Paul Jackson Music

#37: Preps and Plans

2017-09-04T22:50:00.002+01:00

Ahead of performing live sets hopefully in the not too distant future, I was recently urged to supply promotional material including artist name and web links. The ridiculous mental debate I've had with myself over the last year about what form my live set up should take was nipped in the bud when I had to make a decision. Probably at the relief of the few friends I've no doubt bored senseless with my indecision.
So for this vocal and piano venture, I shall be simply going out as Paul Jackson. That's it. Done. Next!

http://pauljacksonmusic.com/

Please sign up to the mailing list to receive news and regular, or maybe irregular, bits of info.

I've been gathering up some songs and reworking them as acoustic versions. Not really one to leave things unfinished, I am still aiming to the next album of electronic pop tracks before wrapping up the Production moniker. I have always felt a disconnect between me, the vocal take and the music. Recording vocals over an electronic backing track is something I've always struggled with and it has never ever come out as I wanted it to. But sat at a piano, pressing keys while also singing lyrics has a very different feel. More freeing in a way. Whether it's related to being more in control of the musical notes as well as vocals I don't know but I can sense I perform better that way. I think so anyway.

So at present, I have a set list forming of my own songs for just vocal and piano. There are no keyboard stands and racks of boxes for me to hide behind, or sweeping synthesizer lines to cover myself with. Not yet anyway

I tried out another open mic night in August at the Duke Of York in Tunbridge Wells. I decided to risk trying out a song that I'm currently recording called A Long Way Off, which is quite an upbeat electronic pop track that I never envisaged could be performed on piano. But I didn't want the piano set to be just slow songs so I thought I'd try it out and while it felt tricky and not exactly as I intended, I think it might be worth persevering with.

I also decided to upload some earlier material to my Production Bandcamp page that includes songs I am currently adding to my forthcoming piano set. Live With It and Lost Again are two songs from years and years ago I thought might work. So at http://production.bandcamp.com you will find two digital ep's called Studio Archive EP and Remix Archive EP containing a few tracks I recorded for the Production album 'Studio' as well as some remixed versions.

And purely for keeping record of songs I've tried out at recent Open Mic nights, I decided to list them here

24 February 2017

The Elm Tree, Paddock Wood

It's My Life (Talk Talk cover)

Fireflies (Owl City cover)

Getting Away With It (Electronic cover)

To Everyone Unknown

27 February 2017

The Duke Of York, Tunbridge Wells

It's My Life (Talk Talk cover)

Getting Away With It (Electronic cover)

To Everyone Unknown

15 May 2017

The Duke Of York, Tunbridge Wells

Love Comes Quickly (Pet Shop Boys cover)

Frozen (Madonna cover)

Turn

14 August 2017

The Duke Of York, Tunbridge Wells

To Everyone Unknown

A Long Way Off

Come Dancing (Kinks cover)

Getting Away With It (Electronic cover)

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://production.bandcamp.com/album/studio-archive-ep"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Studio Archive EP by Production&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://production.bandcamp.com/album/remix-archive-ep"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Remix Archive EP by Production&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

#36: Open Mic Nights

2017-05-16T16:17:00.003+01:00

So I survived my first try out at an Open Mic night back in February. Up until a couple of weeks prior to it, I had never attended one. I had always associated Open Mic nights with stand up comedy. It had never crossed my mind that there were ones for musicians as well until several years ago when a musician friend of mine mentioned that they had done one. I immediately thought they had turned their hand to being a stand up comedian.
The first one I performed at was at The Elm Tree, Paddock Wood, and I didn't even need to supply my own keyboard as there was one there I could play. But not having tried it out until I was up for my first song, it was a little hard to get used to a different keyboard feel, keyboard stand height and general set up and sound. It was a very busy Friday pub night but I got through the songs and it seemed to go down okay.

I performed It's My Life (Talk Talk) and Fireflies (Owl City) to begin with. I was later invited back to do another where I played Getting Away With It (Electronic) and then later on in the evening I performed one of my own called To Everyone Unknown: a song I have been recording for the next Production album though this time I was performing it as vocal and piano rather than with synths and sequencing
The following Monday I went to the Open Mic night at the Duke Of York, Tunbridge Wells, which was a smaller and more intimate setting, and a very relaxed atmosphere and welcoming bunch of people to perform to. I performed It's My Life, Getting Away With It and To Everyone Unknown and they seemed to go well.
This time I brought and set up my own keyboard and stand and sound module, and it didn't take as long to assemble as I feared it might.
Then a few weeks passed until I decided to have another try. Last night (Monday 15th May) I went back to the Duke of York for another try and this time performed Love Comes Quickly (Pet Shop Boys), Frozen (Madonna) and then another of my own called Turn. They seemed to go okay though I felt I could have performed Turn a bit better. But its all good testing ground and a good learning curve.

So it took me a while to get round to it but I gave it a go. I would quite like to do them as and when I can and eventually get a full set worth where maybe I could perform a gig. Though the intention is to then incorporate some electronics and extra keyboard work into the mix to vary the sound and arrangements. Nothing too overblown as I may have done in the past, but I think a more subtle approach with a view to reinterpreting songs rather than any straight covers.
But one step at a time.....

At The Elm Tree, Paddock Wood, Feb 2017

#35: Open Mic... Prep

2017-02-22T08:45:00.001+00:00

When I kickstarted the idea of playing live again early in 2016, I wasn't quite sure in what form it would take. While I mentally debate about whether to go for full synth/sequencer set up doing original material, or vocal/piano set up or even a vocal/piano with minimal additional synth arrangements, I was aware that it could all be for nothing if I end up not performing that well anyway - or even not enjoying it. So I decided it was test the water. If only to see what might work, what path to venture down and what to rule out. Even if that means ruling out the whole idea..
So the other week I had a look online to see when and where there would be an Open Mic night for singers and musicians for me to watch and listen and see if that should be the next step. I saw there was one that very evening in Tunbridge Wells, so after getting home from work I ventured over to watch a selection of singer songwriters performing a mixture of covers and originals. Though all were guitarists, I was invited to come back with a keyboard and try out some songs. So that's what I aim to do on Monday 27th.
In addition to that, the other day I found another Open Mic night advertised for this coming Friday at a pub in my village. On contacting the person running it, it now turns out that I'll be attending this week with a view to playing some songs. I have an idea of the songs I'll be trying at both nights which are mainly covers but I have a couple of my own songs ready to drop in if the time is right. They are songs I've already recorded and arranged as full electronic pop songs for the next Production digital release, but I shall be trying out minimal piano versions.
So it feels a little bit like I'm peering over the diving board and not really knowing how it will feel or how it will be received. After Friday and Monday, we shall see what happens next.

#34: Wrapping Up The Present

2016-12-21T14:09:00.002+00:00

So as I wrap up another year, I have a brief look back over musical activity in this area. Not one but two Duster Jack albums were composed and recorded and uploaded to the Bandcamp site in the last two months.

Both were fun to write and record and kept within the instrumental electro synth dance style that fit under the Duster Jack moniker.

You can stream and download them here..

Theory Of Something
https://paulajackson.bandcamp.com/album/theory-of-something
Timeline
https://paulajackson.bandcamp.com/album/timeline

Since the beginning of the year I've had a Production album which currently consists of finished backing tracks. I did start recording vocals but want to try again and hope to have that done in the new year. I've also started arranging covers for a possible live venture. I have been toying with the idea of playing live again in some form or the other. Initially I wondered about performing original material in a solo electronic set up, as I used to do, but I've also been mulling over the idea of performing as a covers act - interpreting songs from various eras and styles in my own way and while I've rehearsed and recorded some of these, they need a little bit more work.

And aside from creating music, I've felt that I need to go back to having some sort of landing webpage from which to link to Bandcamp and the Blog and wherever else. So there's a few things to set my mind to in 2017. Until then I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

#33: New and Ongoing

2016-12-02T17:46:00.002+00:00

Following a musical prolific 2015, I hoped I could continue on the same path this year whereby I finish work on various ideas I've previously sketched out, or start and complete new projects. That hasn't quite happened as I intended, but I have found myself embarking on yet another idea that I've probably been spending far longer than is required at this time.
Last autumn I did start writing a new Production album and actually finished all the music for the ten electronic pop tracks that would form it. But I have yet to find adequate time and space to finish recording vocals and mix the whole thing down before setting it free into cyberspace.
At the start of the year I focused a little on how much I have missed performing live - be it with a band or solo, and I began toying with the possibility of breaking the haitus in some way. At the same time as doing my typical thing of overthinking, overworrying and overplanning on how I would action it, my brain has been awash with thoughts on how it might be perceived, how many people would be there to do any perceiving in the first place, and how I would feel in carrying it out.
Would I perform original tracks and pick up where I left the Production 'act' hanging at the turn of the century, or should I maybe not put it under any guise or umbrella and just perform behind a keyboard or two and delve into covers? I've chatted at length with a few close friends who have remained patient enough to hear me pour out ideas and thoughts and concerns and have received generous support in return. I have an idea of how I want to perform and present a selection of tracks - whether covers or originals, but nothing is going to happen until I actually find somewhere to play and turn up and just give it a go. But rather than just procrastinate and worry over it, I have consistently been collecting songs, arranging and sequencing accompanying synth and rhythm parts, as well as mappingout vocal and piano arrangements of various songs from various eras in various genres. So now I have quite a large bank of material to collate into performable sets, my next task is to record a few so I, and maybe select others, can hear and critique them, before I decide to take the next step.
I was sure I could reach performing stage by the end of the year but it hasn't quite worked out. I'm not too keen on trying it out in public before I feel I've confidently learned the material and my limited vocal and playing abilities are as fit for purpose as they can be.
As well as sequencing and arranging cover versions on my travelling studio tablet set up, I have also occasionally delved into musical ideas for instrumental tracks and reworking early Production tracks which I hope to air sometime in the new year.
A few weeks ago I decided to push myself a little with the challenge of creating some new musical ideas and experiments for another Duster Jack album. Purely for a fun exercise and workout. While starting on the basics for 12 new tracks, I found a bunch of ideas I had put down several months ago but had never expanded into full tracks. I had forgotten about them.
Theory Of Something

So out of those, I created 12 full tracks for a fourth Duster Jack album now released as Theory Of Something. And the newer 12 ideas were then expanded into a fifth album called Timeline which is all ready to publish. Just need to hit the button to make it live which will happen any day now. So I managed to get to the end of the year with putting something new out into the ether at least. And I hope the fun it was to make the tracks comes across to those who hear them.

#32: Cassette Box

2016-03-12T22:45:00.000+00:00

By 1994 I had got into the habit of recording demos of songs from my little synth/drum machine/portastudio set up and making up cassettes to scatter around the corners of the earth. In the summer holidays of that year from university I set up a mini recording area and began reworking and rerecording old songs as well as writing new songs and instrumentals. Partly for fun and partly for the cataloguing side of me I started compiling them as cassette albums. They didn't really venture outside anywhere other than into the hands of a few friends that showed an interest. However it was a way of archiving what become the results of a musical prolific few weeks and it was good fun. I cobbled together some sleeves courtesy of the library colour photocopier and typed up the tracklisting. I was sorting through some old boxes recently and had a little browse through these little cassette tapes from over twenty years ago. The latter two were compiled a couple of years later in 1996 but I never reached the colour sleeve packaging stage.

So for perhaps posterity and a little nostalgia and maybe even for the amusement of anyone who may remember any of the songs from that time, I've decided to list them here on the blog.

And while I'm not at any stage to even consider giving the audio another airing, I haven't ruled out maybe revisiting and reworking some past ideas for future ventures.

A Personal Possession (1994)

A Personal Possession
1. Would You?
2. Let It Go
3. Night Exodus
4. Possessive Mind
5. Let Me Hold You
6. Obsessive Mind
7. Confession
8. Just Another Love Song
9. Be Mind
10. Never Need You
11. Don't Leave Me Now
12. I Couldn't Really Care Less
13. For You

Trks 4,9,11,12 features Simon Partridge on guitars
Trks 1,2,8,13 (1994) 3, 5, 6, 7,10,12 (1993) 4,9,11 (1992)

Dreams and Illusions (1994)

Dreams and Illusions

1. Tomorrow Could Be A Different Thing
2. I'd Rather Not Know You
3. Don't Ask Me Why
4. I Could Do With A Little Love From You
5. But I Forgive You
6. What's It All For?
7. So
8. Would It Be Alright?
9. I'm Not Telling You
10. Isolated Virtue
11. On The Edge
12. Destiny

Trk 7. features Simon Partridge on electric guitar

Dark (1994)

Dark

1. Last Night I Stayed Awake
2. I Need A Place
3. I Don't Want To Be Here Anymore
4. It's Not So Easy
5. Wanderlust
6. Miles Away
7. Sitting In A Room
8. One Night
9. Time To Go
10. Poetry
11. One Of These Days

Club (1994)

Club

1. NRG Overture

2. Moments I Long For

3. Repercussion

4. Nightlife

5. Portrait

6. Don't You Feel Unreal?

7. One More Day

8. Masquerade

9. The Product

10. Would You Like To Take A Trip To The Moon?

11. Interlude 9

12. Productivity (Reprise)

Optimistic (1994)

Optimistic

1. It's The Only Solution
2. I Know A Place
3. I Would Like To...
4. After All This Time
5. You Are
6. Great Expectations
7. You Take Control
8. I'd Like To Know You
9. Do What You Have To
10. I Never Knew
11. Your Only Lover
12. What Can I Do?

Trks 8 and 11 feature Hannah Cygan on lead(8) and backing vocal(11)

Synth Disco (1996)

Synth Disco

1. Open
2. We Could Be Good Together
3. Thinking Of Me
4. Together
5. Blowing Your Mind
6. Long
7. Forever
8. Making Mistakes (I'm Alive)
9. Live With It
10. This Could Be
11. Club Pop
12. We Could Be Good Together
(S-cape mix)

Recorded 1995-96

Machine (1996)

Machine

1. I Want The Machines
2. Someone You Could Change
3. Moving Closer
4. You Wouldn't Want That
5. Calling Me
6. I Could Easily Forget
7. Living Tonight
8. Something More
9. Making It Real
10. Live and Die

Recorded 1996

#31: All things pending....

2016-02-04T18:56:00.001+00:00

I'm currently in one of my favourite lunch hour retreats from work where on occasion I sit with my tablet, a notepad and a coffee. I usually scribble down some music ideas and sketches, or on this occasion, take to my blog for a catch up. Last September I began noting down new song ideas which have now taken shape in audio form and I'm just now listening and reviewing all ten backing tracks. Certainly a lot faster process than it was for the 'Tonic' album but perhaps finishing that album has become the motivator to push ahead with continuing to create rather than stagnate.

The album has taken shape quite quickly and pending some vocal sessions I'm hoping I can put it out into the ether very soon. It rather depends on if I can hit enough right notes to be happy enough.

By the end of 2015 I had managed to finish a few little projects under various monikers I have been accustomed to jumping between, and I wasn't sure whether to continue in that fashion or create a new one and stick to it. Especially as I've been more recently mulling over the idea of maybe trying to do some live performing again. Not entirely sure where, when, what or why but as it's something I've missed doing I think it's at least worth another shot. Tried lots of different things over the years since I last performed and always had the intention, or maybe the hope, that I could pick up where I last left. Before I knew it fifteen years had gone by. So we'll see what happens after I spend a bit of time working on arrangements and performance strategy with a new set up. Maybe if I post it in this blog and I have knowledge that it has been read by someone somewhere, it may propel me to forge ahead with the idea instead of ducking out without good reason.

#30: New Year New Projects

2016-01-23T20:41:00.004+00:00

This is me stealing a few minutes on my lunch break in a coffee shop going through some ideas for an album's worth of new tracks.

More recently I've been tinkering with audio ideas using sequencing/synth/sampling software on my tablet which has become my trusty travel companion. But I also like to roll back to the old school method of notebook and pen. Usually for lyrics but occasionally to jot down chord sequences, melodies and rhythm patterns. Happy to report those Aural and Transcription lessons back at Salford University weren't wasted.

Hoping to work a bit faster on tracks this year and work a bit differently to previous projects. Instead of slaving over sequencer lines on the computer, audio editing, mixing etc, I'm aiming to record and write in a more immediate way for some project ideas I'm aiming to tackle.

We'll see how that progresses.

For now though, I've moved all musical output to one Bandcamp account which I'll be mainly using for everything regardless of artist pseudonym used.

paulajackson.bandcamp.com

#29: Rounding Up and Rounding Off

2015-12-23T22:54:00.003+00:00

So for the last blog post of the year and the foreseeable future I thought I'd round up the links to my musical online activity from the last 12 months. At the end of December 2014 I used Bandcamp to publish a bunch of tracks I had recently been working on under the name Duster Jack across five digital eps. This then paved the way for further use of the Bandcamp service throughout the year.

dusterjack.bandcamp.com

Time To Dust was the first digital album comprising of some of the previously released Duster Jack tracks including some slightly tweaked and remixed versions and two new additions.

Duster Jack: Time To Dust [album] (January 2015)

Time To Dust by Duster Jack

Android was the next album compiling the remainder alongside two more new tracks.

Duster Jack: Android [album] (May 2015)

Android by Duster Jack

My former synth pop music moniker, Production, was revived for a new digital single paying homage to the classic 7" and 12" formats I used to enjoy collecting back in the day. I had started formulating a new Production album of material from as far back as 2003 and after some years of going back to various works in progress, I managed to reach the finish line.

production.bandcamp.com

Desperation [digi-7"] (June 2015)

Desperation [digital 7"] by Production

Desperation [digi-12"] (June 2015)

Desperation [digital 12"] by Production

This was followed by the full album Tonic featuring a longer version of Desperation

Tonic [digi-album] (July 2015)

Tonic by Production

In September I decided to transfer some early recordings I made in the nineties under the name S-cape during my years in Salford, and I created a Bandcamp page for these too. I included five CDs I compiled of recordings, plus three earlier cassette albums and a couple of live recordings. Visit the S-cape page for full track listings and audio.

s-capemusic.bandcamp.com

S-cape: The Salford Tapes (Archive '99 Series 1-5) (September 2015)

Archive: Volume 1 by S-cape

S-cape: Live In Salford [1994]

S-cape: Live In Manchester [1996]

S-cape: Welcome To My World [1993]

S-cape: N-Trance [1993]

S-cape: Live Mind [1994]

In September I went through some other Duster Jack ideas I had programmed and written and decided to flesh them out into full tracks. This resulted in an album called Inside Influence

Duster Jack: Inside Influence [album] (September 2015)

Inside Influence by Duster Jack

I followed up the Production Tonic album with a homage to the six track remix album often released by synth pop bands of years gone by... in the form of a six track remix album called Proud

Proud [remix album] (October 2015)

While I never regarded Live It Down as a favourite of mine from Tonic, I had so much fun remixing it that I ended up doing a few versions to make up a followup single

Live It Down [digi-7"] (October 2015)

Live It Down [digital 7"] by Production

Live It Down [digi-12"] (October 2015)

Live It Down [digital 12"] by Production

During the year I also re-packaged, re-issued and re-mastered the tracks I had previously composed and produced under Paul A Jackson for the music for dance in education label Dancesounds. This time I released them as a Production Music Library for media use.. While these are only available to media users on certain platforms, the original Dancesounds albums remain available at my original Bandcamp page featuring Volumes 1-12 plus extra material, that has continued to see a bit of traffic with tracks streamed and downloaded every now and then..

paulajackson.bandcamp.com

Dancesounds Volume 8: Creative Workshop by Paul A Jackson

Dancesounds Volume 12: Mood and Atmosphere by Paul A Jackson

So after a few musically dormant years, it was a good feeling to actually get some projects finished and out of the way. Uploading content to places like Bandcamp helped me draw a line under them and allowed me to think of other things to do next. As I no longer have the same drive and ambition to do anything else with the tracks, and regrettably nor do i have any vision of how or where I could perform live again, it still felt worthwhile to continue writing, recording and uploading.

As for the near future I had been mulling over what I should tackle next.

More Duster Jack?
More Production?
Rework some old Production tracks?
Finish off some other pending projects?

But I've now decided that it's time to wrap things up. I started the Production musical umbrella over 25 years ago, S-cape is something I see as belonging to the few years I spent in Manchester, the Dancesounds label was a good home for the music I wrote for a specific audience embedded in dance education and performance and Duster Jack was an experiment in creating new music with new musical toys while on my daily train commute. Alongside all that, this blog has been a fun way of offloading and sharing some musical observations, thoughts and memories with some like-minded friends.

I don't know what lies ahead music wise but it feels the right time to draw a line under what has gone on before and do something different.

Many thanks for your support

Paul A Jackson

Production

Duster Jack

S-cape

#28: The Remix Album

2015-10-10T20:18:00.002+01:00

Alongside the studio albums, occasional live albums and compilations, there is another album type that might show up in an artist's catalogue: The Remix Album. That little package of 12" extended remixes that gets sandwiched between studio album releases which may consist of a handful of usually 6 - 8 previously released, or forthcoming, 12" single tracks. As an avid collector of a band's recorded output, you may already own most of the tracks on there, or if you missed out on the now hard to find 12" releases, it's a good way of obtaining the mixes in one go, often at a budget price. To some it may be viewed as a cashing in of repackaged material, and to others a chance to obtain the extended and re-edited tracks aimed at the dancefloor. My reference point lies in the early to mid-eighties where bands such as the Pet Shop Boys followed up their debut album Please with the six track remix album, Disco. Soft Cell had followed up their debut album, Non Stop Erotic Cabaret, with NonStop Ecstatic Dancing, and Howard Jones had followed his debut Human's Lib with the straight to the point album, The 12" Album. We've also seen Madonna's You Can Dance collection and also The Human League's follow up to Dare with Love and Dancing released under the name The League Unlimited Orchestra.

The Thompson Twins did things a little differently, and instead of releasing a separate remix package, they added them to limited edition releases of their albums. In fact, for their albums Quick Step and Side Kick and Into The Gap, a limited run of the cassette album release came with either an extra cassette, or a second side of various remixes. Their 1985 album Here's To Future Days contained a 12" single of five remixes including exclusive mixes of some of the album track all with different titles. As someone who finds artist's catalogues fascinating, these sorts of releases add extra interest to the run of singles and albums that make up a band's recorded output.

The remix collection has never really gone away, and often you will find artists, doubling up their CD releases with an extra disc of dancefloor reworking’s, if not a standalone release.

While the PetShop Boys have continued their Disco series with a remix album popping up every few years, they also included a second CD of remixes to accompany their Fundamental and Yes albums, titled Fundamentalism and Etc, respectively.

As for the remixes themselves, these were often either extended versions of the single releases, with added instrumental passages to turn a 4 minute pop track into anything up to 7 or 8 minutes. Other mixes may include additional sounds, riffs and hooks. One of my favourite remixers was always Shep Pettibone, whose remix work would pop up on records by Pet Shop Boys, New Order, ThompsonTwins and Madonna, and while usually staying faithful to the song structure, he would often add lots of extra percussion sounds. If it was a 12" mix that opened with cabasas, shakers, cowbells and extra hi-hats, then it might just be a Shep mix. Then there are remixes which take just a few elements of a track and add a new backing track giving a different feel to the original track. It could be a dance version of a previously mid-tempo ballad. Or a chilled out ambient mix of a previous up-tempo pop track.

And so with my recent Production material that has followed the classic release structure of 7", 12" and album (albeit in digital form), I now pay homage to the Remix Album concept with a collection of six new remixes titled Proud. Among them are examples of previously mentioned remix ideas and little tributes to some of the artists, remixers and releases that sit in my collection.

Now available at https://production.bandcamp.com/album/proud

Related Blog Posts:
Record-Rewind-Remix
The Single

#27: S-cape In Salford

2015-09-20T18:55:00.000+01:00

At the beginning of 1993, while in my first year at University College Salford, I bought a synth module to add to my limited music-making set-up. I can't recall the exact model number but it was a Cheetah rack mounted module with a few little buttons and a LED number display and was meant to be an editable digital synth. With button combinations to access menus that weren't visible made it very non-user friendly and it was a matter of hours before I realised it was an unwise purchase. I returned it and instead purchased a friendlier sound module called Dr Synth made by Roland. This had a multitude of sampled sounds ranging from synth waves, percussion, traditional orchestra and acoustic instruments and others in between. It was also multi-timbral so I could layer a few lines of music at once and it soon became the backbone to my digital orchestra. While there were some editing features in the sounds including filtering and envelope controls, these weren't possible to use when in multi-timbral mode. So for what I wanted to do, I was a little limited if I wanted to run several musical parts at once.

With some experimentation over the next few months, I manipulated the sound palette by assigning several sounds to the same midi channels and using pitch shift, panning and other features to build more interesting sound combinations and effects.

I found the best way to explore the new sound palette was to sequence up a few little test tracks. So I hooked it up to my sequencer, which also controlled my Yamaha and Korg keyboards, and spent some evenings in my little bedsit programming some electronic instrumentals. The first one, later called Trancewaves, was a sort of ambient trance track and other tracks followed of a similar nature. Either ambient, techno, electro or sometime combinations of all three. All the tracks could be played by the machines with some manual live editing and sound manipulation, and on Sunday 23rd May 1993, I spent the whole night programming extra bits, and recording a cassette album's worth of material. I gave the cassette album a title of 'Welcome To My World' for no particular reason, and decided to give the 'project' a name, as it was different to the Production material I had previously done. So 'S-cape' was born and this became the moniker used really for instrumental electronica music I created with this particular set up. It wasn't tied to a particular electronic genre, nor any sort of song structure, and with it being more experimental, it felt a kind of escape from the way I had previously been working. I later recorded a further cassette called 'N-Trance; where I included more live sound manipulation and playing along with the sequencer lines. As part of Salford University's afternoon gigs organised by Andrew Greenwood, I seized the opportunity to perform as S-cape, having previously performed solo Production gigs. This particular gig was held at a nearby pub called The Squealing Pig where I set up the gear and performed a few tracks including ones I hadn't previously recorded. Included in this set was Patrol where I exploited the experiments I had done with multi-layering sounds on the same midi channel. For this one, I layered up several drum set patches onto the same channel, with individual pitch settings and effects, and would mute and unmute several parts which allowed me to improvise and mix them live. Almost as if I had created my own live drum set,

I recorded this live set to cassette, and along with some new tracks, compiled the third S-cape cassette album 'Live Mind'. When I say album, I really just mean a cassette with a homemade sleeve that I'd copy for friends who requested it. A second gig at The Squealing Pig followed, along with sets at the Subclub, the Pavilion (a gig which has its own blog post here), a support slot at the Black Horse pub for a great band called The Pudding Spoons and then I was invited to join BoomBooom, who were a collective, who put on club nights and happenings at various venues. Initially I performed at their more ambient BoomBooombient nights at Night and Day Cafe in Manchester, and then later performed sets at BoomBooom nights at locations such as Jabez Clegg, Castlefield, a club in Hulme, a club in York and Manchester's Music Box and Roadhouse.

Video footage that captures one of the BoomBooom nights at the Night and Day Cafe can be seen here where i have edited down a ten minute snapshot from the original video tape. Filmed by Vicky in 1995.

I'm indebted to BoomBooom and to Andrew Greenwood for giving me the opportunity to perform the tracks live. Making the music was my sole focus in those years, so to play them out of rather large speakers and seeing people dancing around to them was the ultimate high for me, and as I can't ever see it being repeated, remains a most cherished memory. Now in hindsight I wish I had done much much more and pushed myself further to play as many places as possible.

Halloween BoomBooo!mbience

BoomBooom had put out some compilation cassette albums and included an S-cape track on one of them before putting out a CD compilation of BoomBooom artists. This was my first encounter with homemade CD production so it was quite a new thing to hear and see a track on a compact disc. BoomBooom also began broadcasting an internet radio show called BlazzNet, as well as broadcasting some of the live gigs, which at that time around 1995 was quite innovative and exciting.

As I had only been writing new tracks to perform at venues, I decided it was time to record all the latest material, particularly as BoomBooom were to include tracks on compilations and internet broadcasts and had asked me for something to play. I had written quite a number of tracks that needed titles, and I remember sitting in a pub with a notebook trying to come up with a lìst of titles to then distribute and assign to the various works.

Something I still do to this đay.

A few S-cape gigs including two in one day.
Also a poster for a second Subclub gig. I can't actually remember
performing as S-cape twice there.

By early 1999 I had my own computer which included a CD burner so I was now able to burn my own CD's and print out labels and sleeves - a step up from the cassette album.

I had borrowed a DAT machine, set it up in my flat with all my gear and recorded all the S-cape tracks I had created in recent years, including re-recorded versions of some of the earlier "cassette" sessions. As N-Trance had now been used as the name for a chart topping dance act, I renamed that particular track Intrance, for what it was worth, and I also toyed with the name S-cape a bit too. For certain gigs I dubbed it S-kape, and also while messing around with various fonts, quite liked the look of using a Greek font. So that became a kind of logo that no-one could pronounce or possibly even notice. Not the best promotional move.

A gig at The Black Horse pub in Salford with set list poster.
Also a poster for the first Squealing Pig gig.

In 1999 I put together five CDs of S-cape material, of which I did a few copies on request from friends. At the end of 1999, I performed a final set as S-cape at a club night at Band On The Wall in Manchester, where having now acquired a sampler and new synth module I performed a more improvised set using lots of samples which I looped round across multiple lines and used the mixing desk to arrange the tracks. I had never done that before, and was never to do it again, as within the next month I left Manchester and moved to London. That seemed to close off any avenue I had in performing as S-cape again, as it would mean starting over again and I was now in the middle of recording Production material.

So I view the leaving of Manchester as closing the door on the S-cape moniker, project, act, entity, name etc. Plus, the name has been used for other things. I like the idea of that name attached to a bunch of tracks I created in those years as being part and parcel of a great experience of having time and opportunity to focus on music creativity; meeting some great people, and keeping some great memories of Manchester. The association with the name S-cape is more than just a name under which I twiddled some dials, pushed some buttons, swept some filters, and sequenced some synths. For me it is a chapter heading of sorts for an audio diary of my time in the North West.

Having said that, I have continued to write electronic instrumental tracks, which to me sound like the natural progression from S-cape, particularly the Dancesounds Volume 2: Classwork album, released in 2002.

More recently, the Duster Jack material I've been working on is the more electro side of what I was doing in Manchester, and as abstract a concept a project name might seem to some, it feels like a sort of offspring of

S-cape.

Some live recordings.
NB the left cassette features tracks I hadn't yet got titles for.

Now S-cape exists only as a pile of cassettes and CDs in a box, through which I had a rummage recently. I decided to upload a selection of them to a Bandcamp page as a kind of archive area. Being cassette recordings, it meant the quality wasn't to a high standard, but I quite like the old worldly charm of hearing tape hiss and hum in places. If only for me, it conjures up memories of hitting the record button on a portastudio, in the bedsit of a terraced house in Salford in the early nineties.

Hearing the live recordings brings back vivid memories of me uncoiling cables and setting up keyboard stands while around me others assembled decor, food stalls, video screens and record decks for BoomBooom extravaganza evenings. It's certainly more vivid than any photograph.

So now the bulk of those recordings are in cyberspace on the S-cape archive Bandcamp page.

S-cape Archive Volume 1 to 5 is the repackaged five CD set of the 1999 live-to-DAT sessions I recorded in my Salford flat over a few evenings. They include some re-recordings of earlier tracks from the cassette albums.

The cassette albums, Welcome To My World, N-Trance and Live Mind are also there along with a couple of extra live recordings. Live In Salford is the second Squealing Pig gig, and Live in Manchester is the 1996 gig I did at Jabez Clegg as part of a BoomBooom night.

Depending on feedback and response, I may add to that archive in time. For now, I hope you find them of interest, particularly those friends and supporters at the time who may also share memories of some of those live gigs and cassette sharing.

s-capemusic.bandcamp.com

#26: Music For Dance

2015-07-17T20:50:00.001+01:00

At the end of 2001 I was renting a room in South London and had started working on some new music for a new purpose. Rachel, my future wife, prompted the idea of writing music to suit dance education; whereby tracks would be composed, produced and presented to students of contemporary dance tailored to meet their examination criteria. It sounded like a good plan to try out, so I started work on a number of tracks each of which displayed some change of dynamic - be it tempo, time signature, texture, etc. I acquired various sources of reference material and started to build up a library of sampled African, eastern and tribal drum and instrumental sounds, as well as some synth elements. I put together 12 tracks that ranged from electronic synth to experimental sample based works covering a fusion of genres. Added to the album were three tracks I had written and recorded years earlier as S-cape, which had a more electronic ambient vibe. These tracks made up the first release titled ‘DancesoundsVolume One, Choreography’.

Dancesounds Volume 1: Choreography by Paul A Jackson

We had a twenty pound note and spent it on some stamps, jiffy bags and blank CDs. I burned the CDs on my home computer, printing out the labels and jewel case sleeves, and we put together a flyer with order form promoting the album and sent it out to a number of schools we had addresses of. This was in February 2002 and it wasn't long before we started to have sales. We burned more CDs, printed more labels, sent out more letters and then took more sales. Rachel started building a database, I was building a website and soon we were looking for an accountant. By September of that year, we released a second volume entitled ‘Classwork’, which featured longer tracks structured around a dance class with music for warming up, footwork, travelling and cool down. These were more electronic dance based and more akin to the music I had done as S-cape a few years earlier. We decided to get our CDs burned by a company rather than do them at home, and we started to use printers for the sleeve and promo leaflets. The orders built up and the database grew quite quickly.

Dancesounds Volume 2: Classwork by Paul A Jackson

Rachel worked on the admin and promotions, including designing the leaflets and putting together guidelines for tracks. I worked on the music composition and production, as well as the website. It was a good team in a modest cottage industry. Volume 3 'Stage Dance' was released in January of 2003 and contained more classical influences with traditional instruments and shorter pieces aimed at use for dance festivals and competitions. I didn't have a strong palette for orchestral and traditional sampled sounds, so I've never been happy with the tracks on this CD; particularly since upgrading my sound library in recent years and listening back for comparison. However, they continued to contribute to incoming sales, and I was soon working on Volume 4 'Solos & Groups', which, like Volume 1, was aimed more at choreography use for dance students. It is probably one of my favourites of all the albums with its wide range of styles and sounds, which was fun to compose and record.

Dancesounds Volume 4: Solos & Groups by Paul A Jackson

Volume 5 ‘Dance Drama’ and Volume 6 ‘Percussion’ were released together in 2005. The former contained tracks with narratives depicting street scenes, water, the Wild West, spy drama, communications and machines. These were fun to make as they incorporated a lot of use of my sampler. For the water tracks (stream, river, sea) I recorded the sound of water in the garden using the outdoor tap and a bucket. For the Wild West movie scenes, besides using what sound effects I already had in my sound library such as gunshots, horses galloping and the sound of wind, I took my minidisc recorder to a local pub and recorded the punters and background noise of clinking glasses and chatter. This served as the background for a piece for a Wild West saloon over which I played a honky-tonk piano track. 'Machines' featuring sampled printer noises shifted pitch to depict big factory machines, and communication included my own voice as an answerphone machine and other telephone effects. For ‘On the Street’, I recorded the sounds of traffic on Oxford Street and then cut up the samples around the car horn sounds, which I then played and sequenced as a track.

Dancesounds Volume 5: Dance Drama by Paul A Jackson

Great fun to record and put together.

The Percussion album also made use of sampling on a few tracks. All the tracks used percussion sounds and instruments so there were drum tracks, chromatic percussion such as xylophones, marimbas, glockenspiel and use of orchestral percussion sounds only. But I also created my own by recording sounds made by various kitchen utensils and cutlery, as well as hitting pots and pans and shaking containers from the spice rack.

Dancesounds Volume 6: Percussion by Paul A Jackson

We also started to sell music for dance by other composers on our website. Our promo leaflet had now grown into a catalogue of several pages, more so when we started to incorporate dance education books.

I recorded another choreography album the following year called ‘Composition’, which sits as another of my favourites. Ten tracks blending hip hop influences, with contemporary uses of traditional sounds and some synth effects. Volume 8 ‘Creative Workshop’ featured a mixture of ambient, jazz influenced, and some up-tempo tracks that were structured suitable for different choreographic and class work routines.

Dancesounds Volume 7: Composition by Paul A Jackson Dancesounds Volume 8: Creative Workshop by Paul A Jackson

Volume 9 ‘Ideas For Dance’ featured more narrative tracks with music depicting space or time travel, pirates discovering treasure, a balloon rising and falling, this time based more on musical themes, harmonies, instruments and styles rather than sound effects.

Dancesounds Volume 9: Ideas For Dance by Paul A Jackson

Volume 10 ‘One Minute Thirty’ provided another challenge as every track had a duration of one-minute-thirty seconds (which served as the title), so each had to maintain some form of structure, and a change of dynamic. This was a mixture of electronic and sampled traditional acoustic sounds across various genres. Volume 11 was titled ‘Musical Cues’ and each employed a compositional device as the basis of each track. That could have been a form such as canon, or a rhythmical device.

Dancesounds Volume 10: One MinuteThirty by Paul A Jackson

We also had started selling digital downloads of the tracks by adding on a digital store to our website. This also meant we could sell music on demand. While we had been providing alternative edits of some tracks on the end of CDs, we started offering a service where I would edit a track to a required length from a customer, and make it available as a download only track. Around the same time, we started providing a music search service where we had dance teachers and students searching for a suitable piece of music for a performance or choreographic task in an examination and on receiving an enquiry, Rachel would select suitable suggestions by referring to a spreadsheet we built containing data pertaining to each bit of music. The customer could then preview the tracks and buy the downloads. This proved to be quite a popular tool and gave us some indication as to what type of music people were after, particularly when we received requests for similar themes or settings. In some cases I would compose and produce new music that might fit some requirements ahead of time, which would then be additions to the catalogue and form the basis of the next album. In 2010, we released Volume 12 ‘Mood and Atmosphere’ which featured more cinematic styles of music with an improved sound palette and some new compositional ideas.

Dancesounds Volume 11: Musical Cues by Paul A Jackson

One thing Dancesounds has done over the years is stretch and challenge me a little when it comes to compositional style, sound selection and use of form. Instead of always sticking to 4/4 steady rhythms and standard harmonic structures, I found myself experimenting more with time signatures, polyrhythms, using timbres in different ways and playing around more with sampling and creating new sounds.
Dancesounds Volume 12: Mood and Atmosphere by Paul A Jackson

In 2012, after ten years, we wound the business down, in part prompted by a house move, a change in circumstances and the quietening down of CD sales. After 12 volumes of work, plus extra albums of edited tracks, extra compositions and commissions, we had built up quite a catalogue of material and a customer base of happy clients.

While a number of CDs are still available through the NRCD(National Resource Centre for Dance), I also put the entire digital catalogue on Bandcamp. I also released Volume 12 through CD Baby which now makes it available across various digital outlets and services such as iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Google Play, and many many more. The tracks are occasionally played and sold and I recently set about remastering them all with a view to reissuing a selection of the albums, as well as preparing them for availability as music for media by way of a production music library.

This week sees the re-release of albums ‘Composition’, ‘Creative Workshop’ and ‘Solos & Groups’ which are perhaps my favourite three. These, along with ‘Mood & Atmosphere,’ now sit on the other digital services mentioned as well as various others.

Around six years ago, I began editing video footage to a few tracks to give them some life on places like YouTube. I've always been keen to write or edit to visual media, and while I’ve contributed music to a few short films, I never managed to find a foothold in the right place to get any further. So sometimes I just have to make my own and do it myself.

Cracking Codes

Edited video of my trip to Derek Jarman's Garden a few years back.

In all the time we were selling the CDs we would occasionally get some feedback from students or teachers who had used our music, but we would never actually see examples of the combined efforts of each art form; except for one time quite early on when we were invited to a local school in Tonbridge, who were putting on their end of year dance performance, using around seven pieces of my music. So it was quite a thrill to see students perform their choreographed routines to tracks from the catalogue. A few years later I began doing a few commissioned arrangements and compositions for stage festivals and competition performances, which were filmed and sent to me. And more recently I stumbled across a few tracks that had been posted to YouTube by dance students showing their choreography routines. So while hearing and seeing evidence of the use of the music has been minimal, it is very rewarding to see.

Chroma.

My competition entry of a short score to a Wayne McGregor dance video.

Part of the Royal Opera House Create project competition.

It didn't win but here it is anyway.

‘Composition’, ‘Creative Workshop’, ‘Solos & Groups’ and ‘Mood & Atmosphere’ are available in digital stores including ITunes, Amazon, GooglePlay, and Spotify.

And the full catalogue remains available at Bandcamp.

www.dancesounds.co.uk

#25: Production @25

2015-06-11T23:11:00.002+01:00

This sentence is sure to give me a shiver as I write it, but a quarter of a century ago I started writing and recording synth pop songs under the name Production. At 16, I was already in a school band performing soul, pop, blues covers, which later progressed on the live circuit, but I also started borrowing a 4 track portastudio and a drum machine, and along with my trusty Casio keyboard, began experimenting by putting some tracks together. Later in 1990 I bought my first proper synthesizer and began manipulating and programming sounds as well as sequencer lines, and then started to fill notebook pages with lyrical ideas drawn more from imagination than any autobiographical musings. I don't think the world was ready for any lyrics about paper rounds, though in hindsight, maybe I'd have made more in-roads had I done.

I started compiling demo tapes of recorded songs, instrumentals and remixed versions before trying to work out how I could perform them live. I tried various line-ups including trio, duo, full band, and managed to pull off a few school performances before the move to Salford University. By this time I had begun sending out packaged demo tapes to what I then thought were the correct avenues for moving up a few ladder rungs - record labels, publishers, etc. Some of which were returned with polite replies on variations of 'no'. Performing live was always quite tricky and I felt that I never focused properly on correcting the parts of what I thought should have constituted a good performance. While performing as Production I also began performing instrumental dance tracks under the name S-cape and later performed more under this name in Manchester club nights run by BoomBooom. And while I enjoyed performing S-cape tracks, regularly going back to Halifax for many Fabulous BB Kings gigs, a few solo covers pub gigs, and gigs with a friend under the name Inside Edge - as all previously blogged, Production was the format, act, entity, call it what you will, where my heart really lay. Even if performing vocals was one of my weak points, and writing lyrics being another - anything that I did under the Production banner always felt closer to my heart.

In early 1994, I took Production back home to Halifax for a club gig with an expanded line-up of friends and musical colleagues, who worked really hard in helping me put on a gig, including stage platforms and lights, backing singers/dancers, musicians and more.

In 1995 I expanded Production to a trio, and besides performing some afternoon gigs at university, we also performed at Salford SubClub, which was a highlight for me because it then finally felt like it had reached the format, line-up and set-up I'd been aiming for. Sadly it was only for a short time and after graduation in 1996, I was back to recording on a portastudio in my flat, after having the luxury of using studios for a few years.

Soldiering on, sending out demo tapes and promo packages, and working out how to get gigs in Manchester were all met with brick walls and as desperate as it was, I always felt I wasn't doing enough, nor was I good enough at the right things. 1997 did see a couple of gigs at Manchester Roadhouse; the first with a quickly assembled three piece line-up, but by the second gig in June, Production was solo again. Back to the duo format the following year for a gig in Burnley and then solo again. I was busier performing occasional gigs under the other guises and other aforementioned line-ups.

After moving to London in 1999, to start working for the BBC as a pop music librarian, meant leaving familiar places and networks of friends and musical colleagues. This also meant an end to performing gigs, as I had been doing, and having to start again in an unfamiliar place. I continued to record, made a CD via mp3.com and sold maybe a couple of handfuls and was also invited to perform a support slot at a London venue to a band I knew called The Sepia - to whom I remain forever grateful. Initially attempting to expand the line-up, by showtime it was back to being a solo venture. While recording was usually a solo venture, with the occasional guest slot, personnel could fluctuate at live gigs so there was never a fixed line-up for long enough before another gig came along, despite efforts to have one. So whenever I was asked if I was in a band, I wasn't really sure how to answer. Was it a one-man band with vacancies? I had no idea.

Live in London, 2001

After moving to Kent, and into other musical recording ventures, Production, in whatever form it was then in, was placed on a shelf, with cassettes, videos and documents of recordings and gigs boxed away. But at the end of the day, Production was and is just a name, and even tracks I wrote as Production became S-cape tracks, and vice versa, and even some of those were used for Dancesounds releases, so it shouldn't really make a difference what moniker I attach to what track. It doesn't have enough significance, or importance, for it to be of interest to anyone other than myself, yet at the same time, after 25 years, Production seems to have been a kind of peg where I hang my favourite coat, even if it was more practical to wear a different coat at times. I often found myself performing the wrong tracks, in the wrong venues, to the wrong audiences, under the wrong guise. I became increasingly aware that while I may develop and rework a batch of songs over time, my point of view of a track is very different from someone hearing it for the first time. So the listening context is going to be wildly different. One of many mistakes I felt I made when wearing the Production coat, and there are many I could list, was not thinking more about how the tracks and performances would come across to an audience for the first time. I believe the correct phrase is 'winging it'.

However, it is strange how your perception of past events can change. And while I often thought that if I don't carry on doing it, despite the lack of motion in the wheels, then it wasn't really worth starting at all. And if you reach a point where you know the wheels have come off, then do you then view your past efforts towards it as being wasted? I thought I might, but I don't really because part of the journey was who I got to meet, befriend, work with, and interact with along the way, which wouldn't have happened otherwise. So when realising an idea, such as a performance event, a recording, some mad promo exercise and so on, I was lucky enough to have friends and colleagues willing to go along with it and support, and maybe even humour me from time to time. Sometimes you just have to just do something without worrying about how it might come across, or be interpreted. I wouldn't be writing a blog otherwise.

1990 'cassette!' - remember them?

In recent times I've heard from old friends reminding me of a particular demo tape they had, or a gig they attended, or were part of, and in a way that feels as good a reward as anything else I was aiming for, even if I became unsure what that was. So I remain grateful to all those who offered support and help - be it technical, musical, visual, and any other way to keep my morale ticking over. While to some it may seem odd to attach some kind of importance to something that might be common practise for many other musical practitioners, or a peculiar hobby for someone who could have spent their time better, but when it forms part of your routine, either gives you some self-confidence or tests your self-consciousness, then it's a part of your past that is hard to shake off. More so when recalling the enjoyment I got from doing it.

A friend recently recommended I should dig out some of the old tracks and air them in cyberspace, but I'm not quite sure I could face hearing my past efforts in that way without cringing. Some things may well be best left for the memory banks, and in some cases its very far reaches.

#24: Projects New and Old

2015-06-04T21:07:00.000+01:00

As planned, the remaining batch of tracks I composed and produced under the Duster Jack umbrella for last December's upload to Bandcamp have now been reassembled properly into a second digital album. As with the previous album presentation (dubbed Time To Dust) this new one (dubbed Android) has a couple of new tracks - 'Android' and 'Processor'. So regardless of any online activity that should occur around those tracks, for me it means a clearing of the decks and Duster Jack can now sit to one side while I press on with some other unfinished doodlings.

Tonic Proud is a temporary pseudonym for an album's worth of tracks I've tinkered with for a few years now and never had time to finish them properly. But when I revisited the tracks 2 or 3 years ago, I decided that every minute spent on any aspect of them - be it recording, programming, mixing, editing etc...and however far apart those minutes are, they will constitute another step in the right direction and that years down the line, eventually...they will be finished. A couple of years ago while reviewing some rough instrumental mixes, I told myself if I keep chipping away at each track, eventually, some time in the future - be it weeks, months or years - I'd be listening to fully finished versions, regardless of what becomes of them in the aftermath.

Mixing is the part I hate the most about creating any sort of music. While painful, it is unfortunately necessary and always more drawn out than I would like. But I think I'm at the finish line and I will give it a launch very soon.

And alongside all of that, I've been going through all the tracks I did for the Dancesounds label with the aim of remastering and recompiling them for another outlet. That work is accompanied by a mountain of admin involving track categorisation, writing blurb, filling up spreadsheets and other brain numbing exercises. Playing tracks from a rack of keyboards in the corner of a pub to a handful of bemused punters now seems such a distant memory.

A few pending musical experiments are also scribbled down on my 'want to do list' which I will pepper the various social media sites with as they progress.

For now though, you can visit the latest Duster Jack album release here and indeed the previous one.

http://dusterjack.bandcamp.com/

And any Tonic Proud related news will appear here

https://www.facebook.com/TonicProud for the time being

#23: Time To Dust album

2015-01-31T19:00:00.001+00:00

So following a trial run of releasing recent tracks as Duster Jack via Bandcamp throughout December, I've decided to widen the reach with a digital album release available in places such as iTunes, Amazon and many other cyberspace outlets. The album is made up of tracks from the recent Bandcamp set of ep's including some mix tweaks and remastering as well as two new tracks.

The album is called Time To Dust and the tracklisting is as follows:

1) Introducing

2) Gate 19 (new mix)

3) Prime Location

4) Forget Not

5) World Construct

6) Time To Dust

7) Cycle Break

8) Clipper

9) Frequency

10) Open Port

11) City Mainline

12) Endpoint

I am aiming to somehow conjure up some time to create a visual accompaniment to one of two tracks for a YouTube presence but who knows when that will happen.... Am pondering over some ideas on how to present one's own musical endeavours and may take the plunge and action these in the next week.

Anyway, expect various tweets and Facebook updates with links to where it all can be found,

In other related and not so related musical news, I've started some rough mixes for 'Tonic Proud' and I now fluctuate between hating it and thinking it might be okay with some more work. I think the enjoyment may have been zapped out of it now but will soldier on.
And I am currently working my way through the 12 albums I did for Dancesounds label which was primarily for use in dance education. Looking to compile new releases of various tracks that will be sequenced for a different mindset, i.e more for listening that functional use. Will most likely re-record, remix and rework many of them and then start releasing those.
So that should keep me out of mischief for a while.

The album is currently available at http://dusterjack.bandcamp.com and is scheduled to appear on Amazon on Monday 2nd February. Others will follow.

#22: Introducing... Duster Jack

2014-12-15T20:13:00.004+00:00

As has already been documented in this random selection of blogged musings, my daily routine had a shake up earlier this year when, after nearly 12 years of working from home, I became a commuter again, travelling daily to a new job in Richmond.

This has meant time spent on the train which has always been my favourite form of transport. However I knew one downside when it came to anything music related would be having even less time to spend on creating any. Considering the time I previously had was minimal anyway, it felt that maybe the productive years were long gone . While I have been hacking away a few minutes at a time on unfinished tracks from several years back in my home studio setup, both time and energy are nowadays quite scarce.

However, around the time I started commuting, I embraced one of the more recent developments in technology - that of a tablet which I bought with some birthday money. Initially I used this to catch up with some YouTube tutorials, TV programmes, web article reading and a little bit of blogging, Then at the tail end of the summer I found some music software that included a sequencer, sampler, vocoder, drum machine and a selection of synths. After a little bit of exploring and experimenting I was suddenly thrown back to my teenage years when I had some new electronic pals to play with. My home studio set up is by no means cutting edge by today's standards, but it does have a large enough palette of sounds and sequencer tracks to keep me amused and that usually would be seen to be a good thing. However looking back I have found I am usually more productive when I am restricted to number of sounds and tracks and the most pleasure I always get is seeing what I can do to sounds to make them different from how they first arrive in the box

The Caustic 3 software I downloaded onto my Android tablet has enough there for me to explore and create that should last me a little while. So in September I began experimenting with the virtual toys such as the modular synth and creating new sounds, or morphing and modifying existing ones. I used the vocoder to manipulate synth sounds and effects as well as the occasional bit of speech, and while others in the train carriage would either be eyes deep in phone apps, laptop spreadsheets, the Metro paper, or just asleep, I was creating drum samples and building up patterns. I suddenly felt musically revived and started to get the same buzz I used to get over twenty years back when I would crouch over a portastudio, a drum machine and a synth in my Salford bedsit and construct electro synth tracks fuelled by my passion for the records I used to play. It also dawned on me that I had spent a good number of years doing music for other people which have been good projects and served me well - be it music for dance choreographers and teachers, arrangements for dance festival competitions, short film soundtracks, but it made a change to do something for myself.

Whether I then pass the tracks onto someone else for other use remains to be seen, but in the moments the tracks have been created they have been to please only myself.

So as a couple of ideas turned into a handful of tracks, after a few days they became ten tracks and then, by the end of October, I had twenty tracks I felt happy with. I couldn't help but compare this flurry of activity to the other musical project I had been trying to finish this year and had grown a little tired of. As soon as the twenty electro tracks had reached a point I was happy with, I started working on ideas for other tracks.

It was then I realised that come the new year, it will be five years since I released the last Dancesounds album: Volume 12 Mood and Atmosphere, and therefore had really put any new music out into cyberspace. I decided that if I don't do anything else, I should at least get some tracks out there somewhere if only to prove to myself that I can, when opportuniy arises, set to work and get something done and dusted

So the aim was to get the tracks to a place other than my computer device by the end of the year.

Rather than twenty tracks all in one go, I thought stretching them out over a few weeks might be better for those interested to digest. Five four track digital eps seemed to be worth a shot with a couple of weeks seperating each one. However as I started tinkering with mixing and mastering, the weeks left in the year were diminishing and I knew that I could be tinkering with the tracks forever if I wasn't strict with myself. So I decided that no matter what, they would come out in December and would be one every week.

I arranged the tracklistings and took some photos while on my commute depicting images I see everyday, thought up a new name for myself, created a Bandcamp account and started to release them from Monday 1st December onwards.

Whether they are streamed or downloaded by any of those recipients of tweets, status updates or other social media delivery methods, is out of my control, but at the very least I can't help but feel a little sense of achievement to reach the end of the year having outputted some musical content. I can also now look towards 2015 as hopefully a creative period where I can write new tracks, further take advantage of the tools to hand by using sounds from my home studio into the tablet based sampler and audio editors, and vastly reduce the timeframe between executing an idea and uploading a finished version to the web.

Duster Jack can be found on Facebook , Twitter and Bandcamp

The digital ep's are being released throughout December

Introducing... (1st Dec 2014)
City Mainline (8th Dec 2014)
World Construct (15th Dec 2014)
Forget Not (22nd Dec 2014)
Export Setting (29th Dec 2014)

#21: An Album

2014-11-06T23:02:00.001+00:00

So the original plan was get an album finished and uploaded by the time I hit 40, preceded by the uploading of a digital single to act as a sort of preview. 40 has come and gone and I'm still no nearer finished. So it will be ready when it's ready which, bearing in mind I now have a new job and no longer based at home, means that I have even less time and energy to tend to the plants in my musical nursery. So now every ten or twenty minutes I get to attend to the tracks, I see as a little step further.

All the parts for all tracks are now recorded and assembled into files ready for mixing, I started this process recently but it hasn't been the most satisfying part of the whole long winded venture. I've tried various approaches in starting the mixing of each track and haven't yet felt successful.

To further hinder this, I managed to lose a few musical parts which I had to re-record. So after slowly climbing a few ladder rungs, I seem to have now stepped on a snake and slid down to a square two rows down.

But I've had the same trackisting laid out for quite a long time and I'm quite determined to 'release' the álbum' to somewhere that sits outside my head and my computer. Which leads me to think over how the definitions of 'release' and 'album' have changed over the years when it comes to home-recording.

In the early days, it would be a cassette that I would view as an album, and after filling it up with a sequence of recordings, packaged with a sleeve put together using the latest in photocopying technology courtesy of the local library, I would pass it on to a few friends, as well as dubbing selected recordings to cassettes, placing into jiffy bags to be posted, or handed, to record labels, publishers, producers and so on. Though in reality it was most likely the dustbin. A selection of tracks would be put together to be performed live at whatever gig opportunity I could get.

By the end of the nineties I owned a computer and a CD burner where the "albums" were now in the form of compact discs. Wider jiffy bags were required. I did put together a collection of CDs compiling recordings I had made under the name 'S-cape' and distributed these, and edited versions to various people in various places.

By the time I had moved to London, I had found a website called mp3.com which allowed you to upload your tracks and artwork, and then customers could buy the CD from there and it would be printed, packaged and posted from their US address. I recorded and released an album under my electropop guise, 'Production', and spent a bit of time attending to my "profile page" where you could promote songs as "digital singles". This was quite a new thing at the time. However, while I sold a handful of CDs to various people, it was short lived and mp3.com closed down sending me a cheque for $8, after it had taken a questionable cut from the sales, and as at that time it was going to cost me £10 to cash it, it was worthless.

Over the next few years I returned to pressing up CDs with a range of albums of music composed for dance education that became a more successful venture. But I shall go into that in a future blog.

Nowadays, digital releases have become more commonplace as a cost effective way of packaging a bunch of recordings to send out into the world. That is the plan for the current batch of tracks I've been trying to mix, after which they will be edited, remixed and reworked for various musical outlets. Work on them has been interrupted over the years with other projects and tasks shifting into focus but every now and then I've tried to chip away at them a little more with each opportunity.

Years gone by there was more time to do such things, and I managed to work quickly though that was more down to having limited sequencer and recording tracks, and a smaller sound palette. The overall quality no doubt left a lot to be desired, but each recording and mixing task was always an exciting time. The current batch is proving to be quite a different beast with my enthusiasm lifting and waning at quite a high frequency. I occasionally go from having some sense of excitment on hearing some rough instrumental mixes, to feeling a little disheartened when it comes to the mixing stage and recording overdubs. I seem to be reaching the stage where I'd be happy to get the whole thing out of the way and let it loose in cyberspace.

This time round though, there won't be any jiffy bags involved, or promotional activities such as live performances. These days all musical ambitions for the project have been reduced to just clicking the "upload" button when I've considered them finished. I've got a stack of other musical ventures I want to tackle next.

#20: Tenement Symphony

2014-08-31T10:59:00.002+01:00

I felt it was time to recount a particular concert I went to many years ago which was made memorable as much for the journey getting to it as the actual concert itself. Sometime in 1991 I woke up to a record being played on the radio that sounded epic coming through the tiny mono speaker. The record was "Jacky" by Marc Almond and featured a full orchestra and a bombastic electronic backing track. On buying the record I saw it was produced by Trevor Horn, who was already one of my favourite producers through his work with Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Pet Shop Boys and ABC, and it also set me off exploring Marc Almond's back catalogue of which I had very little knowledge.

Some months later, the accompanying 'Tenement Symphony' album was released which was half produced by Marc Almond, Billy McGee, Nigel Hine and Grid members, Dave Ball and Dave Norris. Dave Ball had been Marc's Soft Cell sidekick and this saw the pair reunite for a few tracks. The second half of the album was produced by Trevor Horn and formed a suite of songs titled 'Tenement Symphony"

I remember having a £10 Boots gift voucher which I guess must have been from Christmas 1991, and I headed into Huddersfield one Saturday to buy the album. Unlike other stores, Boots didn't stock vinyl albums so if I was to buy it from there, it had to be on either CD or cassette. I didn't own a CD player so I purchased the cassette. One benefit of this choice of format was that I happened to have my walkman with me which meant I could listen to the album straight away instead of waiting until after the bus ride home. So I popped in the cassette, turned up the volume, and wandered aimlessly around Huddersfield town centre taking in what the album had to offer. From that day to this, it remains one of my favourite albums. Full scale sequenced synth arrangements with huge dollops of orchestral bliss surrounding Marc's soaring vocals through some amazing songs such as Meet Me In My Dreams, Beautiful Brutal Thing, Vaudeville and Burlesque and ending with the sensational My Hand Over My Heart. A great album and a great way to experience it.

The singles from the album gave Marc some chart success peaking with the Top 5 cover hit "The Days Of Pearly Spencer" and he appeared a couple of times on TV backed by an orchestra.

Fast forward to the summer of 1992 and I had left school and was preparing to start university in Salford.

My first day of lectures was to be on Monday 28th September and I had moved into my Salford bedsit a week beforehand.

While browsing through the music magazines as I often did, I came across an advert for a live show. Marc Almond was to perform two shows, Nottingham Royal Court Centre and then Royal Albert Hall in a career retrospective show called 12 Years Of Tears, which as well as featuring a full band, would also feature the Tenement Symphony Orchestra. The chance to hear tracks from the album, as well as other hits, performed by a band and full orchestra seemed too good to be true. By this time I had built up a catalogue of Marc Almond's discography and was now familiar with all the albums and singles and Marc had now become one of my favourite artists. As the Royal Albert Hall show was to be recorded for video and live album release as well as for TV broadcast, I guessed the Nottingham show was to be the warm up concert.

The only difficulty I could initially see in going was that the shows were taking place in the week beginning 28th September which was my first week at Salford University. What's more, the Nottingham show was on the Monday. I initially sacked off the idea as being logistically impossible, but it kept irking me for a week or so before I decided to review the possibilities. I rang the venue to get further details, as this was pre-worldwideweb, and was told the concert would start at 8pm and there would be no interval. I then found out that my last lecture on that first Monday of my uni course would finish around 4pm, and the first one on Tuesday morning would be at 9.30am. I also discovered that a 5pm train from Manchester Piccadilly would get me into Nottingham sometime after 7pm, and the first one in the morning would get me into Manchester around 9am, giving me time to make my first lecture on that day which was actually to be an improvisation group led by jazz saxophonist Jan Kopinski, of Pinski Zoo.

I found a B&B situated down the road from the Nottingham Royal Court Centre for a tenner, and on enquiring was told that I would have to check in by about 10pm as they would lock the doors. I figured I would have time to do that between stepping off the train in Nottingham and the concert starting at 8pm.

I decided to go for it.

September came and I moved to Salford ready to start the Popular Music and Recording course. After the last lecture on the Monday, I took off at speed to the train station to catch the train to Nottingham only to discover it was delayed... And delayed further...and delayed some more. I was already restless and a little anxious and this didn't help. I kept watching the clock trying to work out what sort of timeframe I had. On the journey I got chatting to the woman sitting next to me after we were trying to work out the arrival time. She was interested to hear of the concert and worked out that the train would reach Nottingham around 8pm. Furthermore as she was going to be on the ITV programme 'The Time, The Place' the next day, the TV company had a taxi booked for her from the station and she said she could give me a lift to the Royal Court Centre. I reached the venue at exactly 8pm and raced in to pick up my ticket. There hadn't been time to post it. I raced up the stairs to get to the back of the circle as I could hear the audience cheering to the opening chords of Vaudeville and Burlesque. I had no idea what I was going to do about the B&B and I didn't have a back-up plan, but I got to my seat as the full synth band kicked in and Marc walked out onto the stage. It was quite a moment.

The opening songs were the synth heavy tracks from the Tenement Symphony album which sounded great. This set was then followed by a vocal and piano section with Marc now in a suit and I soon got the idea that the concert was structured more like a series of different sets with different arrangements and costume changes. Almost like a few shows rolled into one. A full band then accompanied Marc for some renditions of early singles including some Soft Cell tracks. One thing I did notice though was the lack of orchestra. There was only a band on stage. I felt a little disappointed despite the gig being such a good one, I then figured the Nottingham show must be perhaps part of a warm up for the Royal Albert Hall show in two day’s time, and the orchestra would just be for that one. I couldn't think of any other reason. Then after nearly 90 minutes, Marc said goodbye and left the stage to rapturous applause. It was around 9:30pm and it all seemed to come to an end. When I had booked the ticket, the box office had told me there would be no interval so I wasn't sure how long the show would run for. Also there were quite a few big records Marc hadn't performed. The audience were on their feet shouting for more with several rounds of slow hand claps, before an announcement came over the speaker 'Ladies and Gentlemen, this is now an interval, the show will start again in 20 minutes'. I couldn't believe it! So there was an interval, and I had time to run down to the B&B, drop off my overnight bag, grab the key and get back. I raced down the road using the directions I had been given and checked in. I got back to the Royal Court Centre and saw there on the stage, quite a number of new chairs laid out. The second half started with Marc performing a Jacques Brel song called 'If You Go Away' which I had never heard before, This was a vocal and piano arrangement and made for a melancholy opening to the second half. He then followed this by saying 'Well I guess that is one way of performing a Jacques Brel song... And this is another'. He then performed 'Jacky' with a full band and orchestra who were on stage for the rest of the evening. It sounded amazing as they belted through some classic Marc singles and album tracks with full orchestrations and arrangements making some songs sound more epic than the recorded versions. The show finished with 'Say Hello Wave Goodbye' with a full stage, a full sound, and a full auditorium of excited fans being showered with confetti. I left there feeling elated and blown away. One of the most exciting musical experiences I had encountered and nothing has really quite topped it.

I returned to the B&B and set my alarm for the early hours. To get my train back I was going to have to leave before the Breakfast part of the B&B arrangement, and a few hours later I was making my way through a dark, cold Nottingham following the signs to the railway station. The route took me through an eerie shopping centre which was just trying to wake up, and I managed to get my train on time. I was tired and quite hungry but still buzzing from the previous evening's experience. It was a gig that would inspire me in various ways in the years to come, but that will have to wait for another blog.

The finale to this story is almost like a punchline or something that might have been scripted for a sitcom. I arrived in Manchester sometime before 9am and I quickly made my way across the city up to Salford University to get to my first Improvisation class at 9.30. I got to the building in time where I met my fellow course colleagues and discovered that Improvisation had been moved to 11.30am.

And the reason?

Because it was going to take a while for the tutor to get to Manchester as he lived in.....

Wait for it...

Nottinghamshire

Needless to say I was lost for words, but also quite amused. The 12 Years Of Tears show was still swirling around my head too much for me to be anything else. I headed up to the canteen and got some breakfast.

#19: Thompson Twins

2014-07-22T21:13:00.002+01:00

Thompson Twins are one of very few big eighties pop acts that have resisted following their chart contemporaries such as Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Ultravox and ABC, and reformed for either retrospective tours or recording sessions. Aside from large amounts of money on offer to such acts, the allure of thousands of fans that regularly attend the retro festivals such as 'Here and Now', 'Regeneration' and 'Rewind' has opened the doors to many more singers and bands to play through their early hits again. Every year, the line-ups to these package tours grow bigger and bigger and it now seems to be a case of noticing who isn't playing. One band that has been more noticeable by their absence, according to various online forums and articles, has been the Thompson Twins; but there has never been a hint of it ever happening. In fact the only mention of a reunion I have seen in the last ten years is in an interview with Alannah Currie who eloquently stated that she would "rather vomit on her boots". There was also an interview with the group in 2001, long after they had ended, that they felt they should have split up earlier than they did. Even with the worry that a reunion of any band runs the risk of being a disappointment, I felt they were being a little harsh on themselves. More so when I consider their later material, particularly their final album, to be excellent pieces of work.

The group’s records, and history, has been a fascination of mine for many years, and while I maintained a devotion to other artists whose output I have continued to follow as it is created, I didn't start buying Thompson Twins records until 1990, when they were out of the public eye. And as this was pre-WorldWideWeb, my resources in learning the band’s history and discography depended on my visiting second hand record shops and record fairs, thumbing through magazines such as Record Collector, and occasional phone calls to the record company press office. There was a sense of excitement in spending weekends piecing together the back story of this group and their output; from learning of the first line up to tracing different mixes and formats of their records. Finding a 7" single of one song in a different sleeve at a record fair somewhere in Manchester was made all the more pleasing when discovering it played a different version of the song to that I had previously heard.

Though I had memories of seeing them on Top Of The Pops and the occasional Saturday morning TV show, when I was very young, and seeing them in magazines such as Look In, it was on finding a copy of the "Here's To Future Days" album in Huddersfield's EGS Records in 1990 for 99p (which also included a 5 track 12" of remixes), that I became hooked. The bit of detective work that followed soon revealed that the band had been a lot more than a trio with big hairstyles and colourful clothes that had bounced around on the television.

Some 7" singles

The band started in 1977 when Halifax born Tom Bailey, along with three friends, formed the band in Chesterfield, South Yorkshire. The four members quit their jobs and moved to a London squat to pursue music. They put out a couple of 7" singles, hand delivered to record shops, both of which are great little indie pop gems. The group expanded to a seven piece and recorded an album of percussive guitar based pop called "A Product Of...". Tom soon developed a fascination with synthesizers which influenced the second album, "Set" and the single "In The Name Of Love" made an impression on the dance charts, which formed the band's new musical direction. However, this caused enough tension in the band to culminate in a split. Tom, Alannah and Joe continued as a synth based pop act and drew up a manifesto of what they wanted to do and how they were going to do it. Lyrics, music, performances, videos and images were all tasks they divided up between them, and by taking a synthesizer, a drum machine and recording equipment to a rented cottage, they wrote and recorded demos for the album "Quick Step and Side Kick" in 1982. This was a time when synth pop music was becoming a staple of the Top 40 with the Human League, Depeche Mode and Ultravox all making waves. The new TT album fitted right in and provided the band with a few hit singles including "Love On Yours Side", "Watching" and "Lies". This paved the way for the next album "Into The Gap", which reached number one on the album charts, accompanied by international smash hits such as "Doctor Doctor", "You Take Me Up" and "Hold Me Now" in 1984. The following year saw more hits coming alongside the album "Here's To Future Days" and a performance at Live Aid in Philadelphia, shared with Madonna. Then 1986 saw the departure of Joe Leeway, and the Thompson Twins were reduced to duo, Tom and Alannah. Even though the dents on the charts weren't as big as they once were, they continued to write and record some great songs including "Ĺong Goodbye", "Get That Love", "Sugar Daddy", "Bombers In The Sky", "Queen Of The USA", "Flower Girl" and "Nothing In Common".

When I became hooked on the band, my time was spent seeking out the albums and singles in various record shops around Yorkshire and Manchester; as well as picture discs, 12" remix releases and other gems that came by. It was in 1991 that the group started releasing new material which this time was more dance oriented. The album "Queer" is one of my favourite albums and features great tracks such as the dance hit "Come Inside", "Wind It Up", "Groove On", "Shake It Down" and "Strange Jane". "Come Inside" had become a club hit when it was released under the moniker "Feedback Max" which was actually the name of the remix duo Tom Bailey and engineer, Keith Fernley. Sadly, it wasn't as big a hit when released commercially as Thompson Twins and the group felt the name was maybe holding them back. So in 1993 they changed their name to Babble and released an amazing ambient dub album called "The Stone" later followed by "Ether" in 1996. Although the music on these albums is among their best material, the lack of attention and commercial interest sadly brought it all to an end.

Some picture discs

Since then there has only been the occasional compilation release and some album reissues but no mention of any more Thompson Twins or Babble activity. A third Babble album was nearly completed but is now locked in a record company vault somewhere. Alannah has gone on to become an artist, and is now married to former KLF man, Jimmy Cauty, whereas Tom has continued to make music under various monikers such as Holiwater Project, International Observer and the Bailey-Selgado Project.

Some 12" singles

All my Thompson Twins collecting and passion was a sole venture as I never really knew of anyone else who shared the same interest. In the last ten years there have been a couple of fan websites devoted to the group and their history, and a few interest groups and pages on sites such as Yahoo, MySpace and Facebook. Tom Bailey even created his own pages on the latter two social networks for his International Observer activities

A reunion or any kind of resurgence of Thompson Twins related activity has seemed less likely as time has gone by.

That is, until now. Having accepted the notion that any further TT related activity would be confined to reissued material, I was taken quite by surprise when earlier this year I saw a new Facebook page appear. This one was a little different to others as it was an official page called "Thompson Twins' Tom Bailey"

And before I knew it, I was reading of how Tom Bailey was about to take to the stage to perform Thompson Twins songs for the first time in 27 years, He had been asked to contribute vocals to a pop track, and fellow artist, Howard Jones, had persuaded him to not dismiss his back catalogue but actually look into performing again for the current retro-style tours, He bought himself a Thompson Twins compilation CD, which I still can't get over, to hear the songs again, and has ended up re-recording a few of them for his own use to reacquaint himself with his past material. He has also put a band together which he has said is 'hi-tech' and 'electronic', and ahead of touring the US with Howard Jones, Midge Ure and China Crisis, he is to perform at the Rewind Festival in Henley-On-Thames on August 17th. He also said in a recent interview that he might be inspired to get back to writing pop music again which, after such a long time, is quite a thrilling prospect. Though the anticipation for the fans is quite high, I can't imagine what it must be like for Tom after all this time. Though regrettably I won't be there to see this debut performance, I’m just hoping it won't be a one off venture and it will lead to more live dates and more recordings in the future.

Tom Bailey in 2014

#18: Relax in Richmond

2014-05-22T23:16:00.001+01:00

I now work in Richmond, which is a pleasant riverside town situated in Surrey/Greater London. One aspect of my new job is to do with archived Top 40 UK singles charts, where one can pick a date and listen to the Top 40 singles from that time, A personal favourite era of mine has always been 1984 when, as a ten year old, my already established musical passions were further enhanced by the arrival of some amazing records. As I was listening back to some chart playlists from thirty years ago, one particular Top Ten stood out by being bookended by two notable tracks. 'Relax' by Frankie Goes To Hollywood, and 'White Lines' by Grandmaster and Melle Mel (not Grandmaster Flash as is often erroneously reported).

Marrick Priory, North Yorkshire

Aside from both tracks coincidentally featuring the phrase 'Don't do it' a lot, another coincidence is that listening to these two tracks in Richmond, Surrey, takes me on a nostalgic trip to Richmond, North Yorkshire

In January 1984, I went on a junior school trip to North Yorkshire, where a large group of us resided at Marrick Priory for a few days. It was freezing cold and we were surrounded by deep snow, in which we made daily treks out to places of interest; including a trip to Richmond swimming baths. From starting swimming lessons at junior school, to current family outings to the local baths, I have never been a fan of swimming pools for a number of reasons which have no place on my blog. Needless to say they attack many of the senses including the sound, the sights, the smells, the heat (or general lack of) and many many more. Enough for me to shudder at the thought.

At the age of nine and ten months (because at that age you still counted the months) I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do less. And then the highlight of the school trip came, and one which I remember fondly. We were given the option of either swimming in the baths, or sitting in the cafeteria. Obviously I chose the latter and although I can't remember exactly who else was with me in there, I do have a vivid memory of 'what' was in there.

A jukebox!

I can't quite recall if I had seen one before, let alone used one, but suddenly myself and some schoolfriends soon dug out a few coins between us from our holiday pocket money and started to feed this large record box of lights and buttons and seven inch vinyl discs. And we played only two tracks on it: 'Relax' and 'White Lines'.

I don't know how well I knew the records before that time but I knew of them well enough to want to play them several times. I remember it being an exciting moment listening to them with friends sat around the jukebox. 'Relax' had gone to number one in the charts after moving up and down the Top 40 over the previous three months, and stayed at or near the top for most of 1984.'White Lines' was recorded by Melle Mel without Grandmaster Flash even knowing about the track. Similarly with 'The Message' which still gets credited as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five though Flash had nothing to do with it.

However, 'White Lines' became one of the remaining group's biggest hits and entered the Top 10 in early 1984 and fully entered my conciousness via the jukebox in Richmond, North Yorkshire,

Fast forward some thirty years (and change) and I'm sat in another Richmond town, listening to the same singles on what is now dubbed a 'digital jukebox' with as much love for the tracks as I had back then, and a little less for swimming baths.

#17: Bye Bye Beebie

2014-05-02T08:21:00.000+01:00

In 1999, while living and working in Manchester, I received a call from my former flatmate who, in the previous year, had moved to London to work in the BBC record library. He told me of a vacancy for a pop music cataloguer that he thought might suit me. After giving it a little thought I decided to apply. By mid November I was boarding a National Express coach with a suitcase and heading down south to start work in the offices in Brentford. I was shown several racks of shelving that contained thousands of pop music CD's that needed cataloguing for the BBC record collection. They were all in random order so it was lucky dip as to what you would discover. As well as back catalogue material there was a box of new releases that arrived every week containing the latest chartbound singles and albums. You may have detected from my other blog posts that I had a fondness for record collections since an early age so for me this was a dream job.

Some years later I moved to Kent and was able to work from home with fortnightly trips up to the office. I later moved onto cataloguing other genres of music and soon found myself involved in projects for other departments involving software programming and databases.

However, as the milestone age of 40 was looming, I decided it was time to move on and after 14 and a half years, I left the BBC. As with my previous job in Manchester I was pleased to end my time there on a high after making some good friends and working with some great people.

As well as saying goodbye to the Beeb, I was also saying goodbye to 12 years of working from home and hello to the world of commuting. So I now have quite a different daily routine to what I have been used to for so long. However, I have now started working for a company with a vast record collection of pop music that has been digitised for use as a music service. I am now back to being close to pop music again, meeting some great people and also involved in software development. Though the daily commute is quite a change from what I've previously been used to for so long, it gives me a little time to do things such as updating this blog. All I need now is some music software to take with me and I'm away.

#16: New Year Catch Up - Al and Morrissey

2014-01-06T23:07:00.001+00:00

So, where was I?....Oh yes, I was saying that instead of making it a weekly blog I would make it fortnightly. That was back in August. I went from being on a roll to being well and truly off it. So we'll try again....
Since the last blog post there have been a couple of significant musical moments on my calendar. In fact they occured in the same week in October 2013.

Al Stewart gig

In October I went to see Al Stewart perform the Year Of The Cat album in full with a band at the Royal Albert Hall. An event I banged on about in my Al Stewart blog.

Well the gig was even better than I anticipated. I had got the impression that the first half would be Al and Dave Nachmanoff doing an acoustic selection of songs and then the band would assemble for the second half. However within three songs, the line up went from a duo to a trio as Peter White joined them on stage playing keyboards. Then as the set progressed other musicians were introduced including Tim Renwick on electric guitar, making the first half of the show coming pretty close to a band performance. The first set included House Of Clocks, In Brooklyn, Gina In The King's Road, Time Passages, Soho (Needless To Say), Night Train To Munich before closing with two tracks from my favourite Al album, Modern Times, The Dark And The Rolling Sea and Carol.

The second half featured a full band for an amazing performance of the full Year Of The Cat album. This included a slightly different arrangement of One Stage Before which had a slightly heavier sound than the album version with plenty of cross-rhythm action going on.

One Stage Before (Royal Albert Hall, October 2013)

After closing the set with the title track, Year Of The Cat, the band encored with another of my favourites Roads To Moscow. I left the Hall on quite a high after such a knockout show. After many years of seeing Al perform only acoustically and usually solo (which have always been fantastic gigs), it was rather special to hear his songs performed with a full line-up. Something I hope may inspire future band get-togethers for other shows.

Morrissey book

Another significant musical moment was the release of Morrissey's autobiography. This had been anticipated for quite a while with mentions of his memoirs popping up over the last few years.

I had been looking forward to reading it yet news of its release remained vague. After reports of Morrissey being taken ill at the start of 2013, I accepted the book release wouldn't be any time soon. The next news I heard was in September when it was suddenly announced that it would be released very soon. By the end of October I had acquired and read it. Quite an unexpected whirlwind moment.
And it is such a great read too. It's a hefty 457 pages with no introduction, foreword or preface and no sign of any chapters with very minimal use of paragraph breaks. You get a constant narrative stream that is very poetic in many places. As well as describing his own upbringing in Manchester, it depicts various scenes and landscapes with masterful use of language. The ghostly description of Scammonden Moor is particularly chilling, while the character assassination of a particular renowned journalist is a work of poetry. There is a very lengthy commentary on the infamous Smiths court case, and various engaging accounts of Morrissey's loves, hates and views on music, meat and Manchester. An entertaining read that I look forward to having again.

However, it took me a long long time to become a fan and admirer of his work. For some reason I just never clicked with what I had heard and knew of him and The Smiths back in the day. I don't really know why to be honest. I first encountered The Smiths back in 1984 when Top Of The Pops showed the video of 'What Difference Does It Make', and it just didn't gel with the ten year old 'me'. So the band was off my radar all through my musical upbringing and I can't remember when I next heard a Smiths record.
Several years on after the band had split and Morrissey forged a successful solo career, I still wasn't fully on board and my ears were elsewhere. Though I met many people who were big fans I was obviously missing out on something and it would take me a little while to find out what.
I knew Johnny Marr more from when he formed Electronic with Bernard Sumner but never delved into his back catalogue.
I began attempts at listening to Morrissey albums that friends lent me, and I was quite taken with 'Panic'.... and then 'How Soon Is Now?' and then very, very slowly I started to find songs I quite liked with a perspective that had maybe matured a little over ten years since I first heard the band.
In 1995 I had queued for around four hours outside Manchester's HMV where Morrissey was doing a meet 'n' greet record signing, purely just to keep a couple of friends company who were there to meet him. The queue didn't move as far as going inside HMV but we had a good natter and the rain stayed away.
Then in 1996 I finally sat down to a Morrissey video collection belonging to my flatmate and watched through the promo videos for various singles. Around nine years after Morrissey had released his debut solo album Viva Hate, I finally heard Everyday Is Like Sunday. I had no recollection of hearing it before, but this time it fully grabbed me. Perfect timing as Morrissey then went on a hiatus.
In 2003 there was a fascinating TV documentary called The Importance Of Being Morrissey which made a fitting prelude to his return in 2004. On BBC 1's Friday Night With Jonathan Ross he performed his comeback single Irish Blood English Heart accompanied by a great interview and by that time I was 'a fan'. It only took me twenty years.

Morrissey on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, 2004 (part 1)

Morrissey on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, 2004 (part 2)

And now ten years after that, I've caught up with the back catalogue, continued to enjoy his music output, read his contributions to the online fanzine 'True To You', and have now seen him perform live at Glastonbury 2011. Better late than never, as they say.
So as I acknowledge his stature as a brilliant performer and songwriter, as well as an extremely witty and fascinating interviewee and essayist, I can sense all those friends and acquaintances over the years who have always been Smiths/Morrissey fans giving me a slow head nod to say 'yeeeessss'.

Ongoing work

And as well as all that, I've been progressing slightly with the 'bunch of tracks' I casually mentioned in passing sometime last year. The plan is to get them finished and uploaded and out of my hair before I hit 40. The feasibility of that tends to fluctuate between 'maybe' and 'who am I kidding?'. But it's a labour of love and it's nice to have an aim.
I've created a Facebook page for it so feel free to subscribe/link/like/follow.

#15: Meeting Morricone

2013-08-07T18:55:00.000+01:00

Since watching Clint Eastwood westerns from a very early age, the music of Ennio Morricone has continued to play an ever growing part of the soundtrack to my life. By the mid-nineties I was sharing a flat in Salford with Adam, a like-minded friend from university, and besides sharing interests in electronic dance and pop music, we also had a fondness for Morricone resulting in his movies and soundtrack albums steadily growing in our respective collections. I had many firm favourites at that time including Cinema Paradiso and the scores for the Dollars trilogy, notably The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. From that film, one of my favourite cues was, and still is, “The Ecstasy Of Gold” that scores the penultimate scene where Tuco finds the cemetery the protagonists have been looking for. A repeating piano motif accompanies an oboe melody and begins to build into an epic, galloping orchestral and choral masterpiece, as Tuco frantically runs around the gravestones searching for the one containing the buried gold. An absolute masterpiece of cinema music.

By 1998, Adam had moved to London to work for the BBC music library, with his room at Salford still on hold until he found a more fixed abode in the “big smoke”. In November of that year I happened to read a news item about Morricone that mentioned he was about to play four concerts in Rome to coincide with his 70^th birthday. About a week before these concerts were to be performed, I happened to mention it to Adam in passing during a phone conversation. What Adam said next totally caught me off guard. “Aren’t we going then?”.

I hadn’t even considered the possibility,

Within a couple of days, we had each booked the necessary time off work. From London, Adam sorted out the concert tickets of which only Sunday evening was available, and from Manchester, I sorted out the flights and accommodation via an Italian tour operator I knew. We could only get this particular hotel for four nights from the Sunday but we could fly out Saturday if we wanted to sort out the first night ourselves. Without any experience of where one could stay in Rome, I ended up signing up to the Youth Hostel Association to get a place to kip on that Saturday night, and any other night we needed.

On Saturday, we were flying out from Manchester landing in Rome and arriving at the main train station late in the evening. We had heavy bags and a map showing where the Youth Hostel was located. We walked for ages along these dark deserted roads, unaware that there were cheap pensione hotels right next to the station we just left. After a bizarre first night in a shared dormitory of around ten people, we found our main hotel on the Sunday morning, checked in, had lunch and then ventured out to the venue taking in some sightseeing along the way.

We walked through St Peter’s Square and arrived at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia venue with tickets in hand only to see a crowd of people looking at a poster outside the entrance. It was all in Italian of course, and my Italian vocabulary was limited to a few memorised phrasebook entries, and the original track-listing to The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Adam and I looked blankly at the printed text on the poster, until someone translated it for us. Eduardo was actually Spanish but living in Rome and fluent in Italian. He told us that the orchestra and choir of Santa Cecilia were actually going on strike for one of the days of the concert, which just so happened to be the Sunday we had tickets for. We couldn’t believe it. Eduardo was both impressed and disheartened to hear we had travelled from Manchester to be there. All we were advised to do was to go to the box office the next day to get a refund. All that was on our minds was to get into the concert.

We left there on a big downer clinging onto the hope that we could get in the next day,

At the box office on the Monday morning there was quite a scene with people shouting at the poor box office staff. After only been giving refunds for our tickets and being told that the remaining two concerts were sold out, we slumped onto a nearby bench feeling incredibly sorry for ourselves. One guy was shouting loudly at the ticket booth, and at one stage pointed towards Adam and I while mentioning the word ‘Manchester’.

We headed back to the hotel feeling well and truly hacked off. The only thing we could think of to do was to write a begging letter to Ennio Morricone himself, pointing out how far we had travelled for the concert, and if there was any way we could get to see either the Monday or Tuesday concert. We knew Ennio didn’t really speak English, so we had to get it translated. With no luck at the British Embassy, we ended up persuading our hotel clerk to translate and type it out for us. We gave him a ‘fistful of lira’ and headed back to the venue with our letter. We found the stage door, and handed the envelope to one of the crew who said he would pass it on.

We never heard anything of course, and our desperate efforts ended up being wasted. We met Eduardo again at the venue who already had tickets for the Monday show and urged us to try for returns at the box office. Unbelievably, we got them without a problem. The day’s work and stress had been unnecessary.We were in the venue, though seated separately, in the auditorium.

The huge orchestra, 200 strong double choir and Ennio Morricone took to the stage and delivered an outstanding performance of very familiar music from films such as Cinema Paradiso, The Mission, Once Upon A Time In America and many others. The arrangements and performances sounded fantastic with some of the familiar sound effects on the scores recreated by voices and instruments. At the interval, Eduardo spotted me and rushed over just before the second act was to start. “So glad you managed to get in to the concert, stick around with me at the end, I know someone who can introduce us to Ennio”. And then he was gone and the second half began. A highlight of the concert featured a suite of music from some of the Sergio Leone westerns Morricone had scored including The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, A Fistful Of Dynamite and Once Upon A Time In The West. All the sounds were there, the chanting, the electric guitar twangs, the sound effects, and swirling strings and choir. It was amazing. Then as what sounded to be the final piece started to slow down, fade and end on a chord, I started to get ready to applaud only to be interrupted by the repeating piano motif from The Ecstasy Of Gold. I couldn’t believe it. The hairs on the back of my neck were at full attention as this anthemic masterpiece whirled around the hall like Tuco round Sad Hill Cemetery. It was a momentous musical moment that blew me away.

At the end of the concert, Adam came over and we exchanged comments on how fantastic the concert had been. “Shall we go then?” he said. “Not yet. We’ve got to stick around” I replied with a grin. Eduardo then met us and introduced us to a guy named Claudio Fuiano who happened to be a record producer for a label that released many Morricone scores, as well as those of other Italian movies. Claudio shook our hands and was also impressed that we had travelled from Manchester. We were suddenly part of a group being escorted to the back stage area where Claudio introduced Adam and I to Ennio Morricone. Knocking out a few sentences on a blog post doesn’t do the occasion any justice. We could not believe where or how we were there. Claudio spoke to Ennio, and once again we heard the word ‘Manchester’ pop into the Italian conversation. Ennio smiled, signed our programmes, and shook our hands. Now whenever I’ve met someone I’m a fan of, it’s often quite awkward not knowing exactly what to say. However meeting Ennio was a little different as because he didn’t speak much English, and what smattering of Italian I knew had vanished from my memory at that point. “Grazie” was all I could summon up and that seemed appropriate and enough for the occasion.

We left there on a high, and totally oblivious to how we reached it. We high fived all the way to the Vatican, and said “right, the holiday begins”

And if that weren’t enough, we went to the Tuesday concert too, via box office returns, and joined in with the audience to sing Happy Birthday to Ennio. Later in the week, Claudio took us out for drinks and food, and gave us presents of Ennio CD’s and chatted more with us about film soundtracks.

A few years later, by which time I was living in London, Ennio performed at London’s Barbican Centre so I got to hear it all again including “The Ecstasy Of Gold” and many other favourites.

And since starting at the BBC music library myself in 1999, I’ve become acquainted with even more Morricone score albums and movies, further expanding and cementing my love for the ‘Maestro’ and his work.

#14: "Lights, camera..... "

2013-07-28T21:42:00.001+01:00

There is a camera shop in Brighouse that I remember first visiting when I was ten years old in 1984. I went there specifically to buy some film for a cine camera that I had been given by a relative. However between me receiving the cine camera, and me going to buy some film for it, I spent several months on a creative high. After receiving the camera, there was only one thing on my decade-old mind to do: make a movie.

I started plotting out a story and developing characters and soon began writing a script. I had a toy blaster gun which was to be used as a prop, and my dad helped me paint a large piece of hardboard jet black before I used a brush to spray white painted dots everywhere, resulting in a makeshift ‘space’ backdrop. This was to be a sci-fi adventure film heavily appropriating elements from Star Wars, Battle Beyond The Stars and Battle Of The Planets. I scouted locations for various scenes on the industrial estate and fields near where I lived in Elland, and I started casting at my primary school, persuading friends to take on various roles. At no point during this process did I consider how, where and when to buy film, or how I would edit it or even how I would dub the sound, as this was a silent camera. Regardless of that I started compiling a soundtrack which would include a recording I had of Finlandia by Sibelius for the main score, and a Hammermen recording of Duane Eddy’s “Rebel Rouser” for the end party celebration sequence. Besides music I also picked through a couple of BBC sound effects albums I had. I drew various scenes and poster ideas for it and very soon I felt ready to start making it. I went to the camera shop to inquire about buying film for the camera, somehow expecting to be able to afford it at ten years old. I learned that three minutes of silent film, which couldn’t be erased and used again, would be £15. This was in 1984. I was planning the film to be a lot longer than three minutes, and I hadn’t allowed for retakes or anything. That was when the creative flow came to an abrupt end and the idea of making a movie remained just that.

However, the sadness in failing to realise the vision I had seemed to disappear quite quickly. The creative process had been so much fun that it never felt like it had been a waste of time. I’ve always looked back on those months fondly and wonder if the end result, had I somehow managed to cobble together some movie footage accompanied by an audio cassette, might have been so bad that it would have ruined the whole experience.

El Mariachi
by Robert Rodriguez

By the time I was introduced to video cameras where you recorded directly onto a video cassette, my destiny was leading me on a more musical journey than a filmmaking one. The times when I did borrow a video camera at school and at university were more based around making little music videos and filming live performances.

My passion for films and how they are made and who makes them has never diminished. In fact it has grown and grown over the years. While I’ve never had plans or aims to consider making films, I’ve devoured many books and films on the craft of film making. Robert Rodriguez’s book on how he put his film El Mariachi together is still one of my favourites and I’m forever lapping up DVD commentaries and documentaries on the filmmaking process. Kevin Smith’s podcasts are now a regular fixture for me,particularly his Film School Fridays series where he talks and advises new filmmakers, and his series of Q&A shows give a fascinating insight into his journey into making movies.

While my path led me into focusing on making music, I occasionally have flashes of an alternative universe where I somehow managed to make a three minute film, and then continued down that road. The fact that I didn’t has never diminished my appreciation and interest into those who did.

Black Out
by Derek Boyes

At university I met an incredibly talented guitarist called Fil Hill who I also discovered had made some movies with friends which I found fascinating, inspiring and highly entertaining. A friend I made in London, Jason Young, went from acting to writing and directing his own films including three shorts that I contributed music to. And more recently, via MySpace, I came across a filmmaker based in Kent called Derek Boyes, whose DelFilm website is not only an impressive piece of design, but packed with content that makes for an outstanding CV. It not only features completed short films, but also earlier film experiments and tryouts that tells his journey into film, as well as his ongoing work, in a very engaging way.

In a recent Q&A by Kevin Smith, he is asked by an audience member why he does all the different things he does, and how he finds time. His response is an outburst of passion, in very colourful language, for being creative and why everyone should – be it a film, a piece of music, a YouTube clip, a podcast, a blog, a cupcake store etc. It is highly motivating and actually pushed me into starting this blog, for no other reason than to create and put something out there while I continue to work on making music.

I’ve found over the years that regardless of the outcome and where it takes you, the creative process is such an important thing. Success in something doesn’t always have to be tied to how much money it will make. Music artist Moby has referenced filmmaker David Lynch saying ‘creativity, in and of itself, is beautiful’.

Nearly three decades on from the creative process of making a movie coming to an end in that camera shop, you can essentially make a movie on your phone and upload it to the web for anyone, anywhere to see. Similarly with music, any audio or visual creation can now be more easily accessible and discoverable to any audience. What happens after that isn’t something you can really control, but you can control the creation and realisation of those initial ideas. And the result, or future course, shouldn’t deter one from embracing the creative process.

As well as being inspired what other filmmakers, and in fact creative people in general, have done, what I have more recently found most inspiring closer to home, is that my 6 year old son has taken an interest in film making. He has been planning out stories with his Thomas the Tank Engine toys, and together we have filmed and edited shots on a computer into mini-movies. Even as I write this he is mapping out a camera shot list for his next creation and it feels great that he has us to here to help and guide him. And should he continue down that road (or track in his case) he is growing up in a world where tools such as a camera and editing software are more easily available and affordable than they were a generation ago.

#13: The Single

2013-07-20T12:22:00.001+01:00

So this year I’ve finally realised that I don’t actually know what a single is anymore.

I can still go out and buy a physical single 7”, 12” or CD single, or buy a digital track, but the concept of the ‘single’ release by an artist is, for me at least, a bit of a mysterious grey area.

It’s not so much the choice of format because, be it a digital or analogue release, you are still buying the song you want and it is now far easier and more convenient to do so. Furthermore, the digital format is a more convenient way for people to listen to the song and a cheaper way for an artist to distribute their music.

But I’m quite fascinated by how that convenience has compromised other aspects of the ‘single’ that I’ve been so accustomed to over the years. Be they out of date, no longer relevant or no longer cost effective, it now leaves me wondering if or why I’m bothered as to which song is released as a single.

The 7"

In the early days I only really knew about 7” vinyl singles and it was via TV, radio and magazines I would get to hear about these being released. On buying a 7” single you were presented with the main song and then a b-side song, or a remixed version of the a-side. The single would be promoted on the radio and on various TV shows, the ultimate accolade being the Top Of The Pops performance usually once the single had reached the charts. On BBC’s Saturday Superstore, Mike Reid would clutch a bunch of 7” singles telling you how you can win that week’s “Top Ten”.

The 12"

Thompson Twins "You Take Me Up" was released
in 1984 on 7", 2x12", 10" picture disc and 3x
interlocking 7" picture discs

Sometime later I spotted a 12” single at a friend’s house and thought it was an album. A Billy Joel single I think it was. Until that moment, I didn’t realise you could get ‘bigger’ singles. I would then look out for the 12” release of a record and would later opt for that instead of the 7” format. Sometimes I’d get both. The 12” would usually feature an extended version of the song with the main track in the middle of a lengthy introduction, and extra bits at the end. All bonus extras to the song you previously knew inside out. The b-side might feature the same b-side as on the 7”, or sometimes an alternative mix or even a new track altogether. The sleeve artwork would usually remain the same in just a bigger form.

Frankie Goes To Hollywood's
"The Power Of Love' in double
sleeved 7" and 12" plus a gatefold
12" release.

A single would sometimes come in various limited edition formats. There maybe a gatefold sleeve, or a fold out poster sleeve, or one that came with a set of postcards, or even a picture disc version. I later discovered that more than one 12” single may be released with alternative versions and more experimental remixes.

By exploring discographies of various artists through magazines like Record Collector, I found a pattern emerging with certain record releases by certain artists:

A couple of singles each with b-sides and 12" mixes, followed by an album featuring those singles, and then another couple of singles of songs remixed or re-edited from the album. Then the pattern starts over again.

The singles would have accompanying promo videos and TV performances depending on the chart entry.

There may be some deviation from this pattern with some artists but it was one I observed more often than not.

The CD

The KLF released "3am Eternal" in 1989 and
1991 resulting in multiple 12" singles

The CD single later appeared with a smaller sleeve that to me was less exciting than the vinyl packaging. The writing was a lot smaller and it felt more of a pain to play. Well it was for me as I didn’t get a CD player until the early nineties. But the CD single format would usually follow the track-listing of the 12” single with the addition of the 7” a-side.

Later a band would choose to release 2 CD singles with some experiments in packaging by having both singles fit into one box or wallet.

Kraftwerk's "The Robots" on 7", 12"
and cd single

Due to restrictions on the number of chart eligible formats a band could release, some acts chose to release 2 CD singles instead of a 7” or 12" and soon artists would take advantage of the amount of music you could fit on a disc and start filling it up with lots of remixes of the main song onto a CD single.

Usually CD1 would feature the main song and a couple of b-sides (b-side now becomes a loose term) and maybe a remix, while CD2 would have a stream of remixes by various DJ’s sampling bits of the main song over a new backing track. I never always found these to be pleasurable listening experiences . Thirty minutes of remixes including dub versions of those remixes that hade very little trace of the original song became quite hard work to digest.

The ‘line-crossing’ moment for me was the release of The Lightning Seeds’ ” You Showed Me” in 1997. I had been a big fan of the group for a few years and would usually buy both CD single formats for each single release. But I stopped when they released “You Showed Me” for the reason I shall present in the form of the tracklisting for each CD single.

Lightning Seeds single
"You Showed Me"

CD1 “You Showed Me”

1 You Showed Me (Radio Edit)

2 You Showed Me (Attica Blues Vocal Mix)

3 You Showed Me (Attica Blues Instrumental)

4 You Showed Me (Wiseguys Remix)

5 You Showed Me (Wiseguys Instrumental)

6 You Showed Me (Strike Twice Vocal Mix)

7 You Showed Me (Strike Twice Instrumental)

CD2 “You Showed Me”

1 You Showed Me (Radio Edit)

2 You Showed Me (Tee's Alternative Mix)

3 You Showed Me (Tee's Club Mix)

4 You Showed Me (Tee's Freeze Mix)

5 You Showed Me (TNT's Frozen Dub)

6 You Showed Me (Bonus Beats)

7 You Showed Me (Tee's Radio)

Well over an hour of listening to remixes of a Turtles cover, mostly bearing no relation to the original.

I stopped being, what my record buying friends would term, ‘a completist’ around that point.

The shrinking sleeve artwork and the stampede of club DJ mixes onto the commercial release with little quality control resulted in my affection for the single release diminishing a little.

The MP3

Fast forward a few years and the digital format has now taken precedence. It’s incredibly fast, easy to buy and very convenient to play on either computer or a mobile device. You don’t have to record your favourite tracks onto cassette to take out and about with you in the car or on a Walkman. You can either drag the file into the relevant folder on the relevant device, or even buy the track straight onto your phone. And while vinyl releases have since started growing again with more bands going back to 7” and 12” releases and more collectible Record Store Day releases, it seems the digital release is at the forefront with or without an accompanying physical release. The digital release of several tracks to accompany the main song has the horrible title of “digital bundle” which I’m sure could be improved upon.

A consequence of this is that a track can be made available and chart eligible outside any sort of promoted release date. A few years ago a technical error by one online store resulted in all the tracks on an Arctic Monkeys albums being individually chart eligible and appearing in the Top 40. Although later rectified, this did raise the question of what constitutes a single release if you can make any track eligible for the chart if you want to. Now you get YouTube videos being made to promote a song which you can then buy on iTunes without it being clear if it’s actually a ‘single’ release or not. While Pet Shop Boys are due to release the single "Vocal" from their new album, they had already made one track, "Axis", available to buy as a download prior to the album. However without the usual promotion surrounding a single release, the song is now engraved on their discography listing as their worst chart placing to date.

Johnny Marr's album
"The Messenger"

In November 2012, Johnny Marr's song "The Messenger" appeared as a YouTube video to promote his forthcoming album, though it wasn't actually a single. Yet the YouTube video was there to do the same promotional task.
So whereas years ago the single was created to promote the album, then later a video was created to promote the single, nowadays the lines are so blurred that a track can be watched as a video on the web, or downloaded in a digital store regardless of whether it is promoted as a single release or not.

For certain artists some formats may not be cost effective to produce and sell, or a ‘single’ release may not be as relevant as it once was.

Then again, not only does it allow the artist to release and promote a track on their own terms and in their own time, it also allows fans to promote a track themselves without any input or influence from a record label or even the artist.

Public Enemy's 2007 single
"Harder Than You Think"
was revived in 2012

An online campaign saw Rage Against The Machine achieve a Christmas number one in an attempt to prevent The X Factor winning single getting there. It also saw a Public Enemy single from 2007 achieve a high chart position thanks to its use in TV coverage of the 2012 Paralympic Games and a simple ‘buy this track’ link appearing in the right places. And instead of the one high chart entry and then a sudden drop seen by a lot of singles in the last couple of decades, this one moved upwards and upwards; like records used to do some twenty to thirty years ago. It wasn’t solely dependent on a certain number of physical copies being made available in certain places on a certain date, nor a promotional campaign by the band or label.

Perhaps this elimination of record label control over what records are made available and when, what deals are struck in record shops, or what influence pluggers have with radio stations might be a good thing for a lot of artists and their fans.

While on one hand I like the idea of fans and artists having the freedom to control their own promotional campaigns online and choice of songs to release and chart, on the other I still like record labels putting out a nicely packaged 12” picture disc edition in gatefold, double sleeve with a specially chosen b-side track and a couple of remixes. Perhaps we can have both.