January 2015: Break-ups, cancellations, and we've got to find a new singer from somewhere.

It’s funny how the worst situations can bring out the best in people. Although, I guess, it pays to look at it positively.

On New Years Eve, my girlfriend and I broke up after being together for four and a half years. I’m going to keep the reasons for this to myself, as it’s not for me to post the inner workings of our relationship online, but the breakup did affect me quite profoundly. There was a lot of sadness, a lot of tears, and a lot of wondering whether or not we’d done the right thing.

The Fakes. We're alright, really.

I tried to keep it quiet from most people who didn’t have a lot of investment in the situation, since I didn’t want them to feel awkward when talking to me. But there was one group of people for whom this would never have remained a secret, and that is The Fakes. On our first band practise after the Christmas break, we were talking about our holidays, and the story came out. After the obligatory “Sorry to hear that,” the band decided to cheer me up by running though our version of She Hates Me (not actually the case, I hasten to add!) by Puddle of Mudd. And it worked! It was quite nice, having my most consistent group of friends for the last eleven years around me and just getting on with what we do, which is playing indie songs not very well and taking the piss out of each other. That sort of thing can’t be bought or looked for, and the fact that I have it makes me feel a lot better.

It’s also given me a lot of material to write songs about, so you might be hearing some new songs from me later!

I was hoping to be able to tell you about some gigs I’ve been doing. I’d had two of them booked and they were both cancelled. One was a solo gig, and one was with No Questions Asked. Where I was given the reasons, it seems that a lot of the pubs were looking at their January budget and deciding that they can’t afford to pay for the shows, so they cancel them.

Now here’s where I feel inclined to go off on one about how live music often gets the roughest part of the deal. It’s true that I felt let down by the cancellations. I’m blaming nobody I’m in contact with for this; they were invariably the middle-men having to deliver the bad news and had nothing to do with the decision, but I actually quite like playing live and was disappointed not to be able to do it.

Still, it’s not a significant problem for me. All it means is that I didn’t get to do a gig. I haven’t lost much. I rarely got paid for gigs up until NQA, and have not touched any of the money that they’ve paid me so far. Relying on a pub band for income is a dangerous game indeed – NQA is a walking case in point for this – so I’ve saved all the money they’ve paid me for a rainy day. It’s there if I need it.

But I wonder what might happen to those people who are counting on their live work for income. If live acts can be cancelled as easily as that, it’s hard to see how one is supposed to make a living from playing music. It makes me glad I have a reasonably steady day job, since at least I’m sorted for the year.

That being said, I try to understand the pubs that have to cancel us. *My opinion* is that live music isn’t a great draw anymore. It might have been at one point but entertainment is not hard to find now, in fact rarely involves moving. I’ve said it before but not for nothing: The only way I can usually get anybody to come to a gig is if I drive them there myself. So it won’t necessarily help the pubs to have a live band that they have to pay because there’s no guarantee of extra footfall. When the budget comes through for the last quarter and some things have to go, why shouldn’t they choose the live bands that aren’t making a difference anyway?

Finally, I’ve been told that Mike is leaving No Questions Asked, and we’re currently looking for a new singer. We’re doing our next gig with Rich Sadler, and Mike will do the one after that. We’re looking into some people and I’m going to try to learn as much of the set as I can so I can help out on vocals if need be.

At least I’ll have one gig to talk about next month…

*edit*

Why I don't do competitons, or Battle of the Bands

I saw that Open Mic Uk had posted up a songwriting competition. This apparently was like their regular competition, a kind of X-Factor-lite talent show, but with the onus on the quality of songwriting coming out rather than the overall performance. I approached this cynically as I clicked the link to investigate, and then closed down the web page as soon as I saw that there was a £10 charge to enter. I rarely have a good opinion of these things anyway, and having to pay for the privilege of standing in a queue for eight hours to play two minutes worth of a song only to have the judges tell me to clear off is not something I wanted to be involved in.

It did, however, remind me of how much I don’t like ‘Battle of the Bands’ style competitions and talent shows, and how unlikely I am ever to enter one again. I thought I would share that with you today.

So what is my problem with competitions? Well, even if I could conceivably get a band together that could play its own material good enough to participate in the contest without being laughed off the stage for being fat and old, I don’t like them anyway because of the way they tend to be judged. The competitions I have been involved with in the past almost always decide their winners in one of three ways:

1. Whoever is the youngest girl, (this tends to happen in acoustic singer-songwriter-style settings,)
2. Whoever is playing the most indie,
3. And most commonly, whoever has sold the most tickets.

Now, I’m demonstrably neither young nor a girl. I hate indie.[1] And the only way I can usually get anybody to come to a gig is if I drive them there myself. So, on the basis that this is the standard by which these competitions tend to be judged; I’m knackered before I’ve even applied to take part. There’s very few of them I’ve taken part in that haven’t made me think “What a waste of time.” Judges tend to vote for the bands that have sold the most tickets because the organisers need to be making money. But that doesn’t help me, as my general reward for inviting people to gigs is every version of “I can’t be arsed” under the sun.

And it doesn’t help anyway. The prize for winning tends to be about 4 hours studio time and, if the band is very lucky, some cash - never more than £1000. I was there the night that Junkyard Morning won the Wolverhampton Battle of the Bands in 2008, and where are they now?[2] Even with the high-profile shows like the X-Factor, I couldn’t even name three people who’ve ever won it.

At this point I will give a shout out to a mutual acquaintance Ben Vickers, who runs an open mic at the Copcut Elm in Droitwich. There was a competition held there in 2011 which I took part in, it had a serious panel of judges who were going on the artistic talent of the people involved. The prize for winning that was a slot at a festival later on in the year; there was no pretence, no over-promising. But that was very much the exception, rather than the rule.

The only reason I would take part in a Battle of the Bands now is if I did happen to be in a band that wrote original material good enough to participate in the contest without being laughed off the stage for being fat and old. I would be against it in principle, but if the other guys in the band were intent on putting themselves through this rigmarole under the erroneous belief that something good would come out of it, I wouldn’t ruin it for them by refusing to do it.

I actually entered the Open Mic UK competition in 2011, I think it was. My intention was to do my audition in Birmingham, then drive over to Wolverhampton to play the main stage at Codfest where I had been booked to play. I arrived in plenty of time, and after having waited in an unmoving queue for an hour or so, I decided to get away and play my set at Codfest. As I think I’ve got quite a good working relationship with Sam Draisey, and he’s also a really good friend, I can say with a large amount of confidence that abandoning the talent show and playing my friend’s festival has done more for my career as a musician than not turning up to Codfest and throwing in my lot with a so-called talent contest.

Funnily enough, I have no idea who won Open Mic UK that year, either. I rest my case.

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[1] Or rather, I hate what indie became during the last decade when record deals were being handed out on a silver platter to anybody who could mash the top four strings of a Telecaster.

[2] I actually looked at their Facebook page and it looks like they’ve not been active as a band since about 2010. So, how much did winning BOTB really help them?

Matt's Songwriting - Stripping it Down

What makes a good song?

Many things, and taking it back to basics and delivering it with one instrument and/or one voice is a good place to start. This isn’t my idea, and I can’t remember who said it, but for me, the acid test for any song is: If you strip it down and have one guitar or piano and one voice, do you still have a good song?

This came up when I was talking to Dave from No Questions Asked a few days ago. I’d posted on Facebook that I was practicing a Queen song for my solo slot; Dave asked what it was and if I would like some accompaniment. I told him privately that it is Who Wants To Live Forever, and I’d rather see how it sounded with one guitar and one voice.[1] That’s how I’ve been doing my acoustic show for years; only rarely do I have someone else playing on stage with me. I try to capture the essence of the song in this format; if it does, then I include it in my set. If not, I move it on.

I love the full-on rock production, but in most cases if you stripped rock songs down to they would still be good. Some of my favourite songs to cover are: Thick as Thieves by Kasabian, Closer To The Edge by 30 Seconds To Mars, A Little Respect by Erasure/Wheatus, and The Boys of Summer by Don Henley. They all sound great in a stripped-down format. And it comes across in my own songs. Bitterness would be a Crashpoint song if we hadn’t broken up soon after I wrote it; originally it was a punk-style rock song and I remember Cj doing a good job on the drums. Get Out Of My Head began in Perception, jamming a Led Zepplin-style riff on my guitar with John on the drums. It didn’t sound anything like how it eventually ended up – but I used the chord progressions from what we jammed out.

I see it in other people’s covers as well. Steve who comes to Sam Draisey’s open mic sometimes does a finger-picked acoustic rendition of Sweet Child ‘o Mine. I think that, in many respects, his version works better than the original. Granted, I will almost always say that about anyone who sounds different to Axl Rose; (I can’t stand his voice,) but the lighter finger-picking and the gently-delivered vocals capture the essence of that song more than the rock song that everybody recognises. I love Slash’s guitar playing, and the riff to Sweet Child ‘o Mine is fantastic. But Axl could have been singing toothpaste; his voice would have sounded just as bad, and the guitars just as good.

So what about bands where this doesn’t work? Two examples: Pendulum and The Prodigy. The latter, as far as I know, haven’t written anything resembling a ‘song’ in the usual sense. And Pendulum relies on the drum and bass sound with the keyboard riffs; without that, the band wouldn’t work. I’m not saying either of those bands bad. I enjoy listening to Pendulum, and I wish I’d seen The Prodigy at Download Festival in 2006. But I will say that those bands have a good sound – not necessarily good songs.

The problem, of course, is with those songs that are great but have extra parts to them that I can’t strip away. I’ve only played Motorcycle Emptiness by the Manic Street Preachers live once, and it functioned – but without the lead guitar, it’s nowhere near as good. I’d love to play Waterfall and This Is The One by the Stone Roses, and Marvellous by the Lightning Seeds, but I think those songs lose something without their backing vocals.

But I don’t think that with Who Wants To Live Forever, despite the arrangement of the original. Taking it down to one guitar and one voice – as long as both are properly managed – can make it as good as the huge amount of production that went into the record. I’m hoping that comes across if I play it at the gig.

What do you guys think? Is this a good benchmark for whether a song is any good or not? Or is the way the record sounds more important? The answer, I suspect, lies somewhere in between, depending on the context of the band. Just remember, the vast majority of songs that we listened to when they first came out and are still sounding good decades later could all be stripped back to their rawest form, and sound every bit as good.

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[1] At the time of writing I haven’t actually done the gig yet so I have no idea what’s going to happen when I do.