Lo-Fi Allstars

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I took up a challenge a few days ago.  The challenge was to use a given set of lyrics and write a “lo-fi” song.  Lo-fi typically means a song that is recorded on the most basic of equipment.  A good example these days would be a song sung into the sound recorder on a phone.

Although I understand the given definition of lo-fi, I tend to disagree with it.  For me, lo-fi simply means lacking polish – whether intentionally, or through lack of equipment.  See, the thing is, over the years many so-called “lo-fi” bands have spent a lot of money-making their music “lo-fi”.  You could say that a song like Territorial Pissings on Nevermind by Nirvana is “lo-fi”.  But are we talking sound or money?  Hmmmm.  Difficult subject, difficult argument.  Anyway.. to cut a not very long story even shorter… I used the given lyrics and produced my “lo-fi” song in a couple of hours.  I came up with the music really quickly and sung the lyrics through just the once.  For me, and I stress, for me, this song is lo-fi!  Ha ha!  (**** it’s so not lo-fi 😉  ****)

This song is not part of any album.  It is just a quick throwaway recording for a project someone on Soundcloud has put together.   The lyrics have indeed been written by that Gentleman.  His name is S2a (Extinction of the New Dinosaurs) and if you are into spoken word stuff and anything with touch of punk then take a trip to Soundcloud and have a listen to his work.

As the lyrics are not mine I cannot be held responsible for their content.  I warn you in advance … there is a lot of swearing!!!


The Epic

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The last few songs I have recorded have taken me on a journey of discovery.  I so often in the past banged on about how the perfect song should be short, sharp and sweet to the ear.  But recently I have been on a mission to create long epic works with the aim of putting the essence of a stage musical into the boundaries of an indie rock song.

This new direction has taken me via landmarks such as Perhaps I’ll Kill You, The Calm and the Storm and Life Will Be the Death of Me.  And I’ve enjoyed every minute of those songs… and we’re talking about 19 minutes with just those three songs.

My youth in music was built upon the desire to write that perfect pop song.  That perfect rock song.  That perfect punk rock song.  Although perfect is probably too extreme a word, I do believe that I have on more than one occasion produced songs of true worth in that ballpark.  Songs that could have been written by Blur… or the Buzzcocks… or etc etc… but were actually written by me.

I now unveil ACTION HERO! .  This song is the beginning of a new phase in my time as Confession of the Whole School.  It is the start of something new… something that may throw even those of you who have listened to everything up to this point.  I am still yet to officially release All Monsters and Dust, but I wanted to keep you up to date with exactly what I have been doing.  It is after all only fair that I keep you guys involved every step of the way.  It is you that are staying the course by logging into this site and reading my drivel!!!

This new song is going to be on the next Confession of the Whole School album.  Believe me, this next album’s scope is going to be far beyond anything I’ve ever attempted before!  The new song ACTION HERO! has already been compared to Bohemian Rhapsody, Paranoid Android and various other epic works of music.  These compliments do of course make me over the moon, and while I accept that, for me, the song is nothing but another of my songs… flattery will always get you somewhere.   Who wouldn’t want comparisons with greatness!  Ha ha!  This song is setting the stage beautifully for everything I have to come.  You see, I just can’t stop.  I know I should be concentrating on promoting All  Monsters and Dust… but I just can’t stop writing at the moment.  I feel that when I’m like this (which I haven’t been for ten years!) I really shouldn’t stop.  I should just exhale.  Let the music spill out.  So that when the time comes that I have no music left to give I can look back and realise that I accidentally recorded a hundred albums along the way.  Okay… a hundred would be unachievable and an exaggeration… but it’s the spirit that counts.  I believe I have so far recorded three albums of genuine worth.

1) Alexi in Winter – Out of the Low Times

2) Confession of the Whole School – All Monsters and Dust

2) The Eleventh Hour – Escapism

(I am ignoring countless demos and obscure singles)

I believe that in amongst those albums are songs of value.  Complete artistic merit.  Complete cohesion (unlike this post which is veering wildly through the years and the subjects).

And I have a title already for the next album.  I won’t leak it yet! 😉  But I’ll let you into a little secret (which, okay, I may have mentioned in a previous post).   The next album is gonna be a concept album.  Not a twee, silly story concept album – but a concept album that ties in with the themes I have already explored on previous songs.  I’m just gonna step it up a gear.

Anyway… here’s ACTION HERO! .  Let me know what you think!

My Blues

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I am here.  Working on a new little ditty.  Small scale.  Intimate.  Ha ha!  up my own arse or what?!? Ha ha!

ACTION HERO! is on hold for the moment.  It is finished – but on a semi-permanent vacation.  I am here. I have an acoustic guitar and my note pad and nothing else.  I can’t audio record an idea.  I just write it down in the scribbled manner I have become accustomed to.  Pages of weird tablature and random diagrams. I think I’m on the brink of a really beautiful, really simple, really down to earth song.  I would hope to have it finished in a week or two.  But for now it is an idea.  A spark from a fire.  Lighting up the night.  But only for a fragmented moment.  Then it’s gone – unless I can make my notes completely complete.  (and stop drinking the red wine!!!).

Anyway… I think I’ve stumbled upon a new take on the blues!  Watch this space fellow confessioners! Watch this space with interest!!! 😉

Elbow Grease

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My manifesto!  Ha ha!  I’ve been breaking the rules today.   Okay… here’s the story.  I am currently working on a song that is becoming more than “just a song”.  It is a beast of a piece.  And the more I tinker the more the beast is snarling and lashing to get out of his cage.  I still have him trapped in the cage at the moment – but seriously, I can only keep him in there for so long.  The caged animal.  Prowling.  Shifting back and forth.  Put in a less obtuse way, I have simply written the longest song of my career.  It has waves, movements – like a theatre piece.  It has a chorus or two.  It could almost be an entire album rolled into one song. In fact some of my favourite bands have had albums that are only twice the length of this song!  Ha ha!  I think this song is going to split opinion BIG TIME!  Some will love it some will hate it.  I gotta say that the me of a few years ago would perhaps have fallen into the ‘hate’ camp.  But the me of now is fully behind this song.  It is as epic as I can get without actually hiring the Albert Hall and finding 500 tramps to play the spoons.

Okay… breaking news.  This new song is going to be called ACTION HERO.  There… I’ve said it.  I have to complete it now.  The game is up and the secret is out.  There is a new song and it is called ACTION HERO!  Hey, maybe I’ll even include that exclamation mark in the title.  And, actually… it looks pretty cool written in capitals.  Like someone’s SHOUTING it!

ACTION HERO!

So… there you have it.  This song will either confirm your confidence in me – or make you believe that I’ve lost my mind, lost my sense of credibility.

You gotta understand see.   I have written my fair share of pop songs.  I have written songs that ‘should’ have changed the world! 😉  Ha ha!

Now I gotta write some just for me.  Whether any of you are interested in coming along for the ride is a whole different matter!!!

And I shall update you soon about how you can actually get your hands on my debut album All Monsters and Dust.

This has been a most exciting 12 months.  What with the Eleventh Hour and Confession of the Whole School I have been writing prolifically.  Not just that though… the important thing is I’ve been writing the best songs of my career.  Listen to the two albums back to back and you are hearing some serious time and effort.  It has all been worth it.  How crazy would it have been for these songs to never have existed – just because I may never have bothered to put the effort in!  A bit of elbow grease.

The ‘Dying Swan’

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Just watched the comic relief dance thing.  Adrian Edmondson ballet dancing. Is it wrong that he was actually quite good?  Quite good to the point where he was a little bit boring.  No-one wants to watch an ugly bloke ballet dancing WELL!  Ha ha!  Still, it all ended as it should with Rik Mayall hitting him in the face with a frying pan!  Ha ha!  Takes me back.  The first series of Bottom.  I’ve banged on many times before about my love of comedy.  And I shall bang on about it again I’m sure.

The Future

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So… I sit here to type.  What words shall I inflict upon you this evening?  This is a site dedicated to my thoughts on music… therefore the subject of music it is that I shall force upon you!

I have written a lot of music in my life.  A lot of songs.  There have been common themes, and common emotions.  Most of the themes and emotions can be traced through most of the songs that have ever been written.  Obviously people have had something to say – the reason they ‘write’ the song.  And there are only so many things that people want to say.  Songs of love.  Songs of lust.  Revenge, despair, devotion, religion, stupidity, deception… okay, I must admit that even typing the list brings the realisation that I can’t just ‘box up’ music into an easy little package.  A song has a reason to be… and a song has a time to be.

I have written punk pop songs.  Most of these amateurish efforts were in my first couple of bands.  A time where you feel like everything you do is fresh and novel.  A time where you believe you can take on the world armed with nothing but your own bloody God-like genius.  And usually a time where the nature of the songs is overwhelmingly frustration.  Of the bands that escaped oblivion and got these early works out into the wide world a lot of them are punk bands.  I’m thinking the Buzzcocks and the Undertones.  For me… the Buzzcocks got everything right.  Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve) still stands tall and proud amongst the greatest songs ever written.  The awkwardness of songs like What Do I Get? and Everybody’s Happy Nowadays.  Absolute class!

And so when I think back to the songs I wrote in a similar spirit I was writing of pain and unrequainted love… as if I was so important.   The solar system spun around me.  I was the axis.

Life does eventually knock that spirit out of you.  But for those precious moments… years… you feel on top of the world – yet also in a pit of despair.  Hindsight’s always 20/20 and if I could relive those years there are certainly things I would savour and things I would do differently.  But we can’t do that.  We can never do that.  Life is a remorseless plunge onwards…. into the dark depths!  Ha ha!

Moving into my Alexi in Winter period I maintained the theme of loneliness and isolation.  I equate this period of my songwriting with the works of Nick Drake and Tim Buckley.  A lot of introspection and a lot of still believing that the woes of the individual are wanted to be heard by the masses.  When the years knock you, you eventually realise that you just aren’t that important to the strangers out there.  They just don’t care.  You are lucky to be one of the few that the masses appreciate hearing the woes of.  Morrissey et al are indeed lucky.  They may not realise this but that does not stop it from being true.

I’m thundering through my songwriting career here… but I’m trying to get to the punch-line – the point of this essay!  Ha ha!

After Alexi in Winter came the writing and recording of All Monsters and Dust.  Now, this has been an important album for many reasons.  I think it’s important to note the evolution of the songwriting.  From the Alexi in Winter-esque overtones of The Comedy is Over… to the kind of post-rock of The Last Gasp.  I think All Monsters and Dust traces a kind of growing up.  Not growing up in a po-faced, boring, middle of the road grow a beard kind of way.  I just mean the acceptance that the world is here to knock you down.  Knock you down and teach you a lesson.  The world doesn’t ‘owe’ a songwriter any recognition.  The world is here to kick a musician in the teeth! Ha ha!  And kick it does!  And bite!  And claw!

The internet revolution has been responsible for many things.  Good and Evil.  For me it has opened up possibilities with my songwriting.  The interweb has allowed me to connect with people I could only have dreamed of before.  I have certainly played live with many amazing musicians including Seth Lakeman, and my Alex in Winter album/ep showcased my own introspection during that period of time to a (in my opinion) dazzling degree.  However, the ability to work with a musician from a different country has opened my eyes and released my ears!  The Eleventh Hour project with Bill Ryan has I think been my most concise work yet.  I believe I have taken those years of being bashed in the face and turned everything on its head.  I have learned how to craft the perfect pop song.  I am an expert in song structure.  I know what a hook is and I know how to get you right between the eyes.  Bill has brought a new hocus pocus to the equation and allowed me to concentrate more vividly than ever before on the music.  The creation of perfect music.  Bill has written some beautiful lyrics and I feel we are nearing the completion of the Eleventh Hour‘s debut album.  I appreciate that I am talking very highly of this work… and that I would do because I wrote it.. but that is not the point.  It doesn’t matter that I am bigging myself up.  I am explaining what it feels like to finally reach the top of the hill.  The Grand Old Duke of York.  I’ve marched to the top of the hill.  I can now see for miles around.  To the horizon.  I’m not OVER the hill you understand!!!  That is not the analogy I am trying to express.  I am saying that I am at the top of the hill, surveying the landscape.  I can see all the “rules of music” spread out before me.  I can see all the checkboxes.  I can see the lists.  I can see the disappointed faces. I can see EVERYTHING.  I can see for miles and miles and miles!

I can now break the rules. I can now ignore the rules with complete confidence.  The worst you could level at me is that I’ve lost my mind… that the songs stink.  But I rise above it.  I know the rules… I ignore the rules.  I do so at my peril.  But it is my peril.  Please understand… this is not a rant in which I am saying I know everything.  You must understand that I know I know NOTHING.  But I SEE EVERYTHING!  Ha ha.  That probably reads like hippy bullshit.  And if you don’t get it you likely never will.

Here’s one for you.  Listen to a song from my ‘prime’ Alexi in Winter period.  A song like, for example, Salt Cellars. You will hear a complete ‘sticking-like-glue’ to the rules of songwriting TM.  And there is NOTHING wrong with that.  I loved the song then and I think it still has charm now.  Okay.  Now listen to a song like Fall.  You can sense the change.  It kind of pricks your ears.  There’s something a little different… but you could still imagine Jonny, Jase and I playing it.  It could be Alexi in Winter… but an angrier, more eclectic Alexi in Winter.  Now listen to Reconstruct a Memory.  I believe that’s the point I realised that I don’t have to conform.  I can be who the hell I want.  I don’t have to be in anyone’s shadow.  I don’t have to better anyone.  I don’t have to sound like my idols.  I can just sound like me. You have to understand that albums like The Bends and Definitely Maybe changed the face of British  music.  For the better in that me and my mates could form a band and pretend we were stars.  Playing pubs.  Being ‘seen’ out and about.  Getting the girl.  Whatever.  But to be honest… mostly for the worse.  We were totally in the shadow of those albums.  And when you’re trying to play ‘indie rockTM’ how the hell do you better a song like High and Dry?  And my word does it take a long time for the following to sink in!!! :  Why the hell do you want to better The Bends?!?  Just Be Yourself.  Sounds so simple.  Yet bands of the time didn’t realise this and most bands today still don’t.

Listen to Perhaps I’ll Kill You.  Okay… the lyrics specifically state a lot of what I’m saying here – but even just the music.  Listen to it.  I’m not trying to BE anyone!  I am me.  I may want my music to convey the ambition of the Theatre but in a more concise form… but that is not a genre.  I am not trying to actually ‘outdo’ anyone specific. I am finally being me.  Just me.  Now… if you don’t like the music then you can just turn away.  Never listen to another note.  Never read another word from me.  But for those few of you who like it… well.. the world is finally OUR OYSTER!!!

I suppose this rant has actually begun to become my manifesto.  Perhaps this post can be my manifesto.  When I’m feeling deflated I shall read it back.  Listen to the latest Eleventh Hour song.  I am carrying out my manifesto.  And I am taking Bill with me.  He has a mind of his own and he does not have to believe in a single word of this prose.  But he is with me for the ride.  I finally feel free.  Musically free. Lyrically free.

I am currently working on a song that is taking these concepts to new heights.  Perhaps I am building a ladder on top of the hill.  I’m not sure what I’m leaning the ladder against?  Possibly the fool?!?  Well… that’s for me to find out I suppose. Rant over.  Get back to watching Eastenders!  Ha ha!  😉