escape plan

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Yay!!!  We’ve just completed the latest The Eleventh Hour song.  It is titled Escape Plan and it will hopefully give you a warm glowing feeling when you listen to it.  I would liken it to sitting back in a sweltering studio in New York on a summer’s evening in 1971.  Come on, roll with it… picture the scene!

You’re hitting ‘play’ on the reel to reel tape deck. A glass of JD perched on the side of the control room desk (although in NO danger of spilling onto the vintage console I hasten to add!!!).  There are a few hippy chicks milling about and a couple of blokes with handlebar moustaches messing with rizla papers in the corner.  Anyway, you’re not concentrating on them… you’re getting ready to listen to the summer distilled into a 3 minutes 50 seconds slice of rock.

What are you waiting for?!?  Hit ‘play’!

… just one more thing

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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

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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

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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.

overblown indie rock and roll

Posted on Posted in song discussion

I’ve spent today in the studio working on the latest song.  It’s nearly finished and has the potential to be another epic.  I enjoy the task of making sure the current song outdoes the last – leading me on a never ending quest to produce the perfect epic, cinematic pop song.  Okay, I’ve given myself quite some task in aiming to achieve perfection.  But you have to set your sights high.  In the current musical climate this is the only recipe for success.  Unless you’re lucky.

The latest song has been another collaboration with American artist Bill Ryan.  This piece is a further plotted point on the graph towards the final destination.  I will update you further soon Confessioners.