corporate gig = court jester?

A quick extra blog, here’s an interesting vid of (excellent) lefty US singer-songwriter Jill Sobule performing at the D: All Things Digital conference, which is run by Rupert Murdoch’s people. She sings a sweet song written ‘for’ Rupert Murdoch.

Imagine being hired for this kind of event and then being asked to be specifically on-topic, yet non critical! Everyone knows who everyone is here: they know she’s a lefty, she knows her co-star runs Fox. I like Sobule and she manages it well but there is something uncomfortable at the heart of this relationship.

If she did ever feel debased, how would she express it? Wouldn’t want to jeopardise a lucrative relationship. For now at least, she’s owned. In an odd way this follows up what I was trying to say in my Morning Star column about Britains Got Talent. She’s not even a court jester here: too soft, doesn’t really speak truth to power, just makes a joke.

catching up

Argh! Fucking fuckedy fuck! My friend (a promoter out west) co-runs a stage at Glasto. He emailed me earlier this year and offered a good slot on one of the smaller (but still legitimate, advertised) stages.

This precious Springsteen-tinted golddust email went to an old address, which I haven’t bothered to check recently. I missed it.

I literally first saw it this morning, one day after the final lineup got advertised. You cannot imagine how gutted I am right now, I’m wondering what evil shit I must’ve done in a former life to deserve this year’s karma. Fuck.

Right, deep breath. I’m sorry it’s been so long. Honestly, I’ve written and deleted three or four entries since getting back from the States. I’m tempted to blame Twitter because Evan’s right (see previous entry comments), it’s tougher to write long-form blogs once you’re habitually posting every idea the moment it pops up. I love Twitter but there’s also a slight issue with its effect on creativity: One of the classic songwriting ‘rules’ is not to tell anyone your song idea til you’ve finished the song. This is nothing to do with protecting it from theft but simply because once you’ve told it to people, your instinctive need to express it gets drastically reduced and it’s much harder to complete the song. I think that’s from Jimmy Webb’s book on songwriting – really works for me, anyhow. So possibly a similar process happens with Twitter, where you share your early bursts of creative thought, instantly making it much harder to develop them.

17% left on my battery, let’s see how far I get before the laptop dies. I’ve broken the charger cable and keep failing to get around to buying a new one (perhaps because it’s 60 fuckin quid). 

I’ve been having a weird, intense feeling of embarrassment when I get onstage recently – it happened for five gigs in a row and totally threw me. Then luckily it went away the last couple of shows, which was a relief, though I’ll be totally blitzed if it comes back. Maybe it’s beard-related. Started at the tail end of the USA tour and lasted right through to that Trafalgar Square gig for ‘Strangers Into Citizens’ (which was also my biggest audience I think – they said 8k-9k – overtakes the crowd for Frank at Reading and Leeds).

It means I can’t disconnect and get into the song, or just find something in the situation to enjoy. I think it’s a really dangerous place to be in, to be unable to shake off the cringingness – especially when you do material like mine.

My other big fuck-off headache right now is the PRS, the Performer Rights Society, which is the agency I belong to, who are supposed to collect royalties for me whenever and wherever my songs are performed or broadcast. Over the last few months I’ve gone back through my PRS payment statments for more than five years and can’t find a single payment for Frank Turner singing The Huntsman Comes A-Marchin’, not a single one.

If you know Frank you’ll know he played the song fucking loads between 2005 and 2008 and you’ll also know he’s a 100% honest guy and would’ve written the song down assiduously on PRS forms, including at festivals and on big tours with The Automatic etc.

It’s not money Frank pays, it’s money the venue pays for their entertainment licence, which then the PRS should pay to me because my song was performed in the venue. Simple. But can they find it anywhere? Can they fuck!? Did they try!? Well someone looked it up on a computer and sent me a thing saying I’d been paid £43.50 since 2005 for six performances. I checked the performances, they were my own fucking performances! Frank? Nada. When I first flagged it up with them, I provided a massive gig list, a pile of Youtube links and links to print and web reviews where the performance of the song got mentioned. By which I mean I did their job for them (this is what they tell you to do). They are a collections agency. Well go collect! It’s not about the money, honey. But it fucking is.

Anyway, even thinking about that makes me angry, the deeper I dove, the more confused I got – most recently discovering I have two separate IDs as a songwriter with them, even though I only ever registered one. Their website, and in particular the interactive database where you can check claims and make claims, is a total fucking mess. Frustrating.

On happier ground, here’s where I’m at, heading into summer: I’ve almost completed the LSD ep, built from improvised piano and Garageband sessions I did on acid after coming home from tour last autumn. I’ll hand that in this week and we’ll announce things properly next month, when Agent Ashmore has booked me a few shows to go with the EP. Separately I’m working hard on finishing the mizzog new songs for a quiet, personal album, which I’ll record in summer. Meanwhile got seven festivals.

Sounds fun, now I just have to not feel like a cretin throughout. Next blog sooner, unless I tweet everything I want to say.

Amerikaland #4

The long drive back to the coast is slower because of gigs.

2am, Deming, New Mexico, a dying town, although they have the largest statue of a roadrunner in the United States. Or was that Fort Stockton? We ask the Super 8 receptionist where’s good to eat. She laughs. “There’s only one place open, where I had dinner last night… Denny’s.”

In the diner, two comically rotund local cops eat massive late dinners, like Simpsons characters. Denny’s has a rock band sponsored night-time menu with such gems as – deep breath – Plain White Ts Vanilla Shake. Cock-ends, where the fuck do you put the apostrophe in that mess? Deming used to be on the border with Mexico, the second place where the great railroads met in 1881. A thriving bordertown hub til someone bought a huge tract of land just south, moved the border 20 miles and rendered Deming essentially pointless. Cue the long, slow decay.

Throughout the trip, I can’t get my head around these internal USA police ‘border’ crossing points that aren’t actually on a border. Everyone’s blasé about it but it’s surely a key myth-fucker about that word ‘freedom’, when your movement even within your country is restricted. Really, they’re after illegals from Mexico and we always get waved on uninspected because we’re white men driving a nice hybrid. I can’t imagine what it must be like driving around the south-west right now if you’re Hispanic, in a dusty pick-up – you probably get stopped and searched every time you want to go anywhere west of El Paso or north of San Diego.

In Phoenix they have a scorpion problem. Shake out your boots in the morning, we’re told in all seriousness. Fuck that, we’re driving to the next town tonight. God, how I miss the Isle Of Man.

I play an in-store at little indie shop Stinkweeds, on the patio out back. It’s beautiful, fewer than 20 people but they’re all really nice and buy CDs and the two women who run the shop are great. Later I’m down one end of a busy, long, goth sports bar up the road – where they turn the TV sound down but not off. Nasty start and (for the first time ever in the USA) they DO NOT like my politics, but I win in the end by belting out ‘Beer’ and ‘Eminem’. Stomp off to decent cheers, ashamed for playing to the dumbasses. Turns out the headliner is a Christian metaller-gone-country.

In Tucson, Sarge’s publisher friend Dan takes us for very good Mexican brunch, totally different to Cali- or Tex-Mex (but they STILL won’t put molé on my veggie quesedillas! Bastardos!). The waitress hugs us all goodbye in an Ama-like spiritual way. Then out to show us some real desert. My parents would adore this: extraordinary flora&fauna as well as the intense cowboy vibe. Keeping an eye out for rattlers, for real.

Tucson’s Dry River co-op has a young, quietly anarchic crowd and a really fun, appropriate bill. One guy does melancholy beats’n'acoustic emo pop, Get Cape-ish, but when his laptop crashes and he reboots, he has a big pic of Katy Perry on the desktop, for which he takes severe ribbing. On the chalkboard listing the month’s events, I’m between community self-defence and the mens’ group.

Cassie, lovely singer/pianist from Seashell Radio (lush, Tucson-based, though I gigged with them in SF) turns up offering accommodation, which is super-generous but Sarge already scored a decent hotel on the cheap. We almost got kicked out though, after he smoked a joint out by the pool this morning and the maintenance crew smelled it . He always saves himself/us from these crazy scrapes with friendly good cheer. 

Out of Tucson we visit the boneyard: an aeroplane graveyard on immense scale. Can’t describe it but hundreds, maybe thousands of dead planes being gradually decommissioned or just rotting. And that evening we actually make it back to L.A. ahead of schedule, there by 7pm-ish, which gives us a whole evening to recover.

Not telling you about L.A. – same things I always do. Back at Muddy Waters in Santa Barbara, remember Bill is a great guy to talk with, a proper music fan. And there’s sunset on an empty Santa Barbara beach.

Quality time with Sarge and Jane. Interesting debate about fiscal libertarianism, as separate from conservatism, inspired by S&J’s reaction to me calling FT a right-wing bastard. Needs more time though. I interview Radio 1’s punk specialist Mike Davies for my doc about Frank. He ain’t complainin’ but they’ve reduced his Maida Vale session time from 1 slot a week to 1 slot a month, which seems totally fucking mental to me, giving the quality of upcoming stuff he has access to. Sunburn.

Also one sweet night out getting gently trashed with Countessian and somehow make it back from Echo Park to Eagle Rock via Downtown on the early morning public transport, while barely able to walk or speak. 

Sarge and me try the best coffee I’ve had in the USA at Funnel Mill, where a heroic barista, using what looks like meth-lab gear – all bunsen burners and glass funnels – sniffs and even throws out one of our coffees, starting from scratch because he didn’t like it. 

The plane ride home should be spent asleep but involves a 10 hour conversation with Bojana, the 17-year-old highschool volleyball ace sat next to me. She’s on her way to Belgrade to visit Serbian family but no hint of an accent, on a sports scholarship to UCLA. She’s very bright and we talk religion and morals. She’s also very tall, I doubt we’d've been able to have a comfortable conversation, had we met standing up! I’m exaggerating but not much.

And, well, so it goes. Arriving finally in Brighton that afternoon, it’s warmer and sunnier than when I left L.A. though that won’t last.

Amerikaland #3: South By Southwest

“Stephen, you’re the Hunter S Thompson of legal highs”
– @vgan

Vivian Girls are the first band we see. They aren’t great this time round (doing a ton of gigs here) but they’re zippy, will be better later in the weekend and the bassist’s auburn winnie-fringe stretches one’s patience into the fourth song. Just what all-girl bands appreciate: being judged on their looks.

Queue for ages to score a wristband, then queue again round the corner to access a party run by a famous clothes store. A recurring motif on the first day, til we’ve aquired enough wristbands to get everywhere fun. Party involves a free bar serving Southern Comfort with obscure fizzy-pop mixers, so despite the early hour and lack of food I’m well disposed towards Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head from Seattle, a keys and drums quintet doing bouncy disco-pop where Ting Tings meet Shy Child or even Scissor Sisters. Lily Allen’s US tour support. Sarge dances loon enough to earn a shout-out. It’s fascinating how the US west coast picks up these ‘edgy’ Brit pop fads (like nu rave or 60s chic) and softens them for their own, more controlled and ‘talent’-driven musicians.

We can’t sneak into the rammed 4AD bash, though Annette from 4AD is our housemate. She’s at a label dinner in their hotel when we go say hi. We stand around chatting at a table containing Mr Coxon and various Future Of The Left members, none of whom I notice until Sarge tells me off afterwards for not saying hello. I’m still a shit networker after all these years.

Annette is super lovely (ah Christ I’ve picked up the American use of ’super’) but she’s running around like crazy all weekend and we’ll hardly see her. I hope she’s comfy, I suspect Frank’s bunch of local guests on the final night will keep her awake. Annette also officially has the best haircut of the whole weekend, her fringe at a slight angle is intense.  

I’m more excited about Decemberists playing Hazards Of Love than anything. In the end, they’re brave and the music is great, an elaborate, beautifully realised folk-prog-metal concept piece about a love triangle (I think). The weakness is hesitancy or even nervousness in performance. Broadcast live on NPR too, to add pressure, yet still terrific. Guest singers Becky Stark (Lavender Diamond) and Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond) playing the protagonists almost steal the show and ‘I Was Meant For The Stage’ as second encore is fucking perfect.

Frank Turner with Steve Soto’s band backing him sets me thinking as well: last night Frank showed up at the condo at 2am after a nightmare journey and was then out before 9am to go rehearse with this bunch of much older, American bar band musicians he’d never met. At the British Music Embassy (wtf!?) it’s fun but not brilliant, they have the chops but not (yet) the love, though the tour should fix that: to play half a set after a few hours rehearsing was damn good. I miss Nigel though. Positives: St Francis is on fantastic vocal form, I suspect he’s stepped his singing up a level through the Gaslight tour. New song ‘Try This At Home’ gets the best audience reaction – always a good sign when your new material competes with your best-known stuff.

Catch up with Oliver at the Six Shooter Hootenanny, where the heroically good-looking Luke Doucet (pronounced, I’m told, Doo-set, rather than my choice Douche) is storming this little alt-country bar. I already loved some of his darkly self-abusive country-rock songs (especially heroin one sung by Oliver at his 60th birthday a few months ago) but I wasn’t prepared for this ferocious, quiffy guitar work, the guy is brilliant.

Hold Steady play a bunch of times, so we catch a celebratory singalong at an afternoon outside party. Kicks total arse, damn right. I steal a poster off the wall which is on thick card and beautifully printed, frameworthy. If FT hadn’t already got a Hold Steady tattoo I’d be considering it as part of my current “5 tats before I’m 40″ obsession.

The @Vgan Cvar shows up and instantly fixes our condo’s wifi. He’s out with us sometimes but spends a chunk of time working. Afterwards we’ll almost convince him to join our roadtrip back to the coast, instead of flying home. He makes the right decision though, because he pulls as soon as we leave on Sunday. Maybe we’d jinxed him up til then.

Also catch up with D and N from SF who have special cookies, herbal E and big smiles. Yup, lovely to see them! We won’t cross paths often over the weekend because they’ve got a whole big groovy agenda of their own – but it’s nice when we do see them. Same deal with Countessian really, she’s out and about snapping bands and living too hard, as per. Sally too – but none of those LA girls’ scenester barriers come down: face-time is rationed according to whether our pool is heated and sadly it isn’t.

By day two-and-a-half we still haven’t hit a market for breakfast supplies, we’re still eating almost nothing of value, consuming far too many naughties, beginning to get a little crazed. I think SXSW is the weekend I ate least for a long, long time.

To a Canadian showcase for Sarge’s friend Trevor’s band Wet Secrets who dress as a marching band, with two women at the front playing trombone and trumpet. It’s great fun and they have songs too. Cleverly they walk around in costume all day inviting people to the show.

They’ll also be at the Six Shooter hootenanny where we’ll catch Luke Doucet… oh, so that happened later? Sorry, linear time is a victim to the mix, the weekend slides towards Jeff Noon territory and I can’t remember when I saw what but it doesn’t matter. Everyone is tweeting like crazy, til you find yourself tugged this way and that by different enticing tweet opportunities.

A moment of peace and sanity: Oliver hosts a dinner for us. Cast includes his friend Paul who hated Decemberists, John Parish and his band, minus Polly, plus me. We’re in a lovely Mexican place opposite Stubbs, where Paul talks us past the maitre d and makes a friend for life in the process. I’ve not met EDF before, sitting next to me. He’s bass and keys in John’s band and amazing company, really cool but I’m a bit overawed.

Thankyou Jay Jay Pistolet for solving my plectrum-loss problem on Saturday evening. I only caught a couple of songs of one of his sets but his singing was superb. And Beans On Toast has cut his hair! Looks quite attractive.

At some point during the morning I actually make it up and out to see Little Steven Van Zandt speak at the convention. He’s a charming, funny speaker but I disagree so vehemently with 95% of what he says, I’m working on a rebuttal blog entry. Be warned, it is coming.

…donate so we can buy the next keg…

The finest small band I’ll see is when Sarge drives us out to a suburban party in back of a bike shop where Local Natives are playing. 90% of the audience don’t have wristbands or owt to do with SXSW beyond hitting the edges and getting fucked up. Kids in the backyard pump beer into plastics from kegs and get off with eachother. Local Natives are a superb, duo frontman proggy outfit with unbelievable harmonies (especially given the crummy gear). Frantic keys, violin, electric lead lines. Hints of British Sea Power (especially in the two frontblokes) but more choruses. Fucking superb, basically. 

PJ Harvey & John Parish Utterly staggering. Beyond any expectations (and they were high) the show is all new album and the previous Dancehall… collaboration. Yet the songs and band are so impossibly good, PJ on such unbelievable vocal form, that the audience reaction is ecstatic to every track as if it’s a ‘hits’ set. So calmly they steal your breath. This is in my top 10 shows of all time, and I’m going to see them at least twice more

Stand through most of (post-Andy) Razorlight to make sure we get into the JP&PJ show. I’m prepared to give them a sincere go with an open mind, because Borrell still has a voice I enjoy… but it’s no good, a demoralising half-hour. No energy, which always sprang from the man behind the kit. No personality, ditto, and JB doesn’t give a fuck. They go off after 35 without playing America or a couple of the other biggies. Were they expecting an encore? 

In other circumstances Alessi’s Ark – who I know vaguely from doing songwriting workshops in schools – would be a real highlight, she’s developing into a classy songwriter and is shaking off the Newsom-isms to find her own voice. But it’s mere minutes since PJ&JP (oh, I’ve got my linear timeline back) so I’m too dazed to let her sink in. She makes me smile though.

I chased around all weekend but missed (every time) both Bearsuit and Graham Coxon. Can’t believe I didn’t even see the Bearsuiters in some social way. When I discover they have no more sets to play I really start thinking I’ve been at one SXSW and there’s been 100 others around the corner to have experienced and you’ll never know if yours was the right one.

Me After loving the beautiful woodeny old upstairs hotel bar venue and being treated well since I arrived, my 1am showcase set starts in a mess and struggles for a hellish 20 minutes of bad tuning, tinny sound and distracting street-noise spilling through open balcony doors around me. I’m wishing quite hard that I’d never been born.

I wonder how you recover, once you start to be embarrassed with yourself as a performer.

Thank fuck something clicks and it’s, well, it’s, I guess, not bad. A patient late-night audience which grows throughout, til luckily it’s really busy just as I improve – so at least more people see the better bits. Far too much American bourbon in the small hours with the charming organisers (a thousand thanks Chris and Wendy if you ever get near reading this). 

You know, I’d had a vivid pre-gig fantasy of destroying the room, then piedpipering the crowd out to the foyer to play a last song on the hotel’s delicious baby grand piano. In reality, I smiled, said “thankyou” and snuck tiredly into the backroom for more booze and contemplated getting a job and moving to the Isle Of Man. Like Piglet when he realised the Heffalump was Pooh.

Then we went and partied as hard as we could.

So, an un-fucking-believable few days – sublime and ridiculous. And it’s not done, I’ve got five more shows between here and the Pacific coast on this tour, before flying home at the end of the month…

I’ll post photos on Facebook.

Northern Ireland

Got in last night and caught up on the news – immediately feeling sad about the murders in northern Ireland because we were just there. Onstage in Derry and Belfast, Thursday and Friday, I paired up ‘This Gun’ and ‘Box To Hide In’ halfway through, introducing them with some nervous self-justification, for singing songs about terrorism to people who’ve got far more first-hand experience of it than me.

But that triggered a powerful internal repositioning and rethinking of the lyrics in my brain as I sang them. Always a rare treat because it takes you away from the danger-zone of singing the song over and over again, without real feeling. Songs written about the middle-east are suddenly brought much closer to home.

Actually in Derry I gave up on ‘Box’ – didn’t make it out of the first verse even. Nothing to do with vibe or content, just a technical problem:

The northern Irish crowd is enjoyably odd, in that they talk all the way through your stuff as if they’re not listening, but between songs cheer like madmen as if you’re a hero. I think they have a more balanced relationship with musicians, associating us (especially acoustic acts) with the old fella singing in the corner of the pub that they’re more familiar with than most parts of the UK, so it’s more equal, less inately respectful. A Good Thing but a bit exhausting. It’s only a problem if you’re concussed, haven’t got enough bottom-end in your monitors and therefore can’t hear to pitch yourself over the bar chatter.

I didn’t want to honk at the soundman for more foldback at the same moment as abandoning a song. So I came offstage and did ‘Tin Man’ unmiced on the floor, then went back on, did ‘M1′ and only after that, got the soundman to rebuild the mix, so the sound out front was quieter, and I had more monitors and a brighter mix. The rest of the set was fine but I wish I’d gone back and given ‘Box’ another go, because I felt the lack of an anti-violent counterpoint to ‘This Gun’. Especially this morning, when it felt retrospectively uncomfortably like rabble-rousing.

After the show I even got told off (in a nice way) by a couple of people who’d been chatting by the bar, because once I was on the floor, they couldn’t hear that song. A good night though and one of the cheapest breakfasts ever, in a Wetherspoons-type pub.

Belfast was more pro and we had a half-decent keyboard, thanks to Oppenheimer, so I was able to be Turner’s bitch for a duo show. Izzy did merch and was a star. The soundman at Auntie Annie’s had bodged a broken keyboard-stand, fixing it with gaffer and nails but by the end I was holding it up on one knee, shoving it against a speaker at the other end, using the wrong foot on the pedal and desperately trying to keep going. For encore, the keyboard went high up on top of a monitor speaker. Maybe a rock’n'roll end but we did ‘English Earth’ and it was probably the weakest moment of Frank’s set because I couldn’t hear myself.

I found it reassuring that – despite rapidly impending international superstardom – Frank had the same challenge both nights with the background talking, so it wasn’t personal to me.

I was supposed to drive these Irish shows but missed my flight to Dublin, after some kid twatted me on his bike on Tuesday night and ever since I’ve got scary concussion in the corners of my eyes. Anyway, the back-up plan (much cheaper in the end) was travelling by taxi, so I was forgiven for letting the side down. Main arsehole was I missed Gaslight Anthem’s end-of-tour party, which was probably epic and perhaps even an opening slot.

After saying goodbye to Frank and Izzy the night before, I had an early breakfast and took the smallest, shortest flight I’ve ever endured, full of shame about the carbon.

…and I’ll tell you about the Isle Of Man another time, if you’re fucking lucky.

999,999 Solutions

Buy this Dark Was The Night it’s extraordinary.

I just wrote a Morning Star column about Spotify and ended up thinking optimistic thoughts about a future for selling recorded music, for the first time in a long old while:

What if, as music consumers move away from the bother of downloading, towards building playlists and streaming tracks using legal collectively held libraries (like Spotify or Last.fm or even the BBC iPlayer), this means they semiconsciously move back into the mindset of actually having to pay for music? The legal streaming royalty may still be tiny – fractions of a penny for plays – but it adds up and is negotiable in the long-run. What it does do, that’s a massive positive, is put value back on music. You either get used to the advert breaks, or you buy a premium account.

I really like the idea of increasing that per-play royalty a large amount but allowing the first 2-3 plays of any song by any individual for free or discount. Not a new idea I’m sure.

I also love the idea, in the long-run, of a compatible, direct-relationship streaming system between artist and audience. So I hold tracks on my own site and people stream them and an automatic process by which I get paid takes place. Liberating us (again) from the middle-man of the streaming hosts.

The solution was so damn simple after all – a user-friendly front end. Maybe I’m being over-optimistic but there’s a purism about streaming I like: it’s truly meritocratic, meaning that if you write a ‘classic’ and thousands of people play it over and over again over the years, you make more money. Obviously, if someone buys one of my albums, it’s (usually) so goddamn brilliant they’ll treasure it and play it several hundred times over the next decade. Ditto lots of people I love, from Decemberists to Radiohead to Tom Williams.

But if someone buys the latest hype album on the basis of the one good song on there, they’ll probably only ever play it a few times.

Consumer benefits because they haven’t shelled out for shit. I (by which of course I mean ‘good’ music) benefit because even if my initial core audience is smaller, they will repeat-play more often. 

In other words, repeated plays are hype-proof. So there’s one solution.

Last night Jen & Jon took me to see Robyn Hitchcock – he was excellent, much better than last time I saw him playing solo. This time he had a terrific band (his UK band, not the celeb-heavy Venus 3) with Rob Ellis drumming and Tim Keegan got up as well, who used to accompany Hitchcock all the time – and also fronted one of the great lost bands of the early 90s, Departure Lounge (they were on Bella Union and produced by Simon Raymonde, I think, who, if memory serves, made them sound less good). 

I used to vaguely know Robyn Hitchcock’s Mum, I interviewed Hitchcock at WOMAD about 10 years ago. When I introduced myself he said: “Have a cup of tea,” and passed me a plastic cup. “Thankyou,” I replied and took a big swig, “I just found it.” He said.

Anyway, I listened to Hitchcock today, then various other things connected (for me), Decemberists, Yo La Tengo, Fairport, Okkervil River, Delgados, the aforementioned Keegan, Mary Hampton, Bellowhead, other stuff, then found myself heading back to Capital, wondering if it was too ‘boring indie rock’ or was lacking something with hindsight. Fuck that though: I hope it’s not too arrogant to say – or at least you’ll take it as an honest feeling – but listening to it on Spotify, I sincerely can’t understand why it wasn’t a smash hit record, it’s great. Doesn’t matter though, the next two will be and actually, that doesn’t matter either.

So there’s another solution and it’s not yet 3pm.

2009, the myth of process and what not to talk about.

Sorry this blog has been sparse (so far) this year. No excuses, I haven’t found reasons to write moving forward into 2009 and I’m confused about what to do and where to go next.

I started handing in my pile of new song demos. They vary between loud, quiet and odd/groovy in between. I like them all (or they wouldn’t get beyond my MacBook) and I’m extremely proud of a few of them, although the trademark ’sound’ of Garageband is all over them, which I hope everyone relevent can “hear through”.

Left behind for now are what I’ve mostly been composing but isn’t useful or appropriate: nasty electro ideas waiting for a structure and improvised Keith Jarrett-style romantic jazz(-ish) piano. So you can tell, I’m all over the place creatively. In fact, I’ll probably hand in some of the piano impro demos at the end, and pitch that we accompany the next album with a second disc of that stuff, taped at the same time as recording the album. Would be ace fun, cheap to make and probably a strong extra record.

A funny thing with demos: I’m sure most people have the song completely written and it’s just the recording / performances that are ‘demo standard’. For me, the song itself is still at a demo stage, so incomplete or a work-in-progress. In particular, lyrics aren’t done. Jon Clayton will tell you (probably through gritted teeth), I’ve literally had to redo vocals at the final mix stage, when I’ve found a tweak in the lyrics that’s too important not to include.

Ach, I’m talking about process. See below. 

So here’s a million dollar question which I always resist asking… Do you prefer Chris T-T music loud or quiet? solo acoustic, full band or somewhere in between? or is it more an issue of content… Should I be writing more psychedelic nature / animal / love songs or keep up the commie shit? 

comments more than welcome, obviously, or I wouldn’t be asking

I know what some of my closer friends and family think but never really know what the record-buying, gig-going ‘fans’ prefer, or whether the split (if there is one) is even. 

Of all the things spoiling culture at the moment, I’m starting to pinpoint the worst as what I’ll call The Myth Of Process. This is the shift by which everyone thinks they know how it’s done, even though they don’t really. It’s the real damage inside the reality TV talent show movement but can equally be found in every area of culture and in the instant communication of those making culture. Interactive shows, Twitter, blogging or posting demos on Myspace are just as much a part of this as any celeb gossip columnist.

No (or very, very rare) communication between an artist and audience (or potential audience) is entirely truthful, simply because the artist wants the audience to increase. So as we increase the amount, intimacy (hey @wossy or @schofe on Twitter) and regularity of that communication, what we’re actually doing is increasing the spin / lying.

Even at my level, I’m mythmaking / spinning. I’m not going to tell you which artists I hate that I’m friends with because it’ll stuff my friendship with them (or worse, lose me professional opportunities ;p)

So the audience now almost always think they know how it’s done and, alongside this, becomes obsessed with the process itself, rather than the product. At the same time, us artists fall for the same myth. 

When musicians hang out, why don’t we talk about making music anymore? A few years ago, we’d sit around yacking about guitar pedals, snare drum compression, which towns had the best audiences. Now, to a much greater extent, we all yack distribution demographic this, PR that, business shit all around their mouths.

I’m guilty totally myself and, in a sense, have always been one of the worst offenders: a keen music industry gossip and process-hound, disguising myself as an aloof ‘pure’ music maker. But I don’t get it: do we now actually enjoy the business more than the music? Sounds bonkers but feels increasingly, heartbreakingly true.

I love the visual arts because I don’t know how they manage it. The mystery is still intact. When I hear a pop hit, I am aware that what I’m loving about the first 30 seconds is primarily a snare drum sound and a bunch of reverbs – and can make informed assumptions about how they achieved those. But with a brilliant classic painting, I have no idea where to begin with process – and don’t want to.

And that’s what we need to recapture, somehow. But talking about it – and especially asking your opinion – contributes to the opposite. Doh.

euro tour diary #3 – gone tits

ST GALLEN (calm before the storm)
I forgot to tell you how boss our dinner was, back in Lucerne, in the Fuckhaus, where I had breaded aubergine and polenta – discovering against expectations that I love polenta. Here in St Gallen it’s also delicious: potato-cake things with a rich sauce and vegetables, plus incongruous unsauced pasta on the side, which I ignore. No more pasta til Italy. Switzerland has provided some of the best posh veggie food I’ve tried. 

The hotel is also nice but the shower is in the corner of the bedroom with not even a curtain, so we take turns to sit outside the room while the other jumps in the shower. Would be fun for lovers but a bit annoying today.

Grabenhalle is ace fun. A slightly older, folkier crowd. During the time it takes for Frank and me play our sets, standing in front of a big circular window (hence tonight’s ‘Porthole Concert’ event name), almost two feet of snow falls, totally burying the town. I’ve got lush footage of the sets with fat flakes falling behind us.

The night unfolds messily. Half the audience sticks around and Frank jams tipsy NoFX covers sat on the edge of the stage. We’re alternating appenzeller with whisky thanks to a(nother) forthright bar manager who won’t see us empty-glassed and at the very end I do three uberdrunk extra songs, including a Swiss-German-ised Hedgehog Song. Then we all pile outside, build a massive snowman called Steve in the carpark and have a vicious snowball fight. Frank falls down and cuts his elbow quite badly. That night he’ll leave a disturbing amount of blood on his bedsheets, leading to an embarrassed check-out.

In the morning, covered in snow, St Gallen is an opulent Catholic town but bits of the old town were ruined when a bank bought it all, tore it down and build a ‘red square’ precinct, painting several streets bright red and commissioning a former socialist artist to sell her soul, building massive red-painted installations. It’s gross.

We’ve had a fantastic morning. Then we drive four hours through driving rain and heavy traffic to Geneva and at some point during the journey our karma goes to shit…

GENEVA


The airport straddles France and Switzerland. We need to drop the car off at Avis on the French side of the border, to avoid a massive international surcharge. It’s only half a mile away from the main Swiss airport but somehow SatNav can’t find it and Avis have no address for it. We drive around a bit getting frustrated, then go to the Swiss branch of Avis to ask for help and they kindly give us a hand-drawn map. It’s getting late so we phone the promoter, who will come to the French side to drive us to the venue.

But the Swiss map proves to be utter shit. We drive around Geneva Airport 11 times (I shit you not) adding an hour and 70km to our journey. Meanwhile our promoter Luc got there just by walking through the airport.

We finally find it. At which point Avis stick us for an extra day because apparently we should’ve dropped the car off by 11am. First I’ve heard of it. Also, we slipped over the mileage limit driving round in circles. After a fight, they relent on the mileage and fuel at least. Here’s the beef: according to French staff, the Swiss map we were given is deliberately inaccurate, because the two Avis branches hate each-other and the Swiss side loses money when punters drop cars off on the French side. Or something like that. Anyway, utter smackable fucktards in my book.

So finally shot of the car, we head across town to the venue, at which point we discover we left Frank’s laptop in the hire car. Aaargh! Luc, who is a prince, drives back to the airport while we soundcheck. Tiki’s is a sexy Hawaiian-themed retro bar run by hardcore punkers. It’s fantastic but we’re super-late (and knackered as shit) so just check and play. Luckily it doesn’t affect either show but afterwards I feel so self-consciously stinky and tired, it’s hard to talk to anyone properly.

And then, the worst conclusion to the day possible. Because we’re up at 5am, Luc has just put us up in a Youthhostel and – fuckfuckfuck – we’re in a shared room with strangers! If I’d known even an hour earlier I would’ve happily paid the difference for a private room. We walk into a space the size of my own bedroom at home, but it’s crammed with bunkbeds full of smelly, drunk, snoring and farting Eurofucks. Utterly dismayed but tiredness defeats disgust and I collapse fully-clothed onto an odourous bottom bunk. 

GENEVA – ZURICH – VIENNA
Four hours later, we’re up, unshowered, legging it through dark frozen streets to catch the 6.30am train from Geneva to Vienna, via Zurich: 3 hours to Zurich, 12 minutes to change trains, 8-9 hours to Vienna. Croissant and coffee. Guardian.

What follows, despite kinked circumstance, is the most jaw-droppingly beautiful journey I’ve ever taken. We sleep at first. Then after leaving Zurich we head high into the Alps and cross above a series of snowbound, forested valleys like nothing I’ve ever seen.

We’re in an old-fashioned private compartment of six seats. We have our laptops linked via Bluetooth, so we can talk shit about the various people who come into ‘our’ compartment during the journey. Eventually we get rumbled by two haughty women from Liechtenstein who were offensively blasé about the scenery and don’t react well to being mocked by two scruffy English musicians.

There’s even a reasonable restaurant car, although we have to take turns to go eat because all our luggage is in the compartment. 

VIENNA


We get to Vienna four minutes late, after eight hours traveling, and other passengers are moaning. I wish them all a long British train ride for healthy perspective.

Flying Pig bar owner Paul picks us up. Paul and me lived together for a year at college in the mid-90s but I haven’t seen him since and we’ve only had contact on Myspace. He’s different from how I remember: a quirky bar owner, complete with full-on Austrian accent, married to a Korean action movie star. The bar and gig and whole night are eccentric. The sound is almost impossibly quiet because the speakers are spread through the Flying Pig and there’s no monitoring. Sounds like a truly unplugged show. It’s also very busy with a heavy hardcore contingent but the crowd is weird and can’t decide whether to talk through us or get into it. We both win them over and I begin to think Vienna might have a happy ending.

…btw at this point I realise I accidentally smuggled a (very small) helping of something naughty through seven countries. Moron! Was forgotten in a coat pocket – must be a really common thing to do and I’m just lucky it wasn’t the kind of stuff that a sniffer dog might notice. I’ll leave it behind in Vienna – there were too many armed cops on the train and at the Swiss border… nasty thoughts…

The most interesting people in Vienna are two Stoke guys and an Australian girl living in Budapest offering open house to anyone who strays by (and through couchsurfing.com), making their living by online gambling. They are scarily young, only just out of teens, yet like something out of a hip movie and their leader is one of the brightest, almost eerily composed guys I’ve ever met. I suggest they watch Grifters because they’d make a stunning scam team and they’re currently locked out of half the gambling sites. We would love to party late with these dudes but we’re just too flaked. Pause to add Budapest to the next EU tour city list. 

We stay in Paul’s flat, while he sleeps in the backroom of his bar. Oddly, his flat has a shower in the kitchen. He says he’ll pick us up at 7am the next morning from the flat, to get his keys back and pay us.

We wake up at 6.30am. A second day operating on 4 hours’ sleep. 

At 7.15am there’s no sign of Paul. We phone him and leave messages. At 7.30 we phone again and pack our gear in a panic. By 7.40am we’re wandering the streets desperately seeking a taxi. Forty minutes and €50 later, we’re at the airport. More phone messages: we still have Paul’s keys and he still has all our money! Come on, where are you man!? Fuck! 

We check in and just make the flight, mainly because it’s been delayed by 30 minutes. It’s a tiny prop plane with 20 other people onboard. Coffee and croissant. Financial Times. Flying low over more Alps and across the Adriatic, south-west into Italy, towards Bologna Airport. And as the Italian booker’s assistant Laura meets us at Bologna, Paul is waking up and leaving messages. But we’ll leave him to our agent now to get our money and I’ll tell you about the last three days in Italy when I’m safely home.  

eurotour diary #1

I fucking did it again: rubbed huge blobs of shampoo into my eyes mid-shower. I have no idea what I’m suddenly doing wrong in my 30s to be unable to wash my hair without oracular self-harm. The third time in a week and it’s become a psychic burden whereby I’m convinced it will trigger a difficult day, so of course it does. Packed. Repacked in a different case. And again. Decided fuck it I’m not going on tour. Then left for the train. 

SOUTHAMPTON 

I’m here to open for – but much more importantly see – Carter USM’s secret show, because I’ll be in Europe for their two larger reunion gigs. Plus Marc is back in the UK. Except that in the repacking panic I left my acoustic guitar pick-up, some cables and several other vital bits at home and I’m supposed to be on the Eurostar tomorrow morning. So I play a short set using a hi-hat mic on my acoustic (clarity but no balls), which goes surprisingly well – quite upbeat and jokey – then instead of sticking around I have to jump on a train back to Brighton to pick up the stuff. Missing Carter. And I carried all my stuff for the Europe trip all the way to Southampton then home again.

PARIS

In the French bakery at St Pancras, I’m waiting for Frank when an elderly couple wander over. He wants a croissant but she wants a crepe from the café next door. Their solution is to each go into the adjacent café and sit and order separately, but sit right next to each-other separated only by the glass window dividing the two cafés. They seem quite content.

Anyway, I’ve got to say Eurostar is lush, I’m sure we accidentally booked First Class because we get a gorgeous meal, much better than airline food, with dessert and wine if we want it (I have apple juice). On my mind is my key task for today: to pick up the hire car in central Paris just before rush-hour and drive it across town to the venue, over that infamous lethal roundabout that doesn’t count on anyone’s insurance, when I’ve only ever driven a tiny bit of right-hand drive in L.A.

So I’m nervous. But what transpires is worse: at Gard du Nord absolute muttons at Europcar won’t let us have the car we’ve booked. Frank has the credit card to pay – but no driving license. I have the license to drive – but no credit card. Despite us both being there and it being totally sound, because if I crash Frank pays, obviously, somehow they won’t let us take the car – the name has to be the same. And it doesn’t say anything about this on their shoddy excuse for a website, they deliberately gave Frank the impression when he originally booked that this wouldn’t be a problem.

None of the other car hire companies sat in a line can help because all their cars are booked.

We leave carless (and late) but hold the booking, hoping to resolve it over the phone. No such luck, in fact they attempt to charge us a €1,400 cancellation fee for not taking the car and the customer services woman is almost impossibly rude to Frank on the phone. They only relent on the fee after a shouting match – I’ve not seen Frank so angry. God, we’re stranded! Might as well get on with the gig.

Dinner at La Fleche D’or is delicious despite it seeming like quite a grimy club. It’s set above a railway bridge looking out over a set of railway lines. Seedy glamour abounds but the other musical acts are utter shite. I learn a harmonica solo for a smart new FT tune (quite a short, quick one) with a working title of Dan’s Song. 

Drinking heavily now (mixed emotions at not having to drive) I chat to this nut-job singer Cosmo Jarvis at the venue. He’s not playing tonight, his band are touring supporting Gabriella Cilmi around Europe and the TM knows Frank. The band are charming guys but Cosmo is filth: just one of his stories is about drinking some bloke’s piss, catching thrush from it, then giving it to his own band-member by snogging him. They’re good company but I find myself edging away in case I pick up something nasty.

Next morning, after struggling to work out train routes and fare budgets, leaving us aghast, we are rescued by Frank’s Parisian punkrock friend Cham from Jedethan, who used to work at Avis and scores us a Cleo. We’ll have to drop off in Geneva, leaving a gap in our transport plan between there and Vienna, but the deal is much, much better. A blessing in disguise. The icing on the cake is, the pick-up is in the north-west of Paris so we take a hefty Metro ride and I won’t have to drive through the city, just out onto the motorway north.

AMSTERDAM

Traffic, traffic traffic. Amsterdam rush-hour but I’m not scared of right-hand drive anymore, even when I turn right onto the tramline. SatNav takes us down several narrow alleys to the wrong Paradiso, so we’re scarily late.

Italian dinner. Hotel room on the fourth floor, with no lift and steep stairs but an amazing balcony looking out over the rooftops. Despite being on the edge of the red light district, which I’ve never seen, we decide to kick back in the room / on the balcony and go to bed pretty soon after that. Therefore apologies – I won’t be able to tell you about stoned late-night debauchery in the ‘Dam because there wasn’t any.

I’ve just discovered my new-ish mobile phone has a golf game on it. That’s what I was doing at 1am before faling asleep.

saving the economy in one go / last night

Yesterday I realised the ultimate right-wing dream: a one-step solution to the global economic crisis that doesn’t involve scary socialism. Just make a big (cost-free) ethical shift instead of these crazy-expensive fiscal shifts… here we go: let’s legalise the black markets. Drugs, the sex trade, the movement of labour and suddenly some of the world’s biggest, most stable and profit-making trades become a sizeable chunk of the ‘official’ economy. All the resources currently spent fighting them can be channelled into their development and the deregulators get to crow victory. A shot in the arm, if you like.

Really enjoyed yesterday’s Manchester jaunt. Marc Riley is a total gent, his team are lovely and we rocked it. It’s dangerous having a bar so near the studio though – especially with gaps between each performance – because the band has a swift one after get-in, another swift one after soundcheck and then one between each song.

Not me, I was driving.

Only bummer was, we adjourned to a highly recommended curry house, where everyone else had a delicious meal but I had a shite one. My floridly-described main course was just sag aloo with an onion. Asked for it mild, got it medium-strong. The tarka dal was viciously hot as well and even the pilau wasn’t much cop. And they forgot my mango lassi (though it was the nicest bit when it came). So I don’t care that the rest of the party was raving, I was gutted. Then three hours down the motorway I nearly lost my rag in Welcome Break, where it took thee different attempts to score a pathetic excuse for a coffee. Both Coffee Nation machines in WHSmith were bust and the staff were a bit ‘confused’. Especially once the milk started running and running. So I was forced into Coffee Primo, Welcome Break’s pretend café brand. It’s the worst! The staff can’t make hot drinks for shit, you get a filthy lukewarm milk’n'dirt mess and you don’t realise it’s undrinkable until you’re back on the road, doing 80 miles an hour with nowhere to throw it. The canteen was full of flies as well. God I hope their IT department tracks back!