Birth of a Band 2

I’m not sure why men seem to think that ‘meeting up for a drink’ is some sort of positive, ‘getting-things-done’ sort of activity, but generally they do – while women do not. Usually, I would concur with the ladies on this one. Not that I’m averse to a drink – on the contrary, I love a beer, but I almost never mistake having a beer for having a meeting.

In this case, of course – as you can read here – simply seeing each other was in fact a proactive step towards actually doing something.

The emails from this late November period seem a bit strained. Neil and Nige were both obviously keen to be seen as easy going and humorous, but trying too hard in these areas tends to have exactly the opposite effect.

We met up on Saturday 15th at half two at the George & Dragon in Wargrave. During this meet (at which we all got along swimmingly) we heard George’s first reference to his having played in a gypsy jazz band and Neil’s first ‘well, we’re just hobbyists, aren’t we?’ comment. I suppose I should have seen the danger signs here straight away…

The really good thing about the meeting was 1) we set a date of January 5th for our first rehearsal and 2) what had started out as a good feeling became an excellent one. Again, I really don’t know why, but I knew this was going to work – and it seems that Nige did, too.

By Tuesday 18th The Rhoom had been booked for rehearsal and Nige was going through some odd explanations of how he and George would be playing Saw Her Standing There by The Beatles (“It would, on the surface of it, appear to be a simple evolution of both George, and myself to play our (completely different roles), put the two together, and hey presto (hopefully) it's the Beatles live on stage! Lennon is kinda working along with the Bass line creating a driving sound in the background, whilst Harrison seems to be kinda vamping along with the chord work and fills. Seems quiet simples"). 

What?!

Interestingly, however, is that a song list with ‘arrangements’ (read as: “keys and who will be playing the solos”) that Nige sent through on December 18^th contains 26 songs of which only seven are no longer part of the set – one of them, of course, being Saw Her Standing There!

And so it all went quiet for the Christmas period and, following a brief reminder email from Nige on Jan 4^th – he really is good at that. I guess it is the being prepared army training or some such. We met up for a six-hour rehearsal on Saturday 5^th…

Sunday saw various emails thrown about regarding song arrangements (Roadhouse Blues and Worried Life Blues) and a call (from me) for more rehearsals during the week with just Nige, Neil and me. I note there is no hint that we might be unhappy with Neil from these mails.

A word is spread that we can meet as a trio on Tuesdays and Nige is desperate to be out and gigging by the end of February.

Neil then comes back and says he can’t rehearse before 4pm… useless for me. In the end we went for a Wednesday from 6 to 9pm. Neil also sent through a couple of songs he’d like to do – one of which was an out and out country number. He never really got it, did he? Nige and I discussed the possibility of doing Spoonful, Crossroads and Voodoo Chile. George added Hey Joe.

(Nige also suggested Born Under a Bad Sign at this point, saying it was “a nice easy one”… I finally nailed it for our most recent gig on September 21^st!)

By the time we tried to get booked in The Rhoom, we had missed the chance. The Rhoom was fully booked. We called off all rehearsals until George could next make it down on Jan 26^th. In the meantime we started discussing recordings…

I was, by now, getting pretty frustrated…

Simon Cowell is NOT responsible

A recent letter from an old acquaintance – once lost, now re-established, albeit by email only at the moment – contained this…

“The music industry seems so strange, a lot of the stuff I see on TV now is such boring and utter rubbish. More about posing in bling than about the music and singing as far as I can tell. I hear people's stuff on Soundcloud, and it just sounds so much more passionate than the manufactured dross.”

From my response…

“The points you make about music are so valid, but unfortunately very, very few people put two and two together. The problem is somewhat ironic – even paradoxical.

Obviously, artists need to eat and drink and have a roof over their heads, need to produce their art and disseminate it. All of this costs money. The spending and earning of money for whatever reason falls into the category of ‘business’. Because ‘business’ essentially controls the money, it has come to control the art. The skill sets needed to be a good businessman are almost totally exclusive to those needed to be an artist.

As soon as business considerations begin to govern the creative process, limitations of time and space begin to constrain that process. Mistakes are made in the production.

Further to that – and there should be a thesis to be written on this some day – the moment business considerations and financial motivations begin to control, the art dies in the artist. There is nothing left save technique. The pictures, the shapes, the words, the music all wither to become the sum of the parts.

So, yes, your observations are very astute. The stuff you hear on myspace is often created for the sole purpose of being created and being heard. The stuff on tv has no purpose other than the preening of the ‘star’ and the gleening of the cash.

In the music business, this has been ongoing since the 1950s. As the skills of the artist have improved and evolved, so have the skills of the businessmen – but unfortunately the latter has had no empathy with the former. The artist to the modern music businessman (in the vast majority of cases) is nothing more than a tin of baked beans, a brand of underpants, a service (supplied by another) to be delivered.

Simon Cowell and the like are not directly responsible for this phenomenon, but they are the latest brick in the walls that separate the artist from the music and the music from the audience. Scrawled hastily on these walls are the two-dimensional representations that the business world would have us think are music. And the vast majority lap it all up, mistaking mechanics for music and celebrity for talent.

The problem with trying to ‘do something’ with music is precisely this. The money is in the illusion of music and what people expect it to be – and people’s expectations are overbearingly restrictive.

I organise an open mic night at my local pub every Thursday. I often do a couple of my own songs, but people simply aren’t interested. The moment you start playing something they don’t know, the audience switches off. The only way to progress in the rock and pop worlds is to work the circuits and hope that someone picks up on what you are doing. The reward is to be placed into the mincing machine that feeds the public's expectations.

On top of this, you also need to work with other musicians, which is a difficult, angst-ridden, unpredictable environment at the best of times.

For me, the future lies in solo efforts. I don’t know if you listened to any of the ‘auraloramas’ such as ‘Relaxation’, ‘Hillside Wind’ or ‘Twilight to Night’, but these are all spontaneous pieces, sometimes partly planned, but always improvised and recorded live – just me, a guitar, and a bank of effects pedals. They utterly rebut the idea of ‘commercial’ music in terms of intro/verse/chorus/bridge/middle eight/coda, which, combined with the improvised nature of the pieces means they begin from a point of making expectation redundant. No-one, not even the musician, knows exactly what is going to happen.

From the musician’s point of view, it is a very exciting way of making music. The looping of sounds means that whatever you play will come back at you in a few seconds – you have to take responsibility for everything you do. Mistakes have to be used and blended to become part of the music. I find it totally absorbing and very thrilling.

Trouble is, of course, is that the moment you turn your back on the ‘expected’ you leave yourself out in the wilderness in terms of performance and audience. This is one of the many tasks I shall be taking on this year: trying to find venues and audiences that would be open to such a music.”

And so begins 2011…