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Touring with Snowapple

Tuesday 3 February, 2015
Tags: snowapple

Snowapple have just released their superb second album “Illusion” (on Debt Records naturally) and are about to embark on a UK tour.
I’ll be the support act at most of the shows (but will be driving in a separate vehicle because their van is full of huge frocks and extravagant hats).
They’re a great live act so I urge you to attend one of their gigs if the tour comes anywhere near you. Dates can be found in the gig section of this website.

Here’s a little song I wrote for them last year:

www.snowapple.nl

Delete as applicable: Looking Back, Looking Forward, Looking Inward, Looking Stupid.

Wednesday 7 January, 2015
Tags: album, bedlam six, fab radio international, fresh on the net, musicians union, snowapple, tom robinson, youth

New Year’s Day and Epiphany are both rapidly fading in the rear view mirror so I suspect I’ve missed the window for a 2014 retrospective. Probably for the best, retrospectives tend to be more for the writer than the reader, it’s a way to get a sense of closure on a year whilst simultaneously smuggling out old news under the guise of new writing.

So rather than posting a month by month roundup of events I’ve opted for a sort of existential belch. A pause, a glance over the shoulder, a deep breath and then a continuance.

For me 2014 was a good year on paper but one that left no lingering sense of satisfaction. The Bedlam Six released what most of us deem to be our best work yet (the album “Youth” – available here); it received good reviews from both crowds and critics before disappearing down the plughole of cultural indifference without leaving so much as a ripple. It’s fine, that happened to Tom Petty’s new album too. Later in the year we played some relatively impressive shows across the UK, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Austria and Italy, most were healthily attended, many sold out (a few were the opposite but they probably clashed with football matches or something, right?). A more zealous PR man than I would have polished it all up into a big glistening progress-shaped press release but it all felt rather same-old-same-old and I couldn’t help notice my knees were starting to hurt after the nightly power slides. So we promptly disbanded to nurse our wounds and look quizzically at our respective bank balances.

My favourite moments of 2014 were those that took place out of my comfort zone. I joined the newly-formed Live Performance Committee at the Musicians’ Union, became a radio presenter on Fab Radio International and accepted an invitation from Tom Robinson to join his team of moderators at Fresh On The Net. All three of these new positions have done wonders for invigorating my sense of the greater music scene. Context can be a terrifying thing, but it also enriches our understanding and appreciation of everything we decide to view as important.

In other news I shaved off my trademark moustache during a photoshoot with Manchester legend Karen McBride. It kind of made sense at the time, when I first grew the thing in 2008 moustaches were artistic shorthand for “loser” and “deluded throwback” – stereotypes that suited the angry little narrator of my Bedlam Six songs. Now they’re synonymous with cereal cafes, beanie hats and tumblr, I’m not sure the look really chimes with my thwarted little protagonist. Maybe I’m just over-thinking it. I did a lot of over-thinking in 2014.

So, looking ahead… I think the main thing I want to continue in 2015 is the attempt to keep eroding all the “industry” bullshit that everyone seems to think is so essential to our everyday lives as musicians, putting up pointless walls between audience and artist in an attempt to make the latter feel more authentic. At the label we began an ongoing project of public recording sessions whereby we’d put together tracks in full view of anyone with a passing interest in the process. We also started holding Bedlam Socials where we’d just let our audience know when we’d all be in the pub at the same time so anyone who fancied it could come over and say hi without having to buy a ticket to a gig or negotiate a website contact form. I know, it’s not exactly the fall of the Berlin Wall but it’s a gesture of sorts. So, yes, more of that sort of thing.

As for new projects, I’m currently recording a solo album that should be out in Spring (NB I tend to say “Spring” when talking about things that aren’t finished yet – it always seems so far away when one is shivering in the Winter chill, so infinitely achievable… it’ll probably be out in the Autumn really) and there’s a musical I’m about a sixth of the way through writing (I hope to finish that this year but as for when it might ever see a stage, who knows). And there’s a novel. But there bloody would be wouldn’t there? Don’t hold your breath for that. I’ll also continue writing songs for people with better voices than mine (that’s a pretty wide net I’m casting there) because my single greatest joy of 2014 was hearing Snowapple sing the song I wrote for them. Hopefully something similar will happen again this year.

Anyway, I won’t say “here’s to 2015!” because it’s probably high time to just get on with the damn thing.

Better The Demo You Know

Sunday 21 December, 2014
Tags: fresh on the net, music industry

Sometimes the best teachers are not our elders but our contemporaries.

At Fresh On The Net we’ve just sifted through the final batch of submissions for 2014. As usual there was everything from the sublime to the ridiculous.

I’ve learned a lot from Tom Robinson’s music site since joining the moderation team at the beginning of the year. True, working at a label means I’m no stranger to demo submissions but until I became a FreshMod there was no effective framework within which to satisfactorily listen to unfiltered independent music.

One thing I suspect all label stooges can agree on is that there is NEVER an ideal time to get contacted by an unknown artist wanting attention/advice/affirmation/adoration. Even if there are four minutes at your disposal with which to listen to a new track does that artist really want to be judged by someone who has just spent three hours battling with the PPL database and is about to spend the rest of the day attempting to fill the annoying Tuesday gap on a tour that begins next week? Surely such a listener will just hate everything in the world, they’d probably hate the bloody Beatles. I’m a songwriter myself and I know what the ideal listening circumstances are: a sealed silent room and a freshly peeled mind ready to appreciate every nuanced lyric and lovingly ignore every botched metaphor. But no one listens like that, there’s always distraction: your phone might ring at the start of the game-changing tuba solo, the dog will want to go outside just when the really impressive bagpipe harmony kicks in, you’ll miss the incandescent pay-off in the closing verse because a starling has fallen down the chimney and is now flapping soot all over the chaise-long.

Music is never born within a vacuum, neither is it consumed in one.

And what is the arch nemesis of every unknown band? EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD. Particularly the lives of their potential listenership.

Yes I have a thirst for new art but No I don’t want it flung at me all day from all angles, especially not accompanied by inane second-hand PR nonsense about how much “buzz” so-and-so has, how “hotly tipped” they are and how this will “definitely be their year”.

When exactly did Music and Bullshit become such persistent bedfellows?

But every Thursday I sit down to listen to about 150 tracks of all genres, unaccompanied by explanation or excuse. The songs are bereft of clothing and context, entirely at the mercy of human patience. And the best thing about this strange mixed bag of high hopes and hot air? Just that, it’s a mixed bag.

It’s all too easy to get duped into believing the music business is one clear linear narrative of trend begetting trend – Rihanna then Adele then Cyrus then Swift… like some kind of pop evolutionary diagram.

But every week emerging artists send us brand new stuff of all flavours: indie, rock, shoegaze, hip-hop, ambient, electronica, reggae, dance, folk, country, alternative, punk, jazz… almost all of it produced to a professional standard. This is what new musicians are up to – EVERYTHING.

I am so encouraged by this variety, simply because it is so at odds with what the dreary mainstream media would have us believe.

That’s not the only thing I have learned though. Regularly confronting such a tangle of talent and trash has taught me a lot about the attitudes all musicians are up against – because I adopt those attitudes myself. Unfortunately (for me at least) the only workable criteria when confronted by such a formidable deluge of new material is (at first glance anyway) “What do I hate the least?”
Sad isn’t it?

These songs are loved by those that made them and they are loved by those that love those that made them and, with the help of some cultural eruption that somehow makes them the soundtrack to every sixteen year old’s GCSE results day, could potentially be loved by an entire generation. But, to me, most are merely new assemblages of old cliches and the skip button looks mighty enticing.

This process has explained why so much of my own early songwriting got ignored by reviewers. Why didn’t they appreciate that extended intro? Didn’t it effectively set the scene and shepherd the listener into exactly the right mood to properly appreciate the song? No. No it most certainly did not. Poor anonymous reviewer was waiting for the damn thing to get to the damn point so they could make their own judgement about whether or not it was the sort of thing their magazine/website/radio show even covered (let alone liked). Ten extended dramatic intros later and anonymous reviewer is beginning to wonder whether reality itself is melting or just his brain. A hundred extended dramatic intros later and aforementioned brain has been blown all over the walls by a self-administered bullet.

But the wonderful thing is that once I’ve whittled the 150 songs down to my 15-20 “What Don’t I Hate” list then I can properly listen and decide what I actually actively like. And that’s when the pleasure begins. Like picking flowers rather than pulling weeds.

Then after the most popular tracks go through to public appraisal we take it in turns to write reviews of the favourites before starting the whole process again. When it was my turn to write the reviews (http://freshonthenet.co.uk/2014/07/faves116/) I resolved to like everything (sometimes necessitating no small amount of willpower!). And what was the final lesson I learned from Fresh On The Net? That if you really want to like something then you’ll probably end up liking it quite a lot. Indeed that’s what we do with all art: it makes no sense until it somehow invades (or is invited into) our world, then once it’s there becomes one of the things that not only makes sense in our world but makes sense of our world.

Unfortunately for artists that do not have the zeitgeist (or the media) at their disposal the process by which one ingratiates oneself into the cultural imagination still largely relies on uncourtable serendipity jumbled up amongst the peculiar personal prejudices of individuals just as confused as the artists themselves.

Still, if it was easy everyone would do it.

Hang on, I just looked online… it seems everyone does do it.

Fab Radio International… one year on

Sunday 23 November, 2014
Tags: fab radio international

Fab Radio International, the station I do a bit of work for (if you can call playing the records I enjoy “work”) has just celebrated its first anniversary. Over the last year it has grown from a little website with a few niche programs stewarded by passionate amateurs to a modest empire incorporating two channels (soon to be three) broadcasting shows dealing with not just music but politics, literature, gardening, film, comedy, chat, sport, finance and a whole bunch of other things besides, drawing in established names from the media world grown disillusioned by their work at mainstream stations, now eager to embrace the alternative.

I hadn’t really noticed the progress and growth of the station until this week. Biff Roxby and I turn up when the building is all but empty, play songs for insomniacs and then slink away into the darkness when we’re done. So it was a great pleasure to attend Fab’s birthday party and witness the sheer number of people involved, from all manner of backgrounds, catering to all sorts of interests and tastes. It was only then that I realised I was part of something pretty big… and getting bigger all the time.

Fab Radio’s Best Music Show Award

I’ve already written about how presenting a late-night radio show reinvigorated my faltering enthusiasm for music. It’s no secret that I have a personality worryingly open to getting jaded about things quickly. It was a huge relief when this new activity helped to rescue an old love. Then later, when the novelty showed signs of wearing off, that threat was happily thwarted by a contagious sense of optimism pervading the station as a whole, that we were achieving something, something small but, nevertheless, something real. Many of us (in Britain at least, but I suspect it’s true of the developed world as a whole) appear to be lamenting the onset of a profound cultural stagnancy. There is a tangible sense that things are not only getting more and more mediocre but that this mediocrity is an inevitable and unstoppable turn of events, that we are destined to end up sluicing about in the sludge of a willfully homogenized and creatively-compromised version of the arts (and the media that reflects it) in which everything has become a conceited shadow of the safe cynicism that went before. Of course, if you ferret about in the underground long enough you’ll find no shortage of inspirational practitioners building a compelling case for the opposite. Unfortunately not everyone has this aptitude for ferreting.

Making something on one’s own carries with it a great deal of satisfaction and pride; but making something in the context of many other people making many other things carries with it an invigorating and ever-replenishing optimism. Over the years I’ve learned that the latter sensation tends to fortify a person a lot more efficiently than the former.

I’m not suggesting that maintaining a successful internet radio station is a revolutionary act. It isn’t, not in itself. But anything created by passionate people outside the influence of indifferent money-guzzling corporations is a source of hope. And hope is always a good start.

***

The Debt Records Show airs every Monday from 11pm until 1am. After that it is available to stream on demand from the Debt Mixcloud.

We recently won an award (see photo of me looking pleased in my Sylvester McCoy tanktop) so we must be doing something right.

The latest show can be listened to here:

fabradiointernational.com

Topless & Tache-less

Thursday 30 October, 2014

When I was sixteen I did a course in mime and physical performance that culminated in a piece of promenade theatre about the disastrous exploits of a family of clowns on holiday. I was the clown dog, leaping at unsuspecting spectators, humping legs, sniffing crotches and generally being a nuisance. I would, of course, go on to use the extensive research I’d done into dog mimicry years later in the Tell-Tale Hound song (little did I know that these bizarre qualifications would end up serving me better than two university degrees – but that’s the funny thing about life, you never know if the bit you’re currently in is the feed line or the punch line).

As well as learning how to struggle with invisible boxes and invisible suitcases and invisible doors and invisible ropes the clowning course taught me one very important lesson: a red nose affords its wearer near infinite license. Bound up in that one simple prop is the power of the Other, of the Carnival – a strange freedom that hinges on shedding one’s cares in favour of a temporary state of chaos and absurdity (Mikhail Bakhtin is the fellow to go to if you want to read more about this stuff).

I remember the particular moment this lesson truly sank in. After a long hard day of relentless miming (that mostly consisted of pouring imaginary tea out of a massive – and very heavy – imaginary teapot) our moderately immoral instructor and I were in a bar and he said to me:

“Quick, put your red nose on, let’s go chat up those girls over there…”

I’ve never been much of an up-chatter (with or without a red nose) so was understandably dubious (plus I’d struggled enough with the imaginary teapot) but I did as I was told, put on my red nose and walked up to the two women in as dignified a manner as is possible to do on all fours.

Up to that point I’d naturally supposed that, in matters of the heart, a red rose was preferable to a red nose. Well, it turned out I had supposed erroneously.

Years later, when I’d shifted my ambitions from acting to music, I realised that the red nose did not necessarily have to be a literal one. So I grew a moustache as a kind of surrogate. It suited the earnest little thwarted narrator of my skewed love songs, the humourless doom-stricken slapstick romantic, a semi-tragic antihero with his tragedian’s mask upturned in perpetually ignored self-mockery. Later, when I grew a foot-long beard, I regarded that as an extension of the red nose into full-blown Jester’s motley: same function – just slightly more ostentatious and, if possible, even more woefully silly.

When The Bedlam Six announced a hiatus recently I decided that as well as parting from my bandmates (however temporarily) I would also part with my moustache. I’d been a clown so long it was time to see if I could be anything else.

Some red noses detach easily. Some don’t.

So I shared my secret intention with Karen McBride (a brilliant photographer whose work has almost certainly crossed your field of vision whether you realise it or not) and asked if she’d be interested in capturing the moustache’s final moments. (I realise this all sounds a bit overdramatic but the truth is we’d been chatting about doing a shoot together for ages and this seemed as good an excuse as any)

I didn’t read too much into it at the time but, in retrospect, it was an odd little project. Normally the photoshoots I do are promotional shots designed to be scattered around festival brochures or venue websites – there is a destination in mind. In this case I wasn’t sure where the pictures would end up, who would see them and why, or even what we were trying to say (if anything). My only thought had been to get a few final pics of the familiar face that had ushered me from my twenties into my thirties before it metamorphosed into something unknown, something I didn’t yet trust (long time readers of this blog may remember my almost-existential-crisis following the Bedlam Six’s “Deep Enough” music video – so I was kind of pre-empting something similar). Beyond that one simple brief I had no thematic suggestions, no poses or accessories; I just turned up in my cleanest shirt and told Karen to do with me as she wished.

“There aren’t enough photos of topless men” she said matter of factly, “we’ll start with you clothed and then try peeling away some layers and then see what happens…”

So that’s what we did. And it was quite an experience. Karen is not only a very gifted photographer (a natural framer and keen-witted observer of the infinitesimal shifting of a person’s private seasons) but also a sort of archaeologist of the human condition – she kept brushing away layers of topsoil and debris to reveal all sorts of treasures and horrors. I felt both literally and figuratively laid bare. Karen had set out with the intention of photographing “the real me” but, in the end, I don’t think this is what happened, it was something stranger than that – this was a liminal moment, as if there was no “real me” to photograph – I imagined myself to be on the threshold between two characters – that familiar clown and whatever had been germinating beneath the moustache follicles during all those years of stage bombast and dumbshow.

I look at these photos now and don’t see me. But that’s not surprising, I also look in the mirror now and don’t see me. And yet there I am.

I won’t stay this way for long, maybe a few months, just long enough to soak up a bit of difference, to feel some fresh air and sunlight on the places that aren’t used to it. I’ve never really got on with my face as a whole. Bits of it are quite fun when viewed in isolation but I’ve always felt the entirety to be a bit untrustworthy. Something around the mouth perhaps, something slightly venomous and mocking, something cruel.

It’s nothing serious though. Nothing to be worried about. Nothing a red nose won’t fix.