Three at once.

The four tracks I have recorded for my first EP have been sent off to my cousin for her approval and advice before they are uploaded. I think they will be going on itunes and amazonmp3, those were by far the most popular choices by commenters on my latest video. So for today I can't really do anything on it. That means I can do some work on the acoustic tracks that I also want to make available to download soon.

It's got me thinking about how I'm going to need to work in the coming months and years. Since I don't have an audience large enough to sell thousands and thousands of whatever I release, in order to live off my creativity I will have to have quite a high output. As such I think I'll always be working on three things at once;

1. Current songs - those which have been written and are being recorded.
2. Old songs, which will actually be new to the audience - songs that are recently available to download... Making videos for them will be the most important part of this category.
3. New songs - I'll need to be writing songs to get started on as soon as the current ones are done.

Supposedly itunes takes about a month to process songs, so if in that time I can get two or three videos done ready to promote the songs, and get a good start on recording the next thing I should be able to keep things moving nicely.

Of course this will all fall apart because I'm useless, but it's good to have a plan.

The strange thing is the idea of consciously keeping my youtube channel a month or so in the past, because I will have to wait for songs to be available before uploading videos for them. I like to share things as soon as I write them... I suppose I can still do that, maybe just a rough version of new songs on my second channel, or I might find some new ways to get stuff out there... More secret ways! I can show people who read this blog some of the demos or something. That way the people who really care can keep up to date.

Hmm, sorry - just thinking out loud (*in type).

Well anyway, it should be fun!

Too long to tweet.

There was some discussion on twitter yesterday regarding Summer in the City. I missed the fireworks, but I thought I'd add a word or two in a place not confined by a 140 character limit and at a time slightly out of the heat of the argument, which I hope will allow for a more level headed approach.

The background to the story is this. Davey (aka daveyboyz) entered an online video competition a few weeks back. The prize was £100,000 (I believe only £20,000 was cash, the rest in 'sponsorship'). Davey announced that if he won he would give £2,000 to help cover the cost of the gathering already being organised by myself and a few others. Whether this move was intended for the good of the community and the gathering, or as a way of gathering support for the video, I'll leave for you to decide. What I will say is that he didn't make any contact with any of the organisers before he did this.

I remember seeing a lot of my friends helping out on twitter, asking people to vote for the video for the good of the gathering, but in the end it wasn't enough, Davey didn't win that prize.

However, and I don't know exactly how it works - I think there are competitions every month and Davey's video was re-entered into the next competition, and it won. The prize is significantly smaller, I believe £5,000.

Now here comes the argument (isn't it always right after the money comes in?!) Tom, who's helping to organise, assumed this meant Davey would be sticking by his promise of a £2,000 donation. Davey said it was a different competition with a smaller prize so he would be keeping all of the money himself.

The point of this blog is still to come, and it's not to voice my opinion on what would have been the right thing to do, but I'll let you know that now just for the record.

I don't think it would be fair to ask for 2 out of 5 grand, when it was originally supposed to be 2 from 20 (plus all the sponsorship).
I also don't think it's fair to give nothing when a lot of people were voting for the video under the assumption that a percentage of the winnings would be going to the gathering.
What I would have done is given the same percentage - it was £2,000 out of £20,000, so I would have offered £500 out of the £5,000 winnings - 10%.

If I were in Davey's place, that's what I'd have done. But let me be clear, I'm not asking for £500, or any money. First of all I don't think even I could persuade Tom to accept it now, secondly Davey posted the following tweet earlier:

"if I do give anything to the gathering, I will decide people i give it to - its not going anywhere near you guys, sorry"

So I don't imagine asking for any amount would be fruitful.

But most importantly, and here we've finally got to the point... We don't need it. (Sorry you had to read all of that to get to a four word point. Still it could have been worse, I think Tom's was four letters.)
We've planned this gathering well, spent a lot of time considering options, searching for places and thinking about ways to finance it. Though there's still work to be done, we're in a good place.

I wrote this post last night, and at this point I took a break and watched X-Men 2! When I came back there was another tweet from Davey that read,

"Ok well i dont mind giving some, but i wont be giving directly to you organisers."

I think I've said all I need to as an organiser of the event, namely that planning is going really well and we are happy to continue without any 'help'. So I'll leave this last paragraph for my personal thoughts - this is my blog after all.

I was quite insulted (though not surprised) that Davey made the announcement without consulting any of us. Those last two tweets have magnified that considerably. I don't know where he would plan to send money if not to the organisers, but I feel as though he's undermining the huge number of hours we've spent discussing, researching and planning this gathering. On the plus side, nothing has changed! I'm still really looking forward to August, in a couple off weeks I'll be in London and I'll be looking at the probable venue for the Saturday night. There's also a sample t-shirt on it's way to me, we'll be selling them to help with the funding.

On another note, did you hear... The UK is forecast a long, hot summer. I'm very ready for that!

xxx

Lunch break.

I've been working on a song and I thought I'd write a cheeky little blog before lunch. It's nice to have something to show for a morning's work, lately I've been doing a lot of production work, which only changes something you already have, and a lot of organising, which involves looking around the internet and emailing people. Even when not getting distracted and actually doing it, those things don't give you that feeling of accomplishment that either writing or recording do. But when I woke up today this song didn't exist and now... It kind of does... A bit!

The organising I mentioned has been mostly for Summer in the City. Looking for a venue that will allow under 18's in is no mean feat... But I think I've found one. I'm going to go have a look at it when I'm next in London (15th for Kweller!) It will be 14+ and I think that's the best we can hope for, I will have to apologise to any under 14's but they can still come to the daytime part of the gathering. We also have some t-shirts in the works, should be seeing some samples soon, then if it's all good we will start selling them and the profits should cover the venue fee and any other expenses. That's the plan anyway!

Oh and music plans at the moment, I have three tracks that don't really fit in with the other 10 - 12, because they're electric with drums and stuff, so I'm going to put those on itunes on their own, before the rest. I'm adding a fourth because three would really just be a single, four I can call an EP. The fourth is what I've been working on today. Once these songs are up I'll work on the rest, then once everything is on itunes I'll work on a CD, which will include a couple of the tracks from itunes but possibly re-recorded and some newer stuff. I'll be able to put some extra money into the CD because I'll have some from the itunes sales. It all fits together quite nicely, ya see? It'd be nice to get that done by Summer in the City, that's the target I have in my head.

Right, I'm hungry.

xx

Jazza called me wise.

I will never let him forget.

But that's not why I'm here, I just wanted to tell you lovely blog readers that should you want to listen to a properly recorded version of the song 'Another Day, Another Motorway' (Or ADAM... I got very excited earlier when I discovered the acronym!) I have just uploaded it to Myspace.

This is a bloggy treat, I'm not even telling twitter!

Click here to listen.

xxx

THE GREAT PURGE '09!

I'm gonna add my tuppence to the idea of the internet purge started, as usual, by Alex Day.

But this isn't really directed at him. I know Alex quite well and as such I'm pretty much unshockable with regards to these things that he does... And if you want my opinion on what in his brain makes him do them we'll be here all day.

I'm going to look at it the other way... From the purger's perspective.

A brief mention of non youtube sites - twitter I would never delete because it's too useful as a promotional tool. I might unfollow a few people, but more likely I'll just miss some updates from everyone. Twitter is very in the now... If I don't see something within the first half hour it's off the first page. Now I could track back and make sure I see everything, but there's no need. I'll just look at the first page and my @replies... If something is important then it will be replied to me or sent via a different medium.

Dailybooth has no real use, but it doesn't take up much time either, and I do like having my latest picture here on my blog... That's kinda replaced the in-blog pictures I had for a while. So while I've given up taking pictures daily (though I never really intended to see it through) I'm keeping it for now.

Facebook is my only private website. Everything else I accept everyone to, but it's pretty much the only link I have to a lot of old friends. I doubt I'll ever delete it, even if I stop using it.

Myspace is basically essential for a band. I only go on there to accept friends requests and answer stuff, but I can't get rid of it.

Ok, so youtube. I used to watch every video in my sub box. I don't anymore... So I suppose I do have too many subscriptions and I may cut them back. But for me there are two types of subscription... There are those that are purely for entertainment. Channels like 'College Humour' which I watch because it's funny - I don't know them, I don't communicate with them, it may as well be on TV. I could get rid of these channels as easily as I could stop watching TV (Heroes and 24 aside - pretty easy!)

The other type of subscription would be those channels that belong to friends. This is different, because although I do get a similar enjoyment out of the videos (and when it comes to youtube friends I almost inevitably do enjoy their videos, as you tend to start talking to people because of that), I also care about their videos. Whether they're talking about something that's important to them, or showing their latest creation, be it song/artwork/whatever... I want to know because it's a friend.

Little side note example: I lived in Liverpool for three years. During this time I lived with a few people who were part of a band. Over the three years I went to literally hundreds of their gigs. This could be considered a huge waste of time... Imagine the hours I clocked up listening to them play, the things I could have done in all that time! If I'd used it to work and revise I'd easily have first class degree right now. But I definitely wouldn't be as close to them, and I wouldn't even know a lot of people who I now consider friends. I'll take that and a 2.1 any day!

Now, they aren't total bastards. If I hadn't gone to a single gig they wouldn't have denied me friendship... It's just as they were friends I wanted to go and support them (and have fun, make no mistake I loved every minute) and so we became closer friends due to spending more time together and because of the fact that I cared about them. It works both ways obviously - they were supportive of me, hell I practically became part of their family I was round their house so much.. I had a toothbrush there!

The point is part of friendship is supporting people in whatever it is they do. It's not necessary, but it brings people closer. So, there are some people whose videos I could not stop watching because I consider them friends and that is their creative outlet. If I can't give them a couple of minutes every week or two then then that friendship obviously isn't worth very much to me.

There, that's what I think. Please note as I said at the beginning, this isn't about Alex - this is how I feel about it as a possible purger, I know Alex thinks differently and that's fine. My only problem with his purge is that I probably won't be in contact with him much any more... I don't really think to email people and that's pretty much the only option left.

If you have any thoughts feel free to share.

x

All apologies

Have you noticed how people are always apologising for the length of time since they wrote a blog, or posted a video? Yeah, I'm not gonna do that - I don't owe you blogs!

I think the reason, if you care, is that these last few weeks I've either been very busy or very not. When I've been busy I've had other things on my mind and haven't thought to write, and when I've not been busy I've had nothing much to write about. I should really use the not busy times to write and reflect on the busier times. I just... Didn't.

Things of interest, just to keep you up to date, include having a bunch of far away friends come here for a night which involved my playing a gig in a cave. The gig was fun, though quite difficult - I like having a microphone! I couldn't play quite a few of my songs because they'd have been too quiet. But it's good to have things like that thrown upon you at the last minute - keeps you on your toes!

I've also been down to London to film this cheesy charity video. The sort of thing I wouldn't normally do but did because it's for charity... And they paid for me to go to London and see some friends and stay in a hotel. Just so you know - I don't specifically enjoy taking expense money from charities... In fact I still have a £40 dinner receipt that I couldn't bring myself to claim back from the RNLI. It was doing those things that was enjoyable... Not the fact that they were free. (Well ok... It may have helped.)

Today I wrote a song on the piano. It was quite a challenge as I was trying to keep the meaning somewhat ambiguous. I wanted it to make sense, especially at the beginning, as a break up song, but I also wanted it to work for a friendship that had gone wrong, and most importantly as a reaction to the death of someone close. I know - cheery stuff! I might blog about the lyrics in detail once I've put a video up. That will hopefully be in the next few days.

Just had a break in writing this to eat dinner and you'd never have known were it not for this sentence.

Tom called as well and that reminds me of something else I've been working on - Summer in the City planning. It's not easy trying to keep every demographic in mind and keep every one of them happy. For example we need a venue that lets under 18s in - or we'd have a bunch of pissed off under 18s, but also serves alcohol - or we'd have a bunch of pissed off over 18s. But I'm hopeful that I may have found somewhere perfect... Should be hearing back from them tomorrow.

Alright then, enough for now.

x

April Fools

I think people hate April Fools because they know they can't fool anyone because everyone is so guarded... Apart from Ginger Chris apparently who'd been had five times in the first hour.

But it always reminds me of prank wars. The best I've had were in uni. You're away from home with new people and it's all about having fun... Little jokes escalate so fast! I remember in first year, we got from hiding people's clothes and food to stealing each others cars and bedroom furniture within a couple of days.

That last one actually led to one of my favourite moments in my life so far. My friend and I decided to steal our flatmates bed... As you do. We left the pillowcase /sheet in place but took the frame. We got everything ready - got the keys to her room and the room opposite to hide the bed, then picked it up and got it halfway out of the door. We held it for a second while I opened the door opposite, and then these two guys that worked around the flats walked in. I was stood there opening one of the girls doors with one hand, while holding half a bed in the other hand, my friend holding up the other half was still in the room and didn't know what was going on. I just looked at the men and they looked back for a couple of seconds while I held back laughter, and then they just carried on walking the other way.

It's one of my favourite moments because still remember exactly how I felt - it was hilarious and there was just nothing to say to explain it so I was just stood there, I think I actually did say 'Hi.' and smiled... Yunno - ACT CASUAL style.

Ahh good times!