out there?  I watched Dirk Benedict playing the role of the greatest lieutenant tonight at the theatre.  I took to my seat with the dwindling hope the Faceman wouldn’t do any ‘Columbo shtick’…  and Dirk proceeded to trot out ‘Columbo schtick’ (hey, we’re not sure whether it’s shtick or schtick!) turned up to eleven.  To be fair he did it with some panache.  You gotta give credit where credit’s due – How the hell do you play the character after Peter Falk owned the character?  Peter Falk is/was Columbo.  But, play the part Dirk did – and he did enough to earn a pat on the back (if I had been in his vicinity).  Hell, he even smoked a cigar throughout – onstage!  Now, I’ve got to assume they produce special ‘stage-cigars’ for that purpose?!?  A stage cigar!  Ha ha.

Columbo is one of my all time favourite shows.  I can watch them endlessly.  I have done in fact – since I was a boy.  What you’ve got to understand is that good tv/film is like a good song.  No-one says “Why are you listening to that song again? You’ve heard it before!”.  But people will quite happily question why you’re watching a film for a second time.  “You know how it ends!  What’s the point?”.  Wake up!!!

A song is a song.  TV is TV.  Film is film.  Art is art.  “Why are you looking at that Van Gogh again?… you already looked at it before 5 years ago.  Remember?  We were in Paris?”.  Replace Van Gogh with any name you like and replace Paris with any place you like.  The song remains the same.  The score is always on the doors.  The song doesn’t change… and yet people wouldn’t query why you had to listen to Sympathy for the Devil 1000 times over the course of your life.  If a song can get you through the day then so can any other form of art.  Horses for courses.

So…  he mimics the mannerisms, wears the coat, holds the cigar, and even has the exact same moleskine notepad that I use to write my songs.  And you know what… I don’t care!  It’s a celebration of a character who will always be special to me, and a celebration of one of the greatest actors of all time (Falk not Benedict I stress!).  The essence of Columbo is engrained so deep down in my soul that I have a constant urge to become a cigar smoker.  But then the reality hits me.  It stinks!  I will curse the day when your common or garden 3D Holo-TV set comes with smell-o-vision.

I’m inspired by Columbo.  The foundations of the show are so rock-solid.  Reveal the murder and the murderer at the very start.  Then dwell on the cat and mouse interplay between Columbo and the guest star.  You see, no other TV show could pull off the trick up Columbo’s sleeve.  If any other crime show ever had a ‘guest star’ (i.e. an actor you actually recognised) appearing in an episode… you knew it would have to be the murderer.  Columbo thrived on this.  You KNEW the guest star would be the murderer.  And the ‘slowly slowly catchy monkey’ between Columbo and the killer would be TV gold.

It’s not necessarily about surprise.  Or at least not surprise as presented in most other cop shows.  The secret of Columbo is in the fine detail.  What are the flaws in the criminal’s master plan?  These people have all the time in the world to plan the perfect murder… but they ALWAYS slip up.  There’s a great conversation in the play I saw tonight (Prescription Murder) where Columbo explains it in simple terms to the smart-alec suspect.

“You see, the murderer gets one chance.  Just one chance to pull off the ‘perfect crime’… the ‘perfect murder’.  But you see sir. this is my living.  I get 100 of these a year.  This is my bread and butter!  And I’m good!”

I’ve written hundreds of songs in my time (well, tens anyway), and one thing holds true.  You don’t always have to surprise.  You can lay out the fundamentals of the song in the first few seconds.  It’s not necessarily about finding out ‘what’ the song is, but rather the journey towards ‘why’ the song is.  Music doesn’t just exist.  It has been brought about for a reason.  And that reason is far more important than the tricks used to ‘surprise’ you during the song.  We’ve heard it all before.  The new synth sound… new drum machines…  new romantic, old romantic, three bags full romantic, punk, rock, indie, emo, acid, dubstep, folk, trance whatever whatever whatever.  It’s all old news.  It’s not about finding out who the murderer is, but all about how and why.  Keep questioning.  Don’t follow.  An enquiring mind is where it’s at!

… just one more thing.  I have published the new song.  I changed the title to Reconstruct a Memory.  It seems apt.  You’re not supposed to feel you have to like it… more “do you understand why you should like it?”.

the album track

Posted on Posted in song discussion, the eleventh hourTagged , ,

I nearly have another song completed for my “all monsters and dust” album.  This song is a bit of a departure from the norm and will be one of the oddities on the album.  Shall I give the title away?… or is that tempting fate?  Hmmm.  Well, it’s called who invented the colour yellow? and I think it’s gonna be the ‘love it or hate it’ song on the album.  I’m from the school of thought that says sometimes you’ve got to have those songs.  I love JD but I hate Southern Comfort.  Hey, that’s life.  There’s something out there for everyone.  Sgt Pepper has within you without you.  I could personally do without you, but for some, that song is the key to the album.  Some ‘difficult’ tracks work, some don’t.

I’m just trying to work who invented the colour yellow? into a song that you’re going to love.  Perhaps you won’t love it for its catchiness, or for its ‘ipodability’, but maybe for the fact it’ll challenge you – and do it with a smile on its face.  I don’t want people to hate my songs!  But I don’t mind them being a bit perplexed 😉 .  That is the point where a ‘collection of songs’ finally gels into an album.  Rather than being a swept up heap of hits or singles, there is an uneasiness, a cleverness that elevates the mound of dirt to a position well above the sum of the individual components.  Occasionally the balance is wrong.  The ‘difficult’ song can shine so brightly that the rest of the album sinks into the doldrums (I’m looking at you Achilles last stand).  Sometimes the ‘difficult’ song is just so boring compared to the hits that all it calls out for is the finger on the ‘next track’ button (for me, some of the grandiose tracks on the early Maiden albums missed the mark).

So… it can be good to be ‘difficult’… if you’re lucky.  Fall borders on the difficult but I think I’m gonna raise the bar with who invented the colour yellow?.  Fingers crossed it works!!!

I’m still in the process of recording the latest song for The Eleventh Hour project with Bill Ryan.  This latest song is the opposite of what I have been discussing.  This is going to be the easy song on an album that so far seems headed in the direction of the ocean of ‘challenging’.  It’s gonna be a complicated journey, with islands of ‘wow, that’s a single!’ along the way.  Now… who could ask for more???

an appetite for destruction

Posted on Posted in music, song discussionTagged , ,

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!