I got an email from Alan a day or so ago saying that, so far, 56 people have pre-ordered the 117% Complete bundle :)

To some people, that number might seem tragic. I have 92,000 subscribers, and I can’t get 92,000 pre-orders, or 920, or even 92?

But let’s look at this another way: this is an EP that’s available to pre-order despite you only hearing one of the songs on it. That’s a hard sell. Before the music videos come out at the start of March, people aren’t gonna know what the songs are like. And in addition, the physical pre-order is part of a $25 bundle. People don’t just have 25 bucks laying around, waiting for Alex Day to release new stuff. Honestly, I’m grateful that anyone is excited enough about my music and the products I put out that they’re placing an advance order for the release. And I know most of the people who’ve ordered are also people that read my blog, so thank you :D

There are a couple people who said they would have been happy to pay 7 or 8 dollars for the EP on its own because they want to have the physical, and while I think it’s very cool that you’d be willing to do that, I do think it’s more money than you should be spending on a three-track disc. I wouldn’t in good conscience be able to offer it at that price. Given that the people who like physical releases are also the people who (in general) savour/cherish physical objects in general, we decided that the bundle would be the best way to make the deal sweet for as many as people as possible. What I would suggest, if you don’t like the t-shirt design (although I think it’s cool :D) is that you could maybe split the cost of the bundle between you and a friend, so they have the shirt and you keep the CD?

In any case, there won’t be an EP-only purchase at this point, because that would be very insulting to all the people that just parted with twenty-five dollars of their money if I suddenly say “oh, now you can buy it on its own for 7 bucks, yeah!”

I promise, next time I release an EP, I’ll make sure I include more than three tracks on it, and all of this will be irrelevant xD

I just multiplied twenty-five by fifty-six. Fucking hell. Drinks are on me.

x

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I’m sitting in Heathrow Airport and I don’t intend to sleep. :)

I’ve never been to Terminal 3 before. It’s nice. I’m gonna sit reading Jonathan King’s autobiography and when my eyes get too tired, walk around the airport to the beat of Lady Gaga.

There was only one other person on the train here, and they got off at Terminal 4, leaving me to spend one stop in my own world, standing and singing Bad Romance as loud as I could while the music played through my earphones. Big grin on my face, hurtling underground while the world sleeps, feeling so alive. I thought, “I could die now and it would be brilliant, if the train just burned apart, in this great haze of music and joy and isolation”.

But there wouldn’t be anyone to meet Lily at the airport. So I’m glad I didn’t die. That means I get to have another one of those experiences :)

They say life is short, but it’s the longest thing you do, and it’s the only time you get to do it, so I say enjoy yourself :D

(Disclaimer: that’s just my opinion, on the ‘one life’ thing, but it’s one that’s shared by science, and Derren Brown, and Charlie, so … sticking with it.)

x

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I’ve given in.

I was going to keep all the songs to myself and not let people hear them until March 1st …

But you know what? Here. I asked Alan to add “Pokémon, What Happened To You?” to the pre-order page, so people at least have some idea what they’re spending their money on.

I hope you guys like it :)

x

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Today is PRE-ORDER DAY for my new videogame EP, 117% Complete! *jumps around with excited things*

AND! It’s not just the physical CD (which looks beautiful – we made the back look like the start screen of a NES game). Because there are only three tracks, it wouldn’t make sense to sell that on its own, so we have a BUNDUL! Yeah!

Head over to dftba.com now and you’ll see a twenty-five dollar burst of fun right there on your screen. We figured this would make the most sense so that you’re not getting ripped off on shipping for a three-track CD, and would provide a cool opportunity to give other stuff to the people that like physical things.

First off, there’s the CD:

You’ve seen the art for that already, and the rest of it is just lovely.

Then there’s the T-SHIRT:

That is also nice :) I figure most people will just buy the shirt cos they like it, and the music will be a nice bonus for them. I think it’s a fun design.

And finally, the badges – I don’t have a separate picture of those but you can see them on the pre-order page and it’s basically each quarter of the EP cover in badge form.

I’m gonna try and get some copies of the EP and the badges shipped over so I can sell them at shows, but the t-shirt is exclusive to dftba.com so if you’re sure you’ll love the music, or you just like videogames and think the t-shirt is cool, the pre-order is right here for you :D

For those that are waiting to hear it, I’m going to be releasing the EP on this site on March 1st, the same day it goes up on iTunes, and we’ll also be putting out music videos for all three songs on the first week of March, over the period of 117 hours. <3 (Alan’s idea, what a brilliant human.)

I definitely would advise, though, if you’re planning to purchase the EP, get the bundle; not cos I obviously make more off it, but because I think these three products are really nice and worth having :)

x

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My mum got married on Saturday!

I was best man, which I largely discovered was a figurehead title. Usually, the role of the best man is to take care of the groom – but my mum and stepdad were together on the morning of their wedding, so they basically had each other. (I know, I wasn’t happy with it either. I’m a purist. But he lives in Egypt, and went home this morning, so they were entitled to spend as much time together as possible.)

Anyway, that basically meant that I rolled out of bed at about ten thirty, unaware of what was going on, stumbled into the shower while dancing to Lady GaGa (AND I’D DO IT AGAIN) and got myself suited up. (Sidebar: I have a suit now. I needed one for the wedding. I’ve never had a suit before, it’s nice. I got it from Topman, obviously.)

When I went downstairs, everyone that’s ever been related to me seemed to be standing in my living room. I went and hid in the corner with my cousin Danny, where he proceeded to make up things that I was supposed to do as best man, in order to make me nervous. “You’re supposed to take care of everyone! What food are we having later? You don’t know? YOU’RE THE BEST MAN!”

Cue the meme for the day. “Come on Alex, phone the cab for us. Best man duties.” “Can you grab me a slice of cake from the buffet? Best man, innit.” “Drive Nana home. I know you can’t drive, but you’re the best man. It’s your duty.” Fuck off.

Basically it was like being a godfather. Halfway through the ceremony, they said “and now I’d like to call up Alex, who has the rings. Stand there, Alex. Give Tracy’s ring to Emad. Give Emad’s ring to Tracy. Okay, you can sit down now.” I was the delivery man. That’s all it is.

Oh, I did have to make a speech as well. That was quite fun. And then I played some songs cos mum asked me to. Here’s the set list if anyone at all cares:

Hearts
You And Me
A Thousand Hours
Dead And Gone
Debut
Holding On

Hopefully the two new ones won’t leak online before the album release! A JOKE TO MAKE ME SOUND IMPORTANT. Also you’ll notice that Debut isn’t a song of mine, it’s Ed’s, but my mum said she wanted me to play it cos she liked it. (Feel free to click here if you wanna hear it yourself, or search ‘Fortunes Fall’ on iTunes.) When I told Tom I was playing it, he seemed amused by the notion that I could forge a career as a wedding singer of Ed’s hits xD

I played Danny the new EP, too, and he gave me some Sopio decks to play around with. (Backstory: Danny and I developed a card game called Sopio. I moved on to making music while he developed SEVEN DIFFERENT DECKS, some of which are THEMED, and now they’re ALL MINE.)

Bracket slash Maureen

We’re hoping to develop it professionally, approaching companies etc, but if worst comes to worst we’ll refine it to perfection ourselves and then distribute it through DFTBA, hopefully.

Then, yesterday, I filmed the first half of the Hearts music video with a handful of people in Camden. Charlie’s stressed and exhausted from the experience and is gonna edit together what we have so far to see if it’s worth doing the rest. I have confidence it’ll look good, but we need to move on to 117% videos so you won’t see it for a while either way.

The new episode of Lost airs tomorrow night in America, meaning I can download it on Wednesday morning, but it’s already been leaked online and it’s REALLY hard to not just watch it now. I say ‘leaked online’ – if it was full quality it’d be worth it, but it’s filmed on a handicam with crappy audio off a screen, so it’ll be a sub-par experience. And that’s what I’ll keep telling myself.

There isn’t enough milk in the house for tea, but I don’t wanna leave this bed :( It’s Becky’s birthday so we just watched The Lion King. Tonight I am staking out Heathrow Airport because Lily (a fun Australian lady what I know) is coming here for a few weeks and arrives TOMORROW MORNING. It’s easier for me to stay overnight in the airport than it is to travel up in the morning. EXCITEMENT.

(I need to film a video, too. Not a Twilight one, don’t get excited.)

Oh, one last thing: clicky. <3

x

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I’m not gonna bother cluttering up the internet with my opinion of the iPad, for the same reason I refuse to answer the question “what do you think of the Eleventh Doctor?” – I haven’t seen it (or him) in action yet, so what reasonable opinion do you expect me to form?

(I will say, though, that of the unfounded criticism that has so far been flung the iPad’s way from people with no authority at all, “it can’t be used as a phone” is probably the most stupid. I mean, no, it can’t. Of course it can’t. It doesn’t need to. Neither does your dishwasher, does that bother you as well? What does it take? You really wanna walk around with a ten-inch screen plastered to the side of your face? Idiots.)

Now they’ve used iPod and iPad, do you think they’ll work through all the vowels? iPud next? Okay, I’m done.

I’d like to draw your attention to Sophie Madeleine, who was promoted on bandcamp recently and who’s really good. I bought her album “LOVE. LIFE. UKULELE.” this morning and it’s really nice <3 Click here to hear it for free and hopefully you guys will like it.

x

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I had another of those very picky conversations with Alan. I think the pickiest thing I said was “that bar needs to extend by 17%, at the moment it’s going by about 22%”. I’m a tosser. I can’t work out if my precise direction is a designer’s dream or a designer’s nightmare. Either way, this is the result:

EP release is March 1st; pre-orders go live on February 1st. =)

x

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iTunes has a thing called the Gracenote Database. It’s the beast responsible for storing all of the information about a CD, so that when you put that CD into your computer, iTunes can say ‘oh, it’s Greatest Hits Vol. 1 by The Oceanic Six’ instead of just ‘Track 1, Track 2, Track 3′ etc. Any individual can actually help the Gracenote database by filling in the track/artist/album info for an unrecognised CD and clicking ‘Submit CD Track Names’. (If everyone could rename the hidden track of Chameleon Circuit ‘We Are The Daleks’, and submit it, that’d be great. Cos it shouldn’t be called ‘Daleks Never Die’.)

Anyway, I put my new EP into my computer yesterday, six tracks long – the three tracks of the EP, and the three tracks again without vocals so that I can perform them live.

And this happened:

Who are the Mystic Revealers?

x

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So, guys. We need to talk.

I did something behind your back, and I’m sorry, and I hope you can forgive me.

It was a special circumstance! My friend John was having a baby boy, and I am so happy for him, SO happy for him :D And so were my other friends, the DFTBA artists. So we all got together and … it all happened so fast …

I wrote a new song. Just for the Lullabies album. You were never supposed to find out, it was just for John to enjoy, but … sigh.

It’s called Candy Canes. There it is, okay? Candy Canes. I’M SORRY.

Click here and you can download the album, including my track, for free.

I hope we can still be friends.

x

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The EP is finished! <3 And the release date has been moved up to March the 1st! Yay and such.

I’ve been trying to limit the number of people that hear it before release, so as to make the day of release a mutually exciting event for myself as well as you guys, rather insultingly referring to those that have heard it as being in the stupidly named ‘circle of trust’. Today I got over myself after Tom had a stern talk with me about how I’m an emotionless drone and I just played it to Becky. I’m now gonna play it for my mum. Tom’s always right about things. What a wanker.

Although he did come out with this today:

“… imagine if I was in charge.”
Me: That would be a dictatorship!
“No, it wouldn’t be! Let’s call it a … monocracy.”

Since the EP will be out on March 1st, I’ve decided to do a launch gig on February 28th, similar to Tom’s launch for Painfully Mainstream; little venue, hopefully Tom and Ed will play for me, and then I’ll play the EP through and do a few other fun things and then I’ll bring copies with me. I don’t know how much they’ll be yet but it’s only three tracks, so it won’t be as much as a full album OBVIOUSLY.

x

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This isn’t gonna be as entertaining as the last entry. Basically my throat’s a little better so I laid down vocal tracks for the Sonic and Mario songs – the Mario one is, I think, the best vocal I’ve ever done, because it’s all performey and “let’s make this dramatic” and such. If we performed it live, the music would be much more of an experience, it’s very full and theatrical. I really love it.

Your teaser for the day is that, during recording of one part of I Hate Mario Kart Wii, our engineer Oli said, “this is feeling a bit Drop It Like It’s Hot“.

x

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I haven’t blogged much recently, but you already know that. “Yeah where have you been? What else do you have to do, Alex?” Fuck you.

For the last three days, I’ve developed a sore throat and watched – or, felt – it grow steadily worse. It feels like there’s something lodged in there so whenever I sing, or swallow, or yawn, it hurts. I’ve had so many Strepsils that I’m starting to suspect a Strepsil has got stuck in there and is the cause of my unending misery. (Except for that being obviously not true.)

In fact, when I got home today, my throat was SO painful I could hardly speak, and my mum marched me into the kitchen where I proceeded to consume honey, cough syrup, Lemsip Max, gurgled salt water, and – you guessed it – Strepsils. Is it possible to overdose on Strepsils? What a way to go. Your final moments consumed by the medicinal strawberry flavour as they dissolve your insides away.

My throat feels nearly completely healed, now, but I’m sure it’s just a temporary measure, a result of it being doped up on all the throat mixtures my mother shovelled at it.

Today was the first day of three consecutive days that I’ll be in Dreamtrak Studios recording my new three-track electronic video game-inspired EP. I know that’s quite a long title, so for short I’ve dubbed it “117% Complete” – a Spyro The Dragon reference. (The studio is in Hackney, the same place I recorded Chameleon Circuit. Hackney is where music HAPPENS. That should be their slogan. Does Hackney have a slogan?)

The first song, “Sonic Doesn’t Need A Story”, was all but finished today (the ‘all but’ being that, rather crucially, it’s missing my voice). Tomorrow we’ll start on “I Hate Mario Kart Wii” and on Monday we’ll finish with “Pokémon, What Happened To You?”

So I’m spending the evening tucked up in bed, fully clothed, listening to Dan Deacon, waiting for Lily on Skype, and trying not to move my neck. And resisting the urge to send my new song to everyone on my Skype list who’s online right now with a message saying “LISTEN! NEW MUSIC BY ME! AHHHHH!” It sounds great, it really does. Tom knows exactly what he’s doing and whenever I had a criticism, he’d already be thinking the exact same thing. And we always found a way to resolve/improve what we didn’t like. He’s just brilliant.

I even thought about copying a bit of it to upload here, but I don’t wanna spoil the surprise. I’ll release it on (provisionally) March 15th, and when that happens you can all rush here to click the embedded player and hear it for free just like Parrot Stories, and it’ll be very exciting and fun (although you can also pre-order if you have faith in my/Tom’s abilities). I want that “silence till March 15th” rule to include even my best friends (with exception of Tom, who will help make it, and Alan, who will have to manufacture it). That way the release day means as much to me as it does to you, it’ll be a mutual “ahh let’s find out what it’s like/what people think” experience.

I will tell you that the song very much reflects the Sonic gaming experience – it feels like you progress through ‘levels’, there are distinct sections to it, and I used the melodies from Green Hill Zone, the Sonic 1 drowning music and the Sonic 1 theme as a basis for what I’ll eventually be singing. (Also, one of the instruments – in fact the very first thing you hear – was the result of Tom saying ‘let’s have something that sounds like the Animal Hospital theme! I love that’. Fact.)

Tom and Oli speak in a different language, by the way. “I want the music to release. Take up the attack but then feed through the delay until it oscillates at a 16th beat.” I can vaguely guess what that means, but it mostly sounds like a covert code for my assassination.

It’s less than two hours until my next Strepsil.

x

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I got The Oceanic Six’s CD this morning and it’s SO GOOD. People should definitely buy it. Now. Go. Buy it. BUY IT <3

So I did an interview with this girl from Seattle called Katie and you can read it by clicking here. Here’s a choice excerpt to get you excited:

Q: You’re just 20 years old. What is a typical day in a life for Alex Day?

A: Every night I set my alarm for around 7:30 and every morning I find myself unable to get up till about 9, silently cursing myself for sleeping in yet again. I’ll debate getting food, but end up reading Lost on-set reports and Dollhouse speculation forums for a couple hours. If it’s been a few days since my last YouTube video, I’ll start thinking of what one I wanna do next, which would require either psyching myself up to get through another godawful chapter of Stephanie Meyer fiction or putting some other plan in place (I have a folder with draft video ideas waiting to be filmed). And at some point I’ll pick up my guitar and warble my way through a cover of Paparazzi by Lady GaGa (which I’m sure thrills the neighbours more and more every time they hear it). I don’t have a job, I should point out, because there are enough kind people buying my album that I can literally just fill up the time, day after day, until the sweet release of death.

Once again, link is right here to read the rest. =D

I came up with a really cool idea for my music, which I’ve run by Alan, and am waiting for him to run by Hank to see if we can actually do it or not. But it’ll be REALLY COOL if we can. ^_^

Hearts video hasn’t got any further, cos it poured down with rain on Saturday, so we’ll be filming again in a couple weeks. Gah. I feel bad for all the people I’m dragging out of their homes to stand about with me in the cold. I might give them all copies of Parrot Stories as thanks. xD

x

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DFTBA just launched an internal monthly chart thing, which is quite cool:

http://dftba.com/shop/pages/Sales-Charts.html

Holding On is at #8 in the singles chart, and Parrot Stories is at #4 in albums – beaten only by Painfully Mainstream and This Machine Pwns N00bs (which were released last month) and Chameleon Circuit (which is still selling ridiculously well). Exciting stuff :D

My aim for TWIM is to get it to number  1 on the albums, which will mean absolutely nothing, but will be quite cool as a personal goal =)

(I should also mention that Blink, Exterminate Regenerate and An Awful Lot Of Running by CC are in the singles charts at 3, 5 and 6 respectively, which is nice, and that Trock On! is number 6 in the album chart. Disclosure: I’m in a band that writes songs about Doctor Who.)

Video soon – I’ll either be talking about my experiences applying for Mensa, my old Apple Store job, shopping at Topman … god my life is boring. Anyway, one of those.

x

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I’m always coming up with spontaneous ideas. Usually, the most they amount to is an email to Mickeleh or Alan, or occasionally Hank and John (if it’s YouTube/DFTBA related), saying “what if there was a club at DFTBA, where every month people get sent a CD with a cracked case for free?” or “what if we sold blank decks of playing cards so my subscribers could recreate my video endings?” or “what if I give out a thousand free copies of my album at VidCon?”. (In summary, the first one won’t work if more than three people sign up, the second is something we might do, and the last one is actually something I’m gonna be kind-of doing … I’m gonna burn a seven-track CD with a few Parrot Stories tracks, a few World Is Mine tracks, and one track from the 117% Complete EP, and give it out for free as a ‘demo’ CD thing on plain ol’ CD-R at VidCon.)

So yesterday after I wrote that blog about community spirit, I emailed Alan saying:

Wrote a blog about how it’s nice when artists help each other out and stuff, and it made me think for a bit about those ‘celebrity playlists’ you get on iTunes, where you can find out who Miley Cyrus’s favourite music is and buy it yourself or whatever.

What would be a cool way to do something similar on DFTBA? Maybe every month one of the CDs gets reduced in price, or free shipping on any purchases involving that CD, just for that month – on the recommendation of another DFTBA artist? We’re not allowed to pick anything we profit from, Tom can’t pick Taking Leave or Parrot Stories, but he could pick (for example) Silent Echoes maybe, so then that gets a little incentive and promotion for the month. Like an artist-chosen Pick Of The Month. And then next month, Dr Noise could pick someone.

Problem with this though is we don’t want the same CD getting discounted six times in a year cos everyone loves Hank’s music or Driftless Pony Club or whatever, so maybe this might not work. Or, maybe it’s just a separate idea. What else could we do that publicly showcases artists’ tastes within the label and gives people an opportunity to invest in them?

(Cos that’s always the first thing I do when I suggest an idea – point out all the problems and end with a vague ‘well, maybe this won’t work’ but then I still send it.)

What Alan worked out – and what went live today on the DFTBA website – is the idea of DFTBA artist playlists. Kind of like a Top Ten Chart for DFTBA, available once a month and decided by a different signed artist, allowing us to recommend our favourite DFTBA-branded music to the masses.

(For those that didn’t know I released physical copies of Parrot Stories – I’m signed to an independent record/distribution label called DFTBA Records, co-founded by Alan Lastufka of the fiveawesomeguys and Hank Green of the vlogbrothers.)

I even tried to rank them in order like a proper chart and gave my own little thoughts on each one. Unfortunately, given that I’m the first artist on the site, I won’t get my turn again for at least another year, but I would keenly encourage you all to clicky and give it a read :D I gave Alan all the relevant links so if you wanna hear the songs I recommended, you can click through to the artist’s DFTBA or bandcamp page or iTunes store section.

Yay for helping each other out!

x

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I think, as part of the booklet for The World Is Mine, I’m gonna write about unsigned acts I like. Just recommended people to check out. Not that much, maybe my top three with a little YouTube link or something. Cos one of the things I love most with all this is the community spirit. (My original idea of rattling on at length about the ideas and meanings behind the album was deemed, by me, incredibly pretentious and boring. So now I’ll fill it with fun little facts and such.)

Since I make more than enough from DFTBA sales, I figure the least I can do is buy CDs from other artists when they’re released. So I have – nearly – every release (I never got a physical of Expert because Craig gave me the files when I met him last year, but I’ll order it soon). The DFTBA artists have had a couple ideas to work on collaborations together; we discussed a fun one a while back where we all cover each other’s songs.

Anyway, someone who’s not on DFTBA but is very very cool needs my help, and I thought in the spirit of this entry that I’d help her out. I used to play acoustic shows with her, where she would outshine me night after night, cos it was three years ago and I had no stage presence and played cheesy crappy songs like “Smile” (“when I see her smile at me, it gives me strength, my room to breathe” – OH MY GOD). The only song from those days that made it on to Parrot Stories is ‘Sicily’ – think of that, Sicily being the strongest song in a set of songs.

Anyway, Fran’s wonderful, and she’s in the Vodafone Live And Unsigned competition in the UK, for which she tells me she’s through to the regional final :) If you clicky here, you’ll be able to listen to some tracks and help her out in the competition if you like them. It’d surely mean a lot to both of us if you did ^_^

(No, we’re not dating, you crazy gossips.)

Oh, one last thing to run by you – Parrot Stories. Since I’m releasing The World Is Mine in a digipak (on account of digipaks being more durable and lighter to transport), I’m thinking of converting Parrot Stories to a digipak too. So once we sell our first order of a thousand jewel cases, I’ll just order them in digipaks from then on. BUT: as part of this, since I’m improving the product, I thought it’d be nice to revise the booklet, and make it what I now think booklets should be, filled with fun facts instead of just lyrics.

So thought I’d put that out there, that’s a plan for the future. =) (No, I’m NOT asking you to buy it again :p)

x

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Today was absolutely crazy. =D

There were about a hundred of you, all screaming and going crazy. Before anything had happened. Literally, as I stepped out of Covent Garden station, a mob of people just cheered and screamed simply because I’d arrived.

We only got two shots filmed – the ones with huge crowd scenes – and we’re gonna film the rest in the next week or two. It’ll look great. To anyone reading this that came along, thank you so much :)

x

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It’s a pun, cos of snow.

I’m getting about ten messages a day from people saying “is London still on? THERE’S SO MUCH SNOW OH MY GOD” before them and their computer gets physically shunted under a pile of snow, leaving them only to click ‘Send’ and cling to what’s left of their lives while they wait for rescue from the snow fairy.

There’s not THAT much snow – trains are still running, everything’s fine, and yes tomorrow is still on. I of course would have announced if it wasn’t.

Background for those unaware; I’m filming a music video for Hearts in London tomorrow, details here:

So that’s still going on. Now, of course, it IS likely that it will be snowy and icy and we won’t be able to film anything at all. But if that happens, it’ll just be a gathering. xD However, we should be fine.

x

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I recently watched a TED talk on creativity led by Elizabeth Gilbert, recommended to me by Charlie. As part of this talk, Elizabeth (I hate referring to professionals by their last names) put forward an alternate perception of the creative process to take the pressure off creative individuals; she talked about how it often feels like a song (or a poem, or a piece of art, whatever your forté) just comes to you as if given by something external. She said that when you picture the source of your creativity as something outside of yourself, rather than something you’re always capable of yourself but only rarely able to access, you lose the constant feelings of frustration associated with the inability to tap into said muse. Elizabeth likes to think of creative ideas in the same way dream catchers approach dreams; that they will briefly breeze through you, able to be captured, but if let go will simply drift over to the next creative individual ready to play catch.

So it was, then, that having written the ten tracks for my album, I wrote an eleventh this afternoon, because the winds happened to be heading my way.

It’s called You And Me and I like it a lot – very Impossible Dreams, only without the emotional weight attached. In my track list, it comes third – between Georgia and The World Is Mine. I was inspired by a dreamy Evanescence song I recently rediscovered called ‘Anywhere‘ – I love the lyrics.

Anyway, I’ve started recording what I call my definitives – crappy recordings of the songs on my MacBook, the best I can do without assistance, but that capture the songs exactly as I intend them to sound, with all the pauses and melodic phrases in exactly the right places. I can then listen to these over and over in the build-up to my album recording, making sure I remember the song exactly the way I want to when it comes time to do it properly.

Incidentally, I’ve now booked my recording sessions for the album with my studio engineer Oli. The first session will take place on the 25th of January – the day after the recording of the 117% Complete EP – and then there will be four sessions in February, a four-day block from the 1st to the 4th of March, and a final two days on March 19th and 20th (giving us time in-between to reflect on what we’ve done up to that point and make necessary changes). That also leaves us time to book an additional session or two in April to finish everything off and make it really perfect.

A few people have been asking me lately how I can afford to do this – both the recordings, and the general living my life as a musician. The studio ain’t cheap, let me point out: Parrot Stories cost £550 to record, and The World Is Mine already looks like it’s gonna cost at least one thousand five hundred. I’ve just been very lucky, and very good with the money that’s come my way.

Chameleon Circuit, first of all, was recorded for free, and that continues to sell very well, such that I always get several hundred pounds a month from its sales. I don’t really go out drinking or partying, so most of that goes away in savings. That money paid for Parrot Stories, which has also sold well so far (and which I get a bigger cut of, because Chameleon Circuit has four members), and the money from them both will go towards The World Is Mine. Currently, I have £10,000 in my savings account, some of which I’ll be investing in an equity ISA (when did life become so boring?), the rest I’ll use to invest in things like album recordings and to spontaneously go to New York when Tom’s playing a gig there xD (I sold all my CDs in New York, though, so that helped pay that all back.)

Anyway; the money from Chameleon Circuit paid for Parrot Stories, and the money from that is gonna pay for The World Is Mine, which I’m purposely spending a lot more time on because I can afford to do so and think it’ll definitely be worth it as a result. =)

The best thing I recommend anybody do is, if you really wanna put out a CD, spend a month noting down every single penny you spend, and exactly what you spend it on. (I did it last October and called it K-TOMM – Keep Track Of Money Month.) At the end of it, you may notice you always buy the large meals from McDonalds but never finish them, in which case you can save by buying the mediums. Or you notice that you eat at McDonalds twice a week but could afford to cut back. I noticed that I’m always spending £3 at every Starbucks buying chai tea lattes when I could just buy a Capri-Sun for 70p. All that money adds up. And once you’re saving, just funnel all of it into the album. You don’t get anywhere without taking risks. It doesn’t matter how many subscribers you have – if you make a fucking great CD, it only takes one person to come across it for the ball to start rolling. And it’ll end up paying for itself anyway.

x

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Earlier today, I had a look around YouTube to see if anyone had covered one of my songs or reviewed my album, and I stumbled upon this video.

The idea was done by jonnydarkmusic at first; to take the lyrics of a popular song, translate them into another language and then back into English, and then sing the translated version.

Charlie and myself spent the rest of the afternoon singing songs we’d written, translated back from Yiddish. xD

Of particular interest is this line from Don’t Look Back:

“I can see my breath in front of me, dancing in the air with yours
We both know what we want but we can’t cos we’re so unsure“

It got translated to:

“Before I can hold my breath and dance with you
We both think that we cannot know who we are“

Which, as Becky pointed out, is ‘oddly beautiful’.

Later in the day, while failing to write Trock, Charlie played this Spanish uke solo over an old chord progression I had and made it sound all fun and new, so using the broken Don’t Look Back lyrics as a basis, I wrote THE MYTHICAL TRACK 5.

It’s called Hometown. I have to fiddle with it a bit, but it’s interesting and just what I was looking for – an interesting, different middle song to bridge the gap between Living On The Underground and Dead And Gone.

(Not all the translations were so poetic. “When it gets to midnight, can you take my freezing hands and dance?” became “In the evening I opened the freezer to get a dance?“)

x

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Ten fun facts about the songs on Parrot Stories, GO:

1) A Thousand Hours, No Sacrifice and Hearts were all written in the same week during December 2008, a month when I had no internet access and was subsequently far more productive. I wrote Don’t Look Back a few weeks afterward, as well as three other songs that didn’t make it on the album. (Bonus facts – Holding On and No More were written around the same time in summer 2008, and Impossible Dreams was the last song for the album, written in summer 2009 several months after the rest of the tracks were finished).

2) The line I’m proudest of on the album is “If you ever need me, I’m only a vodka away from you” from No More.

3) My least favourite line is the description of “perfect glossy hair” in Hearts. Imagine being asked to describe someone’s hair in two words and saying: ‘perfect. And glossy!’ – What a tosser.

4) Holding On took its production style from a song by Roses Kings Castles called ‘Horses‘ – in the studio I played the song for Tom and said ‘we need to make it sound like this’.

5) Candy Floss was written under a tree one night with Mhairi in an attempt to write a cute song similar to ‘Birds‘ by Kate Nash.

6) Impossible Dreams was inspired by the rhythm of a Slipknot song called ‘Circle‘.

7) Some of my lyrics sound really creepy. Most of the ones on the new album do, including lines like “Now I know how to make you mine … I won’t let you go” (from You Can’t Trust Me), and “lay down and close your eyes – all things have to die” (from Not Just Yet) but the creepiest one on Parrot Stories is ”She was gonna go, but I said ‘no, I don’t think so’ ” from Candy Floss xD

8) How We Were nearly didn’t make it on the CD. On the night before the final day of recording, I decided to take one of the planned tracks (titled Standing In One Piece, a uke song) off the album and replace it with this one. (It was a good decision.)

9) In the CD booklet for Parrot Stories, Lex is described as doing ‘lighting’ because our engineer in the studio had a lamp shaped like a duck, and Lex looks a bit like a duck (a recurring joke to the joy of all but Lex).

10) The font on the cover of the CD – and the logo of my name on this website – is a completely original font, because it’s the handwriting of Alan (co-owner of DFTBA Records).

ALSO: A worrying amount of people in my last blog post said “wait … you sell physical CDs of Parrot Stories?” – yep, see how on my blog on the right hand side there’s a link that says ‘buy on CD’, and you notice how on every music video I upload there’s a link that says ‘buy on CD’? RAWWR. THIS IS NOT MY FAULT.

Yes, I sell physicals. xD And the physicals have a HIDDEN TRACK (well, sort of) so you’re totally missing out. If the link on the right of this page isn’t enough for you – maybe you’re seeing this through an RSS reader – here’s the link again. Bonus last fact: the last time I checked, I’d sold 599 copies of my album, so you could be the six hundredth! :D

x

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(I just saw a debate show on TV called ‘The Big Questions’ and the question they asked was ‘is the pub more important than the church’ – WHAT? There were a load of ming-mongs all saying “they’re both important in different ways” and at no point did someone stand up and cry “WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE DOING?!”)

According to dictionary.com, ‘pedantic’ is:

overly concerned with minute details or formalisms.

When I was about 3 or 4 (having been able to read much earlier than the other kids in my class), I managed to say this word. Somehow. I don’t know. But instead of going with ‘picky’, I told someone not to be ‘pedantic’.

Which is proof, if anything, that I AM pedantic.

(Another smart-ass story from my childhood; some idiot thug kid walked up to me when I was 12 and said “do you think you’re smarter than me?”, to which I answered “relatively”. He said “what the fuck does relatively mean?” and I said “well, if you don’t know…”)

This brings me on to the issue of CD booklets.

My view is that if someone’s made the effort to buy the physical CD instead of just downloading it on iTunes, they deserve a really cool CD booklet. And I failed on that with Parrot Stories. I just threw the lyrics in, like all CD booklets do, without really thinking about WHAT a CD booklet should actually do. I mean, all the lyrics and the chords to my songs are on this site, so the booklet’s all-but-redundant.

For The World Is Mine I want the booklet to be something I put just as much thought into as the arrangement of the music, not something I put together at the end. I’m thinking of just writing it all, so it’s literally a literary accompaniment to the album – a pamphlet – with meanings of songs, and some of my thoughts, and stuff like that.

Same with the CD artwork and the CD face. I want you to get something out of having it beyond just owning it, and I also want those designs to sum up the duality I’m getting across on the album. When Charlie and I interviewed Carrie Grant for the Chartjackers project, she emphasised how important it was that the music, the voice, the style, the artwork etc all need to say the same thing. It needs to all work together.

I’ll be thinking about this a while, if this conversation I had with Alan during the finishing of Parrot Stories is anything to go by:

Alex Day
Can you put the swirls on in the background, just on that thank-you page for now, and see how that looks?

AlanDistro
sure

Alex Day
cheers

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories4.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
Okay, I’d say to take that horse disclaimer and space it so there’s an even gap between the text above it and the bottom of the sheet. Aside from that I think it’s fine. Or maybe not that far down if it looks weird, but a little further down than it is now at least.

AlanDistro
ok done.

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories5.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
okay cool, cheers. One other thing is I think the quote at the top should have the same thing done to it – moving up so there’s the same amount of space at top and bottom. Aside from that it looks beautiful

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories6.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
Could you move the Parrot Stories title up a bit? Or maybe the quote and the title. And also I think the multi-coloured swirls would be best on the thank-you page, and the single colour swirls on each of the lyric pages.

AlanDistro
good call

Alex Day
I think it’s just that title/subtitle that needs to be moved up a bit actually, not the quote

AlanDistro
ok

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories7.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
Could you move the ‘Alex Day Parrot Stories’ block up a tiny bit? Everything else is spot on, the thank you bit is fine now I think.

AlanDistro
on the front cover?

Alex Day
mhm

AlanDistro
kk

Alex Day
there’s just a little more space above it than below

AlanDistro
well, that is for bleed, that will be cut off, look at the grey cut lines to the right of it, and that will show you where it will be cut

Alex Day
Even with that cut at the top I think it needs a slight upward movement, even if it’s just a few pixels

AlanDistro
ok, let me fix the title and then I’ll send over the 8th and hoepfully final version =)

Alex Day
haha, sorry to be so picky

Alex Day
It should be the last yeah

Alex Day
WAIT

Alex Day
Before you send it

Alex Day
Do you think the name ‘Blanche’ should be unitalicized?

AlanDistro
it does look better unitalicized

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories8.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
I just measured, and the Alex Day/Parrot Stories block needs moving up three more pixels

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories9.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
Hahahaha. The text looks exactly the same.

AlanDistro
it’s not, it’s three pixels higher =)

Alex Day
I’m being a twat. It’s fine. I approve. Go. No more of this. xD

I’ve reverted back to my original plan of having the artwork in orange (the artwork originally planned for the non-album Epigrams And Interludes, for those loyal long-time readers). So that’s where my head’s at now. More to follow.

x

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Incase that’s hard to read:

1. Together Tonight
2. Georgia
3. The World Is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything)
4. Living On The Underground
5. xxxxxx
6. Dead And Gone
7. Missing You
8. Stay With Me
9. You Can’t Trust Me
10. Not Just Yet

You’ll notice, first of all, that track 5 is missing. In working out the order for the songs this morning, I realised that “If I Was Peter Pan” wouldn’t really fit with the rest, and that means there’s a gap. My process was as follows:

-I knew track 1 and track 2 would be Together Tonight/Georgia, and tracks 9 and 10 would be You Can’t Trust Me/Not Just Yet. So they went in first.

-I knew that The World Is Mine and Living On The Underground would be either tracks 3 and 4 or 4 and 5, hence that first box (I decided 3 and 4), and that I wanted Missing You and Stay With Me to run together in either order at the 7/8 position, hence the second box (I decided Missing You would go first).

-That left Dead And Gone slotting nicely before Missing You at track 6, and one space open.

You’ll also notice in the corner that I grouped them by act. This is really just for production, I’m not sure if I’ll divide them up in any visible way on the back of the CD, but I do want it to sound quite orchestral and musical, so I divided them thus:

1. Together Tonight
2. Georgia
3. The World Is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything)
-
4. Living On The Underground
5. xxxxxx
6. Dead And Gone
7. Missing You
-
8. Stay With Me
9. You Can’t Trust Me
10. Not Just Yet

I’ll get to work on that final song. I’m very excited about this :D

x

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It’s the last day of the decade. I only get to say that once every ten years. Next time I’m in this position, I’ll be thirty. How exciting :D

I’m going out for the day to London, because I’ve been meaning to go to the London Transport Museum for months and Becky said that if I went to the British Museum with her, she’d go to the Transport Museum with me. So that’s what we’re doing :)

I finished a rough version of You Can’t Trust Me last night – I think it’s quite cool. It’ll be the song before the end. I learned a lot about repetition from a Beatles song called Polythene Pam – especially since it was pointed out to me that it sounds pretty similar to Georgia xD It needs a lot of melody construction but it’ll be done soon enough.

I don’t have a full track order worked out, but I know roughly where things will go: I know Together Tonight and Georgia will be the first two, and You Can’t Trust Me and Not Just Yet will be the last two.

I should probably tell you guys that I’m aiming to start recording The World Is Mine in February for release in June. Parrot Stories was recorded over four days, we did three songs a day, but for this I plan to spend a full day on every song, over the period of a month or two, so I can go away and listen and work out the best things to do for each track. In the meantime, I’m going into the studio on January 23rd/24th to record the 117% Complete EP, and that’ll be out in March.

Hope your New Year is fun :D

x

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w00 Boxing Day YEEEAH

My mum lied – turned out she DID get that big duvet for me, and surprised me with it, throwing me off the trail with LIES. So I slept in it and it’s very cosy <3

We had a big roast, watched The Incredibles and Doctor Who on BBC1 (the episode was mostly setup, but WHAT AN ENDING) – my mum didn’t know it was a two-part episode, so she’d braced herself for Tennant’s regeneration, and it was an even bigger cliffhanger for her when that didn’t happen xD

I also got (among other things) this book of puzzles and riddles from Becky, so we spent the evening reading them to each other in silly voices and then trying to solve them.

I played all the new songs I’ve written for The World Is Mine to Becky for her thoughts, which so far is eight finished songs and two half-finished ones. And I read lots of Don’t Look Back comments, including one saying I’m ‘trying too hard to sound like Lily Allen’. It’s not my fault we’re both from London xD Someone brought up that I didn’t sound like that in the past, implying that I’d intentionally changed my singing style in an attempt to sound more commercial or whatever, and that’s not true at all – I just grew out of singing in an American accent and started using my own voice. If anything, it was a move designed for me to be more true to myself.

I’ll stop going on about it in a bit, but I just wanna gush again about how proud I am of the Don’t Look Back video xD I’ve watched it so many times. And I really like that some people on YouTube don’t like it. Maybe I’ve been hanging out with Tom too much, but people who say that they wish the video had matched the music better, or that I should have used a tripod, or that I accidentally left some of the sound in … all these moves were made completely intentionally, and I did everything to get across the feel that the song has to me and what it means in my eyes. It makes me feel glad that people don’t just like whatever I do because it’s me, and that the people who understand the feelings of loneliness and self-destruction in Don’t Look Back will see that the playful video is a perfect counterpart.

This is starting to sound a bit Nietzschian so I’m gonna leave it there.

x

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I’ve just finished the Don’t Look Back video :D I’m really proud of it.

Christmas morning in London is what you’d expect – desolate and freezing. We were really limited on time, so I missed a lot of shots that I wanted to get at St Pauls, Oxford Circus and Covent Garden, meaning that the version of the song in the video is slightly shorter than the one on the album because I literally had to use every shot I filmed to fill up the time I had.

The general spirit of the video is treating London like a playground and just having fun, which I think works really well to contrast with the message of the song (that being self-indulgent can be harmful to others). I love it <3 And I’m sure you guys will love it – let me know in the comments what you think. I can’t wait to do more videos in the new year; I think a lot of people on YouTube still consider me ‘a guy that sometimes sings’ instead of ‘a serious musician’, like my music is more of a hobby to me than a career, and making regular music videos to showcase my work is a perfect remedy to that attitude.

I got a lot of comments from people who got Parrot Stories as a Christmas present, so that’s awesome. Thanks for telling me you got the CD and I hope you enjoy the music ^^

x

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The idea of storyboarding used to be something I hated. I don’t like drawing, I don’t like drawing out pictures of scenes in my head – which is always what I was taught storyboarding was. But tonight I just spent two and a half hours storyboarding Don’t Look Back, which meant a lot of talking out loud, listening to the song through in sequence, making grand gestures in my living room while I paced it, picturing angles and cuts and noting them all down as lines of text in my phone with directions and abbreviations, picturing them in my head, until I had the entire video in sequence from start to finish. The experience was a lot more me. (I’m a very logical person.)

Let me tell you, in my head it looks great xD If London really is empty tomorrow morning, it’ll look beautiful. And it’s my chance to really direct something impressive beyond straight cuts in a vlog. (Holding On doesn’t count really, as Charlie edited that.)

I’m excited. But now it’s officially Christmas Day, and I need to go to sleep.

Thanks for all your comments so far on the last blog entry, btw <3 You guys rule. I’ll digest them properly in a couple days.

(EDIT: I hit eighty thousand subscribers on YouTube just before midnight, so thanks for that too :D It’s like a Christmas present from you to me … does this mean I have to get you something in return? :/)

x

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I’ve just finished wrapping all my Christmas presents ON MY OWN. Well, pretty much on my own – my friend Emma was holding down the sellotape for me. (As I understand it, Americans don’t call it sellotape, they call it ’scotch tape’. So that’s what that is.) But I’ve never really done that before, so … milestone, innit.

Emma’s staying here tonight because tomorrow morning she’s doing me the kind favour of driving me into London and back. I plan to film a music video for Don’t Look Back, consisting of walking around London while it’s empty, getting cool shots of all the empty landmarks, and then be back in time for lunch with my family <3

I’m planning to do a music video every month for my channel, because I’ve been complacent with that and really should have followed up Holding On with something cool – do you guys have any requests? At the moment I definitely wanna do Hearts, and maybe A Thousand Hours and/or No Sacrifice. But I’ve heard from a lot of people that No More is one of my best songs, so should I do that instead? This isn’t a “whatever you say, I’ll do” type deal, my mind’s pretty much made up, but I will take your opinions into consideration :)

Speaking of music, as I always do in this blog because I’m a boring one-dimensional person, I’ve booked a recording session on the weekend of January 23rd to record the 117% Complete EP, the three-track video game extravaganza. The plan is to film music videos for all three songs and release them on my channel over 117 hours, which is about five days :D

My mum just gave me one of my Christmas presents early, as I’ve just upgraded from a single bed to a double. I say upgraded; it’s not like phone companies, the bed people didn’t put me on an 18-month double bed plan, with 300 free hours of sleep a month. That would be nonsensical. But given that I now have a double bed, I need a new duvet that fits the double bed.

My mum didn’t give me the duvet for the double bed. What she gave me was a duvet cover for a double bed. I said, “do you have a double bed duvet that I can use?”

And in a moment of genius, she genuinely responded with: “no, I’m going to wait till after Christmas so I can get one in the sales”.

Heartfelt Christmas gifts for all xD

x

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Right, I suppose I should write with some reasonable consideration now.

On November 16th 2009, “I’ve Got Nothing” entered the charts at number 36. The song was developed, written and recorded completely through internet submissions, and was the culmination of a project that began ten weeks earlier when myself and three other YouTubers started a new YouTube channel called “Chartjackers”. The aim was to document the progress of an internet-constructed single to be released for charity. The melody, the lyrics, all of it was contributed by the online community, and we purposefully made something very cheesy, something that harks back to the days before pop took itself seriously. (The song is still available on iTunes and the money from every sale goes to Children In Need. You can see the music video here and watch the finished half-hour documentary here – the BBC filmed us on our journey).

We were aiming for number 1, but we had a number of roadblocks in our path. In my opinion, the biggest problem we had was that we relied too much on traditional media. Our internet community were amazing, getting the word ‘Chartjackers’ in the trending topics on Twitter no less than four times, emailing radio stations and DJs, but that was the thing – our show was on television. We asked traditional radio to play the song. We asked newspapers and magazines for coverage. When they turned us down we were disheartened. But we never saw that we had plenty of power all our own. Instead of using the online community to get the attention of the people that (we thought) had the real means to support us, we should have realised that we could have mobilised the internet ourselves and took over the charts without needing traditional media at all.

The Rage campaign, by contrast, is a perfect example of how it should have been done. No old media included. Nobody played Killing In The Name on the radio or on TV this week – they didn’t have to. It was never about that. If they’d emailed radio DJs and said “play Killing In The Name, get it to number 1″ – they wouldn’t have. The media are reactive. So they just did it themselves. And (perhaps ironically) enough people cared about the Rage campaign that traditional media DID start paying attention. Now, I’d argue that this is also because the “beat the X Factor” idea is much more appealing than the “let’s see what the internet can do” idea, because the former incorporates the latter – but I think there’s a lot to be learned from this.

I loved the Chartjackers project and wouldn’t change anything that happened. We didn’t get to number 1, but we DID get to number 36, we raised over ten thousand pounds for Children In Need, and now just over a month later, the internet have controlled the charts again in a much more significant way and raised even more money for charity (over sixty thousand pounds has been donated to Shelter by fans of Killing In The Name).

What I’m trying to say is that I feel like these two events are the start of something. We’re at a turning point for the music industry, where the people get more say and, in the words of Rage, won’t do what they tell us.

x

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I’m listening to the Radio 1 Chart Show right now for the first time since Chartjackers to find out if Rage Against The Machine got more sales than the winner of The X Factor this week. I’m rooting for Rage.

Bad Romance by Lady GaGa is the official Number 3, which is lovely :) That song is the anthem of our holiday, rather unexpectedly.

It’s not gonna be a problem if Rage aren’t Number 1 – it’ll just mean more people bought Joe’s song. That makes it completely fair. He deserves it if more people like him than like Rage, even if the internet makes it feel like people don’t. The sales speak for themselves.

…

YES!!!!!!! FUCK!!!!!! <3333333

WHAT THE HELL GUYS?!?!?!?! THE INTERNET WINS!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH ^____^

x

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I did some work on music today – fixed/improved some melodies, added two extra lines to Together Tonight, and just finished a new song called Missing You. It’s a bit strange – it’s in three different parts, a bit like Jesus Of Suburbia, except fluctuating between fast bits and slow bits. That’s what I’ve tried to do with the new songs, to get across that duality – half The World Is Mine and half I Don’t Know Anything – that the songs are like an internal battle between what I want to say and what I need to say.

Anyway, I just sent it to Tom, so if he hates it you’ll never hear about it again, cos he produces my music. But I like it :)

x

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“Get me back; get me back to New York
She’s got something I’m looking for

And from that moment on
My life would never be the same”
-”She’s Got Something“, Greg Holden

I just finished writing a new song called Not Just Yet. It’s about waiting for something you can’t have. I started it last night and finished it just now and it’s nice.

I also started another one on the plane, a jumpy lively one called You Can’t Trust Me, which I haven’t put any guitar to yet, but it’s in the key of A, if that interests you.

So that’s my life so far – I’ve updated the videos page with a song from the NY show, if you’re interested in that :) Just clicky on here.

(Also I’m playing at VidCon shhh)

x

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This day has definitely been the most fun. The gig was incredible, but today was great overall.

To give you some perspective, it started with Tom recounting a story about how, while trying to get to sleep last night, he ended up in this half-awake half-asleep hallucination where he spent thirty minutes unravelling a wristband he was wearing, and when he finally completed the task he declared triumphantly, “I’ve done it! I’ve discovered the meaning of life!” – and then he just fell back to sleep again.

We didn’t plan it to be one, but today ended up as a YouTube gathering, just cos we kept inviting more and more people. In the end there were ten of us (including – most notably – meekakitty, who was lovely and who I had never met before). While waiting for some of our party to arrive at Grand Central Station (which I got excited about cos I recognised it from the pilot of Gossip Girl: what a loser), a homeless guy walked up to us asking for two bucks. He said he was sick and wanted a pint. Tom said, “what, a pint of medicine?” The guy said his name was Timmy and he wanted to share the pint with his brother Jimmy. I gave him a buck. He took my hand to shake it and then held it there, looking at me with his soulless eyes, and saying:

“I’m an alcoholic.”

And then he just held my gaze.

What the fuck was I supposed to do? I’d just given him money for alcohol!

Fortunately the dilemma was interrupted by further surrealism, cos the guy started saying he was friends with Eminem and did we want to hear him rap?!

So he just started rapping, right there, in front of us. There was nothing we could do.

That evening we arranged to have dinner with Maureen Johnson at a Chinese restaurant, and on the way we passed a tattoo place. Ed suggested we all get tattoos. Tom sparked the following ad-lib:

“Yeah, you should do it. Get an eagle. Across your entire back. No – TWO eagles. Two eagles KISSING. OH, and then underneath the two eagles kissing, it could say ‘equal opportunities’. NO – ‘EAGLE OPPORTUNITIES’!”

(I realise this blog is mostly ‘I have a friend called Tom what is funny’.)

The day ended with Michael Aranda losing one of the lenses of his sunglasses into the koi pond at the Chinese restaurant. The final scene had Aranda standing to the side of the pond, looking fretful, while a worried restaurant worker tried to fish the lens out of the pond with a pair of chopsticks.

You can’t make this stuff up.

x

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I went to a They Might Be Giants gig yesterday :D It was my first TMBG experience and I absolutely loved them. They don’t have the typically boisterous/cocky stage persona I’m used to, but they still have a huge presence on stage, so I found that very interesting to watch, and got a couple ideas for songs just from hearing theirs. They’re very good.

They were promoting their new album “Here Comes Science”, and as such were performing in the New York Hall Of Science in Queens, so after the gig finished (I stole their setlist to give to Tom), we got to explore and learn science things. =D

That evening was spent chilling out playing pool – the highlight of which was when Ed took a mighty stance, commanded “double-team!” and sunk two balls at once – until Ed said he wanted to play us his new album, so that’s what we did. We found an empty ball room type place on the first floor, and Melody, Tom and myself sat in a row and listened to Ed play the whole of his upcoming album, in order, on my guitar. It was fantastic. I think I’ll always associate that album with that night. If I woke up now from a lifelong dream, I’d make sure to write it down; cos I’d like to think that I’ve learned some things … but it’s too late now.

I’ll put up videos from the gig as soon as I get home – the internet here is very slow.

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Faithful readers of my blog; the evening of Saturday December 12th was the best night of my life. <3

I’m going to try and be brief, because I’m still in New York and I like it here and don’t want to be on my computer, but here are some sexy briefs to give you an idea of my night:

We left the hostel for the gig, in a taxi, and as it pulled away the driver said “where to?” Charlie, Tom, Ed and myself all looked at each other, and it became clear that none of us knew what the address was. So that delayed us somewhat.

When we finally arrived, we were greeted by Liane from the fiveawesomegirls, and I saw Sam Friedman, and then there were PEOPLE. SO MANY PEOPLE. We walked in. People squealed. As we walked through the crowd, one of them thrust a copy of New Moon into my hands and said “you can keep that!” Throughout the night I also got given a K9 Christmas card, several handmade bracelets, a letter, and a banana with a girl’s phone number on it. Definitely the most inventive way of being given a phone number I’ve ever experienced. It’s also the first time I’ve ever been given a gift with a shelf life.

The people. Oh, the beautiful beautiful people. I didn’t get to speak to them personally but Greg Holden and Maureen Johnson were both there, I saw them in the crowd, but thought it best not to say “LOOK! MAUREEN JOHNSON! EVERYONE LOOK!” And the crowd, oh my goodness. It’s the best show I’ve ever played by about a million times. Everyone was so excited, and so pretty, and everyone had fun things to say. I specifically remember Olivia, and Camille, both of which should definitely message me on YouTube so that I can personally tell them how amazing they are. (And no fakers. I remember what they were both wearing. There will be tests. =p) And MELISSA, who it turns out is my biggest fan. So if I ever meet anyone who claims to be my biggest fan, I can say “NO YOU’RE NOT! I’VE MET HER! HER NAME IS MELISSA!” This girl had my song lyrics written all over her ‘pants’ (by which I mean trousers).

The gig was so fun. We were all so high energy. Tom started his set with Porphyrophobia and Indigo, and it was just fantastic. Ed got a great response for all his songs. I got to finish my set by saying “thank you New York”, thus living a dream right there. People keep saying to me “these big crowds of YouTube girls all there for you, I suppose you get used to it” – I DON’T GET USED TO IT. The gleeful expression mounted on my face for the entirety of last night is proof of this.

And then, before his last song … Tom drags Charlie on stage. Charlie didn’t know this would happen. Nobody did. Charlie, put on the spot, plays Acne Song, culminating in a lengthy improvised version of his crazy mouth scat section. It left me crying with laughter. The crowd went CRAZY. It was incredible. Everyone was incredible. Ahhhhhhh <33

I SOLD OUT OF EVERYTHING. Chameleon Circuit, Parrot Stories, ALL OF IT.

And then, after being mobbed by people (including the aforementioned Camille and Olivia), we staggered home to the hostel bed. Charlie and I were shattered. Everyone else except us and Melody went out for pizza. Charlie went straight to sleep, Melody and I chatted for ages and then fell asleep.

When I woke up, I saw Tom in the bed opposite me, and in his half-asleep stupor, he reached out and grabbed this cuddly penguin he has, and curled up with it. :D

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This flight’s gone by pretty fast, considering it’s eight hours. My eyes have felt achey – you know when you’re tired but you can’t sleep – so I haven’t had enough will to read or do anything too exciting. I watched episode 4 of FlashForward, about to watch episode 5. Dominic Monaghan’s just appeared. That’s exciting. Listened to some old episodes of the Ricky Gervais podcast. Charlie’s been watching stuff on the in-flight system. Tom fell asleep watching Up. Claire’s been reading The Time Traveller’s Wife, if you’re interested in what she’s up to. I had beef for lunch, and a choc-ice, and this is the most boring entry I’ve ever written.

The reason for the update is that I also started thinking about The World Is Mine, and coming up with ideas for the direction I want the music and the songs to go in. I want it to have a kind of duality, like the title – like the music is trying to mask my true feelings but they keep slipping out, and it’s this constant battle. Together Tonight (which at the moment is the first track) is half slow and half speedy so that works nicely. I also renamed I Love You to Stay With Me, which is a little less cheesy (I thought about calling it ‘Funhead’, but I just couldn’t do it). I also played around a little with the track order and the ideas behind the songs, and what I’m trying to convey with each, and how the music can help tell the story, something Tom’s been helping me out a lot with lately.

I don’t think I’ll push the album past ten songs. That’ll make sure that between now and next spring (when I hope to start recording) I’ll be able to keep writing and filtering and picking the very best things I come up with for final inclusion. I did that with Parrot Stories – I had 11 tracks, and then every time I wrote something new, I’d put a new track on and get rid of an old one, because I didn’t want it to be too bloated. Though of course, if I happen to write 11 or 12 songs I think are great and really want to share, then I’ll happily do that :)

I can fit one more episode of FlashForward in before the plane descends.

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My old online diary caused much controversy through its many years online. I started it in 2003, when I was 14, and kept it until just a few months ago. I referred to it as a diary, not a blog, because it was very candid and honest. I grew up a lot in that time, and I used my diary to help understand the new thoughts and feelings I had. I’ve always been happy to expose myself like that; when I was 15 I bleached my hair because I had issues with self-confidence, figuring that if I drew all the attention to me, such that I couldn’t get away from it, I’d HAVE to learn to deal with it. I tend to do things in extremes. And it worked, incidentally. My point is I’ve always believed that the biggest problem in the world is miscommunication, and that if someone feels something, they should be proud of those feelings, and not try and hide them away.

Anyway, this is all a digression: the point is that this blog is designed with a more professional veneer. It’s a blog, not a diary. I’m still trying to be me, and be candid, and not just update whenever I have a gig to play, but I won’t go on at length about the new girl I’m dating, or my own personal friendship dramas. (I think that the people who read this blog will think ‘he’s so open!’ but the people who used to read my diary will think ‘he’s so guarded!’)

But out of everything I wrote in that diary over those six years, the thing I loved the most was when I wrote about travelling. I love travel anecdotes. I’ve never had any travel experience that didn’t contain at least one or two completely unique and surreal moments.

Charlie, Tom and myself are on a plane to New York right now :D Virgin Atlantic flight VS045. I’m in their flying club, so I got a lot of miles for this trip. Tom and I tried to blag our way into first class earlier by chatting to the woman at bag drop – her name was Lucy – and saying all this stuff about how we were launching a CD, and playing a gig, and would you like a copy of my album Parrot Stories

Here we are in economy, one CD down. xD And I think I’ll be giving another copy to the girl sitting next to Tom; a financial advisor named Claire, who seems just lovely.

Boarding this flight was the most hectic experience I’ve ever had at an airport. We went to get food. And then the food took ages, such that we only had five minutes to eat it, because the flight had already started boarding by the time it was served. I’ve never eaten a full English so quickly. And I remembered I had to buy shampoo so I raced off to do that, and we raced off to Gate 20 only to discover that Tom had left his ukulele in the security area, so he headed back and found it:

“That’s my ukulele!” he said in a panic, “can I have it please?”

The dreary-eyed woman at the security desk threw a casual glance over her shoulder at the instrument in its black carry-case, and replied at a pace that held no regard for our urgency, “how do I know this is your ukulele, sir?”

Tom and I looked at each other. “We do have a plane to catch,” I said, with that hopeful ‘give a guy a break’ face.

The woman decided to ask two questions to prove the authenticity of Tom’s ownership.

“What colour is it?” She said. “How many strings does it have?”

Tom came alive.

“Four! And … ukulele-coloured!” He didn’t know how else to describe that orangey-brown stringed instrument tinge.

And although correctly answering those questions required only that you know what a ukulele IS, Tom got his instrument back. She didn’t even check the bag. He could have said “green! It’s green, with sparkles, and the machine-heads are made of gold, and it tunes itself, and all the vowels are the wrong way round so we call it an ekulalo!”

We pegged it back to Gate 20 and made it on the flight in time, Tom played me an album by The Flaming Lips because he’s trying to broaden my musical horizons to anything beyond Green Day, and now I sit here writing this. Charlie is on my right watching District 9; Tom is on my left watching Family Guy; and I’m gonna open up the next episode of Flashforward and watch myself a treat.

(EDIT: Tom is now watching Up. <3)

The pilot just said, “welcome aboard this flight; on board today we have 324 passengers and two cats!”

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Tonight was fantastic :D

Tom, Charlie, Becky and I headed to Disney’s corporate office in London, although I use the term ‘corporate office’ very loosely. There was a giant silver Mickey statue in the main lobby and the banisters had Mickey head emblems on them.

The waiting area to see the film was also lovely, filled with memorabilia, a bust of Walt Disney, sketch artwork, production stills, a giant WALL·E … I asked the woman who’d invited us, Grace, if she could show us around any other areas of the building, and officially I am not allowed to tell you that we got to see the Disney/Pixar meeting room. It didn’t happen. (The lifts played the High School Musical soundtrack :D)

The women’s loo had an EVE print on it, and the men’s (I’m told) used to have a matching WALL·E print <3 WALL·E is my favourite film of all time, so that was nice.

We also snuck through a door into ‘Café Disney’, the canteen area, which was filled with more Disney charm and a massive mural containing every Disney-owned property in one huge wall-size picture. I took the following small picture containing a key to the image, showing what everything is – if anyone can find the full-size one online, link me and I’ll amend this post:

I really hope someone finds it, cos I wanna showcase the full thing.

The film itself was brilliant. It took me a little while to get into, but it had everything that the old Disney classics had – music, theatrics, warmth, skinny villains, anthropomorphic comedy relief, princes and princesses, a musical acid sequence, a crazy wise person who hits the protagonist with a stick, THE LOT. The third act in particular was masterful; everything tied itself together beautifully.

I got to meet Mia Rose, by which I mean I watched Mia Rose walk up to Charlie and not look at/acknowledge the rest of us in any way while she spoke to him, until right at the end when she shook our hands briefly out of politeness and vanished into the music industry. (Charlie said jokingly, “I just overtook you in subscribers!” and she replied a little condescendingly, “oh, I don’t pay attention to any of that stuff. But I’m so happy for you!”)

I also saw Bryony, who actually cared enough to say hello and engage me in conversation, so that’s nice. If you’re thinking of subscribing to Mia, don’t worry about it; go sub to Bryony instead :)

That’s about all. My typing is keeping Becky awake, so I shall sign off. Tomorrow’s gonna be busy on account of me PACKING FOR NEW YORK OH YES.

(If you wanna see The Princess And The Frog – and I definitely recommend that you do – it’s out on general release from December 11th in the US, February 5th in the UK, and other times in other countries that I don’t care enough to mention here.)

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I spent yesterday evening at the Hat Trick christmas party, which was nice. Last year I went to the 19 Management christmas party; I’m hoping that swanky corporate parties can be a Yuletide tradition of mine. Charlie and I had a lovely chat on the train home, just talking about childhood experiences and stuff, and then we played New Super Mario Bros Wii (which he has left here for me to play some more <3). It’s a great game for one person, but the gameplay is problematic with two.

I’ve taken Out On The Town and my re-written version of Tonight off the list of songs for potential inclusion on The World Is Mine – I was never into either of them that much – so that leaves me with six tracks; Dead And Gone, Together Tonight, The World Is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything), Georgia, Living On The Underground and I Love You.

In two days time, I’ll be in New York. Very exciting :D This evening, I’m attending a blog screening of Disney’s new 2d-animated film The Princess And The Frog – Charlie does some stuff with Disney and he had a spare ticket – so that’s good :)

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Yo blog people, if you click the ‘Videos’ tab here on my site, you can see two live videos from the gig on Saturday, courtesy of LondoniPhone :)

And for those of you in the RSS feed, just click here!

Also, NEW COMMENT SYSTEM! Now we have a little reply button, so we can have threaded conversations just like YouTube – so I can reply to people in there instead of making everybody read our little conversations =)

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Yesterday marked my first experience playing my songs in front of a live audience. Much fun <3

The event was to celebrate the release of Tom’s new album Painfully Mainstream. I supported him by playing Candy Floss, Hearts, Don’t Look Back, Holding On and No Sacrifice. It went really well ^_^ We had microphone issues when I started, so I just unplugged the uke and sung Candy Floss completely acoustically. There were a few girls (and my friend Lewis) up front who wanted to hear No More, which was sweet, so I’ll definitely put that in the next set I do in the UK. But after the New York gig this Saturday I won’t be gigging for a while – Tom, Ed and I are gonna focus on rehearsing as a full band with a bassist and drummer, and then rock the UK in the spring :)

There was a point during Don’t Look Back where I closed my eyes and my voice started breaking and being all emotional, and when I looked at the crowd again, they looked really concerned xD I do tend to break down a bit whenever I sing that song.

Oh, and I made £110, cos I sold lots of CDs :) So that pays for my hostel in New York.

Thank you to everyone who was there, especially those who were singing along <3

(Ed and Tom have written their own blogs about the event here and here.)

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Saw a few blog comments I wanted to reply to :)

Kristen: “Hey Alex, would you mind telling us what some of your favorite bands are? I know you love Green Day but that’s all I’ve heard you mention. I’m aways looking for new music and I have a feeling you’ve got great taste in bands.“

My top 3 favourite bands are Green Day, McFly and The Beatles. I used to include Linkin Park, Evanescence, Maroon 5 and My Chemical Romance in there, but sadly I don’t listen to them so much anymore, though I still rotate The Black Parade quite a lot on my iPod. To be honest though, most of the artists I listen to regularly are YouTube/unsigned acts: Greg Holden, Eddplant, Tom Milsom, Hank Green, Dr Noise, ALL CAPS, Raven Zoë, Blue Skies and Julia Nunes, and many others I haven’t mentioned for sake of space.

jennasie: “who is it that sings on your song hearts? im searching all over and cannot figure it out at all.“

Did you look on DFTBA.com? :p Hearts and Candy Floss both have Lex Croucher filling in on vocals.

Lauren: “I just don’t understand at all how anyone can see these things that you mentioned you were amazed at and not think, “wow, there MUST be someone or something planning all this” I mean, you mentioned things like the bicycle, and the computer. These things did not just come into existence on their own. They started with an idea from someone, and then they CREATED it. All these variables that work out just perfect are not some complete amazing accident. How could they possibly be?“

Well I tried to explain that, to me, it’s MORE amazing that they WEREN’T created. No, the bicycle didn’t come into existence on its own. But imagine IF IT HAD!

If you take the argument that the more complex something is, the less likely it is to have appeared from nowhere … what’s more complex than an all-powerful omnipresent supreme deity? Your argument actually makes it EVEN LESS LIKELY that God exists.

Also, I find religious people give too much credit to the world. You said “all these variables that work out just perfect are not some complete amazing accident” – we’re not perfect! Nowhere near! Example: people use the banana as proof of the existence of God, because it’s so ‘perfectly’ designed for humans to use: it fits nicely in the ridges of our hand; you open it like a ring pull; the food is ‘perfectly’ contained inside. Now, not having a go at the banana, but what about bruising? And have you TRIED peeling a banana lately? Sometimes they can be a right bitch to get into. And what about all the foods that AREN’T as easy to get through as the banana?

We WERE an ‘amazing accident’. If you bear in mind that things have been developing over millions and millions of years, on all the planets that could exist in the known universe … eventually, it’s not hard to imagine that one of them got it a bit right. On our planet alone, there are over a MILLION different species of animal, and we’re the only ones (arguably) that have real complex thought. Out of a MILLION species, we’re the only ones with complex thought; it MUST have been an accident, or there would be others like us.

The conditions just happened to be perfect. THAT’S why it’s amazing: because there was NO man behind the curtain pulling the strings. It happened all on its own.

I used to think alien life existed on other planets because the universe is huge, so huge that there must be something else out there somewhere; but that’s not true. The chances of US being here are so tiny, I doubt there could be anything else as well.

I don’t wanna turn this into the Alex Atheist Question Blog, so I’m not gonna keep responding to religious arguments or whatever; but that one comment seemed to have missed the point of my original entry, so I wanted to touch on it again.

(I finished that song “Together Tonight” by the way. I’m pleased with it, but now I have a song for my new album called Together Tonight and another called Tonight, so I need to fix that xD)

FANKS 4 REEDIN LOL

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I have a song in my head right now – I came up with the melody for it just before I got on the train to London (wrap party for Chartjackers tonight), and wrote most of the lyrics on the train, and I’ve recorded it on to my phone, but it’s really frustrating not having access to a guitar until I get home tonight. (Tom said that the sensation of developing a new song is not unlike vomiting, where you have to just get the idea out there and shape it so that you can move on with your life. He’s approached strangers at train stations before so that he can borrow their pen and paper to write down musical notations.)

Anyway, I’ve been working on lyrics that can be sung at a show and would create a great moment – the lyrics from this song include “so here we are, together tonight, having the time of our lives”. I’m not ashamed to say I stole the melody from the chorus of a song by Miley Cyrus called “Goodbye”. God, Breakout’s a good album.

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I listened to an audiobook by Julia Sweeney today and it got me thinking about the world – specifically the negative, hopeless view that atheists are perceived to have of the world. (I am an atheist. I know, scary stuff. As Sweeney said: “it’s one thing to say you don’t believe in God. It’s quite another to say you’re an ATHEIST.”)

Tim Minchin put it well when he said he does believe in things – “I believe in rocks, and gravity.” The natural world is amazing, and taking away a creator doesn’t diminish the amazement of our existence; for me, it enhances it. “You mean we developed to this level ON OUR OWN?!?”

Richard Dawkins said that all of the circumstances that led to our being alive, all put together, are so unlikely to happen – my mum could have just not slept with my dad, or a different sperm could have got through, or they’d have never met because my mum chose not to work at the bakery, or a million other things. Someone else could have been here instead of me, and it’s likely that these unborn ‘ghosts’ that never will be would include better musicians than Mozart, better writers than Shakespeare; and yet, I’m the one who gets his little moment to do things in his brief time on this planet.

And what’s great is, humans are fantastic tool-builders. Steve Jobs recounted a story of a survey he read, where various species were all being compared on their speed, and humans scored unremarkably about third or fourth from the bottom; but then they tested the other animals against a human on a bicycle, and we won outright. We’re great at using tools and inventing things. Everything that’s around us, everything man-made that we have, started off as nothing more than an idea in someone’s head, just like the ideas we all have every day. (Incidentally, Steve told this story because he described the computer as a ‘bicycle for our minds’.)

So we’ve evolved to a point where we can put strings on wood and make sounds, and change the shapes of our fingers to put like sounds together, and then here I am all this time later, listening to Green Day do just that – IN MY EARS! That’s AMAZING! So even though the scope of my existence doesn’t accommodate a supreme being, I still have plenty of reasons to look at the things around me with wonder.

I was reading Katy Perry’s wikipedia page earlier, and noticed she has really cool fashion. I’ve been focusing lately on making my image better, and concluded that bright ‘n’ tight was the way to go forward. But it’s not particularly innovative. Even the people like Perry and Lady Gaga, who are said to have great fashion sense, are just taking styles that were big decades ago and using them now. Nobody’s putting trousers on their heads and exposing half an arse cheek, which would be really different – and if they did, they’d just look silly anyway. I guess my stance on this is that as long as you’re comfortable and pick stuff you personally like without trying to fit in with what everyone else likes, it doesn’t matter. (Billie Joe Armstrong was once asked by a kid ‘what’s punk?’ So Billie Joe kicked over a trash can and said ‘that’s punk’. The kid kicked over a second trash can and said ‘that’s punk?’ and Billie Joe said ‘no, that’s trendy.’)

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Blimey.

I’m retreating into the meet world for a while, gonna watch more Flashforward. (First episode was AMAZING – it’s like 24 mixed with Lost. Crazy sci-fi situation; real-world srs bznz building. They had an Oceanic banner! And Alex Kingston! And Seth McFarlane?! Dominic Monaghan hasn’t even ENTERED yet. <3)

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So by now you’ll have heard the story:

Yesterday I got about eight thousand hits here, and then it collapsed under all the awesome xD

The website has now been reinforced to withstand all possible awesome. <3

Thank you to everyone reading this – even though there’s nothing bad about this site, there will still be people who won’t care enough to click on the link here, despite it being free music. You can’t please everyone, and shouldn’t try to, that’s just how the world is. So I’m really grateful to everyone that made the effort to come here :) I’m excited that thousands of you are hearing my album right now, and some of you might like it enough to get it on iTunes, or buy physical copies maybe for yourselves or for friends. You’re all lovely, thanks for making this so fun!

Bracket slash cheese

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Dear Alex Day,
Hi My name is Georgia Handscomb and i am 13 and i go to school at (SCHOOL NAME CENSORED FOR MY BLOG).
I just wanted to let you know that I AM that Georgia. I am flattered that ou made a song about me although I have to hear it every day of my life via classmates’s.

Anyway thanks again, it was erm… fun. :) thanks
Georgia
P.S I didn’t leave x

:D <3

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My new video is sitting, uploaded, waiting for me to make it public and alert my seventy thousand subscribers that this website exists. Very exciting. :D Thousands of people are about to hear my album for the first time. <3 I’m waiting till midnight to send it live, because it has a plug for Tom’s album in it, and his album doesn’t appear on iTunes till midnight. (It’s registered for the charts by the way, so if you wanna buy it, buy it this week! Wouldn’t it be ace to see Indigo in the charts?)

I also filmed chapters 3 and 4 of Twilight the other day, so they’ll go up in a few days or so.

Made a couple changes here – if you go on one of the chord/lyric pages, there’s now a little player where you can listen along to the track while you play/sing. Mickeleh gets full credit for that idea. (I’d better see this blog in Q4, Mike ~_^)

That’s about all I have to say. Thanks to all the people helping with naming my next album. I’m definitely calling the next release ‘The World Is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything)‘ – I’m consulting with a good friend of mine about album artwork, cos I have a different idea for this title, which is why I can’t use the orange. I’ll save that for when Epigrams eventually does make its way into the world.

Couple of questions in comments that I thought I’d answer – I’m 20 years old, and if you click up in the press section at the top you will have this fact confirmed (along with various other achievements, quotes, and a list of all the CDs that I sing on or helped write).

And yes, you can use my music for your podcast :p All my music’s available to do whatever you want with, as is Chameleon Circuit. In fact there’s a page on DFTBA’s website that has details of all the albums available for you to use music from, in the backgrounds of your videos or whatever.

In a couple weeks, we’ll all be reminiscing about the early days when only twenty people commented :p Thanks for being one of the early ones, you guys. I love that you’re here.

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Oh no.

I was afraid this would happen.

I’ve found an album title that’s better than Epigrams And Interludes.

This throws off everything! I was gonna name all my albums after quotes from books! Parrot Stories, then Epigrams And Interludes, and then I was gonna hunt through An Abundance Of Katherines (my favourite of the John Green bibliography) to find a quote for the third. But now this! Blimey!

Let’s be clear, I think Epigrams And Interludes is a lovely phrase. I’ll use it for my third album if I don’t use it for this one. (I came up with using it as an album name in 2007, so it’s already been kept there for ages, I won’t forget.)

But that new song I wrote, The World Is Mine, has this lovely repetition in it where every third line I sing the words “I don’t know anything”. I actually thought of naming the song that, at first.

So, I think a great name for my album would be:

The World Is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything)

It’s so good! Imagine people asking me what my album’s called, and I say “the world is mine! Brackets: I don’t know anything.” – easy laughs, and it’s fun, and it’s named after a song! And bands name albums after songs a lot, but they never name albums after songs with brackets in them xD

Also, that song sounds quite different from my other stuff. With the exception of Living On The Underground, everything I’m writing at the moment sounds quite Parrot Stories-y. Tonight sounds like Hearts; Georgia sounds like No Sacrifice; but The World Is Mine is different. Longer, and more complex, and more interesting. If I write an album of songs like that, I’ll be proud to have it on the front of the CD.

My only problem right now is that it’s a bit wordy. Try fitting “The World Is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything)” on the side of a jewel case. It’s even longer than Tom’s first album name, “Awkward Ballads For The Easily Pleased”.

Also I like that orange cover in my head. The orange cover only works with Epigrams.

Thoughts?

x

EDIT: Comments so far suggest that I shouldn’t/won’t name the album until it’s finished, but that’s not how I work at all. Parrot Stories came out this October; I named it in December last year, and sat on that title for ten months. I need to have project names, cos I’m not just putting a load of songs together, I’m creating an album; it needs to have a name that I need to know.

EDIT: The orange cover won’t work because I have a better idea for the new title xD

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