My my, I'm certainly getting creative this week!
This one came to me as I was taking the dog for a walk, funnily enough, and thinking about where I stand in terms of music, and my ambitions for the future. I've said it before but not for nothing, if you asked me honestly, music is still all I really want to do with my life, and the day that I give up on it entirely will be a very sad day for me indeed. But I've been doing this for 8-10 years now, depending on where you count it from, either way it's a long time to keep telling yourself that it's all going to work out if you just keep trying. Now that I've been doing it for a long time I can look at it all from a reflective point of view, in the past it's always been about the music and I've had a great many ups and downs along the way. But things have changed; I have a girlfriend now, I need my jobs to make money, and I'm looking to move out quite soon, and these things are as important to me as anything else. And while I still love music, I've been wondering for some time now whether things are, or have been, as good for me as they're ever going to get. I remember one of the last times Jack's Legacy played together as a full band at the Lamp Tavern, and even though it was all falling apart by then I still think that's probably the best show I ever did. I'm proud of what the band achieved in the short time we were an awesome live act, but the thought that I was barely 21 when I reached the peak of my musical career is sobering. To be fair, Crashpoint came close with that gig at Loose Lucee's, but fell apart shortly afterwards; you can see the pattern emerging, can't you? These days, I'm doing a lot of acoustic shows, not because I'd rather be doing that than rocking out with a band, but because I find it so difficult to hold it together.
So I need to take stock, really, of what I have, try to remember why I go around different places playing shows, putting bands together, pursuing a dream that in a very pragmatic world I should have woken up from a long time ago. So this song is really about that.
Inspiration has to come from somewhere, and musically, this one came from Boyzone. Yes, Boyzone. Somehow, me and Sam managed to get talking about them when I was at his open night last Thursday, and as a kind of joke I thought I'd learn No Matter What for next time I play there. Now, don't expect to hear me play this any time soon; I probably will at some point but if I'm going to play a song as a joke then I NEED to do it well. But when I listened to the tune to get the chords, I noticed 2 things - one, there's a lot of 7th chords in there which will open up a lot of doors in my guitar playing if I use one or two of them, and two, there's a cheesey key change in there which I HAD to include in my new song.
I'm actually really pleased with how this one came out, and I will be putting it in my live show in the future, though I'm not quite sure where. I would like to put it near the end but it needs to be the right atmosphere for that. I'd get away with it at The Woodman, I'm sure, but not necessarily at the Varsity.
So if you're reading this and wondering whether all this means I've actually given up, well, who knows how long all this is going to last for me? For now, I'll say this: When I've written my last song, played my last show, and put my guitar down for the very last time, then I will have given up. Until then, I'm going to keep trying.
No comments:
Post a Comment