I’d officially like to pledge my allegiance to this airline. They’re the first (and so far the only) airline that I’ve travelled business class with, so I have a loyalty there. And they’re on Star Alliance, so I get miles, which are always good :)

I’m in a good place right now, considering I thought this was going to be the worst flight I’ve ever taken in my life. It’s eleven hours from Johannesburg to London Heathrow, flying 5644 miles sat in economy, tired but unable to sleep, with plane food and no elbow room and I don’t have a copy of Mockingjay to read. I asked if I could upgrade to business class but they said all of the business class spots were taken. That was when I had to face the reality. x.x

Just for good measure, as I headed through the departure gate (after sadly saying goodbye to Shawna) I asked again if any spots had become available – you never know, someone doesn’t show up or switched to a later flight or something. But the woman took my ticket, going through her motions, scanning it as she told me that all the spots in business were full.

Then she scribbled out my seat, 85K, and switched it to 18G.

“Is that a window seat?” I asked.

“No, it’s aisle,” she replied, “but it’s all I have left.”

“Cool,” I shrugged, “thanks”.

But in my head, my casual “cool thanks” was far more than a casual “cool thanks”. In my head it was a whine: “what? Now I have to do everything I’ve already mentioned IN AN AISLE SEAT?”

(In the argument of aisle vs window, I’m firmly in favour of window because it means I only have to move for myself. I’m not inconvenienced unless it’s for my own benefit. Also you can sleep against the wall of the plane.)

I should clarify that I wasn’t that bitter. Planes are a modern miracle of machinery. My life is a happy one. I was just anticipating the oncoming discomfort with less joy.

So I get on the plane, show the woman my ticket, and she says “straight on and to your left”, and I say thank you and assume there’s some strange bit of the plane I haven’t noticed that’s to the left of me but is also still economy.

And then I notice 18 is the back row of seats for business class and somehow I’ve been UPGRADED FOR FREE.

And then my nonplussed “cool thanks” comes back to haunt me. Now I sound ungrateful. “Cool, you put me in the next class up for no money. It’s an aisle seat, so thanks, I guess.” I obviously wouldn’t have whined in my head about it being an aisle seat if I’d known it was an aisle seat in BUSINESS FUCKING CLASS :D

So this was just a wonderful turn of events, and means I’ll get a good night’s sleep tonight, which I am a happy about :) I was worried about not being rested enough because I’ve decided to visit my nan and grandad tomorrow – I haven’t seen them in a while, so I’m heading straight there off the plane. I’ve also decided to have a long bath tomorrow evening because I haven’t had a bath in years, not since we moved house and got a standing shower. Oh, and I’ll have Mockingjay. So it’ll be a wonderful peaceful day <3 Lessons learned in Zambia; take each day slowly, do things worth doing and enjoy the experiences, no matter how small.

Thanks to all the people who said I should write more in the comments of my last blog entry, by the way :) This blog is just a little outlet for me, so I’m glad people appreciate it.

x

{ 34 comments }

My time in Zambia has been world-changing, but is sadly coming to its end. People have been asking if I miss the UK at all, but I never get homesick when I’m away. I enjoy the opportunity to explore new places and live a different life for a while – I love my life as it is, but travelling is an easy way of forcing you to experience new things. I think there are a lot of lessons that you can take from travel and apply back home, the main one being to make every day count. If I was only in London for a week or two, and then I went somewhere else, I definitely wouldn’t spend all day checking emails and reading Wikipedia, I’d be out exploring the world. So I want to do more of that.

My Zambian experience has felt like a self-contained story. The peripheral characters in our lives these two weeks have slowly become more meaningful. We noticed a tall guy who sat near us at breakfast at one morning, and he turned out to be Ignacio, the guy with dual citizenship from the cocktail party. There’s a blonde woman staying here who we keep seeing around, and last night she was having dinner with Ignacio, so we wondered if they had come here together or if he was trying to score. We also ate dinner at a rival hotel one night, and saw the blonde woman there too, concluding that she was a spy.

The staff are great here, too – you’ve already heard about Adrian, but there’s also a waiter called Kelvin who started working here just over two weeks ago, so for as long as he’s been at the Southern Sun he’s seen us twice a day for meals. He said he’d got used to having us around and would be sad to see us go. Another waitress, Tracy, came over ‘just to say hi’ because she recognised us this morning during breakfast.

I read a book while I was out here called A Million Miles In A Thousand Years by Don Miller; it’s a real perspective-changer and my favourite book now. It puts forth the idea that a good story is just life with the meaningless scenes removed, and that if you can understand the principles of what makes a good story, there is something to be said for removing the meaningless scenes from your own life to make everything you do more meaningful, more memorable and generally enabling you to live a great tale. Being someone who already documents his life on video, this really struck with me. I really like the more documented videos I’ve made while I’ve been in Zambia and I’d like to continue that style, upoading a video maybe every Monday to talk about what I’ve been up to, and leaving time later in the week to do a Twilight reading or a song or whatever else I feel like. Anyway, once you finish Mockingjay, I’d definitely recommend you read A Million Miles In A Thousand Years – here’s an Amazon link.

So my Zambian story is over, and the Sons Of Admirals story is waiting for me back home. We’re taking this re-release really seriously and aiming Baby at press and radio, so I’m really excited to see what we can do :)

To the next story!

x

{ 50 comments }

Paul did a cover of Georgia :D I can only apologise that it took so long for me to see it – check it out:

x

{ 18 comments }

Last night was brilliant.

The hotel we’re staying in is called the Southern Sun, and it has the nicest hotel manager I’ve ever met. He might well be the nicest person I’ve ever met. On our first evening here, he came up to our table and introduced himself, asking if everything was okay and if we were enjoying our meal. He did this with everyone in the restaurant, and once we knew to look for him, we noticed he was always there at breakfast and most dinners, eating the same food as everybody else and in some cases sitting down to join people as they ate. We’ve since learned this guy is called Adrian Penny, and last night (as he does every Wednesday), he through a complimentary cocktail party for the guests of the hotel.

Since we’ve not really had an excuse for a party since we’ve been here, Shawna put on her party dress, I changed into what’s now been dubbed my ’stud shirt’ (the purple hippy one) and Tom didn’t do anything because he just had a series of graphic tees to choose from.

First order of business was name-tagging. Backstory: it’s been a running theme in Zambia that we can never get the food we order. For the four days we were in the lodge, I tried ordering spaghetti every night but never got it; we tried ordering caterpillar every night because we wanted to try it, but never got it; no matter what I ordered, I always got chicken and potatoes. One night I didn’t even get the potatoes. (The rorshach t-bone steak is the one exception to this rule.) I ordered a smoothie at the hotel, and what I got tasted like strawberry yoghurt in a glass. I ordered a smoothie at a restaurant, and got a slushie. Tom ordered a vanilla milkshake and what he got tasted like “lime – although it might just be off”. The general trend is to expect the unexpected when it comes to Zambian dining.

We ordered lunch at Subway yesterday, which worked out okay because we could go through the ordering process step-by-step, but we discovered it’s just as hard to get names down as it is to get orders. Once the guy had finished making my six-inch chicken breast with lettuce and cheese, he asked for my name, so he could write it on the packaging and thus discern my food from the others. “Alex”, I said. “Alex,” he repeated. “I’ll just write ‘R’.” And he proceeded to write a capital R on the packet with marker pen.

Richenda was next. I said jokingly to her, “what letter would you like?” and she said “RG”. I passed it on. The guy wrote “AG”.

So when we arrived at the cocktail party and discovered that the first order of business was to get a name tag, we had low hopes.

The tags were arranged by country with little flags on each one, pertaining to your nation. Richenda was up first and said she needed two Australian tags. “Name?” the woman at the counter asked. “Richenda,” said Richenda.

The woman proceeded to write out two Australian tags that BOTH said Richenda on them. Presumably, I thought, this woman was choosing to assume not that Richenda was getting a tag for her and another for her Australian friend, but rather that she wanted to have her name and nationality displayed on her body in two different places for no reason at all. But then she baffled me by giving the first tag to Richenda, picking up the second and asked “who is the other Australian?”

So all along she knew it was for two people; she’d just assumed that both Richenda and the Australian guy in the graphic tee next to her bore the same name.

Tom came forward and made himself known. I was the only person that had been paying attention to this mistake, so I was the only person who noticed the woman at the counter subtly crumpling up the second tag with her left hand, picking up the pen in her right hand and saying “your name please?” as if nothing had happened. She had to be commended for that.

Tom said, “Tom”, and she wrote his tag, then looked at me. I said “I’m from the UK” so she could get my tag ready. She wrote Tom’s name on an Australian flag tag, then turned to the UK one, and wrote Tom again on the UK tag.

“No, my name’s Alex”, I said. Baffled. It appears that this woman takes the first name she hears and applies it to every other individual she meets until she is corrected. Whoever put her in charge of name tags was either an idiot or a genius.

Anyway, we finally got our tags and it was all well and good (Shawna spelled her name out one letter at a time so there was no way they could screw it up). The party was a mingling thing to try and get the guests to hang out more with each other (hence the tags), but given there were four of us alerady, we figured we’d just use it to hang out together with complimentary drinks. It seemed the people at the party had other ideas.

A fair few people came over to say hi, one of which (a girl called Alexandra) was from West Sussex, so we bonded over that. I marvelled at how an English girl made the effort to talk to someone she didn’t know, which would never have happened if we were in England. There was also a guy called Ignacio who was at least a head and a half taller than me, and was notable for having two stickers on his chest, both with different flags. He said he had dual citizenship, but knowing the sticker-writer, I reckon he was just trying to save face. Ignacio had spent some time in England, so when I said I was born in Essex, he put his huge hand on my shoulder and said “I’m sorry”.

We were interrupted by Adrian Penny, who took the stage to make a speech, by the end of which I’m sure everyone had decided he was the best person in the world and should be president because he’s genuinely lovely.

Then Tom had an idea.

“Dude,” he said.
“Yes?”
“When we finish these drinks,” he said, indicating to his gin and tonic and my vodka and coke, “we should order a scotchka.”

My favourite film of all time is WALL•E, but coming close second is a film made in 2003 called The Room. It’s the brainchild of Tommy Wiseau, who is credited as the film’s creator, writer, producer, executive producer, the director, and the star. In one of the scenes of the film, Johnny (our loveable protagonist) is being persuaded by his future wife Lisa to have a drink so he can loosen up, and we see her putting two scotch glasses on the table and then topping up the scotch with vodka, creating a drink that fans of The Room have dubbed “scotchka”.

So Tom and I headed over to the bar, where Tom ordered a red wine for Richenda and a vodka and orange for himself. I was hoping he’d be the one to do it, but he turned and said, “I don’t have the balls to order a scotchka”.

So it fell to me.

“Thanks,” I said as our unassuming bartender handed me the red wine. “Also, do you have any scotch left?”

He lifted a bottle to indicate he had.

“Could you mix some of that with vodka?”

They looked confused.

“I know it sounds weird,” I said, as if to alleviate their concerns. “It’s not for me,” I added, hoping I could encourage this crazy concoction by mocking our imaginary third party.

And then the bartender responded with something that made him an instant legend.

He took the scotch, and the vodka, and simply said, “with ice?”

I drank a full glass of scotchka last night, and it was fucking disgusting, but I did it.

Bonus anecdote: Richenda bet me 50,000 Kwacha (which is Zambian currency, and equates to about ten dollars) that I couldn’t get someone’s tie around my head by the end of the party. Tom then doubled that bet. I already thought the bartender was going to be the hero of the evening, but of course, I underestimated just how beautifully the Southern Sun is managed…

Nobody at the cocktail party was wearing a tie, because they were all in their party outfits, which were the same as their work outfits except missing a tie. So, after the cocktail party, the four of us headed to dinner, where I had chicken, potato and a bit of calamari. (I’d just tried calamari – squid – for the first time earlier that day and it was a treat. Much better than the deer curry I had previously at the Southern Sun, which was incredibly tough to chew.) Like clockwork, Adrian Penny walked by to ask if we had enjoyed the party and whether we were enjoying our food.

“It’s all great, thanks,” I said, “can I wear your tie?”

It was probably the scotchka talking. But without missing a beat, he reached up to his tie.

“Absolutely you can,” he said. He put the tie on me, and started walking off.

“He’s just leaving!” I whispered loudly to my dinner companions, not understanding why he didn’t immediately want his tie back; and Adrian Penny turned and said casually, “I’ll get it back,” before he continued making his way around the tables and greeting his guests, without a tie.

I had a red wine with my meal, paid for out of my 100,000 Kwacha :D

x

{ 68 comments }

Baby’s not available on iTunes at the moment, wanted to explain why – we’re going to re-release it in October, giving us the proper time to target TV and radio and just do everything we can to make sure it makes the right impact this time around. We have a deadline, we have ambition … it worked for Chartjackers, so we’re giving it another go, using what we’ve learned to see how we do with a song of our own :) We just threw it out the first time around without much direction, so we wanna try again with something more targeted.

However, it’d obviously be really shit to just ask you to buy the song again, so we’re gonna release it as part of a digital bundle; you can include up to four songs and it still counts for the charts, which means you’ll get awesomely new things for what you’re paying, including hopefully new songs and videos and all kinds of fun stuff that’s exclusive to iTunes :D

On that note, out of interest – if we do a video for the digital bundle, what would you have us each do? Think of it like a Challenge Charlie but for all four of us. What do you think would be fun for us to attempt? <3

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Everything’s okay now :) Shawna and Tom are brilliant, as is Richenda, who organised this trip. I just wanna write a list of things that Tom has said (must be a thing with Toms) but most of them don’t make sense out of context. My favourite so far, though:

“If I was in a band, every album we released would have the same name, but then, in between each album, I’d change the name of the band.”

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Well Zambia isn’t what I expected, so far.

The signs on the outside of the airport had an immediate effect. They were handpainted. It gave me a feeling of nostalgia that it took a while to place, before I realised it reminded me of the seaside. Or the abandoned London Underground station I saw, when all of the old signs were still intact and they were painted on wood, not mass-printed with a glossy sheen.

That much was enough to get me thinking about how much I take things for granted. Then everything went crazy.

I always have a bit of awareness when I approach an immigration desk that the person I’m talking to has the power to deport me if they don’t like what I have to say. (In America, they also have a gun.)

My first problem came when they said I needed a visa. I’d completely forgotten about that. In the US I’m electronically registered with an ESTA and in Europe I get a waiver because I’m a British citizen. But here, I needed a visa. I guess I assumed Worldvision would have thought to take care of it and so I didn’t ask.

The visa costs fifty dollars. Simple enough. But I don’t carry cash with me, so they held on to my passport and told me to go to the bank outside the airport to withdraw the money.

After the confusion of 50 in dollars being 270,000 in Zambian money, and terrified I’d press one zero too many and accidentally clear out my bank account, I attempted to withdraw.

Nothing.

I used my Visa, my other Visa, my Mastercard and my American Express, pressing every button on the machine, and nothing worked.

Finally, the guy behind the counter said he would need my passport to approve the transaction.

“But they won’t give me my passport back until the transaction’s approved”, I said hopelessly.

The guy said it would be fine if I just went back and explained the situation to the boys at customs. This I did, but not before having to battle the guy at security, who (quite rightly) pointed out that once you pass a certain point in an airport, you can’t just turn around and go back again. He lectured me for a while on my failure to inform him that I would need to return, cutting me off each time I tried to explain myself to further chastise me. When he finished, I said “okay, so what are my options apart from flying home?” And with an impatient huff he let me back.

After waiting for all of the passengers of the newest flight to be cleared through, the guy with my passport escorted me to the bank – for all the good it did, as my cards still failed to work. Going through my emails, I found that all of the contact numbers I had for the Worldvision staff I’d spoken to were Australian numbers; none of them were contactable with African phones. And when I tried to phone my bank in the UK to see why my cards weren’t being approved, I was met with the words “this number is not in use” and then the line going dead.

Finally I phoned an African number for one of the Worldvision staff, who passed details of my plight on to our organiser, who is now coming to the airport to meet me and apologise profusely for the oversights. Meanwhile, while I wait, I’m sitting in the Zambian immigration office – the guy with my passport is gone, but he very kindly bought me a Fanta – and I’m thinking that for all the upheaval I’ve had getting into the country, it’s a good thing I flew business class.

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The first thing to mention about sleeping on a plane is that, despite the chair folding out completely to make a full-length bed, it’s still a chair. The surface doesn’t have give like a mattress does. So I woke up many times in the night to roll over or adjust myself. Also, it feels strange sleeping in your shoes.

Obviously none of that really matters, though, because you’re sleeping on a plane. Actually sleeping, and not struggling to do so. It’s wonderfully refreshing. The little jostles feel more like relaxing rocking motions than intrusive disturbances. And it’s nice when you do wake up to look outside and see how clear the stars are.

Breakfast now – hot flannel, small bowl of cornflakes, cup of tea, fruit, bread, that’s my starter. By the time I get through the fruit and the tea, my bowl of cornflakes have lost their molecular integrity. (I stole that from The Big Bang Theory, but it’s the only thing worth stealing. They have one episode playing on loop on one of the in-flight channels. If you like it, you should be held under suspicion.)

After the starter, I got a selection of cold meats and cheese. All the meals I’ve had on this plane, by the way, come with little salt and pepper pots for flavouring. And lots of complimentary water bottles are given to me – I’m on my third now.

Just went to the bathroom. They had six different squeezy bottles in there; hand wash, face wash, face gel, toner, facial moisturiser and hand/body lotion.

This is blog entry 151. The originals end here – it can only go downhill from this point. THIS WE HAVE LEARNED.

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

It’s only tonight that I realise how much I love salmon.

I knew food in business class would be good. I knew it’d be better than the TV-dinner-style packaged chicken or beef options you get in economy. I guess I figured it’d be the same but just a little fresher.

No.

First off, fuck chicken and beef. They also have salmon.

Chicken is something I eat every day. (I buy wafer-thin sliced chicken from Tesco and snack on bits of it until it’s fully depleted.) Beef isn’t that much more exotic. But salmon is something I never eat myself. It has to be prepared, cooked, given proper attention to. Salmon consumption is a labour of love. You can’t just throw it in an oven and leave it for twenty minutes. So I don’t bother with it. I only eat it when it’s made for me, and that makes it a treat.

Hot salmon is wonderful. And this hot salmon had this luscious green sauce on it, and it came with mashed potato and roasted vegetables. It was perfect. And it was on a plate. The knife and fork came in a napkin, tied together with a fancy paper roll just like in a restaurant.

But even before the salmon, we had a starter.

A STARTER.

ON AN AIRPLANE.

Cheese and vegetables and meat, before we even get to our meal. And then this woman offers me bread from a fucking BREAD BASKET! And right at the start we got one of those hot flannel things to wipe our hands with! And all of this even before the salmon I was so psyched up to savour.

I think it was the best salmon I ever had.

My third glass of complimentary white wine will be my last, as the high altitude is making itself known. My eyes already feel drowsy, which is really the only effect I get of having alcohol in my system. So I’ll pace this with small sips until it’s gone, and then give myself to sleep. This is the first time I’ve been on a plane where I’m not counting the hours until landing, because I know I can just recline, sleep, and resume a normal sleeping pattern. (And it helps that Africa is only one hour ahead of the UK. I’ve never taken a late flight before, but it’s a great idea.)

I’m already thinking about how my flight from Johannesburg to Lusaka will take place in economy. That’s fine, but if the eleven hours back after my trip to Zambia is also in economy, I’m sure I’ll be harder to please. It’s easy to get used to this, and it’s a very long flight. Then again, I’m fully prepared for the possibility that I’ll have denounced all of my possessions and will be sleeping in the cargo hold as a result of seeing the impoverished conditions in Zambia up close, unwilling to even accept a seat on the plane while such injustices continue. It’s impossible to tell the effect it will have on me – but I know I’m a person of extremes. I’m curious to see what happens. I know this time will effect me profoundly, either way. And it’s exciting because I’ve never been to Africa before. By the time we land, I’ll have visited every continent on the planet except South America. (And Antarctica, but that’s kind of a different league.)

Oh god, I was just handed a box and inside was a triple chocolate mousse and a french almond. Dessert. This is my dessert, after my starter and my main course of salmon. I just had a three course meal on an airplane. The world is ridiculous.

The flight attendant just put a blanket down for my inevitable sleep. There is now nothing separating this experience from my bed at home except that I feel a little more alone than normal. Everyone I’m close to is at least 35,000 feet beneath me. I miss Charlie specifically – it’s really nice just having him around the flat all day, knowing we energise each other to do creative things and work harder at what we do. Okay – finish drink and sleep. No more writing. All this wine is making me sentimental. xD

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

My flight to Zambia comes in two parts – the first is an eleven hour flight to Johannesburg, the second is a two hour flight to the city of Lusaka, where I will be departing for my Worldvision adventure (see here for more details).

It’s a long flight. And it’s an overnight flight. So I may have upgraded myself to BUSINESS CLASS.

This has been a dream of mine all my life so it’s really REALLY cool. It’s always bothered me when you get on a plane and the flight attendant says “straight ahead and to your right”. Like you need that. It’s a stupid direction. We know we’re walking in at the front of the plane and we can see which way it goes. So I was conversely elated to hear “straight ahead and to your left” when I boarded with my boarding pass in seat 01K.

Let me reiterate – my seat was 01K. OH ONE. I’m at the FRONT OF THE PLANE. So, there’s me, and then my legroom, and then the pilot. THAT’S FREAKING COOL.

Unfortunately, since this is an overnight flight, I’ll be spending much of this experience asleep – but there’s complimentary wine, which is a treat, and full meals, and the seat gives you a massage if you press a button, and extends flat out like a bed if you press another button, and I have Catching Fire to read, and everything is just wonderful <3

I made a little promise to myself when I went to LA that my flights there and back would be the last time I ever flew economy. It was a good motivator for me to start earning enough to get better flights, and ooh, something else cool – I have a silver membership in this frequent flyer’s club called the Star Alliance, which is a huge partnership between loads of different airlines, of which South African Airways is one. Since I upgraded, I’ll get way more miles than if I’d flown in economy, which means I might be able to get a gold membership – gold membership means I could get FREE upgrades on future flights, along with being able to use any of the Star Alliance flight lounges in airports around the world FOREVER.

I feel like my life is going in a very good direction, and I can only hope it will continue :)

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

I went to see Toy Story 3 a few days ago with my mum and stepdad, and because of the rain, we all had umbrellas with us. I’m not the kind of person who would think to use an umbrella ordinarily; my scatty pinball-machine brain, though not as bouncy as Tom’s, still leaves me with the lack of forethought one would need to think of using an item like an umbrella. (It’s also the reason the canvas bag Kristina gave me for shopping is always sitting unused in my cupboard, while I silently curse myself in the supermarket for leaving it there AGAIN.)

Anyway, when we moved into our flat, it came fully furnished, which included sofas and beds and towels and cupboards and a toaster and a microwave – all the things you’d need (except a kettle, for some reason – bracket slash digress). And this surplus of supplies included umbrellas. Several of them. At least six. So I distributed them amongst my family and away we went.

And this is where we got into trouble, because as we left the flat, it became obvious that the rain had ceased. So what now? What happens when you have an umbrella and there’s no rain?

Short answer: you carry it with you, closed.

Long answer: you have more fun than you’ve ever had with an umbrella. I submit to you that umbrellas are actually at their most useless when shielding you from the rain. Sure, you can be “practical” with it, but that doesn’t compare to prodding your mother in the back to make her walk faster, and leaning on it like a pimp cane, and twirling it around like a baton, and walking with it in your arms like you’re holding a rifle and pretending you’re a Stormtrooper walking Chewbacca around the Death Star. And HOLDING IT BY YOUR SIDE LIKE A SWORD. I love life.

Thank you to everybody who came to our show last night. It was our best show yet :D Here are some of you:

There were over 400 people in the main room, and even more than that still queueing out the door to get in when we started playing. I was totally blown away by the sheer number of you and can only attribute it to the rarity of having John Green in Europe :p When we weren’t playing, we ran upstairs and played an acoustic show for the people who couldn’t get in, and then ran back downstairs again to finish our set :)

So thank you guys so much for coming. We impressed a lot of people last night <3 I can't wait to see you all at the next show, whenever it happens - it was such a blast.

I'll be in Zambia for the next two weeks so keep watching my YouTube videos to find out what my life’s like over there, and we’ll talk again when I get back!

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Hello you filthy bastards! Two years ago, I uploaded a YouTube video to my channel called “Trock” in which I played a song called “An Awful Lot Of Running” and Charlie uploaded a video called “Blink”, simultaneously launching our Doctor Who band, Chameleon Circuit.

Two years have passed, so we thought we’d give you something new :)

Lyrics to my song “The Doctor Is Dying”:

Lyrics to Charlie’s song are available here :)

And yes, both of these songs will be on the new album. More details in time ^_^

And no, this doesn’t mean the end of Sons Of Admirals. We’re in lots of bands. Why can’t you handle this? :p

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

That’s what I’ve been doing lately :D

I wrote two new songs – the first that I mentioned in the last entry, called The Doctor Is Dying, and a new one called Everything Is Ending which is a duet between the Doctor and Amy … from THAT scene :)

I’m sure you’ll hear one of these at some point, probably after my next Twilight video, which I need to make to keep the mob at bay.

I also have Sons Of Admirals news – there’s a limited edition Sons Of Admirals t-shirt available between now and August 16th! I absolutely love the design, so you should definitely check that out :D Clicky!

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

I have successfully re-entered the musical creative Alex bubble :)

I’ve finally finished a song I’ve been working on for a while called Across The Sea; I’ve been so in love with the verses for it that I’ve struggled to find a chorus that fit until now. I drew a lot of inspiration from the songs in the Very Potter Sequel (“To Have A Home” and “Those Voices” being my favourites) – Darren Criss is so amazing, just on the side. His melodies and song structure are quite brilliant indeed.

I also wrote a new Chameleon Circuit song called The Doctor Is Dying, which I think is better than any Trock song I’ve written before – admittedly I’ve only written three, but still, I really like this one :D An Awful Lot Of Running was always a purple song in my head, and The Doctor Is Dying is a strong red/orange. (I know exactly why that is, though; the original video for AALOR was in my room with purple walls, playing on my purple guitar, and wearing a pink shirt, and I wrote The Doctor Is Dying in my bedroom with the red/orange canvas hanging on the wall, on the yellow notes app of my iPad.)

I don’t like to leave you guys too long without new stuff, but I won’t be putting out a full album for a long while – I’d prefer to promote myself one single at a time, and have four or five single songs released before a third album comes out. It’s an easier way of keeping me fresh in people’s minds, and allows me to give proper focus to the songs I want to draw attention to.

That said – you will be getting an acoustic EP in October. Since people missed the acoustic sound on World Is Mine, I figured I’d take a few of those tracks and guitar them up. The EP won’t be on iTunes, since I still want the World Is Mine tracks to stand as the definitive versions (I didn’t put all that studio time in for nothing) but you’ll be able to grab it physically from DFTBA as a slip-case.

I’ll talk more about the EP sometime next week, tell you what the tracks are, etc. <3

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Hey, wanna see me at a gig?

What about Tom Milsom and Eddplant?

Go on, you know you do. I’ll play all your favourites.

The Admirals sans Charlie are playing a London show on August 14th at The Old Distillery, Whitechapel (doors open at 6:30).

It’s £7 entry, and will be AMAZING because alongside our performance, there will also be JOHN GREEN from the vlogbrothers launching his new book. John has joined forces with us because he wants to show the publishing industry that his books matter in this country, and we want to show the music industry that our songs matter in this country. So we’ve invited some record label people, and we need as many of you as possible to come along and support the show, pack out the place, and generally show the execs that Sons Of Admirals kick arse and are worth their time.

It’ll be an absolutely amazing night, we’ll have an evening of singing, dancing, reading and laughing, and we promise to put on an unforgettable show if you promise to be there to see it :)

(oh and it’s all-ages. Always assume my gigs are all-ages unless I specifically say they’re not. 80% of my audience is under 18 so it would suck if I didn’t do that :D)

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Having been in LA for two weeks, I’ve missed some things. I was hanging out with my friend Ben today and he filled me in on the two big news stories that have happened while I’ve been out of the country.

The first concerns a SERIAL KILLER. I know, right? Apparently this amazing serial killing event happened while I was out of the country and I missed it all.

Backstory: this guy called Raoul was put in Durham Prison for just under five months for “assaulting a nine-year-old relative” – I know, less than five months, even though he’d already had one previous conviction for common assault, had been arrested twelve times in the past and had been charged for seven separate offences.

So his sentence is up – he told police he needed psychiatric help for himself, to which they evidently did nothing and let him go anyway – and then two days later, after declaring (on Facebook) that he wanted to shoot his ex-girlfriend and her new partner … he shot his ex-girlfriend and her new partner.

After that, this maddening search begins, with Raoul releasing 49-page letters saying he hates the police, that the public don’t need to fear him but the police do because he’ll keep shooting police officers until he dies; on July 4th, twelve minutes after calling up the police to tell them he was going to shoot a police officer on patrol, he shot a police officer on patrol. Everyone’s feeling helpless because he keeps telling people who he’s gonna shoot before he shoots them but yet nobody can ever seem to stop it. In the meantime, the media started reporting absolutely mental stories about him, which drove him madder and he declared that for every inaccurate story printed, he would kill a random member of the public. Which as you can imagine was crazy, because the media seldom like to get things right. While this was happening, the police brought in – I shit you not – “TV survival expert Ray Mears” to help track his movements (chief constable’s a fan?).

Everything came together in Rothbury. This a town with a population of less than two thousand people, used as a staging point for “recreational walking” – you couldn’t have picked a better place if you were writing Hot Fuzz. And this became the setting for the culmination of the biggest manhunt in British history, with over 160 armed police officers and armed response vehicles chasing the guy with sniper teams, helicopters, dogs, armoured anti-terrorist police vehicles and a fucking Royal Air Force jet. And I missed all of this!

The guy eventually shoots himself and everything comes to an end, we’re left with all the usual inquiries and the media can now officially start being shit about him again (although I suppose they have good reason).

So that’s the first story – remember, I said there were two big news stories of equal magnitude while I was away?

The second is that Cheryl Cole got a disease on holiday so now she can’t do The X Factor.

I fucking hate the news.

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Holy hell. It’s been so long since I’ve blogged. I didn’t think it had been that long, but when I went to log-in, I saw a box saying “hey! Is this your first time visiting? Be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed! Thanks!”

I WROTE THAT BOX. How insulting.

Anyway, I’ve been in LA. You’ll be hearing more about that in a video – I’m not the type for reflective retrospective holiday posts, because it makes me feel that the adventure is over and I’m back to my boring routine again, and the way I see it, the holiday’s never over. I’m planning lots more trips in the next few months, so I’m really looking forward to that. I just want to keep travelling. Sitting here getting bogged down by life stuff is really hard to live with.

To more positive things concerning you guys – I’ve been working on a couple new songs, so I’ll presumably have something new out by October or November. I like to release things every three or four months, which I’ve been pretty on task with up until now. It won’t be an album, it’ll probably be an EP, but it’ll be something :)

I feel so tired. Yesterday I went for an afternoon nap at 3PM and woke up at 11 at night, didn’t get to sleep again until four in the morning, and woke up again at eight. Rawr.

Thanks for your patience, guys :)

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Right, this is where I get all pretentious. The album booklet very nearly became this, before I decided to run towards irreverence instead. But I thought I’d write this for those who may care.

I’ll keep it short – four headers – you’ll get a lot more out of this if you’ve bought the CD or at least heard it (it’s available to play through for free, so you could load it up while you read) – think of it like the director’s commentary:

Reversed Speech
You And Me, Georgia and Heart On My Sleeve all have reversed speech. In the case of Heart On My Sleeve it’s before the first chorus and it’s very obvious, but I’m not gonna tell you what it says :D In Georgia it’s during the solo and it’s barely audible, so I will tell you what that says – Tom said we should do some reversed speech, and I didn’t think it would sound good, so he took me in the recording booth and explained to me why he thought reversed speech would work. And then we reversed it.

The most fun was had in You And Me: first, we recorded ourselves saying “Georgia, Georgia, Nikoll Lekaj doesn’t care” and reversed it. Then we listened to it reversed and recorded ourselves again, imitating the reversed sound, and we reversed it back. So the result is that it sounds like the same words, but slightly distorted and odd.

Production
Tom produces very spontaneously and organically. Usually he doesn’t hear the finished song until the morning that we record it, but he has some idea of what it sounds like (with the exception of Heart On My Sleeve, where he went in blind). We recorded the album in the order that you hear it on the CD. Thematically, the title is reflective of the two dominant aspects of my personality; one side cocky, one side vulnerable. So the album starts with You And Me, Georgia and Heart On My Sleeve, being big blasty songs that have confident, assuming lyrics; then The World Is Mine comes in and questions that, balances both halves, and then from The Time Of Your Life to the end it’s all vulnerable lyrics, with the production getting more vulnerable as well. Not Just Yet finally gives a bit of acceptance with a celebration of the times we had and promising more to come :)

In terms of specific ideas, Tom wanted You And Me to sound like a natural, organic bed of sound; Heart On My Sleeve was produced as a response to me saying there wasn’t enough synth in You And Me or Georgia (at the time, Georgia didn’t have a synth line – only one person in the world has a copy of the track without it); The Time Of Your Life started with Tom asking our engineer for ‘a sound that had never been used or asked for’ and we went from there. Living On The Underground was made to sound like an old blues song, as those were often about trains, and we also added loads of authentic train sounds, recorded on my phone as I was headed to the studio that morning. Fun fact; when I was recording the sound of the train pulling in to the station, this woman started talking to me. “Are you getting the Central Line? I’m getting the Central Line as well.” So that’s the nonsense you can hear at the start of the song.

Tom’s Voice
Tom uses his voice sometimes. He sings the “boo-doop”s in You And Me, helps shout the “no no no”s in Georgia, the “I know I know”s in The Time Of Your Life … lotta repetition, is what Tom brings to the vocal table. Most people think he sung the falsetto vocal on Stay With Me but that was all me, baby.

Influences
You And Me was inspired by an Evanescence song called Anywhere. Heart On My Sleeve was inspired by Lady Gaga’s Telephone. Living On The Underground was inspired by the riff of Green Day’s East Jesus Nowhere. Dead And Gone was inspired by Elvis Presley’s Love Me Tender, as well as the old sounds of the songs on the Wall•E soundtrack. Missing You has the structure of Molly Lewis’ “Our American Cousin”, the ‘missing you’ melody line of the Very Potter Musical song with the same name, and a bit of Ed’s ‘Less Than Three’ (compare “I’m getting over you tonight” to “let me start by saying sorry”).

And finally…
Tom’s favourite moment on the CD is the “looks like I’ve fallen in love again gain gain gain gain” bit of Heart On My Sleeve, before the final chorus. My favourite is the descending piano that Tom plays halfway through the instrumental break of Dead And Gone.

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

(Written yesterday)

Today, the Sons Of Admirals are jetting off to America.

Well, some of us are. And some of us are flying tomorrow. And some of us are going to LA, but some of us are going to Virginia. And we’re all flying back at different times.

Yeah, as much as I’d like to tell you we’re all outbound for some big record label meeting overseas, the purpose of our trip is not business, but pleasure. John and Hank Green are hosting VidCon on July 9th in Los Angeles, and Tom, Charlie and myself will be playing there. We’ve been allocated about fifteen minutes play time each, so I’ve been rehearsing a really tight set of six songs. And maybe a seventh. And maybe a duet. It’s gonna be fun, whatever happens :)

My experience flying today has been the most pleasant of my life, entirely because Eddplant is flying first class to Virginia (he’s staying with his girlfriend for a few weeks), and that meant I got to share in his first class perks. Flying first class has always been a dream of mine, and today I got to check in through the first class section and sit in the first class lounge as Ed’s guest – helping ourselves to complimentary croissants and the free bar while we reminisced about our lives. It was wonderful, and made me realise that the extra money doesn’t just go into a seat at the front with more legroom, it goes into the experience – the lounge, the quicker check-in, the tranquility of it all.

(The first class lounge, by the way, was called the Admirals Club Lounge.)

I’m hoping I’ll never fly economy again, but realistically, I can’t afford anything else xD Well, I could afford it, if I wanted to let my savings trickle away, which isn’t something I want.

All the Admirals were scatty about our plans, so we all have different schedules; Tom’s flying out tomorrow, Charlie’s flying out a week from now, and we’ll all be uniting to hit up Disneyland and see Toy Story 3 before partying hard for the three days of the conference. (I say ‘partying hard’, but that mainly applies to me and Tom. Charlie told me he’s participating in a Super Scrabble tournament during VidCon :D)

Then we’ll be off to Vegas for a few days – I’ll be playing poker, and treating myself to seeing the Beatles LOVE show, cos hey, how often do you find yourself in Vegas? – and then, finally, we’ll return home. While I’m out here I’ll still be doing everything I can to break Here Comes My Baby, including mobilising the request show on Radio 1 through Twitter each weekday at 4PM (which will be 8AM my time – just as I’m waking up).

Fun story – I found these new Durex condoms in Boots that I’d never seen before; a pack called ‘RealFeel’ that apparently feels like you’re not wearing one (which they’ve promised before with FeatherLites and it didn’t deliver) and another called ‘Crystal Clear Diamond standard condoms’ (I don’t really know what that means). Anyway, I bought those, and then Ed got a pack, and when we got to the counter the woman at the checkout said, “you know these are on offer, two for £10?” and Ed replied “I didn’t want to be too presumptuous”.

Thank you for all your kind words on the new album :) One thing I was pleasantly surprised by is how many people don’t really like it, which I think is great; pulling people out of their comfort zone. Good music should force an extreme opinion. I’d worry if everyone just said it was awesome. All my favourite albums left me unimpressed when I first heard them. I shrugged at American Idiot. Lady Gaga was just an annoying person on the radio that my mum sang along to. The albums I instantly love are usually the ones I get bored of just as quickly.

On that note; a number of people seemed to be surprised by how different it is from Parrot Stories, even though I released 117% and The Time Of Your Life and Georgia and You And Me early and have repeatedly said that the new album is a dance record. I’ve tried to ease you into it as much as I could :p I don’t ever want to stay in the same place, which is good; because if you don’t like Nickelback, you don’t like Nickelback. You can’t listen to Nickelback’s newest album, dislike it, and say “well maybe they’ll do something different next time that I’ll enjoy”. They won’t. Nickelback are what they are. But if you liked Parrot Stories, and didn’t like The World Is Mine, the next album will be different and new all over again and you’ll have fresh opinions for that, which is what I think music should do. (Having said that, I think you’ll be able to find at least a couple songs on all my releases to enjoy, as Tom strives in production to do justice to the individual track and give it a unique feel.)

Okay, enough of this. I have Chapter 17 of Twilight to edit, and I want to enjoy the in-flight entertainment. Date Night! Valentine’s Day! The Time Traveller’s Wife! It’s all here!

Ooh, chicken or beef? I’m going for beef. Yesterday all I ate was chicken drumsticks. I’m sick of chicken. What happened to fish?

x

EDIT: Wow, nothing like drinking a complimentary bottle of wine at 30,000 feet to knock you out for a few hours. I very nearly slept through the end of Date Night. Good film by the way, even though the premise is ludicrous – much better than the equally ludicrous Hangover, which was rubbish. I’m now watching an advert for a vodka called Gray Goose, the tagline of which is “World’s Best Tasting Vodka”. Surely that’s misleading? Then again, maybe it objectively is the best, in the same way the Beatles made objectively great music, and Twilight is an objectively bad book.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Video (click here to watch if you’re reading on an RSS feed):

:D

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Player:

(If you’re reading this on an RSS feed, click here to access the player!)

New album. Bit exciting. =D

Let me know your thoughts here, favourite tracks, lines, whatever you like. I love this CD, and I hope you do too. Sorry I kept it from you for so long <3

Get the CD on iTunes
Get the CD with physical booklet

Live video for ‘The World Is Mine’ going up tonight!

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

So guys, let me be clear – I didn’t expect to be releasing another song from my new album before its iTunes release on Monday. However, it turns out you’re getting one early :D

I got a ridiculous amount of blog comments yesterday. Thank you for those. Let’s see how many of you stick around :p It’s a bit of a different vibe over here than what you get on Charlie’s sites; little bit more vulgarity and a little less quality. ENJOY.

The challenge I picked was to find all of the London elephants, a task made much easier when I discovered they had all been moved to the exact same place. I needed some music to go with the video, so I picked “You And Me”, the first track off my new album =)

Regardez:

You can order the CD – ships worldwide, converts to your currency, yada yada – by clicking here, or you can wait until Monday and get it on iTunes! AHH ALBUM RELEASE. Funsies. But keep in mind that buying on iTunes means losing out on the limited edition Harry Moon shirt. Harry Potter’s face. Sailor Moon’s hair. On a shirt. Only available until Monday. You know it makes sense.)

I’ve so far sold about six times more copies of my CD than I did when the preorders for Parrot Stories were going on, so that’s encouraging =) Thanks again for your patience and support, I FEED OFF IT LIKE AN OBESE MAN.

(Little bit weirder than Charlie, as well. Just kidding. He’s the Ernie to my Bert. See?)

Speaking of which, listen to him reading your next chapter of Twilight on my behalf (and what a relief it’s been):

Let’s not talk about Doctor Who. While Russell T Davies was high on emotion and low on plots that made sense, Moffat has gone completely the other way, giving us a story so convoluted that I never knew what was going on and how things could possibly be happening, and subsequently, I forgot to care.

(Note – when trapped in Pandorica, never fear: once you’re free, you will free yourself.)

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Yes I know I’ve been away, let’s not focus on the negatives – I have something I need your help with!

My friend Charlie does a thing on YouTube called Challenge Charlie, where he asks his viewers to challenge him to accomplish tasks – like juggling, balloon modelling and eating fish custard.

Today, he told me his newest challenge was “swap places with Alex”.

This means that your next chapter of Twilight will be read by Charlie, while I have to take his place in the challenge world – you guys need to challenge me to do something that I can do, so we can sufficiently switch roles :)

Comment below w00! Or send me a tweet. Yeah, fuck off. I got Twitter. Fuck you.

Alex on Twitter I hate my life

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

I’ve never worked so fucking hard in my life.

On Monday, I had one cup of tea. That was it. All day. I was so parched.

I’ve been working non-stop for the last few days on Sons Of Admirals promotion. The woman who interviewed us for the Guardian called me a ‘marketing strategist’ because I’ve been setting everyone to work doing everything I can possibly think of.

My strategy is to assume that nothing will work. As soon as something happens, assume it won’t work. That way I’m constantly motivated. Cos I’m thinking “shit, nothing I’ve done so far has worked!”

I’ve been burning CDs. I bought a printer so I could print out press releases and CD labels. I registered the song for the charts. I sent out a mailing list, updated this blog, made a YouTube video, fielded interview questions for a couple local papers. I gave a copy of the song to Scott Mills yesterday. I was up till two this morning filling out envelopes to mail to producers and DJs, and then up again at eight to hand-deliver them. (But, as we’ve established, none of this will work.)

Now I’m in the rehearsal room all day with the band, we’re working out four-part arrangements of our songs, which is a lot of fun; but the internet’s been failing on us all day. We were mentioned on Radio 2’s Steve Wright Show, but we couldn’t listen. And I wasn’t able to tell people about Greg James’ Ten Minute Takeover on Radio 1 because I couldn’t access the stream. (Ten Minute Takeover happens Mondays to Thursdays at 3:45 on Radio 1, where people text in song requests to 81199 and the last three songs requested before the cut-off get played.)

I’m of the firm belief (preached by Tim Ferriss) that unrealistic goals are far easier to obtain than realistic ones, because nobody else is trying them. If my goal is “I want to get a song on the radio”, I’ll have a lot of competition. If my goal is “I want to be Number 1 by next Sunday”, I’m instantly eliminating all of the competition. Thus making it easier. (And also, most people who want to get a song on the radio won’t ever make the proper effort, because they get scared by the competition and talk themselves into thinking it’s pointless before they’ve even tried. You can never do too much. That’s my lesson of this week.)

I haven’t done this with my music before because I don’t think any of it’s been good enough. But I love what we’ve done with Sons Of Admirals and I think it could be huge, and I know I’ll end up regretting it forever if I don’t push it with everything I have.

Anyway, I’m gonna keep working, so I apologise if you don’t hear from me for a few days. It’ll be worth it, promise – so long as I’m still alive at the end of this, not laying broken amongst a pile of Here Comes My Baby CD-Rs, dehydrated and sad.

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

This is what Ed tweeted 39 minutes ago:

This is the Big Musical News that I hinted at last week – Sons Of Admirals :D

I’ve spoken before about how I think Tom’s at his best when he produces me, because it allows him to be more objective about his work; that idea was the basis for this band, that we can all add interesting things as a four-piece that we can’t achieve on our own. And since Tom, Ed and I were always playing gigs together anyway, it made sense to combine our forces :)

Charlie summed it up well in his newest blog post:

So the song’s out now on iTunes, and I hope you like it! If you wanna keep up-to-date, we have a new Twitter page :)

Here’s my video talking about the band:

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

I saw this advert on the bus the other day:

I’m censoring that bit because I want you to guess what the tagline was. Give this some real thought. What’s the message of this ad? What’s the payoff of this idea?

My first thought was something with food, but I’ve played this game with a few people, and someone else suggested a dating website – it’d say something like ‘whatever you’ve got a taste for, you’ll find it at cheesylovewebsite.com’ or whatever. That makes a lot more sense than what I thought. It certainly makes more sense than the actual advert.

But no, ladies and gentlemen.

Boys and girls.

The advert in full reads:

Stupid.

A few mornings ago I was writing a new song. Not content to write yet another ‘love is hard’ song (Tom’s getting sick of producing them), I opened my phone to look for ideas, and the first thing I found was this ad – the condom ad. I’d saved it because I thought it was funny. So I ended up writing a song about a male praying mantis that wants to get with a female praying mantis but is scared she might kill him. It’s called Pray For Me :D

I also wrote a song this morning called Across The Sea, which isn’t a LOST reference, I’m not starting a new band (well, not about LOST); it’s about a guy who wants to be with a girl, but is too scared to put in any of the work to make it happen, and as a result loses sight of what it is he wants in the first place.

With those two songs, and the aforementioned “I’m Sorry”, you guys may have another new album before this year is even finished xD

(DON’T get excited about that, cos that might be entirely untrue.)

Thanks to everyone who’s pre-ordered a copy of my new CD so far, it’s much appreciated =D You guys are amazing, and I always value it so much when people make the effort to get the physical instead of just waiting for iTunes. I recorded a take of the title track with Tom yesterday, just him on piano and me singing, so that’ll go up on the day the album officially comes out on iTunes and is available for streaming on here :) I firmly believe in the try-before-you-buy deal, as well as the people-who-can’t-afford-it-should-be-allowed-to-hear-it deal, so June 28th will be very cool when I finally get to hear what you think of all the songs.

Just as a reminder; the new CD is $12, CD + 117% Complete is $17, and the album’s Harry Moon shirt is $18. All prices are listed in dollars because the CDs ship from America, but the currency will be converted to whatever you’re comfortable with, we will ship anywhere in the world, and you can place an order here :D

Final things:
1) I recorded a podcast with Scotch and Coffee, their fourth episode, which you can listen to here
2) I did an interview for The Questionnaire, which you can read here
3) Facebook like buttons on this blog! Share with your friends and whatever it is you people do.

Ooh and BIG MUSICAL NEWS ON MONDAY. In the comments, I want to read your thoughts on what you think the big musical news could be, as well as what you’d like it to be. This is nothing more than a personal indulgence on my part :p (No, I haven’t been signed. I wouldn’t keep that from you :D)

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

My album’s out on CD today :D :D :D

It’s twelve dollars on its own (it’ll convert to whatever currency your country is), seventeen if you buy it with 117% Complete, and we’re also selling a t-shirt for eighteen:

Harry Moon!

Thanks for being patient with this, and I really hope some of you make the effort to buy the physical disc – I put a lot of work into it :)

If you’re not sure whether to buy, here’s another track from the new release, “Georgia”, to help make up your mind:

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

LOOK IT’S ME AT THE BAFTAS (thanks to daleknek for posting the picture):

It’s my ‘taking art seriously’ face :D

So my great friend and flatmate Charlie presented an award at the BAFTAs a few days ago, and was gracious enough to take me along to the show, as well as the BAFTA after-party (or the Bafter-party, as I never call it). The ceremony itself was really cool – everyone was wonderful and chatty (I had a charming exchange with Sheila Hancock before it all took off), and people were in fun high spirits throughout. And it was an excuse to wear my suit, which is always nice.

The party, though, was something else. It was in the Natural History Museum. In the bit where the dinosaur was. A PARTY. IN A MUSEUM. There was music, and free champagne, and everyone important to British film and television, all there, chatting, hanging out. James Nesbitt would walk by Ben Miller and they’d hug and grin and catch up on old times. I saw that everywhere, people just being friendly and lovely. Everyone was approachable. I congratulated Ant and Dec on their BAFTA win, and they thought it was lovely that I took the time to say hello. We bumped into Graham Norton and Michael McIntyre, both of which were keenly interested in what Charlie does on YouTube and chatted with him at length about it, not in a patronising way, but with genuine interest. I had a chat with Steven Moffat about Doctor Who in which we discovered that he’d heard Charlie’s song Blink. I briefly said hello to Jane Lynch and told her what a huge fan of Glee I was and wished her a good night, and she was very gracious to me as she got pulled into the crowd by the many other people who wanted her attention. And Charlie and I stood under the dinosaur with Professor Brian Cox, the former drinking lemonade while the rest shipped champagne, and talked about how beautiful it all was.

I could go on, but I don’t want this to be a big name-drop post, cos that’s not the point of it. The point is just illustrating how wonderful these people are, and how much I enjoyed being in their environment for the evening. I had a lovely time, and if you ever get the chance to attend a Bafter-party, I highly recommend that you do :D

Album pre-order in t-minus forty-eight hours …

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Explain this to me -

My blog on YouTube censorship received 77 comments.
My blog on the songwriting process received 50 comments.
My blog on musical criticism received 30 comments.

Those are all wonderful statistics, but it doesn’t change that my blog on cherry frubes received EIGHTY-ONE COMMENTS.

You guys are beautiful. <3

(And yes, apparently they're the same thing as Go-Gurt.)

So who liked Vincent And The Doctor? I'm the only one who didn't, judging my the opinions of my peers and early reviewers. Those 'famous people from history' episodes leave a bad taste in my mouth; very sycophantic and the plot's often forced. The last ten minutes of the episode were great, but would have been better if the thirty preceding minutes of 'giant invisible parrot plot' had been worth watching.

Anyway, I'm here to link to a post by a guy I massively respect named Tim Ferriss. The article is about dealing with haters and I thought, given our recent discussion about being honest in creative pursuits, that it'd be worth your time. Tim is the author of a book called The 4-Hour Workweek that changed my life by allowing me to manage my time effectively and focus on what's important - I'd recommend it to literally anybody who can read and has an age in double figures.

Click here to read :)

(Another great thing Tim said is that a blog of a hundred people having engaging constructive debates is better than a blog of a million people slinging mud at each other. So I’m proud of that =D)

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

I eat like a child.

Proof.

The picture above was taken during a recent shopping trip. In my fridge right now there are jelly pots, orange drinks (the ones in pouches that you put in lunchboxes), Billy Bear sausage meat, Pepperami, and the best of all – Frubes.

Frubes are amazing. An amalgamation of ‘fromage frais’ and ‘tube’, it’s exactly what you’re picturing – probably – a healthy fruity yoghurt in a tube-like packet. Three flavours. Three wonderful flavours. My favourite is peach, but there’s also strawberry and forest fruits, and you get three in each pack.

Wait, what?

What do you mean, wrong?

Oh, shit, you’re right.

FOREST FRUITS IS GONE AND HAS BEEN REPLACED BY CHERRY.

I buy Frubes every week (2 for 1 offer at Tesco, ding dong) and so when I opened my newest pack and dug out the familiar trio of red, orange and purple, I was aghast. Pink? What the fuck is this shit? Purple’s my favourite colour, godamnit, give me my forest fruits!

I scrambled back to the packaging and looked for something I’d missed. They must have running a trial of a new flavour – there would be an appropriate email address that I could contact and say “I want my forest fruits back, you cocks”.

That’s when I saw, right in the corner, unassuming and innocent, the contents of the pack: 3x Strawberry, 3x Cherry, 3x Peach. They hid it right in the middle, like nobody would notice. There’s nothing else on the packaging, least of all the apology I feel I deserve. I’ve been misled! This isn’t Frubes! What if you went and bought Frosted Flakes and you opened it and there was chocolate on them? And the front just said ‘frosted flakes with chocolate lol’ like it had always been that way? You’d feel lied to. LIED TO!

LIED TO!

I didn’t know what to do next, but ended up searching online. Typed in ‘cherry frubes’. And … NOTHING. No outcry, no backlash. Where have all the Frube fans gone? I want my forest fruits!

So now I think I’m going mad. Did forest fruits ever exist? Have they fallen into the crack along with Rory? (Ooh, spoilers.) Am I alone invulnerable to the effects of the memory wipe because of my treasured forest fruits memories? Can anyone explain this to me? Does anyone else miss forest fruit frubes?

…

Okay, here’s why this blog post is important to you. I got the internet back yesterday, which means instead of waiting to form coherent blogs on musical influence, critique and the value of personal freedom, I can go back to chatting shit about yoghurt. As a reward to you for remaining patient while I was sans connection, I present to you the nerdfighter Tube Map, a present for Hank Green’s 30th birthday, downloadable in wallpaper size so we can always have Hanko De Mayo in our hearts:

(click to download the full size image)

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

I got a comment on my blog yesterday referencing the way I ended my last post (the joke about end-of-post blog tallies). The commenter seemed to think that I was making a personal dig at my ex-girlfriend Kristina, who uses said tallies in her blog.

Bit of a leap, no? Isn’t that like saying I’m having a go at Kristina by saying I don’t like the colour green?

(I actually DO like green, but that’s not the point.)

Point is, there are a huge amount of blogs in the world. I took a general trait of many of them and referenced it in mine. If you instantly associated it with one person, you need to read more blogs. Start with Jane Espenson’s; she’s marvellous.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because the commenter said that they were not going to watch any of my videos again and didn’t want to read any of my blogs, etc, because I’d said something they didn’t like.

And my response was, “okay”.

The issue of today is: does that make me an arrogant twatty etc person because I don’t scramble to get this person to continue enjoying my content?

I think no, and I’d like to explain why.

First of all, I obviously love having you guys around. You’re passionate, and you engage with me and it’s lovely. But I’ve never lied to you about what to expect from me. You get someone who’s quite frank about his opinions and isn’t afraid to voice them, someone who always strives to be entertaining and hopefully succeeds more often than not, and who tries to be versatile in his content so you don’t get bored. It’s an unspoken agreement that I’ve made with you and I hope to live up to it. I think I’m here to inspire discussion, and you’re here because you’re interested in listening to/participating in that discussion.

I was sparked by something Steve Jobs said on the All Things Digital stage yesterday. For those that don’t know, Steve Jobs (the co-founder and current CEO of Apple Inc.) is something of a hero of mine. He has a single-minded focus on his products, doesn’t see the point in doing something unless it’s going to be world-changing, always cares about making his creative content as good as it can be, and is at the same time able to maintain a relaxed and relatable presence during his assorted interviews and keynote speeches.

The issue in question was about Flash on the iPad, something of a buzzworthy topic of late, given that Steve (I don’t like referring to people by their surnames) published an open letter called “Thoughts On Flash” … I don’t want to get to into it for people that haven’t followed it or don’t care, but the point is that the iPad doesn’t support flash, and so Steve had some questions to answer. Questions like “don’t you feel you’re crippling your device?” and “isn’t it unfair for the consumers?” and such.

Steve responded, quite simply, with words to the effect of “well then they don’t have to buy it. I’m not forcing them to buy it.”

(Incidentally, Charlie has this same approach. He’s been very conscious of the fact that people come across as whorey sellouts on YouTube when they begin selling things – even things that they’ve put a lot of work into, like music. In Charlie’s case, he’s always wanted to design and sell a range of t-shirts. That’s a childhood dream of his. But he always makes it clear, and says explicitly in his videos: “look, if you don’t wanna buy these, then just don’t.”)

That really spoke to me, because sometimes, that unspoken agreement between consumers and creators starts to feel like a power struggle. The assumption seems to be that I can do whatever I want, until enough people start liking me, and then I have to do what THEY want, even though they only liked me because I played by my own rules.

Of course, we want to make things that you guys love. But if you don’t love it, and it makes you want to leave, I think that’s okay. I would never be stupid enough to think that I could please everyone, so when all’s said and done, what matters is that I have to love my own content, and that has to be enough. Love of the product – love of art for the sake of art, not for the sake of trying to please people – should come first.

So in the case of my blog commenter, I stand by my harmless remark and submit that if you interpreted it the wrong way, there’s nothing I can do. It’s in your head. I think, ultimately, people place more value on someone who is willing to stand by their choices and outlooks than they would on someone who will compromise him-or-her-self to please a majority. Certainly, I know I do.

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

A few people have started saying they’ve heard my music in ‘the real world’. My aunt’s boyfriend said Holding On was played two or three times on Absolute Radio; my mum’s ex-boyfriend said that he heard a song of mine in a car advert at the cinema, but couldn’t remember what song or what car advert it was for me to check. In the latter case, I definitely haven’t been paid licensing royalties for that song to be used, so I’m a little confused, and wanted to reach out to you guys. Have you ever heard my songs anywhere in the real world? I figured that if you had, you’d have messaged me or left me a blog comment to tell me about it. Maybe my family are just trying to make me feel like I’m actually getting somewhere xD

Side-note: isn’t it weird describing my mum and aunt as having ‘boyfriends’? Doesn’t that seem like a really juvenile word? I guess something like ‘partner’ would fit better, but that suggests something big and long term and definite. The only thing separating ‘partner’ and ‘husband’ is the ring. If my aunt has only just started dating someone new, is boyfriend the wrong word? What about ‘manfriend’? No, that’s awful.

I’ll continue to watch Sex And The City in the hope that this issue comes up.

(Since I still don’t have the internet, I borrowed my mum’s Sex And The City box set and started watching through. I’ve always loved that show. It’s amazing. I went to a Lady Gaga show last Saturday night, too. In a pink shirt. And then I went down on loads of men, because it seems being without the internet has TURNED ME GAY.)

Number of self-indulgent end-of-post blog tallies: 2
Number of people who care about these tallies: 0

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

When it comes to creative pursuits, I’m a big believer in honesty.

Let’s say you have a good friend who’s putting out some kind of creative content, and you think their creative content sucks. Or maybe not ’sucks’, but you feel they could do better – but you don’t tell them because you don’t wanna hurt their feelings.

In my opinion, that makes you a bad friend.

If you can’t trust your friends to have your back, who can you trust? Putting aside those few people who cry and bitch at the first sign of criticism – and I’d argue such people shouldn’t be creating any kind of content at all if they’re not capable of handling anything less than adulation – criticism should be encouraged. It’s not rude to be critical of someone else’s work if you’re constructive of it, not just saying ‘this sucks’ but saying ‘hey, I wanted to talk to you about that thing you did, cos it didn’t seem like your best’ and maybe going into why. They’ll appreciate your candour, and be grateful that you’re saying what nobody else will. In some cases you’ll even become their go-to guy or girl for opinion, because they know you’ll be straight with them. And the other great benefit of this is that when you have something nice to say, it’ll be appreciated even more, because people will know you genuinely mean it.

There have to be rules, of course. I’ve learnt not to just send my opinion to people when it hasn’t been invited. I’ll wait for people to ask me what I think of something before I tell them. And in a lot of cases, it’ll just be a misinterpretation; there have been times where I say to someone “why did you do that?” and they give me a perfectly good reason that I hadn’t thought of before and it shuts me up. That’s where you have to realise the difference between what’s objectively wrong/bad and what’s just your personal preferences, which is a distinction I think I’m getting better at.

I’ll always endeavour to be respectful and try and give a balanced opinion. I won’t say “I think that song was lame”, I’ll say “I think that song could have been stronger; here are the things I think let it down, but bear in mind this is just my take on it”.

And most importantly, I’d never bother sending anyone an email saying “here’s how I think you could improve” if I didn’t believe in their existing talents and their abilities to push themselves further. It’s tough love. Luke described it as the spit before the shine.

(I have very high standards, I should point out. If I think someone can do better than what they’ve done, I’ll say so, even if the content is still entertaining and enjoyed by other people. I don’t see the point of bothering if you’re not going to aim for the best.)

Anyway, I bring all this up because Alan asked what I thought about Erase This and I sent him back a review which was quite detailed and went into what I thought were the highs and lows of the album. Alan posted it in his blog, so I thought I’d link it here for two reasons. First of all, it gives you a review of an album by a fellow artist/friend which I feel is more objective than any of the others I’ve read, which tend to be posted on Tumblr and consist of words to the effect of “erase this is awesum lol”. But more importantly, it gives you an insight into my attitudes and approaches. I got a blog comment the other day saying:

So I give you this review in the name of getting to know me a little better :) Click here to read it.

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

I just wrote a song ahh new song new song <33

Yes, I know this news pisses you off. You're not at all excited by this. Why should you be? I finished my new album at the end of March, and yet I've been keeping it from you for months, concealing it away like a cheap whore, and already I'm harping on about even newer stuff that it'll take even longer for you to hear.

I get it, and I'm sorry :p The good news is that you'll get the album soon, I promise. In fact, it should be going up for pre-order in the next two weeks - I haven't decided a final date yet, but I can tell you that I approved all of the physical CD artwork today so the album has officially been sent off for manafacturing :D We're still on for a June 28th release.

To the point: I've been in a total writing funk ever since I played The Time Of Your Life to a dear friend of mine, Jonathan, and he told me that he thought it was a hit. From that moment, the pressure was ON. I thought "shit, well now every song I write will have to be as good as that!"

That's obviously stupid logic, and getting into the habit of just writing for the sake of writing is important. Long-time blog readers will remember that I did this during the writing sessions for The World Is Mine (which back then was called Epigrams And Interludes) - I mentioned several songs which didn't make it on to the final release. Out On The Town and You Can't Trust Me are two that I remember off the top of my head. The more songs you write, the more choice you have to pick the best ones from the pile. It's a good thing to do.

But, alas, for the last few months, I've been picking up the guitar, trying out a line or two, feeling out a melody, deciding it's shit and just giving up. "This doesn't sound like a hit", I'd say. "Maybe I'll never write a song that good again," I'd say. "Stop talking to yourself," the neighbours say.

I joke about it, but over the last month I had just accepted the idea that it'd be a really long time before I released anything new, and that maybe you guys would have to wait a year or even longer while I try to write enough songs that I'm happy releasing. And that'd be mental - a year in internet terms is CRAZY! Can you remember what the internet was like a year ago? We didn't have bubzbeauty, or Chartjackers, or Facebook like buttons. So much can change in such a short time when you're online.

So anyway. Now I'm gonna tell you what happened today.

You should know that today was already quite weird. I went into an office for a meeting and found myself sitting next to Nicholas Parsons. Both of us just sitting there, waiting to be seen. And then this girl Jo said to me while discussing education and the rise of depression in British teenagers that "schools teach English and maths and physics, but they don't teach kids how to be happy". That might be the most beautiful thing I've ever heard anyone say.

So I'm at home, listening to Ed's new album 'Confidence Tricks', which we finished mixing two days ago. I get to the last track and halfway through I just pause it.

"I'm in SUCH a songwriting mood", I tell myself. (The neighbours groan.) Truthfully, Ed's music has always inspired me. I don't think he's realised yet that I adapted the melody of Less Than Three for the second part of my song Missing You, and adapted the melody of You're My World for the third part of that same song. Maybe he'll never realise…

So I pick up the guitar and I feel out a few chords that I think sound right together, chords that have a natural flow from one to the next. I start by playing all the chords I know until I find the right starter. Ooh, B. Yeah. B's a good starter. B feels right for this song. This is a B song. I won't play the A shape with a capo on 2nd - I'll just play B. Oh, and then - F#! Ooh, and E! Three chords! We're flying!

I start playing them together. Sounds really nice.

And then I start singing Ed's final album track over the top.

Shit.

I'm not writing a song. I'm just transposing Ed's song.

Again.

But fuck it - I can play those chords in a way that makes them sound different. I like this chord sequence. You can't copyright chords. All the best artists steal chords. I bet Ed has stolen chords. Maybe that B isn't even his. Dirty, dirty Eddplant.

So I open my mouth and sing something.

"I can't tell you what I wanted to."

That's good. I'll keep that. Ooh, and that melody I just sung - ooh, this is gonna be so fun!

I run to my computer, and already I just know that this time I'm actually gonna finish a song. This is an idea that's working. You can immediately feel if it's working or not.

I need to sing about something real, at least at first, so I think about what I need to sing about. I haven't spoken to Lily in ages, and she's one of my best friends. I miss her. I need to sing about that.

I go back to those first lyrics. "I can't tell you what I wanted to". That's fine. When I'm working out a melody, I'll just sing arbitrary words so I can work out the rhythm, and sometimes the words stay there, and sometimes they don't. Holding On's first line, "a million and one thousand things are screaming in my head", was a placeholder lyric when I started writing that song. That's why it doesn't make an ounce of sense. But I liked it. Placeholder lyrics are useful cos you can take this arbitrary first line and then build on it: what does that mean? Where can I go from there?

So I'm singing the first line. I like it. I open up QuickTime Player, record myself singing and playing it cos I'm scared I'll forget. The melody, the rhythm, the chords, the words - it's all new, and fragile, and it could fall apart at any moment. I might mess around with it and accidentally do something good and then forget it seconds later. It's like trying to lift up a jigsaw puzzle before you've put all the pieces in. Once it's finished, each individual part will keep the whole thing held together, but right now it's not solid enough and it might scatter everywhere, and then I'll lose half the pieces and I'll never be able to finish it. We can't have that.

I write another line. I play the first line again to make sure I haven't forgotten it. Play the second line. Play both lines together. This feels good. I re-record myself singing both lines, and delete the first recording. Start singing along to a DIFFERENT song in my head, an old Cat Stevens track, because I want to remember what a hit should sound like. What the rhythm of the words is like, what the structure is. What I can learn from it. I want to go back and listen to Ed's song to make sure I'm not thieving it too much, but I'm worried his melodies will make me forget my new ones.

I start writing the chorus, remembering an old trick I picked up from studying Green Day melodies and drawing them out as graphs; the first note of their hit choruses are always the highest note in their verses. This happens in American Idiot, Holiday and in Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, and it probably happens in others. (Yes, I plot out melodies I like as graphs. It helps me learn.)

So I take that first high note, then descend down. It sounds slow, and nice, and singalong-sounding. I picture being in a crowd, hearing myself sing the words. Are they easy to sing along to? That's a big thing when I write. I want the words to be simple enough that they can be shouted by a mass. I want people to love these words. There might be one person, somewhere, who's listening to my music and who has had exactly the experience that I'm writing about in a song of mine, and who needs exactly that song to communicate their feelings. It's like my "things in 3 minutes" videos - I make them because I want to help people explain something they previously couldn't find the words to do. And I want my songs to do the same thing, but with emotions. So for this new song, there'll hopefully be someone who hears this song and it's exactly what they needed; exactly the words they wanted to hear, exactly the things they couldn't put into words themselves to describe how they feel, but my lyrics can do that for them. And I need to make sure the words are going to be good at doing that.

It's at this point of the songwriting process that I get carried away. This is my hit! The best song I've ever written! (I think this about every song I write, at first.) I'm adding new bits, constantly going back and playing the old bits, making sure I still remember it all as I go, and then finally I'm ready to record it all at once. Full song. I always pick a few people to hear it so I can get their thoughts; people who I know won't send it around and who I can trust to be honest about the quality of the song. In this instance, I record a take to send to Ed, Tom and Charlie. (I don't tell Ed that I've thieved his chords. I want to see if he notices or not.)

But I'm getting way too into it. Still improving and improvising the melodies in places.

During the last chorus, I really go for it.

And the worst happens.

I unleash falsetto vocals.

Gah.

No.

Too far.

Doesn't work.

Take two.

Okay, this take's better, though I'm still working out the best melodies and fuck up occasionally. But the guys know I've literally just finished writing it.

Now I need to let it simmer, go back to it in a while and continue to hone it into the best it can be over the next couple days, and finally in the studio, where it gets bent into a proper shape and adapts to the sudden array of sound that envelops it.

That's how I write. I've never really been able to explain or document it before. It's always been this zone I go into where I sit quietly for an hour and then a song comes out at the end, and I tend to forget what the process is like. Having finished this song relatively quickly, I wanted to take the opportunity to blog it here for posterity. It's incredibly ritualistic; add a line, record, add another line, play the first line, play both, record both, delete the first line, try out a chorus … and all of this comes complete with these little visualisations and ideas that battle through in my brain until the right stuff comes out. Is this anything like your songwriting experience, if you're a songwriter? I've never had much trouble writing songs, once I get going I can get it done in 30-60 minutes and it'll 90% sound like it does when it's finally recorded and released. But I have to isolate myself and just focus on it, because if I get interrupted and my thoughts stray too far, the jigsaw falls apart and I'll have lost it forever.

In the time I've spent writing and re-writing this blog (I proof my blog several times before upload), I've all-but-forgotten how the song sounds. Forgetting the song is helpful because you can be more objective about it once you've let it fall out of your head and listen to it fresh. So I'm about to listen through to the recording that I sent the boys and see if it's any good. But in my head, now, it sucks. What a boring droney melody. This will never work. I can't believe I sent this to people. This is gonna be awful. My memory is telling me that the song is never going to be heard again.

Let's give it a listen.

Hmm. Okay. Yeah, I think it's okay. Tom can probably work with it and make it into something better, because his production is fantastic. The first time I recorded The Time Of Your Life and sent it to the boys it sounded pretty average, too.

So maybe this isn't my BEST HIT EVUR, but either way, I'm writing again. And that's important.

The ultimate moral of this story, though, is that everyone should listen to Ed’s music. =)

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

So, I’ve been totally rubbish and haven’t blogged about my experience in Bury St Edmunds yet. SORRY LOL. Still no internet. I know that excuse is getting tired. But it doesn’t make it any less true.

Quick point before I continue – self-defeating song titles. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Are we all secretly insecure about our music, and so give our songs really self-defeating names like “I’ve Got Nothing” and “Imperfections” and “Can’t” and “Erase This”? (That’s in no way a dig at anyone else’s work, obviously ^^)

Anyway, this forced me to consider how many of my own songs have such names; fortunately, there are only some vaguely doubtful ones on my new album (“Not Just Yet”, “Stay With Me”) as opposed to the flat-out worry on my first release (No More! Hold On! Don’t Look Back!).

The Bury gigs went alright, but we were restricted in a lot of ways. The ‘big show’ on Saturday evening was played in a village hall type area, where the space was restricted and we had to mix the sound ourselves, leaving us panicked and cramped for a lot of the set. We played a ‘casual’ show earlier in the day where we just played whatever we felt like, some new songs, some covers, and that actually went much better because we took turns dicking around and were less worried about getting the sound right and nailing each song. I think Eyelashes was played, Exterminate Regenerate broke out at one point … my first song was ‘Show Me Your Genitals’, which seemed like a fantastic idea before the gig started but wasn’t so much when we stared into the sea of disapproving dad faces.

The following night, Tom and I played what certainly became my favourite gig ever; the two of us fucked about in the Nutshell, which was a local pub near to where we were staying. I’d love to tell you that we packed the place out, but sadly, we didn’t. This on its own wouldn’t be too much of a big deal, but it becomes more humiliating when you discover that The Nutshell is the smallest pub in Britain. (Or Europe, Tom says. Or perhaps the world. It’s constantly being challenged.)

Here’s a sign on their wall:

I used Ed’s guitar, Tom brought his uke, his accordion and his toy piano, and we played everything we could think of to an unassuming Bury woman and her Seattle-based boyfriend, who clapped and chatted with us and generally helped us all have a lovely time.

So that was the Bury gig, and I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you about it. There will surely be more gigs soon, hopefully in more places; for now, we’re all working on cool things together (including working on Ed’s new album) and as soon as we know more, you’ll be the first to know :D

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Okay, here’s the final word on the flagging situation with my new ‘Glory Holes’ video.

(Context: I uploaded a new video to YouTube which was flagged by some viewers as being inappropriate. As a result, YouTube slapped a restriction on the video so that only users over the age of 18 can view it. Click below to watch the video if you haven’t seen it already – embedding it on a website circumvents the age cap.)

I had a lovely chat with Jamie, YouTube’s UK editor, and he basically explained the situation. Well, first of all he said “what do you mean ‘why is it flagged’? It’s called Glory Holes. You talk about glory holes. You specifically said ’sucking a penis off’. Are you mental?”

But then I tried to make my case for why it bothered me. It’s not like I SHOWED the glory hole phenomenon happening, or even simulated it happening, I’m always explicit in my other videos but they don’t get flagged. And I feel that not allowing seventeen-year-olds to see it is a bit over-the-top.

Jamie’s response outlined that this is YouTube’s equivalent of television’s ‘watershed’, and compared my video to a Bill Hicks or Richard Pryor live DVD, which is rated 18 even though it’s just talk with no graphic acts or simulations. He also pointed out that YouTube don’t automatically restrict things. If they’re indicated for review by the community, YouTube take a look, but they’re always reactionary.

Obviously, YouTube seek to protect younger users, while still enabling users to make the content they want.

But I had three big problems with the way this all played out:

1 – I had no choice in the level of censorship. I wasn’t notified that the video was flagged, and couldn’t do anything to prevent or appeal the decision.

Solution: As the content creator, it’d be nice to have had someone come to me and give me a few options to choose from:

- I could choose to stop under 18s from watching it, as they have
- I could mark it as ‘explicit content’ so people are warned beforehand, but can still view it, like on iTunes (which would be my preference)
- I could make it so that only people with a YouTube account can watch
- or I could do nothing, but risk some kind of penalty if the video is flagged further

I’d prefer this ‘tiered’ approach, mainly because the video hasn’t lost any views compared to any of my others, so clearly a lot of people have just watched it on this blog or signed up a new account in which they lie about their age just so they can watch it (a lot of people have admitted to this in the comments). It’s such an easy block to workaround, and that undermines the whole point. I think YouTube should be working with content creators who have content deemed to be inappropriate to find a solution suitable for both parties, not just shutting them off at the first hurdle.

2 – it wasn’t clear to my audience that the video had been flagged. A lot of my users thought I had personally chosen to restrict the video to 18+ viewers.

Solution: Make it clear on the page that appears when you click the link. Say that the video has been ‘flagged by YouTube users’ and so ‘YouTube has restricted viewing of this video to users over the age of 18′. Then people know it’s not my fault. (Or, in the case that my solution to point 1 was implemented, have it say ‘in response, the user has chosen to restrict viewing to users over the age of 18′ if that’s the choice the creator picks. Just be transparent about it.)

3 – there’s no consistency. This is the only video of mine to receive such a restriction; other videos (including ‘Donkey Punch‘, which is of a very similar tone, along with many other verbally explicit videos) are freely available for all to view.

Solution: YouTube needs to look into consistency. Instead of a one-flag-fits-all scheme, the video should have been judged in the context of my others. Why does this matter? Well, I clearly have a big audience who are used to my ‘racy persona’ because that’s what I do. I swear and I’m sarcastic and I make fun of stupid things. It wasn’t out of context for me to be doing this.

To use a TV analogy (which is void before I’ve even begun because of the vast differences between television and the internet), it’d be like judging a soft porn show on the merits of the soft porn show, instead of seeing whether that show was aired at two in the morning on the Fantasy Channel or at two in the afternoon on a Sunday on the BBC. Clearly, one channel is catering to that market and thus it’s considered ‘appropriate’ within the confines of the law, while the other is not. If Charlie had uploaded this video, I’d see a case for it being considered inappropriate within his market and the type of content he’s developed an audience for. But for me, I think it’s perfectly reasonable, even expected. Video review should exist on an individual, channel-by-channel basis; otherwise what was the point of calling our accounts ‘channels’?

I should clarify that I’m fine with not showing boobs or porn or graphic violence on YouTube. I get that. But making a few cock jokes? Does it really fall under this blanket restriction? There will always be sensitive people out there, but you can’t censor everything just incase anyone might be offended by it, and it’s not fair to make the rest of my audience suffer by being denied something I made for them, all because of a few complaints.

What do you guys think of these suggestions? Do you think that content creators should get more control over how their content is censored online? On traditional television channels, if there were complains about a particular show, the network would be responsible for dealing with it; they’d never think of approaching the producer of the show in question. But does new media require a new outlook?

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

I uploaded a new video today, and it’s been flagged as inappropriate, so YouTube have automatically banned under 18s from watching it.

But under 18s are, well, my whole audience, so this is really unfair. The video’s fun, I did another one in exactly the same tone years ago called ‘Donkey Punch’ that went unflagged, so here’s what we’re going to do about it:

Here’s the video. If you embed it, people can watch it. So send this blog link to everyone! Don’t let YouTube dictate who can and can’t see my content without giving me any say in the matter! And if you wanna email the editor of YouTube, you can click here to do that and politely explain that you think this is unfair.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE etc

(But really I just want you to be able to see my video, cos it sucks that some people just never will now for a completely unfair flagging. It’s not like I give glory-holing a real life road test. Fucking hell.)

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Here’s the real mystery of ABC’s Lost: how the hell does everyone remember their flight number?

I mean … does anyone in real life EVER remember their flight number? Think of the last time you flew somewhere. Do you remember what your flight number was?

Imagine if I said to someone that I was in New York late last year, and the person I was talking to said ‘omg, I was in New York last year too … WAS IT FLIGHT 405?!’

That would freak me out! Yet all through the sideways, we see this happen. “I recognise you, didn’t you fly in from Sydney last week?” people say, and instead of just saying “yeah, to LAX?” or “yeah, on Tuesday evening?” they say “you mean FLIGHT EIGHT FIFTEEN GASP?”

What a weird show.

My good friend and musical producer, Tom, is having a get-together with my other good friend Ben, and they’re calling it ‘Lost And Confused’. The idea is that the two of them have never watched Lost, but will be watching the finale together, and playing a drinking game whereby they will drink every time they’re confused by something.

“It’s genius!” Tom said, “because the more we drink, the more confused we’ll be!”

LET THE LOLCOHOL FLOW.

(Lolcohol? Alcolol? Which is better? There’s only one way to find out – FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT)

Speaking of Tom, he’s just released a new EP today called ‘Explorers 4′, which you can download FOR FREE by clicking here. (You can give him a bit of money for it if you want to, as well.)

And the newest DFTBA release, Erase This, is now out, and features cover songs by myself as well as Eddplant. You can check that out on iTunes by clicking here.

Next week, I’m going into the studio to record with Tom, Ed and Charlie. Should be fun!

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Music video BAM:

iTunes artwork BAM:

Click HERE to buy the song or click the artwork if you don’t like text or search ‘Alex Day’ on iTunes if you don’t like links!

uschavb this is the first single off my album. ahhhhhhh. I really hope you like it. :D What are your thoughts and feelings? Let me know on the comments of this post!

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

I just played the BEST GIG EVER. I know I always say that, but they keep getting better and better, so that’s why I say that.

Huh?

What do you mean I didn’t tell you I was playing a gig?

You’re right, shit. And I can’t apologise enough. I mentioned the gig in a video of mine, but not having the internet at my flat (STILL) means that I’ve been lapsing in my activity on this site and failing to properly update you on these things. I’m sorry about that. For what it’s worth, I’m playing another gig with Ed and Tom at Bury St Edmunds this weekend: link for the info is here.

Speaking of the internet – do you think TalkTalk would get a move on if Charlie and I threatened to tell our half a million combined subscribers that they suck?

Anyway, I had a great night. The three of us put far too much work into our shows, given that we’re not touring or anything right now; through the course of the night I played electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass, drums, ukulele, sang with a microphone and without a microphone, and even shook a pack of tic-tacs for percussion during an impromptu encore performance of Tom’s song “Animals“.

This is the only video I’ve found so far, but if I find more I’ll post them here and in the videos section of the website. In the meantime I hope this proves a good advert for Bury:

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Read please :D

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The towel rack in my bathroom is a curse.

What?

It’s a heated towel rack! You get out of the shower and your towel is toasty and warm! Alex, how can this possibly be a bad thing? What are you talking about? Where are you going with that napkin?

Well, I’ll tell you.

The towel rack works on a simple heating principle; the longer it’s on, the more it heats up. Works in theory, right?

NO.

Don’t you realise what this means? When I’m showering in the morning, all naked and soapy, sometimes I like to think about things. Yesterday morning, as an example, I was thinking ‘what could I make a documentary about in order to meet Karen Gillan? The rise of sci-fi in British family entertainment? Scotsmen in politics vs in the media? Sexuality and censorship in the BBC? Gah!’ – a lot of planning was needed. So when I got out of the shower, I’d obviously spent ages, making me incredibly late for what I needed to get done yesterday. My body was wet with the stain of shame.

But then the fucking towel rack feels warmer than ever, inviting me in, rewarding me for my idiotic procrastination. “It’s okay,” the towel rack says: “the longer you take, the better I’ll feel.”

I hate you, towel rack. Don’t make inactivity feel better than activity. That’s not a good lesson for me to learn.

As a result, showering has become a game of me trying to beat my own towel rack. I’m done in five minutes, it’s barely warm – “YES! HA! Fuck you! I don’t waste any time!” What a sad little man I’ve become.

Incidentally, the reason I should have showered promptly yesterday was because Charlie and I filmed the Time Of Your Life video :) The song and the video come out on Monday ahhhh <3

(I’m assuming these last two blogs have been a freakish anomaly. It’d be reckless to assume they’ll all be this good.)

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

On the first of February 2010, my girlfriend turned 21, a full two months and seven days before I did. (Yeah, you know that pulling a marginally older woman makes me a total studmuffin.)

As the day came upon me, I struck her with a barrage of inane questions. “You’re 21 now! What’s it like? How does it feel?”

To which she replied with the perfectly reasonable, “it doesn’t feel any different, what are you talking about? What are you doing here?”

I knew there had to be more to it, and I was right: when it was time for ME to turn 21, oh, the rapture! How could nobody else have felt what I felt? Suddenly I was a man! I wasn’t twenty any more! I needed to strive forward and make something of myself in this world! YES WE CAN! Etc.

Today, I phoned up my friend Lex.

“Have you voted?” I asked excitedly.
“Yeah,” she shrugged (probably).
“How was it?” I enthused, like I was asking her to review a film she’d seen.
“It was alright,” she answered, frustratingly unenthusiastic again. Why didn’t anybody else care about this? This is her first election! For that matter, it’s MY first election! Just like the dawn of my twenty-second year of existence, I’m surely set to find it wonderful and liberating and full of beauty, yes?

Yes?!

YES.

Let me be clear: VOTING IS AMAZING.

There’s been a lot of talk about voting today, but only on who to vote for, what the votes mean, why to vote – nobody’s actually talking about VOTING. The process of voting. After weeks and weeks of propaganda swaying me to make a decision, the culmination of that is exactly that; a culmination. A finale. It’s not boring, it’s the best bit.

First of all, there’s the polling station. On any other day, the old people’s rest home near my house is nothing more than a pleasant view to the eye as I pass it en route to the post office, but today, it was transformed into a POLLING STATION. The signs were all over it, with arrows and capital letters and ‘this way’ markers, pulling me in, guiding me forward. It allowed me to appreciate that area like never before. The old people’s home always looked lovely, but I’ve never had a reason to actually GO inside, until my beautiful country made it happen. Regardless of who gets into power tomorrow, I appreciate my local area a bit more than I did this morning. Thanks, government :)

So, having never been there before, I wandered in, blind, led by the signs like a hopeless sheep getting herded around by haphazard bits of paper with gaudy fonts on them blowing perilously in the breeze.

I walk into the polling station. I’m not sure what to do. Cross on paper, right? What more is there?

Well, before all that, there’s the Friendly Community Woman. I don’t know what she looked like in your area, but in mine, she was smiley and round and understanding … ‘jolly’ would be the perfect phrase. She was probably called something like Margaret; a flowery moniker, similar to the Iron Lady only in name, yet both of them burning with a shared passion for political undertaking.

There was also a police woman there, for reasons that are still unclear to me. The whole scenario is incredibly peaceful – mark a box, fold some paper, it’s like the most important arts and crafts event of an Englishman’s life – what could have possibly kicked off in such an environment?

The Friendly Community Woman saw my bewildered stare and said, “hello sir” in just the right way. The way you know that Margaret would. I liked that. I liked being called a sir.

The first order of business was to check I was registered to vote. This is something I’ve been nervous about all day, namely because I’ve been repeatedly phoning my electoral office to confirm it, each time being greeted with the same unemotional message: “Thank you for calling. Our opening hours are 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM, Monday to Friday. Please leave a message and we will get back to you within the next working day.” – WHAT?! It’s a Thursday! There’s an election on, surely more than any other day you should be making sure you answer your phones? It’s not a public holiday! I’m trying to exercise my fucking democratic rights!

Registering to vote, as it turned out, is nothing like the kind of registration I’m used to. They didn’t need me to pick a username, they didn’t tell me my password was ‘Fair’ (fuck you, Google) and they didn’t send me an email address to confirm I was registered. (Although, if they had, I’d have known I was and wouldn’t have had to spend all day hearing the voicemail of the fucking electoral office.)

It was as simple as checking my name off a list, like a bouncer in a nightclub, except you can’t just vote if you’re under 18 but look fit or have big jugs. Democratic perfection, at last.

I took the two forms – wait, two forms? – and went to vote.

I looked at the names.

Who the shit are all these people?

Have I been reading the wrong country’s newspapers all election long? Where’s Brown and Cameron and Clegg? Where are the people I was told to vote for? Why am I voting for two elections? Why do I have to pick three candidates, what is this, Lost?

Turns out, for all their publicity, 95% of the country don’t even know who they vote for. They pick the party they want, sure, but they have no idea who their electoral representatives are. (95% is an arbitrary statistic that was just made up by me but is probably true.)

Fortunately on the right hand side are handy pictures of each party logo. It doesn’t matter how sophisticated you are or how you wanna dress it up, that’s what most people in the country did today; marked an X next to some pictures with a pencil.

Having done the deed, and felt oddly secretive about neighbour’s prying eyes for no reason at all (WHAT IF THEY SEE WHO I VOTE FOR? I wouldn’t even care, but for some reason I did), I crept over to the ballot boxes.

“Do I need to show these to you?” I asked the Friendly Community Woman. What a stupid question. Of course I fucking don’t. I’m so lucky that they didn’t say, “oops! I’m sorry, you’ve trigged the idiocy alarm, rendering you ineligible to vote! It seems you’re bafflingly stupid.” Then they would put a dunce hat on my head and pull my underwear up over my face and kick me out of the door and on to the cold, hard ground. (Maybe that’s what the police woman was for.)

Margaret was very kind however, ignoring the obvious mockability of my query and directing me to put my paper in the ballot boxes. (Which is SO Margaret. I love Margaret.)

And then I left. I had voiced my opinion. I’d made a difference. And yes – I was excited. I’d just helped to decide the voice of my country’s future. Why didn’t anybody else ever feel like this? How can something so important feel so monotonous to everybody else, even those who have never voted before?

Then I got home. Rung the doorbell of my mum’s black door. And for an indulgent moment, it felt like I really was ringing on the door of Number 10, making my voice heard.

And then I thought, “maybe I DO take all this stuff a bit too seriously.”

x

EDIT: While writing this entry on the train (on my iPad no less, cementing my status to everyone around me as a first-class prick), I saw a sign on a station platform saying ‘Keep Right’.

POLITICS IS EVERYWHERE.

And no, I’m not telling you how I voted, you nosey bastards.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

This is the video about the Candy Floss shirt, which is available by clicking the sexy t-shirt below:

Limited edition, available for a week in men’s and women’s sizes, AHH IT’S SO PRETTY <33

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

HELLO

Still no connection at my flat. Feel free to phone TalkTalk for me and tell them NERIMON WANTS THE INTERNET BACK. (Except, obviously don’t do that.)

Things are gearing up towards album release, which is becoming very exciting – the first single off the album, ‘The Time Of Your Life’, has started getting play on DFTBA’s weekly Radio Hour which you can listen to every Wednesday on BlogTV at 9PM EST. And in the meantime, watch me talking to a purple puppet:

Here’s the design (drawn by Tom) for a limited edition t-shirt I’ll be selling in about a week that’s inspired by my song Candy Floss:

(click to enlarge)

And fine, here’s the new chapter of Twilight:

So I HAVE been doing things – it just took me a while to tell you about them :)

Update soon, promise! Thanks for being patient my lovelies x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Hey, okay, hi!

Wanted to drop you all a line about the Facebook sitch. Firstly – sorry for asking you to do that, cos I felt very whorey and ‘I’m an arsehole who makes my blog readers do things for me’ type person. Sorry about that. I just knew that strength in numbers would work. And it DID work, the facebook page is gone, so thank you all for helping me with that :)

Second – I wanted to talk about the issue of how the internet is a SERIOUS THING with SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES. The following is inspired by this blog comment on my last entry:

So I figured, hey, maybe other people think like this, about me, about other YouTube people, and I thought it was an interesting topic.

To clarify some things, before we continue; the poster doesn’t give me much credit for the things that I do, saying that I’m ‘not as good or important’ as I think and that I’m not ‘talented or unique enough to take it to the next level’. For the record, I’m not writing this so you guys can say “bitch be trippin’, you’re so talented, yeah alex day woo afwFHNT” because I don’t do all this for validation; but I do think it’s a bit close-minded to assume that going to university and getting a ‘proper job’ is the only possibly path in life, ignoring all of the successful musicians, writers, etc that do fine on their own. The poster doesn’t think I’m good enough to get into the latter category, which is a matter of personal opinion. I personally think I’m getting there. Not there yet, but getting there. (I’m obviously not going to be stupid enough to think ‘oh, YouTube makes me some money, I’ll just do that FOREVER’. Give me some credit.)

So anyway, I disagree with a lot of this. I don’t think I ‘obsess’ over subscribers – I doubt anybody could provide any actual proof of that. (Though you could argue that I obsess over my blog comments. xD)

And, yes, I do think I’m talented. I mean, if I didn’t think I was talented, would I bother? Don’t all creative and/or successful people think they’re talented, with the exception of the hopelessly naive or modest ones? That gets into a different question of what it means to be successful – I can live off my CD sales, I make music I’m proud of, and people tell me they like it, so I consider that a success. It’s been argued by Kevin Kelly that it only takes a thousand dedicated fans to be successful in the modern age. Whether or not you agree, I’m getting off the point; regardless of what’s fact here and what’s opinion, the issue is, am I a brand? Am I taking it too seriously by demanding that a Facebook page of fake-me get taken down?

My answer: no. I think anybody who had a fake page posing as them saying stuff like ‘I’m gonna be on GMTV tomorrow’ and ‘if I get 5000 fans I’ll upload a video for Haiti’ would be pretty fucked off. It’s just taking advantage of people’s good nature. That’s not nice. I don’t want people using my identity to deceive people. Maybe that sounds over-the-top – “deception with your identity? It’s just Facebook! Get your head out of your arse” – but I’d be exactly the same regardless of whether or not anybody watched me say words in a box on a screen. My issue isn’t with me protecting a brand, or being all obsessive and wanky over ‘use of my image’ or any corporate shit. Someone is using my face, name, persona, whatever, as a way of lying to people. That sucks, no?

My opinion is that some YouTubers do approach the site as a business before anything else. I don’t know specific people who do; I just think (from observation, same as anybody else) that some people do. That observation could easily be wrong. I personally know I definitely don’t make videos I don’t love, and I always go on the merits of the idea in itself before any other thought crosses my mind, so if anyone thought that I treated YouTube like a business, they’d be wrong. But DO other people think that? About me, about anyone?

That what I’m interested to hear your thoughts on. The debate I put to you, in brief: Corporate YouTube Vloggers. Fact Or Fiction? Discuss.

Don’t be hatin’ on the poster, cos without the post we would not be having this discussion :D Oh, and I realise that writing some huge thought-out blog post isn’t exactly the most convincing way to prove I don’t treat YouTube as a business xD But I just have opinions and love to share them. If I hadn’t written this here it would’ve been sent in an email to several people for private debate, or ranted out loud to Tom’s ears. I wanted to give it the chance to be thought out and written out reasonably so I didn’t sound like a prick.

x

EDIT: I just saw Hank’s new video is called “Fun Is Important. Being Serious Isn’t.” Hahaha. YES. <3

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

So evidently, being me is something that even people who aren’t me want to enjoy.

The Twitter account ‘fakenerimon’ has been posing as me for ages. I emailed Twitter about it, but they consider that (from the word ‘fake’) it’s obvious that it’s not me, even though I explained that a good friend John Green has an authentic account called ‘fakejohngreen’ and the two of us are, well, linked.

Anyway, I just got told about this Facebook fan page. It’s not me, I don’t have Facebook, Twitter, Dailybooth (anymore), Tumblr, any of that rubbish. Can you report this for me since I don’t have a Facebook account? You just have to click that link and the Report Page link is at the bottom. I can’t do it without an account of my own, and I just hate seeing people deceived by people pretending to be me, it’s not fair on anybody. Thanks guys x

EDIT: facebook.com/alexdaymusic was made by Ed to keep people up-to-date on all things me. So don’t report that xD I’m fine with that because it’s not pretending to be me, it’s just sharing info.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

BEST DREAM EVER.

I’m on a bus. Sitting in the back corner. Older girl, I’d say about my age (21, as of today) sitting next to me. Brunette. Hair in a ponytail. The way a ponytail looks in cartoons, where it’s all curved like a question mark. She’s wearing red, or possibly pink, or peach – one of those sorts of colours. And the rest of the bus is full. There’s a group of teen girls in front of me. Some old people on the right hand side. Typical mix of bus users.

I have Get Back To Hogwarts stuck in my head. In the dream. So I start singing it softly to myself. I start at “I’m sick of summer and this waiting around.” When I get to the chorus, a smile’s on my face. That song’s so happy. And when I get to “gotta get myself to Hogwarts”, halfway through the song, the girl next to me quietly sings the line with me. We look at each other. Grin. Someone else on this bus knows A Very Potter Musical! (Which, if you don’t, is a fan-produced musical based on the Harry Potter books and you can watch it here).

We keep quietly singing, enjoying it. I love those moments you share with strangers. A smile at some thing only the two of you have stopped to revel in. It feels so honest, because we’re not trying to impress each other. We’re just having genuine fun.

When it gets to the second chorus, one of the teenage girls turns around. Smiles. She has a big grin. Sings with us: “where everything is magicooooool.” I grin. Can’t believe it. This is the best.

And eventually the whole fucking bus are kicking off. It’s like a musical. I look out of the window and see Canary Wharf rolling by, and inside, the bus has expanded to accommodate room for the teen girls to do gymnastics while they and everybody else are singing along to this song. Everyone knows it, and everyone loves it.

What a great way to start the day ^_^

Here’s my review of The Eleventh Hour, except they cut a bit out. I made a joke at the start: “We all know there have been BBC budget cuts. Certain jobs been axed, certain projects canned. I’m not gonna say too much more about that on this channel cos it could be a bit awkward. But I think I know where that money went – it was used to fund the premiere of the new series of Doctor Who! I’m sure all the money for 6Music went on rendering that big eye thing they had.”

Those squares, no sense of humour.

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

I’m writing this after seeing the following video by alanvlogs, a username I can’t believe wasn’t taken before now:

In that video, Alan quoted me as saying the following: “I think people sometimes have to admit that they’re not good at everything, which is hard for our generation cos we have the tools to do everything ourselves“. I just wanted to elaborate on that a bit. I was talking to Alan about how a lot of artists are guided to do every aspect of their music on their own – the lyrics, the melodies, the production, the instruments, the videos, everything. The advantages of this are, obviously, that you retain complete creative control, and that you can keep more money. But I think that’s a common fallacy and it’s something that’s encouraged by the do-it-yourself share-everything culture that we’re in, emphasised through things like YouTube and Twitter.

Of the $12 I’ll charge for The World Is Mine when it comes out, my label – DFTBA – gets 40%. This accounts for them creating, designing, manafacturing, storing and shipping all of the CDs for me. (Related point – always outsource anything you can do that takes considerable time. Even if you can do it yourself. Even if it costs money. You’re being short-sighted if you want to keep that money. The most valuable thing you have is your time. If you can pay other people to do as much as possible for you, you can free up your time to write more songs, make new videos – make more money. The money I lose by not shipping out those CDs myself is more than made back by the new songs and videos I make during that time. I can’t stress this enough.)

Then Tom gets 25% because he produced the whole album. That includes mixing, instrumenting, producing, and I’m also gonna use the word ‘directing’ to mean that he helped flesh out the tone of the songs, and push them in a specific direction.

This leaves me with 35%, which is $4.20. (In addition, Charlie gets half the ad revenue of the music videos we make together.) I could kick up a fuss and say “omg I’m losing out on eight dollars, think how much money I’d have if I sold every CD and did it all myself!”

But that’s naive for two reasons. One, the reason I stated above, that it just makes good business sense to get other people to do things for you.

And two, which is the point of this entry: people sometimes have to accept that even though we’re capable of doing everything ourselves, it doesn’t mean we’re GOOD at everything ourselves. Tom’s a better producer than me. Charlie’s a better video editor than me. So I get them to help. It frees up my time and it means we combine all of our strengths. Imagine if I did it all myself. I recorded the Don’t Look Back video myself. It’s a nice video, I’m proud of it, but compare it to the way Pokémon What Happened To You is directed and edited. No contest. Charlie does it better.

If I did it all myself, I’d keep 100% of my revenue – but I’d make way less money, cos what I’m doing just isn’t as good. So it all balances out anyway.

One of the biggest challenges for our generation is to acknowledge our weaknesses. Once this is done, we can take steps to find people who balance our weaknesses. ALL CAPS was the example I used to Alan, and the reason I brought this up to him – I think Luke’s strengths lie in production, while Kristina’s lie in writing the songs. So ALL CAPS (I feel) are at their best when Tina writes the songs, giving them to Luke, who then records with her and produces it up. They’re both balancing and helping each other. More artists need to do this. (Case in point – I think Delete You is the best song on their new CD.)

To the artists that do all their own production, their own videos, their own music, instrumented themselves … do you think you’re better at every aspect of those things than anybody else you know? If you do, great. Don’t let me stop you. The music you’re making is better the way it is than any other way you could do it. But I implore everyone who knows a fantastic drummer, or a brilliant videomaker, but isn’t using them, to give it a try. Pay them some money. It’ll pay itself back because the music will just be better as a result. Combine people’s strengths, and let other people join in, and aside from everything else, you’ll have a lot more fun :)

And that’s how nerimon sees it LOL LOL LOL

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }