Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Downloading

Hope that your Christmas was good.

I'll talk about that more later.

I'm downloading some of the uber cool mp3s and videos that Pete Townshend has been putting up on his site recently right now. Can't wait to get these home from the Internet Cafe.

I too will be publishing some more music online.

The internet is FUCKING GREAT FOR MUSICIANS!!!!

Don't believe what the record companies tell you. Believe me...I'm a musician. They're not!!!

Tom.

Friday, December 23, 2005

Happy Days Are Here Again...

In a good mood today...though feeling very tired and looking forward to a lie-in tomorrow.

I came up with a really fucking good, aggressive groove last night. Proper ballsy!

I tried to stick it with some lyrics that I'd written before, but I think that it deserves something entirely new.

I'm in an optomistic, creative and happy mindset. I'm going to be working quite a bit but its all good for paying the bills. I'm renting out a couple of the bedrooms in the house where I'm living at the moment, and had a couple of emails today from a girl who wants to move in who seems to have the right attitude (in fact reading her message did crack me up).

Have a good Christmas and a Hippy New Year.

Tom.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Crashing By Design...

Christ,

I'm up and down all the bloody time today. Too much caffeine, too much/not enough sleep...What the fuck is going on???

I'm all over the place. Had some very entertaining dreams last night, and though I wish that I could have stayed in them, I woke up to the sound of my alarm in a really good mood.

So, I'm feeling charged up on nervous energy this morning.

I got paid today too!! Time to go off and buy many a Christmas gift for the family bash up in Norfolk over the weekend.

I've had a flood of clever ideas for an EP release early in '06. It might be the Flasher Opera, it might just be a few of the new tracks that I've been having so much fun with. But I think that I'll also do an audio production log on it, which I'll record updates for and then edit together for a bonus track and probably webcast it on this blog and also my main site http://www.thechange.org.uk, ofcourse I would love to do this in a video blog, but unfortunately I'm still too poor to even think about getting a rig suitable for that kind of funky game.

Will blog again soon. Hoping that I level out today, my body feels totally wired. Must have another brain kicking around there somewhere which is pressing the overide button.


Tom.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Some Darkness, Some Light

Had an office party last night at the Industry near Old Street. Mostly free drinks, plenty of dancing (including with an anglo-Italian girl with divine hair, who everyone seems to have a crush on) most of which involved a great deal of spinning around the room.

Great fun, but CHRIST!!!! Why did it have to be on the night before a working day? So, I'm feeling a bit fragile today and a little dark about things. More straightforward people would describe this simply as a hangover.

On the otherhand though, I am really in a great mindset at the moment. At the weekend I had a buddy come and stay. I supported his band Eight Miles High a couple of months back. Llee, is a really good, tight guitarist, who knows how to create that mid-60s guitar style and tone perfectly. We wrote and recorded a song together called "Rosie Lee" about the glamorous though sexually frustrated wife of a fat ugly man called Stavros, who - er, how can I put this - invites her cockney milkman in for a variety of teas and always gets an extra pint free.

Llee writes in a far more precise manner than I do. He can come up with a classic structure and chord sequence for a song very quickly (I tend to labor at this, and pay only a lazy attention for conventions when it comes to structure). It was interesting to see how he works.

I am fired up by the quality of what I've been writing recently, and itching to get on stage. I think that in early '06 I will playing quite a bit live. I really feel in my bones at the moment that this is the direction that I should be pressing for. I've got a good vibe about things, I can see what needs to be done and how to do it very very clearly.

Hope that the Christmas groove is a good one for you. Are we having fun yet?

Tom.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

That Mad Mad Feeling

I don't know what it is today, but I keep on feeling a little mad. Its quite a mischievous sensation. Nothing depressing about it, nor particularly funny.

Small stabs of intensity that interrupt my otherwise mundane day.

Feeling full of creative juices at the moment. Really charged up, the world is my oyster kind of thing. 2006 is going to be a big year, a lot of fun, and a great opportunity to kick some devastating rock n roll ass!

Feeling stoked. Though a bit dizzy and mad. It must be too much excitement or spiritual energy chanelled through to me. It all feels pretty benign.

Tom.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Quick Update

Spent Saturday afternoon recording the first segment of my rock opera 'Attack Of The Chevron Action Flasher'. It came out pretty good, but I think that I'll do another take to give it a bit more sparkle. This is just the demo phase (though a later one), and I'm not planning to release this recording. It will provide the 'draft' version for a more complete recording later in a proper studio. That said, its sounding pretty good in terms of the clarity of what I'm cutting, and I'd like it to be good enough to share it with others if the wind changes.

New ideas keep on dropping into my head for arrangements and codas for this, so maybe there will be two versions. I may cut a big song out of it, and so the structure is still being monkeyed around with. There are some vignettes that I'd like to fit into it, but I think that they would shift the whole opera away from pop. For me, pop should always be focussed. Very simple in essence (with the scope to be very complex in execution).

An MP3 of 'Smuggler Sid' is coming very soon (just got to get the login details for my FTP and upload it!)

Am working a lot in the day at the moment, tonight I am showing some people around my house. Potential housemates no-less, but I won't make a decision for a week or so.

Oh, and merry Christmas.

Tom.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

The Winter, Smuggling, and Me

Beginning to get a bit frosty out there!

At least its still quite clear in the sky though.

I wrote some really good lyrics last night for a song called 'Have You Ever Been A Man?'. No. Its not about sex changes. Nothing like that. Its about men being men. Real men. Not just the pantomime stereotype of 'I can drink you under the table, punch your lights out and stop looking at my bird!' Quite a serious and aggressive set of lyrics. It will be a good song. Much more in my line, and a step away from the character based world of rock operas and vignettes that I've been focusing upon recently.

Speaking of which, I recorded Smuggler Sid a couple of days ago. A very silly song, about a rather shady and perverted fictional historical character. As is usually the case when I record something like this, I surprised myself with some of the musicianship. Its interesting how the simplest of musical ideas can come over so effectively when recorded. When I sit down and try to record something very fancy it almost always turns out to be less than perfect at best and deeply flawed with a one stop direction to the cutting room floor at worst.

Sitting here now, at work, in a call centre, in London...I am feeling pretty high creatively speaking at the moment. I worked thirteen hours yesterday (split over my two jobs), and when I finally got in 10:30pm I opened a bottle of cheap French wine and felt compelled to read through a couple of my note pads. I read out-loud the various bits of poetry that I've written at various times and often completely forgotten about. I am not a bad writer. None of it is polished as it should be, there is a tangle of ideas; good entwined with bad. But I figure that I'm on the right lines with all of this. A few pieces from the jigsaw need to come into place so that I can find the place for which I've been looking for so long, but I have faith, I have been awarded grace and I will realise my ambitions.

Recently, as some of you may have deciphered from my recent rather cryptic postings, I have been through something of a transition. A lot of people have fallen by the wayside in my life. Old flames extinguished (some more permanently than others), former friends now living ghost like in my present and removed from my future. Who chose this for me? I think that I did. Is this what is meant by defining one's own reality? I believe that it is part of it, and although this transition is uncomfortable, I know in my bones that it is a journey well worth making. In some cases the decision was necessary because of mutual delusion and lack of understanding of who is who.

Let me make this clear though, I have chosen solitude at times recently. This is a separate issue. I retain many friends, and find it very easy to make new ones - people who are of this/my moment - these are the people who I chose to be close to at this time. They too may disappear in time, who knows? And similarly, who writes or rather dictates the rules on this?

So, the future is looking bright. I really need to get some fucking photographs up here again! It needs to be done. There are some earlier in the blog (if you're interested), and there is an MP3 for a song that I wrote and recorded recently called 'Beer Bottle Joe'.

Expect MP3 postings here soon. Hope that all is well in your blogland, real life, and the rest of your jazz.

Tom.

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