dandelionburdock

2004-06-18T02:47:00.000+01:00

Well fuck me sideways - it's suddenly the middle of June.

All things db have had to take a back seat so far this year. Don't get me wrong, I haven't been gainfully employed elsewhere - it's just that there's so much shit in the room all the gear is set up in that you can barely get in there to see if you can swing a cat or not.

Of all things, the idea of doing a cover version suddenly got me all stupid, excited and productive. Not sure how it happened really - I was fucking around trying to mend all of my Outlook Express settings which I'd spent an hour or so decimating, and the next thing I knew I was laying me down some bitchin' beats.

I'm out shopping for things I can't really afford tomorrow (damn you Bank Of England with your interest rate rises! Damn your eyes!), but I hope to have something to report fairly soon.

Don't hold your breath, obviously.

2004-06-05T11:30:00.000+01:00

After a seriously underwhelming year as far as gig going is concerned, I've just been to two absolute blinders in the space of two days.

First of all, my first up close and personal experience of The Hives. I've been very wary of these folk for some time - they're one leotard away from being the Swedish version of The Darkness. Have to say they fucking tore the roof off the Electric Ballroom though (no bad thing - I think it had dry rot). That said, and although I was massively impressed with them as performers, I can't remember a single noteworthy thing about any of their new songs. Maybe they should just play live every night of their lives, but never release any records.

And then we come to The Pixies at Brixton Academy. I'd been veh excited about this for ages, so when I saw the storming reviews come in from the first two nights, my tail was well and truly up. And fuck a doodle do were they good. I genuinely can't think of any other band that can get through 6 top drawer songs in the first quarter of an hour of a live set (Jive Bunny doesn't count). They got through as many songs in half an hour as many bands try and get away with in an hour and a half, and to their credit - and let's not forget that Frank Black is one seriously pudgy bastard these days - they just gallavanted on without any acknowledgement of the fact that there were any people there. It was approx song 15 of the set when Kim Deal said "Hello!" to the biggest roar that I've ever heard in response to the utterance of one word.

AND there were shitloads of tube mice at the station on the way home. Beat that for a night out.

2004-06-01T03:08:00.000+01:00

Well it's June, and no, there's no double album.

I have no excuses. If you knew me, you'd know that me setting my mind to something doesn't necessarily equate to me following through with it within - say - a decade or so. The best things come to those who wait, so the ad tells me.

New rule: the same goes for underwhelming albums of cheaply recorded indie-schmindie.

2004-01-01T16:20:00.000Z

Tempted as I am to alter the date accompanying this post to stall for more time, I regret to announce that the coming of the new year has not coincided with good news for those expecting a last-minute flurry of activity to make my deadline. Unfortunately, my predictions of having some spare time over Christmas proved just a tad optimistic, and - although I had some time yesterday on New Year's Eve - the odds of actually recording a track and then registering some webspace to upload the tracks to prove I wasn't lying just weren't tempting.

Not all is lost though. December proved to me that I should stick with it instead of having me a big ebay sale of all my equipment. So, once I've eased myself into the new year, I've got a new challenge to get my teeth into:

Three tracks uploaded to the internet by 12midnight Feb 1, 2004.

Obviously, on past form I'll probably have to be setting myself the challenge of recording an entire double-album during June, but in the absence of Christmas and overtime, finding time for this in the month ahead should be more doable.

Happy new year to all, and here's to a slightly more productive year ahead...

2003-12-24T11:10:00.000Z

Oh shite.

As prophesised, I've overslept horrendously on the day that I intended to put some serious hours in. Intended to get up at 8am, in fact work up at 12.08pm - approx 3/4 of an hour before I'm due to leave for family festivities elsewhere in the country.

All isn't quite lost, however. I still have a little time on the 30th, which is now pretty much do or die time. I honestly think I can get this one nailed fairly quickly when I have the time, so this could - still - be fairly interesting.

Here's hoping. In the meantime, Merry Christmas, and doubtless I'll have more tales of db disappointment to tell prior to wishing you similar glad tidings for the New Year.

2003-12-24T02:58:00.000Z

Only a matter of hours before I'm supposed to wake up for a half-day of mad db action. Having a terrible bout of insomnia though, and knowing me I'm now going to inadvertantly oversleep until noon.

While not achieving anything of note, and to add to the seasonal feel that everybody must be feeling, I've been racking my brains for various top 10s. Bear in mind that the absence of most things that are considered leagues ahead of all the cack in my charts can probably be explained by the fact that I've not heard or seen much new this year. For my film list in particular it's odd to think that I've only actually seen something like 13 new films throughout the entire year. Hence the inclusion of numbers 9 and 10 in particular, which I'm far from keen on, but have pretty much no choice but to list. Hopefully I can do a quick cinema blitz over the festive period and amend this list accordingly.

Anyway, here's what I've come up with:

Top 10 singles of 2003
1. Anjali - 7x 8
2. DJ Format Featuring Abdominal - The Hit Song
3. Mew - Am I Wry? No
4. Hope Of The States - Enemies/Friends
5. Outkast - Hey Ya
6. The Libertines - Don't Look Back Into The Sun
7. Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl?
8. The Stills - Still In Love Song
9. Cerys Matthews - Caught In The Middle
10. Beyonce - Crazy In Love

Top 10 albums of 2003
1. DJ Format - Songs For The Mature B-Boy
2. Ben Lee - Hey You Yes You
3. The White Stripes - Elephant
4. Outkast - Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
5. Cerys Matthews - Cockahoop
6. Evan Dando - Baby I'm Bored
7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever To Tell
8. Blur - Think Tank
9. Electric Six - Fire
10. The Wannadies - Before & After

Top 10 films of 2003
1. The Lord Of The Rings - Return Of The King
2. Terminator 3
3. Kill Bill Volume 1
4. Alien: The Director’s Cut
5. Gangs Of New York
6. Pirates Of The Caribbean
7. Finding Nemo
8. Luther
9. Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle
10. The Matrix Reloaded

2003-12-21T23:16:00.000Z

Found myself in a DIY shop earlier, shopping for bunny water bottles, cable clips and pipe insulation. Couldn't help but listen in to a purple faced old man waving his arms around and pointing at his wife during a shouted (one-way) conversation with an employee at the store. "Where are all the rest of your Christmas trees? Why have you got so few on the last weekend before Christmas?" Then my own personal favourite: "When are you next getting some in?" Poor employee - a weekend-shift only student type if ever I saw one - could offer barely any words at all in defence, and spent the duration of the conversation looking vainly for a non-existant supervisor to come bail him out. Spent so much time listening in that I completely forgot about the insulation, something which could bite me on the arse severely over the next week or so.

Having done my time working in the retail sector, I can't help but spare a thought for the poor unfortunates that find themselves having to deal with such cretins at this time of year. I remember working in a fags and booze kiosk for a chain of budget supermarkets that will remain nameless at this point, a job I stuck out for a mere four weeks in part because of some of the local Irish drunkards that'd come in exclusively - so it seemed - to give me shit. One guy in particularly made a habit out of coming in and insisting I looked after his piss-soaked coat while he went shopping, always flat out ignoring my point about me not being a fucking cloakroom and just leaving it on the counter. He was so shitfaced one Saturday that he completely forgot about it. Come the end of my shift, the duty security guard checked it out in case there was any clue to his address only to find his inside pockets and lining rammed solid with tinned tuna and tampons. The juxtaposition of these two items has always troubled me.

In further attempt to deflect from any kind of db activity, some thoughts on the last couple of days in the music world. Yesterday we had the Pop Idol final, basically a shoot-out between a future Blue Peter presenter and the most annoying Scotswoman outside Muriel Gray. Can't help but be amused at news that Pete Waterman left the studios in protest after Michelle won - this time last year the airwaves were flooded with the utter joke of a double A-side that his One True Voice "vocal harmony group" were given to promote. I think the man's idea of standards could do with some clarification. For the record, I hope Suzanne - the frog-throated Jeff Buckley fan with an irrational love of leggings under skirts that made it to the final 5 - wipes the fucking floor with the lot of them when the inevitable round of record deals sorts itself out in the next couple of months. More talent and personality in her teeth alone than the rest of them put together.

A mere five hours ago, twas the announcement of this year's Christmas number 1. Congrats to Gary Jules, who made all of The Darkness's shameless promotional efforts over the last week all a huge waste of time. Mainly I'm just glad that The Idols' single - the Pop Idol finalist's take on Merry Xmas (War Is Over) - didn't get anywhere near the top spot, but it's reassuring that a decent song can win out against all the hype and horseshit that goes along with releases at this time of year. My thoughts on The Darkness are mixed - I think they're relatively amusing, and have livened the charts up this year, but on the other hand I don't actually think they're any good. I suppose it could be summed up by me saying that I saw a copy of their album in a record store in the US for the equivalent of £1.50, and wasn't even nearly tempted to buy it.

2003-12-18T01:04:00.000Z

How indecisive can one man be? While watching the new Lord Of The Rings film (ace btw, although my arse no longer works), I've come up with an idea for yet another track that my head seems to think is the one I should go with. Seeing as though I've got around 50 in various stages of completion on paper already, the fact that a brand new, relatively simple idea crops up a matter of days before my deadline seems just random enough to be worth a shot.

Have just programmed a pretty funky drum track for it, and I've now got half an eye on Christmas Eve morning with a view to attempting to nail the whole thing to my hard drive. I've decided that if Mohammad (ie: the lead from the mic hooked up to record the guitar amp) won't go to the mountain (ie: the back of my PC without my cats pouncing on the leads and pulling it off the stand), then the mountain will have to be carried upstairs and set up next to Mohammad.

Of all the things I've earmarked to be the first completed track, this one is DEFINITELY the most appropriate. Working title - "Theme From Dandelionburdock".

2003-12-17T00:53:00.000Z

Waaaaah. This is really quite painful. Have managed to get a bit of practice in at peculiarly late times, but it's looking fairly certain that I'm just not going to have enough time to get a track done by the end of the year. I'm really furious with myself, as this last month has been a textbook example of how unbelievably shit I am at organising anything. I knew that work was going to be non-stop in the last couple of weeks before Christmas, and yet pretty much every day during my week off I slept in, assuming that I'd have an early morning bout of creativity the next day. All the way back to my A Level coursework, through my degree, and now even today in every DIY task I've ever planned to do this is a recurring theme, and it's not as if I'm ever surprised when the day of all such self-imposed deadlines arrives with me having absolutely bugger all done.

Thank god I'm a bit more sorted at my day job - I wouldn't last two minutes if my home self decided to try its various organisational sins in front of my boss.

For the record, primarily as a method of stopping me changing my mind again, the song I'm going to try and cram into no time at all is entitled "Our Eyes Are Both Green".

2003-12-15T00:59:00.000Z

17 days until my self-made deadline. Since Christmas family visiting accounts for six of those days, I have seven evenings, part of next weekend and maybe part of Christmas Eve to cram in some kind of work on this blasted thing. Since last posting, I've been unable to find any spare time to even think about making any headway. Ominously, I've even changed my mind AGAIN about which track I'm going to attempt to cram in before the end of the year, having convinced myself that the one I'm opting for is even simpler than the very simple one (albeit with a potentially tricky harmony) that I've already created an outline drum track for. The main thing I've been able to take from my "attempts" this month are that I could actually achieve something fairly quickly if I apply a similar sense of urgency to a time of year that I'm not required to work and shop constantly. My consolation for failing to meet my deadline will definitely be that I'll have a ton of time to get something done during January. I'd best reiterate my almost inhuman desire to pull something out of the bag in the time I have though, before that sounds too much like a concession speech.

To excuse my complete waste of the last nine days, I have to make it clear that I've had a very busy week. Have had two office parties within six days, and I'm pleased to report than neither were particularly tragic, although I did fear that someone had stolen my shoes at one point during the first.

And, in an attempt to add historical context to my blog when all those millions of people decide to access my archives in months and years to come, it was reported that Saddam Hussein was captured today. Could not believe my eyes during the press conference - when the soldier spokesman guy suddenly said "...and we've got a short piece of film we'd like you to take a look at...", I couldn't help but feel utterly jipped by all of those tedious conferences given by Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld over the past couple of years, when all either of them said to any questioner was either "no comment at this time" or something to that effect. If they'd got out some footage of a clearly terrified old man at any of those, I'd have been utterly glued. Even a zoetrope or something would've improved matters. For the record, I'd like to mention that the "before shaving" and "after shaving" pics of Saddam in custody were notable because his skin tone and moustache colour bore no relation to those that were shown before they'd cleaned him up a bit. Unless the conditions under which he's being detained allow him access to a sun bed and a bottle of Just For Men, I smell a fucking great rat.

2003-12-05T23:46:00.000Z

Just when it looked like I was getting somewhere - a day where I oversleep, play host to a plumber who stays for four times as long as I assumed he would, and generally achieve absolutely nothing.

So - 25 days left, and no spare time set aside to finish off the track. If I manage to pull this off, I'm going to have to do it at severely unsociable hours.

Actually told the girlfriend about the blog yesterday, so hello m'dear when she actually gets round to finding it. No I've not forgotten our anniversary.

2003-12-05T00:39:00.000Z

A day of vague progress, albeit not without some inevitable frustrations. On the plus side, I managed to hook up things using the existing leads, so that I could just about get the mic-ed amp connected to the PC. Heavily on the minus side however, my sequencer software then proceeded to be utterly evil. Recording myself playing the guitar entails me clicking the "record" button on the PC downstairs, then legging it up to the second bedroom, strapping on the guitar and playing away. Unfortunately, for reasons best known to itself, the software stopped recording after about 30 seconds each and every time, so all I've really managed to capture is the sound of me running up the stairs, opening and closing a door and picking up a guitar. Approximately 30 times. Headway is definitely, definitely being made though. I've got a rough drum track already assembled, and the bass part will be closely modelled on (ie: nicked from) a sample that came with the software, so basically the guitar issue is the only one that's stopping me getting to the really scary matter of actually singing.

Time is really against me however - the plumbing issues of earlier this week have resulted in the need for a plumber, which will rob me of precious hours tomorrow. I find it hard to believe that I'll have it all done and dusted before I return to work next week, so it's still very much up in the air.

2003-12-04T14:01:00.000Z

Right, so I'm shelving that Bramley Apple Pie thing for now. Cannot for the life of me decipher the sounds that I keep humming to myself, so for the sake of my sanity I'm going to have to leave it until I'm less pressured.

Have now opted to pursue something a bit more straightforward. Four or five simple chords (all of which I can play, although - ominously - not yet one after the other), and intentionally shambolic sounding. On the minus side I think some kind of harmony vocal parts may have to be involved (eek @ the prospect). However, seeing as though the end of this week is suddenly chock full of other things that I need to do, this seems to be the idea on paper and in head that's closest to being within reach.

My aim for the rest of the day is to try and commit some kind of guitar part to my sequencer software, if nothing else to reassure myself that all the things I own do actually work together.

2003-12-03T17:25:00.000Z

Oh god, I'm still getting nowhere. I'm stuck playing the same irrelevant chords, vainly going up and down the fretboard trying to approximate the elusive sounds in my head. Yet more stalling has occurred today when it dawned on me that the PC which I hope to record all of my stuff is downstairs, whereas the spare room in which all playing and hollering will take place is upstairs. Between the two is a cat-occupied zone. In other words, anything wire-shaped trailing between point A and point B runs the severe risk of being assaulted or eaten. I've already lost two phone chargers operating in this zone, and I can foresee many hours of cats-locked-in-other-bedroom ahead. Unfortunately, past experience tells me that such a course of action results in bedding being clawed to ribbons and ornaments being uprooted.

And - something which is only just dawning on me now I sit and type - neither the mic or guitar lead is anywhere near long enough. Yet more expense. I bet they don't have this sort of problem at Abbey Road.

2003-12-03T00:08:00.000Z

Can't believe it's Wednesday already. 29 days to go, and still absolutely nothing recorded.

Eventually found the tuner. Somehow it'd worked its way inside my dinky little amp. After a scurry around for two AAAs to power it (note to self: IOtheDVD remote two AAAs...), I got cracking.

Something I've omitted to mention until now is that, not content with being unable to play the guitar, I've been equally unable to play the guitar using foolproof aids such as this contraption. This evening I endured several tuneless hours trying to play more than one chord in sequence, and - I have to admit - there was a point when I felt this Thursday's free listing day on ebay should be when I cash in on my guitars and try and get myself back in the black.

Then, in a hark back to my elementary error during my first attempt at tuning a guitar mentioned in my first ever post, I realised that I was using this guitar wizard thing upside down. Suitably enamoured by this, there's now a visible dent - roughly the shape of my forehead - in the spare room wall as a lasting memorial to the latest showcase for my endless stupidity. Regardless, problem solved, I managed to string some chords together (still not a clue what any of them are called, but they did sound nice), and tomorrow I hope to stumble across the right ones I'll need to actually get some kind of song underway.

On the subject of immense retardedity (not a word, but it should be), I am starting to realise how much I underrate the concept of writing things down. I have the most frustratingly shit memory, and yet I continually have these 2am flashes of genius that I promise myself I'll commit to paper after a nice sleep. Come breakfast, I often have a vague sense of having thought of something clever the night before, but never any specifics.

To be fair though, they're probably only more fucking choruses anyway.

2003-12-02T10:32:00.000Z

Excuse for not achieving anything today - the pipes under the kitchen sink were inexplicably clogged with either wax or lard. Spend a good hour or two pulling it all apart, probably knackering it more and making the third visit from a plumber in the last month all the more inevitable.

I swear to god I achieve far more at home on days when I'm at work until 7pm than those I'm off. The last couple of days I've spent about 4 hours watching some new interactive cable gameshow channel. I actually got on air yesterday, but stupidly lost out on £180. Infuriatingly, I'd worked out the right answer, but following literally minutes of outrageously complicated problem solving I'd failed to add up a short list of small numbers properly while they had me on hold waiting to get on. The difference between success and failure was my inability to carry a two or something.

So, my first time on telly, and almost certainly my last on that channel as they had to apologise to other viewers for me saying "balls" when they told me I'd got it wrong. I also inadvertantly told the presenters that the show was "painful to watch", which was far from clever.

In true gullible fashion, I've been persevering paying the 75p call charge trying to get through again, primarily because my girlfriend pays the phone bill and I've racked up such amounts failing to get on air that I now need to win something just to break even.

2003-12-01T15:46:00.000Z

Well this is just marvellous. I've lost my fucking guitar tuner now.

2003-12-01T12:22:00.000Z

Oh dear god, it's December the 1st.

Panic really starting to set in now. I have a week off work with which I must make some kind of headway. The last couple of weeks have been a masterclass in doing nothing while appearing constantly busy and in need of sympathy. I have drunk the internet dry of its Fraggle Rock, and now I've turned to doing the same with episodes of Thundercats.

But here the idleness must stop. I have the house to myself for 9 hours every day for the next 5 days, and if the week ends with nowt achieved, then in all honesty I will have to hang my hat up and admit defeat. I'm working insane hours until Christmas once this week is out of the way, so this really is crossroads time.

So, if you don't mind, I'm going to bugger off and twat about with my guitar.

2003-11-28T21:02:00.000Z

I don't quite believe what I've just seen. It was called All New Top Of The Pops, and it's easily the most traumatising thing I've watched since I sat through The Ring at about 5am on my own the other week.

Although we were spared the Michael Jackson video (not yet edited apparently - aren't you supposed to do that before you release a single?), eye napalm included Will Young, Kylie (performing an album track), the sight of Gareth Gates being interviewed alongside a bizarrely made-up Kelly Osbourne (who appeared to have forgotten where her lips end judging by her lipstick), as well as the worst presenter the show's had since the days of Andy Crane and suchlike.

Scariest moment was a much-trumpeted Robbie Williams competition. "Win tickets to see Robbie in Australia by telling us which of the following was Robbie's first solo number one single:

1) Freedom
2) Angels
3) Old Before I Die"

This is scary not just because I pay my license fee and the BBC spend it on researchers that don't know that none of these reached number one, but primarily because I instantly did know that the correct answer was Millennium, and spent the next half an hour emailing every BBC address I could find to tell them about it.

2003-11-23T12:39:00.000Z

So England have won the rugby (union) World Cup then. Now where did I put that fucking bunting?

2003-11-18T23:18:00.000Z

While I should have been preoccupied with a stack of work, I got thinking about this whole song thing. Went through my internal database of choruses, and remembered a vague outline called Believe What You Like which seems to sit fairly well with the Bramley Apple Pie verse. I may well have something to play with after all.

Cannot see me learning to play guitar in less than a month and a half though. I've been thinking that trying to play one chord at a time, sampling them as I go and then cutting and pasting them into some kind of melody may well be the way to go, but that does sound like an incredible faff.

In the meantime, I was disappointed to download a file purporting to be Smokey And The Bandit 2, which is in fact Smokey And The Bandit 3. I fucking hate Smokey And The Bandit 3.

2003-11-17T22:58:00.000Z

So, another weekend elapses, and what does Mr db have to show for it?

Well, Saturday night was a Gram Parsons tribute at Union Chapel in London. In other words, ageing country music fanatics dancing like loons while people like Hank Wangford stood side-by-side with Ed Harcourt and Evan Dando, emoting about broken hearts and dead dawgs. I imagine, anyway. Very poor seats, so it was far from clear.

At a push I could call it research. More realistically I should really chalk the whole 3 days since I last posted as 3 more days of achieving bugger all. More scarily, I'm still no kind of musician and yet I've got a mere 43 days to have a song committed to CD.

You'd think I'd be better served going away and twatting about with my guitar some more. But oh no. I'm currently downloading episodes of Fraggle Rock and Quantum Leap off the net. This whole thing is doomed.

2003-11-14T00:24:00.000Z

Getting a little daft now. Sometime round January I (drunkenly) assured a mate of mine that I'd have a CD full of stuff by the end of this year, and yet with precisely 48 days to go, I have precisely bugger all.

So, if I can't get anything done when I have most of the year to do it, maybe I'll fare better when I have no spare time, a stone-set deadline and the incentive of a pint.

Mission statement: I will have at least one completed track ready to upload onto the net by Jan 1st 2004. And four mins of Dec 31st drunken acapella antics do not count.

Fuck.

2003-11-11T21:11:00.000Z

Ah. Now I'm on blogspot.

Can actually feel like I'm not talking to myself now. Even if I very blatantly am. Will talk to myself a hell of a lot more now though.

2003-11-11T19:23:00.000Z

Oooh. On the train home, while straddling someone's luggage and trying hard to avoid a tall person's damp armpit dangling precariously close to my nose, I came up with a verse and everything.

"Birthday candle in a bramley apple pie" goes the first line. And all of my bramley apple pie-related lyric-writing ambitions were thus fulfilled.

The bugger's going to want a chorus, mind. Maybe I'll try tacking on one of the half a million spares I have knocking about.

2003-11-10T23:54:00.000Z

Finally found the bloody mic. It was at the bottom of that box under all that stuff.

So, instead of learning how to do all the boring stuff like singing or playing any instruments, I finally got round to the good stuff - attaching mic to mic stand and hamming it up rock god-style in my bedroom mirror. Current persona of choice: a less fat, more pouty Tony Hadley. That'll fly on VH1.

2003-11-09T09:04:00.000Z

I don't understand Rugby Union. When I played Rugby League at school, my PE teacher would've slapped the crap out of me if I hoofed the ball up the field every time one of the opposition ran towards me. Just because Union players generally have a public school education doesn't mean they instantly have to be cowardly. I thought the main difference was that they have good Valencia oranges at half time instead of the rock hard ones that are mainly pips and cleg that I used to get when I were a lad.

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest. I'm trying to care about this World Cup, but even the highlights are unengaging puntathons.

Oh, and another thing - I've heard Stay Another Day by East 17 four times since yesterday morning. FOUR. I don't want to hear many songs four times in that short a space of time, but I'd gladly trade a couple of plays of Lady In Red and the new Kylie travesty for that heap of wank. I simply don't understand that just because a song was number one at Christmas gives it the automatic right to be bandied all over the place for two months every single sodding year.

2003-11-08T02:01:00.000Z

So Suede have buggered off then. What happened to bands going out on a high? Who told them that all their discography was lacking was that Bontempi articulated lorry head-on crash of a song?

I never thought I'd say this, but I genuinely think I'll miss Shed 7 more.

2003-10-08T01:32:00.000+01:00

Oh god. It gets worse. Woke up at about 5am with a start due to girlfriend snoring at unbelievable volume with little or no prior warning given.

Three sleepless hours later, I've written half a screenplay in my head.

I don't remember giving myself permission to write a fucking screenplay in my head. Where are my fucking verses? Where?

2003-10-07T00:39:00.000+01:00

No no no no no no no NO.

On holiday. Exotic surroundings. Exciting influences. Plenty of filling for the dandelionburdock pie. You'd think.

Choruses. Big fat stupid ten-a-penny choruses.

I have long since lost count of how many bastard choruses with no associated verses I have at my disposal. I'm seriously tempted to just record 10 albums of 50 choruses each and just pretend they're some kind of high concept art statement.

2003-09-18T19:32:00.000+01:00

Slightly gruesome discovery. The unlocatable smell in the spare room turned out to be several months old cat sick in the grille atop my still unfathomable sampler. Thankfully the major chunks didn't fit through, so its just the odd shard that made its way onto the circuit board.

Stunned to find that half-arsed cleaning of aforementioned shards and associated residue with cotton buds and Mr Muscle isn't quite as pointless as you'd expect. Dab dab dab, quick blare of gf's Clairol cold shot, and the thing powers up as if the whole thing was just a big lie. They made those things tough in the 80s.

2003-08-19T17:12:00.000+01:00

Seriously frustrating day. Started off with the customary fart about with the tuner, made more tricky than usual as the battery in the thing was on the verge of death. Then, an Archimedes-type Eureka of a couple of hours, with hitherto unplayed chords coming relatively easily and seamlessly. Still don't know what any of them are called, but one sounded like "duhhhh", and another was more "daaaaaarrrhh". So a good half hour of "duhhhh-daaaaaarrrhh" and suchlike ensued.

By means of celebration, I did what any man would've done in that situation. I grabbed my Game Boy and went for a long, hearty dump.

I'll spare you all the details, but I'd been eating a lot of peanuts the day before, so progress was slow. Heave-ho, wipe, rinse and a towel dry later, I returned eagerly to my trusty little stringed thing. Could not get a single fucking note worth an arse out of it. It was like I'd inadvertantly screwed my hands on the wrong wrists or something. Fuck it in the fucking face.

There's a moral there somewhere, but I find it weird suggesting people should not shit when they're being unusually clever. A&E departments the length and breadth of the country would be full of people hunched over while a kindly nurse turfs out their guts with a cold spoon. I'll just warn against peanuts, to save myself any later legal hassles.

2003-07-14T00:09:00.000+01:00

Nope, I’m still not the new Jimi Hendrix. More worryingly, I’m not even a patch on the gay-looking one out of Fast Food Rockers that doesn’t actually do anything. Guitar arrived a good couple of weeks ago now, and I think it’s fair to say that things aren’t going well. It’s now clear to me that cheapness = goes out of tune every 3 minutes, so even when I think I’m getting somewhere, I’m having to drag out this tuner thing I’ve got and fanny around trying to make a red light turn green. Also, somewhere along the line since I last moved house, my mic has gone AWOL, so it’s not as if I can just piss about trying to warble first and learn-to-put-guitar-to-it later. Fucking hell.

For now, I’ve put the instruments and technology to one side, and picked up the notebook as a few more ideas have come to hand. And I’m really starting to piss myself off. I’ve got about 45 on-paper-decent choruses, and barely a bastard verse to go with any of them. I’ve tried fusing choruses together to try and patchwork me a song, but every imaginable combination seems oh so very wrong.

Ah well, if nothing else at least I won’t get to 65 and toothless thinking “If only oid tried moi ‘and at bein’ a popstaaaa.” Quite why I think I’m suddenly going to be a Cockney in that scenario is another thing entirely.

Have a day off tomorrow. Am currently torn between having a day of all-out war on the guitar, or vegging out on the sofa with the DVD of Platoon and the biggest bag of crisps that the local Londis has to offer.

2003-06-22T00:17:00.000+01:00

First post, and a slightly redundant one as not a note of interest has yet been played or sung. However, I’ve just been clearing out my email history, and I’m astonished to see that it was roughly this time last year that I first decided to get my arse in gear with this, and promptly purchased a guitar, a practice amp, a keyboard, mic, sampler and some bits of software.

Unfortunately, soon after all of this arrived, it became clear to me that any illusions I had of picking up a guitar and conjuring up echoes of Purple Haze were a little misguided. It took me three days to properly tune the fucking guitar – I misread the instructions supplied with it and inadvertently tuned all the strings the wrong way around. Unsurprisingly, my first attempted “chords” sounded not dissimilar to the sound a guitar makes when you kick it. And I can verify this because several times I felt that was the best chance I had of getting a reasonable bastard note out of the thing.

Not much better was to follow once I’d vaguely sussed what I was supposed to be doing with it – I’m not the tallest individual in the world, a point emphasised when this is coupled with my peculiarly small hands. Hence, I can’t physically wrap my hands around to play most of the chords on a normal size guitar, and hence said guitar being consigned to a cupboard for the best part of a year.

So, I moved onto the keyboard and spent several weeks trying to suss how to feed it through the sequencer software on my PC. Looking back I’m absolutely staggered that the same PC I was pissing about with then is the same PC I’m currently typing on. What I will say is that trying to convince a PCI soundcard that it will fit into an AGP port is a mistake I’ll only make once in my life. Some vaguely dancey, piano-y things were faffed with – one track was even completed – but nothing even remotely worth letting anyone listen to emerged in my first couple of months as an aspiring rock demigod.

Shortly after I scuttled around all of my new, exciting gear, I realised that none of it was going to solder itself to my fingers and play on my behalf, so I sank back into my everyday pitter patter, consigned it all to various stations under beds and behind cupboards, and pretty much forgot about it.

Then, around Christmas, I had another fit of “must be pop star man” and farted about with a notebook, scribbling down anything that even vaguely rhymed and definitely wasn’t a song by The Bluetones (couple of semi-exciting false starts on that last point). Then got bored and stroppy at inability to be talented once more.

And now, six months on?...

Well, my hands haven’t grown, and the dirt-cheap ¾ size electric I’ve had my eye on has been out of stock for months now. It arrives on Tuesday…

2003-06-20T07:57:00.000+01:00

Some backstory to this whole thing here.

In theory I think it’s a brilliant idea: write and record a stack of songs, bypass the music industry completely and try and cultivate a following through a website talking about your work (ed: work? Who do I think I am?) as it all progresses. Then ask said following (ed: following? Fucking fuck!) to provide ideas and to make various contributions towards the project, such as album titles, sleeve art and suchlike, and finally flog the finished article online to them for a reasonable profit.

However, as the person that the whole thing centres around is me, there are a few snags:

I can’t sing.
I can’t play guitar.
I can’t play piano
In fact, the “I can’t play list” is very long, so take my word for it that I’m not exactly god’s gift to the world of music. I can’t read music, have absolutely no contacts in the industry whatsoever, and essentially have never provided anybody (myself included) any kind of reason to believe that I could pull this off.

So, armed with an ailing PC, a discounted software sequencer, a keyboard that only sporadically works, an ancient second hand sampler that I can’t fathom, possibly the cheapest electric guitar on the market, an amp so small and unimpressive that the breeze from opening a door knocks it over, not to mention a singing voice so bad that my cat comes to check I’m alright whenever I use it, I’m going to see what I come up with. And then I’ll sporadically pollute the internet with it, just for my own amusement.