Lost Blogs

I've been blogging on myspace. But I like this blog too. Its better for blogging, but myspace has a bit more of a community. Here are some 'lost' blogs that I've posted on Myspace but haven't here. Hope that you'll forgive me...I still love you blogspot.

He's A Chevron Interactive Flasher!!! 20/05/06

Posted my first bulletin in ages today, humbly requesting for audio contributions for the Flasher Opera's sound effects. I'll be doing my own too, I just wanted to see if I could get other people involved...to see if there was any love out there to be shared.

I have a music mix of the opera now. Finally finished up with something that I was happy with last night. Its 12 mins 16 seconds long. Not perfect, by any means, but neither am I...and so I can but try.

I'm enjoying working away and scheming about it at the moment. I have a few cunning plans on how I'm going to pitch it out into the world. It'll be released on CD as well as the web for sure. Probably on the Roostah Records label, or if not, then through me directly.
I've been sketching out some ideas in very rough form for the art work. I'm going to offer this up to some people and see if they want to do the job, they'll get ABSOLUTE creative control on it. And so will whoever shoots the 12 minute video for it too. YES. That's right. I want a promo video for it. It'll probably get shot on Hampstead Heath. I wonder if Ken Russell has recovered enough from the MRSA superbug that he picked up, to consider doing it. I'll have to plead poverty when it comes to the fee (maybe I can get him to work for champagne and smoked salmon sandwiches).

If you've ever seen Mahler or the Devils, then you'll know why I'd go after him. He's a genius, a lost one, but a genius, with a crazy 'minds eye' imagination. You see, I can envision the story of this little vignette in my head...I've even though about recycling some of the footage from my film, 'In Uniform' (more stutterers and nudity in that one too), but I don't think that I should be behind the camera on this one (or necesarily in front of it either).

So, it might be time to go Ken Russell hunting (unfortunately, I never managed to get a response from him when I wrote my dissertation on him...Gustav Metzger was much more accomodating). I'm working in an office today. But will be back at home later tonight and am hoping to do some more opera work on Sunday.

Catch you later. Peace and Love,

Tom.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

This Number Is Blocked!

Worked on mixing the flasher opera last night. A few technical problems (stretched tapes) but sounding good. Am working on some surreal overdubs for the sounds of policemen busting, flashers flashing, mobiles ringing and Silas screaming. Should be good. Have jettisoned the original sound effects that I did on the analogue. A good guiding point though.

A difficult date coming up for me in a week. Two years since my friend and mentor, John, died in really tragic circumstances. You'll hear more about it at the time. I'll need this blog as a therapy to stop me turning into an advert for Alka-Seltzer. I may post some demos of songs written during that crazy time in '04. They're artefacts.

I think that I've found a good hook and some new lyrics. Its for a tracked called 'This Number Is Blocked' about a man who lets people in and then gets cut off...and how the one who does the blocking leaves the other in a limbo land where they get the bitter end of things. It isn't as futile as it all seems. Expect some hope and love laced between the darkness. More an observation of way life works for us self-obsessives. The alternative is to build walls and hide behind barriers...I used to do that - sometimes I still feel tempted too- but you'll end up blowing up like a pressure cooker (in my case fuelled with various cheap things).

Have to go. Speak to you soon. I have mixing to keep me occupied.

Tom.

Monday, May 15, 2006
You're Only Supposed To Blow The Bloody Doors Off!!!

How many road managers said THAT to their groupies when they were back stage with Jim Morrision and his pals?!!

So, did you find the new track on the page today? Chirpy sounding song title, eh?! Its not a new song at all, it just took me five years to record it. Not because I was overawed by the immense technical challenge of two guitars, a backing vocal and a lead...but because its one of those. Its just one of those. Don't be confused for a minute about the title, The Cancer Is Within, must make me sound like I was depressed when I wrote it. Make no mistake! This song was born of anger. A lot of it. You can get yourself wrapped up in your bullshit, let people and emotions twist and enmesh until the woods become the trees and they scrunch up like roots in your stomach. Tight. Impenetreble. And that's just it, the protagonist in the song is crying out a surrender of self...he's on his knees. Its a prayer, because he can't communicate with people, he takes the next step up. He and the people around him have frozen up. 'In a heart solid with frost', etc, etc.

Right enough of that. What a serious sounding fellow I can be -if only you knew the truth...but don't ask because I'll only distract you, that way no scope for manipulation exists - so, anyway...I didn't record 'Magnets and Stars', I did, at the request of my muso pal and co-conspiritor Llee from Eight Miles High, choose to record this. And we smoked a lot of cigarettes, drank a lot of wine, and burnt two types of joss sticks - occasionally simultaneously. The intake of wine meant that I had to surrender my usual large pots of tea - Earl grey - which I hammer through to keep me interested.

I sketched out a list of some songs that I really should have recorded, but that I've either not been happy with the results of or haven't been able to get round to doing. This is the good stuff. And I'm going to attack them soon, which is equal priority to that other great oddysey of mine, which is finding the drummer and the right bassist. Hmmmmmm, the quest continues.
Here's a list of the aforementioned songs in no particular order, with a few notes (Spider: ' No doubt with bullet points, Rudi, you anal bastard!!!')

Magnets & Stars - music written in a bedroom above Warren Street tube station, and the lyrics outside a pub in Camden when I did one of my mad crazy falling in love binges with an old flame that should have remained well and truly extinguished.

Remember Me - That's what your epitaph will say. A social commentary. I wrote a devastatingly harsh chorus for it.

Freeze Frame - More of the above, but don't get trapped in celluloid cages or enraptured by burning pages, it stretches beyond the subject of Remember Me - I wrote it before it - its an anti-bullshit song.

Simple Silas - My poor orphaned Silas. Sadly missing from my mini-opera because it would have stretched it to 17 minutes and left you all far too bored. So, poor Silas - a beloved live standard of mine - needs to be properly recorded so that you too can listen to the story of a stuttering boy who grows up to speak to thousands at the Albert Hall.

Popular - Ah, ma cherie...once I loved you, but now everyone tells me that you are the best song that I've ever written, that I will never better you, that I will be stuck with you like a mill stone around my neck. Not so, and the original demo for this was quite good, but I think that I can do better without some indie boy producing it for me. So, expect the definitive version. It warns against popularity for popularity's sake, ironic for such a popular song, it will remain 'something bought lustful and spectacular', ad nauseum.

The Brief - Says exactly what it does on the tin. Its my contract. My writer's brief...with busker John who came into the Beer Cart Arms on the night that John Entwistle died in 2002 and danced like a fool as I continued with the show, and there it was...the poor battered man, his face gashed, and putting off going to casualty to talk music with me and eulogise the aforementioned Popular and the cuts on my hands from strummmmmmming like a prize fighter. It was like God touching me on the forehead. I used to do this at the end of Popular, and The Change played it too. I defy anyone who questions my sincerity. Unless I've paid you to do so.

There is more stuff that I have to mix down, and a lot more songs. But these are the ones that sprung to mind today. A long old entry today. Hope that you're well, wherever you are...share the love.

Peace and Love,
Tom.

P.S. Apologies if commenting on my own songs makes you think that I'm up my own arse...but its my journal and I'll cry if I want to...today, I didn't want to, I wanted to share some enthusiasm.

Friday, May 12, 2006

Rock n Roll !!!

Howdy,
I have my producer, friend, bandmate elect, fellow Rugby town lad, Llee coming down tonight to do some recording. Last time we did that, we ended up writing a song about an ugly fat greek man called Stavros, his younger milftastic and glamorous bejewelled wife, a cockney milkman who always gives her an extra pint free. Which ofcourse, leaves them very thirsty...hence:
"Earl grey, darjeeling and assam make three, or a breakfast brew made by you just for me.
Come and have some Rosie Lea with me! My lovely Greek lady!"

I dug out the demo for it by chance last night, when I was mixing down the Flasher opera...but I got drunk in the process which resulted in being distracted. Found some usable takes of a couple of songs that I've written but not done a finished recording of too. One is called 'Fools Wish', and the other is 'Remember Me'. They sound quite good. Potential. Potential Potential!
It should be a good weekend for music making. I'm hoping that I can cut a good demo of 'Magnets & Stars' (I put the lyrics for it in my last blog entry). Its going to be proper Bo, I tell thee!

We'll just have to show a little discipline. I'm adverse to going out on the razzle this weekend...as I will smoke and spend to much, and it will fuck up my voice. So, I'm hoping that we'll just settle for delicately demolishing some large bottles of scotch over the course of recording. Far more civilized. And being ripped off your tits on scotch keeps your head a lot clearer the red wine - it doesn't make you as sleepy either.

The sun here is absolutely gorgeous.

Yo! Give me some noise people on the comments...or I'll change my photo here to the one where I'm checkin' this bad face!

Peace. Out. Mo-fos!
Tom.