Rescue Aid Society

Leave

2010-09-02T12:59:00.002+01:00

So I clearly don't do this blog anymore I suppose, but where you should read your words instead is at the NUMBER ONE MUSIC DIGEST

Game Salad

2010-02-27T00:00:00.000Z

I'm actually making a real life computer game! I'm using a program called Gamesalad, which is just the right difficulty for me - it's not very difficult. The game is like a sort of Pong variation, but you're in the middle of the screen and you have to bat the dots back to the right colour, red, blue, green or yellow.

I'll put it up on here soon, or I'll make a special game website where I can rake the cash in. Seriously, it's gonna be stunning. I want to call it Space Apartheid, but it's not called that.

I need to decide what my dissertation is about. I think it's going to be about music, probably pop music because it's the best type.

In 2010 I am going to be....

2010-02-20T12:33:00.002Z

1. In the Bumblebees
2. Doing alright at Uni
3. A football writer
4. A game designer
5. Better at roller-skating

Media Saturation

2010-01-19T18:58:00.003Z

I've been going a bit weird, cos I'm home alone. I came to Oxford on Friday, and am on my own here til Thursday. For some reason I find that I need to be really surrounded, drowned in media - TV, internet, radio, books, games, audiobooks, usually all at once, or as many as possible. Mainly I have been playing the Wii whilst listening to a Carl Sagan audiobook, but I have also been on the internet whilst watching The Thick Of It, or reading a book with the TV on mute showing the World Indoor Bowls Championship.

It's actually not going so bad. I am just a bit scared that if there is a power cut I will go completely mental and hang myself with a power cord.

Plugged In

2010-01-14T23:16:00.002Z

We've been recording at the Fire Station with Michal for the last three days. We got some stuff that hopefully sounds really good. Having Dan in the band makes everything a million times better. I feel like we're just right.

I think what was gonna be a single or EP will be an album now, and that feels just right. We re-recorded two from the old EP, but they're pretty different. Everything's more live with the drums now.

Being in band mode for a few days straight makes me really think it's all that matters, and it's had a good effect. It makes me wanna quit uni. And being on Local Kid makes it feel very real, like being in a proper band, and that is cool. Because Michal is a proper producer. There's a thing Nick Hornby says in Fever Pitch about being at big games and feeling like the world is waiting outside, listening to hear the final score. Which is kinda....weird to say in relation to us recording a few songs, but it's the same feeling of something exciting being created.

Astounding Poetry

2009-12-13T00:43:00.005Z

Hi, I've got a new job at Holland & Barrett. It's something to do between stressing about real work, by which I mean uni, and being in a hotly-tipped indie band. It's good because I get discount off of food that I'd probably buy anyway. It's mainly friendly ladies that go in there. It makes me sad when they buy homeopathic stuff. Can I get sacked for saying that?

I've made a limerick:

There once was a man named Joyce
Who gave the city of Dublin a voice
He made it seem full
And sometimes dull
I like all his books they are nice

Admission

2009-12-07T15:27:00.000Z

Oh, here's the thing, I didn't do my charity run that I was meant to in October. My mum drove me and Roz and Lib down to Portsmouth on the Saturday morning, we had to get up at 6. We got there just before ten, and the race started at half ten. On Sunday. I was twenty-four and a half hours early. We had a gig in Bristol Saturday night so we came back, and then I couldn't by any method get back to Portsmouth, not by train or coach or being driven by someone. It was shit

I have said that I'll do another one instead and this is true, but I have so much uni work that I think it will probably be next summer, which is really lame.

2009-12-06T15:24:00.002Z

I got called a mong in the library the other day.

We played a gig yesterday in Birmingham and it was ace.

Currently reading Manhattan Transfer. S'alright, s'pretty good even

Working at well-known health food chain (Holland & Barrett)

Recording Bumblebees in January hopefully, it's taking us forever to get organised but itll be so incredibly worth it.

Go on

2009-10-20T20:00:00.000+01:00

http://www.bmycharity.com/ellisrunsforpeta

Loads of Old Songs

2009-10-08T18:26:00.001+01:00

I can see how people find this blog, like I mean what links people click to get here. Usually it's only read by my three or four friends but recently people having been coming here looking for new music. Which is weird cos I never ever really write about that.

Anyway here are five really great songs that I think are great and that readers here should check out by listening to.

Jennifer by RESCUE AID SOCIETY is cute powerpop that changes key a few times. I'm not very good at doing that normally so it makes me proud. I wrote it with The Lauras in mind, but Bert's songs were about a million times better.

The Stupidest Boy Alive by RESCUE AID SOCIETY is, or was, my attempt at a Timbaland production. I think it comes close in some ways, the fizzy synths, the kind of rollicking drums, massive overcompression, but far too twee and I don't shout "ey!" at any point.

Real Life by RESCUE AID SOCIETY is the best thing I have ever done, by a mile, and pretty much got me into uni. Dai, who I think is head of Arts at Brookes, said I sounded like Pete Burns. I couldn't convince him otherwise. God this song is so good. Where did those verse chords come from - heaven?

Right Right Now Now by RESCUE AID SOCIETY uses a Beastie Boys acapella and makes it amazing by putting my music underneath it. I did it probably a couple of months after the first Go! Team album came out, and then stuck the acapella on a bit later. I really think I could probably do this for a living...if I wanted to.

So When You Said by RESCUE AID SOCIETY is when me and Bert had this idea of getting loads of people to write songs every month and make it into some kind of club....or something. The first one was going to be about ghosts, so I did this one.

That's it. Oh and Don't Call It A Comeback by RESCUE AID SOCIETY is also great. With a guitar solo when you least expect it. It shocked me, anyway.

Every song by my favourite new band Rescue Aid Society is available here. They are all more than a year old because I don't have any ideas anymore. And I'm in a real band.

Football is Art

2009-10-06T14:26:00.002+01:00

I had to do a composition in music yesterday. I did it based on the movements of the Argentinian football team during the build-up to their second goal against Serbia in the 2006 World Cup. I think it went down really well. Football is pretty much the best type of art. It's like jazz but doesn't make me feel sick.

My piece was partly inspired by Harrison Birtwistle, Morton Feldman, and Steve Reich, but mainly by this:

I'm really enjoying my second year so far. Mostly when I'm not studying I'm playing Mario Kart. But mostly I'm studying.

Mind And Senses Purified

2009-09-28T17:39:00.003+01:00

There is a new ruling which might force manufacturers to limit the maximum volume on mp3 players. That is about time. Now I would like a similar law to limit volume at gigs and clubs. It's so annoying that like 90% of gigs (and 100% of clubs) are way too loud to be properly enjoyed, or even properly experienced. You miss basically all the stuff that isn't drums and bass. So drum'n'bass is safe.

Had my first day back at Brookes today and it turns out there is quite a bit of work to be getting on with. I think I have convinced myself that I want to get a first. Is that stupid? I think it might be. Maybe I should partially give up now. Roz is doing a Japanese module, and it is kinda making me want to learn it as well. Or it was until I found out they have three different alphabets.

Went to an 'I Heart 90's' night on Saturday.

Golden Egg

2009-09-21T23:34:00.003+01:00

One more reason to download music illegally - James Blunt might lose his career.

Marking

2009-09-15T20:54:00.003+01:00

Hrrm. The Pitchfork reviews of the Beatles re-issues didn't really do anything other than prove that rating music out of 10 is entirely pointless, and becomes even more arbritrary when give pretty much all of them a 10.0 - it's such a big statement thing, designed to attract attention. Numbers are for idiots. And they give Let It Be 9.1, despite them slagging it off all through the review. It's a crap album, that doesn't need/deserve deifying. It makes me annoyed a bit.

(And then they gave the Stone Roses album a 10! What a flippin joke.)

I went to Bestival on the weekend. It was pretty good. The best band I saw was Kraftwerk. They were phenomenal. The next best was Dirty Projectors. The did a couple of new ones (I think) and the rest were from Bitte Orca. The harmonies are so incredible. It's like a different type of music. Wave Machine were also good.

Supermarche

2009-09-03T22:28:00.005+01:00

I've had some really great experiences in supermarkets the last two days. It all began in ASDA. I was heading to the broccoli and I noticed there was a guy already there. He was the saddest, most forlorn-looking man I've ever seen. I wondered what could have brought such misery to this man. He seemed to be dressed okay, and was clean-shaven. I looked at the broccoli and it was all a bit mank. I picked some up and it wobbled and flopped. The man sighed.

"It doesn't look very good, does it?" he said. I think he meant the broccoli, but he could have been talking about the future of mankind, for all the despair in his eyes.

"No. I guess I'll leave it," I replied, and I walked away, leaving him there wimpering for all eternity.

---

Last night Jon and I were in Tesco Metro on a date, and a middle-aged guy with an army coat and a bad moustache somehow got inbetween us in the queue. We got talking somehow, I think it was because Jon had a Coke Zero, and the old guy was saying how it was all the same shit, just more expensive. Anyway I paid for my stuff, and as this guy was bagging his stuff he realised he forgot something.

"Crap! I forgot the biscuits! Aw, damn," he muttered.

"Would you like me to get them for you?" I offered.

"Oh, yeah, great. Just own-brand digestives, the big pack." And he pointed me towards where they were, right at the other end of the shop. So I ran to get them. And I ran back, and gave them to him.

"No!" he yelled, "not that kind! The big pack!"

"That's all they have!"

"No, go back and get the big ones." So I had to run back again, and check they didn't have the big type. And they didn't, cos I'm not stupid. But anyway this guy wouldn't believe me, and was really annoyed, and thought I was a complete retard, but wouldn't actually go and check for himself, and so it ended up with me basically shouting at him "I bet you any money they aren't there."

---

And then today I saw this incredible carrot:

Hunting: Against The Law But Not A Crime

2009-09-01T16:06:00.003+01:00

I guess the only reason the BBC even mention this case is cos there's a quarter-celebrity involved (aging posh TV chef Clarissa Dickson-Wright) but it's pretty typical of how this stuff goes whenever it is brought to court. Hunting is kind of hard to prove in the first place, and what with the sad reputation that sabbers have the police, if they are even in attendance, are more concerned with keeping the peace than catching people breaking the law. It is pretty much only private prosecutions by animal welfare groups that actually get to court. In this case the hunters plead guilty, and were let off.

I dunno, to me the fact that these people were 'trying to stay within the law' is pretty irrelevant, but maybe that's because I am a bit into animal rights and think the whole thing is pretty barbaric regardless of whether it was technically illegal. My main point is that basically there's a big conspiracy because all judges are spoilt brats and all hunters are spoilt brats and they all go to a big Spoilt Brats Club and make sure that spoilt brats get to do whatever they want. But you already knew that. What other crime could you promote on a car sticker, like the 'I'm Still Fox Hunting' type ones you see around Oxfordshire? How many other crimes don't go on your criminal record? What other crimes can you openly, actively participate in, and not be convicted? Not flippin many, that's what! (the Crown Prosecution Service has said that only Hunt Masters can be convicted of hunting illegally, as members of the field are technically onlookers, while Nigel Yeo of the Association Of Chief Police Officers has said people with hunting convictions will not get a criminal record.)

Oh and check out the list of convicted foxhunters, and what they've actually been found guilty of. Nasty bunch...

Swung-By

2009-08-31T18:36:00.005+01:00

We played Oxford on Wednesday, and London on Saturday. London was a really great alldayer. Trash Kit are my favourite band at the moment. We played a sort of mixed set with Michal and Lisa, playing two Corey O's songs (the closest I've come to seeing them live so far, sadly) and five or six of ours. Lisa played a drum pad thing [pictured], and I think it really suited us. We're gonna try it as a permanent thing, with our friend from Oxford playing it (but it's not really for sure yet so I can't say his/her name out loud).

Husbands were really good, Drunk Granny were great. It made me feel great about being on Local Kid. I wear my sticker with pride. Sometimes I think we don't fit in, because we aren't really very rocking, at all, but then most of the time I think that doesn't really matter, because we have other things in common. The best thing about our set was when Michal forgot his bit in My Kaleidoscope, and we stopped and looked at him. And then everyone clapped. And then Roz said "that's not the end", and then Michal played his bit and we finished the song.

Gross Overs

2009-08-20T22:55:00.004+01:00

Anyway we played a gig on Sunday and it was okay. It was our first gig with just Roz and me, not including living room gigs and things. We played:

My Kaleidoscope
The Way
Internal World
Cool Science
Mysterious Guitar
Fluffy Clouds Of Joy

We played with this band Trash Kit and they were really good, their myspace doesn't do them justice right now. We spoke to the bassist and she was really nice, Michal said she used to be in Electrelane, which is cool, cos she seemed pretty much like a normal person. Some of our songs don't really work well with just the two of us, like Cool Science for one. It means I have to play guitar and sing for ages on my own, which is cringey. We have some new songs and hopefully in Oxford (Wheatsheaf, Wed 26th Aug) we'll be able to chop and change a bit.

In other news we had a practice with a drummer but nothing will come of it cos she is really busy. It was fun though, and we are looking to maybe try with some other people and see how it goes. If you know anyone....

In other news I've been listening to Perfect Fit by Clues a lot. Clues are a new band with Alden from The Unicorns in. I can't wait to have money to get the album.

In other news OH PLEASE DONT http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8212110.stm

Jobsworth

2009-08-12T10:27:00.000+01:00

Here are the things I have thought that I might be able to do for a living in my life:

1. Footballer
2. Musicker
3. Skateboarder
4. BMXer
5. Online Gambler/Poker Player
6. Some sort of vague online presence (I don't know, maybe writing a blog so good that people who don't know me will read it and click adverts)
7. Lecturer
8. Author
9. Game Designer
10. eBay Trader
11. Journalist/Critic
12. Chef/Restauranteur/Food Inventor (I have this idea for a vegan egg)
13. DJ (the radio type, not the Ibiza type)
14. T-Shirt Designer
15. Athlete (middle or long-distance running)
16. Gamer (I am pretty good at games that don't involve shooting or solving mysteries)
17. Charity Worker (the good kind, not the practically-molest-you-on-the-street kind)
18. Stand-up Comedian
19. Guitar Teacher
20. Some combination of all these things

Right now I am whittling it down to numbers 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18 or 19. Or 20.

Practicing

2009-08-11T20:57:00.001+01:00

Practicing is what we've been doing. I think until recently we had a ratio of about 1 practice:1 gig, but we are quite keen to be better than we have been. And it's actually fun now. I'm a big stupid loser for a million reasons and The Bumblebees is one thing I really think I have done in my life. There isn't really a thrill from playing old songs, like the ones on the EP, but doing new ones is amazing fun, and always worth the depression and stuff.

Gene Simmons Fixes The Music Industry

2009-08-03T22:29:00.000+01:00

This quotes are from an interview with Gene Simmons, in which he gives his opinion on the state of the music industry. I think he has something against freckles. And college.

There is nothing in me that wants to go in there and do new music. How are you going to deliver it? How are you going to get paid for it if people can just get it for free?

The record industry doesn't have a f*cking clue how to make money. It's only their fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there's no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid's face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work. [I don't know where he gets these facts from - presumably nowhere.] How can you pick on them? They've got freckles. That's a crook. He may as well be wearing a bandit's mask.

Doesn't affect me. But imagine being a new band with dreams of getting on stage and putting out your own record. Forget it.

I open a store and say "Come on in and pay whatever you want." Are you on f*cking crack? Do you really believe that's a business model that works?

The most important part is the music. [Tiny bit of a contradiction there..] Without that, why would you care? Even the idea that you're considering giving the music away for free makes it easier to give it away for free. The only reason why gold is expensive is because we all agree that it is. There's no real use for it, except we all agree and abide by the idea that gold costs a certain amount per ounce. As soon as you give people the choice to deviate from it, you have chaos and anarchy. And that's what going on.

He says anarchy like it's a bad thing. I definitely have dreams of putting out my own record. But I don't have dreams of a major label putting it out, which the base he builds his whole argument on.

Anyway the point is this guy Joel Tenenbaum got sued far more money than he could ever pay for downloading (and uploading) some songs. And this is what Gene Simmons wants. Although maybe anyone who downloads Kiss songs deserves everything they get.

New Islands Album

2009-07-28T18:01:00.000+01:00

It's called 'Vapours' and it's going to be more electronic. Old news cos I'm slow and don't really read music websites. I suppose these top two songs are from it. They sound really boring. Islands/Unicorns are one of my favourite things ever and I really hope they haven't gone bad. But they kind of definitely have, right?

He always comes across amazing in interviews. But when we saw them live he was sulky.

Three Anagrams Of My Name

2009-07-25T23:11:00.001+01:00

A LONELINESS THEN JAIL
NATIONAL HENS JELLIESTELL SEA-SNAIL, JOIN HEN

Oxford Brookes Halls

2009-07-24T23:41:00.001+01:00

This post has nothing to do with anything else I have written about, I am writing in case someone finds it searching for information about halls of residence at Oxford Brookes. I dunno, they might be starting this year or something.

I love Brookes, I think it is a great uni, friendly and helpful, I like the library, I enjoy my lectures, I am even growing fond of the comprehensive school aesthetic. I would not talk anyone out of going there. But I would happily talk anyone out of staying in halls there. The rent is ridiculously overpriced - about £100 p/w, and that is non-ensuite in fairly old halls that are rumoured to be up for demolition next year. Internet is not free, it is £2.50 p/w, which adds up to about £70 for the year, and it is not wireless. They have keys to everyone's rooms and are not afraid to use them - during a room check I had a foldup mattress removed on health and safety grounds (Er...what? I would think throughout history mattresses have prevented more injuries than they have caused). I tried to move out cos I didn't feel it was worth the money, but I had to find someone to replace me and take over my contract or else keep paying it. This would have been almost reasonable if they hadn't had TONS of empty rooms already, making the chance of someone taking my room almost nil.

Just a quick comparison, in case newcomers to uni don't have one - Sussex uni halls cost £70 p/w for ensuite(!) and have two fridges and freezers per flat (with the same number of people per flat), free internet, and if you want to leave at any time you pay £30 and that is that.

I hope I am allowed to write this without Brookes kicking me out. Failing that, I hope they don't see it.

Shelved

2009-07-22T23:48:00.000+01:00

I've started a blog to put stories I write on. I don't know if I'll write many because I only tend to do it when I feel like it, and I don't feel like it very regularly. I don't think they're high art.

Anyway it's here: BIGTIME FICTION

I think my writing tends to get influenced too easily. Pretty much you can tell what the last book I read was for each story, probably.

Good Brain

2009-07-22T08:20:00.000+01:00

I had this idea for a gameshow where contestants have to open boxes to decide whether or not they have to kill minor celebrities. I am going to call it Dale Or No Dale

Retro Email Convo

2009-07-21T16:37:00.000+01:00

I was searching for something in my emails and I found this gem. It is something DCB Promotions sent out. It is amazing:

If any of you know any good young musicians in Bristol please pass this on to them

Hi All,

I need to put together a very specific covers band for an underage club night i am setting up in Bristol.

Read this and please pass it on to other members of your band you think may be interested

The band will play very current indie rock pop songs Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons, Foo Fighters etc

This will not interfere with any other band you are in and should be considered a bit of fun on the side,

the band will get paid and probably only play once a month, rehearsals will be once a week (paid for by me)

Criteria

you must be no older (or look no older) than 21

look cool, funky, sexy with a strong overall image

good musician with own kit

must be able to make your own way to bristol with your gear when needed

Get back to me putting your name, number and personal myspace page against the position you could fill below,

if you haven't got a personal page put your band page pointing out who you are on pics, if you dont have a

website attach a picture, the look of this band is really important so i need to see you.

Lead Vocals -

Lead Guitar -

Rhythm Guitar -

Bass -

Drums -

Keyboards -

If you put Lead vocalist and can also play an instrument put you name against the instrument you play as well

Cheers

Dave Brayley

dave@dcbpromotions.com
dcb Promotions & Management ltd 30a college green, bristol, bs1 5tb 0117 9834503

www.dcbpromotions.com

www.hand2hand.info

I replied to it, and me and Dave Brayley (who I presume imaginatively named DCB Promotions after his own initials) had a little electronic conversation.

Me: WHY are looks so important?

Dave: i said look cool not have good looks

"the look of this band is really important" ...why are looks so important?

yes, the look, whats wrong with a band looking great

nothing, i'm asking why they HAVE to

because for this particular thing i want a band that looks good, why have you got a problem with that

because i think bands look good when they are being themselves, playing original music, not when they are put together solely because someone thinks they can make money out of it.

its quite clear what this if for, a covers band, if its something your not interested in then just ignore it, 99% of what we do is with original bands, this isnt

good point, it's not like you ever book cover bands at the fleece, is it...

www.dcbpromotions.com

oh sweet! hard-fi!

ok, send me a link to your band

myspace.com/rescueaidsociety

really like it

can i have a gig then?

He didn't reply to the last one. Anyway I don't know if this proves much other than I used to be (?) a bit of a knob. It's a shame people like this make a living from music, but it's not the only way.... right?

Bachman-Turner Overdrivel

2009-07-20T19:38:00.000+01:00

I have no money. But what I do have is enthusiasm! But not for getting a job. What I would love most of all right now is for someone to give me some money, enough money to pay my rent, and not want it back, ever. And for there to be no guilt in that.

My main idea is to get money for making hilarious tshirts, but I haven't sold any yet. Maybe it's cos they look like crap. My other idea for making money is to write a novel. I heard that was a quick easy way to get rich. Also I might become a DJ. I think I am suitably obnoxious. My only rule would be that I wouldn't talk over records, because that is the most annoying thing that DJs do.

I did sort of think that maybe I could be a professional footballer still, but actually I am in training for a run for charity, and judging by the massive pain I experience everytime I do exercise, maybe I don't have much chance. It's mainly my right knee rather than my aerobic fitness I think, so hopefully I can sort it out. The doctor wouldn't do anything though, would he or she?

Seriously now, my actual idea for making money is to make a living from quiz shows. Just last Thursday I went to Pinewood Studios near Slough to be on Wogan's Perfect Recall. I don't know if it breaks the terms of my contract to say if I won. But... I have no money, okay? It was kind of worth it though, for the experience of meeting possibly the nicest man in the world. Terry Wogan is seventy years old. I am going to apply for some more. The only problem is that it is not what you might call a guaranteed income. I might apply for 20 shows and get on none. Or I might get on 20 and win none. But I do think that the type of knowledge I have is perfect for quizzes - no in-depth understanding of anything worth knowing but a knack for remembering crap sitcoms, football team nicknames and the middle initials of US Presidents.

Non-Trophy Season

2009-04-30T21:34:00.000+01:00

We Bumblebees have agreed to make a record of some kind with Local Kid, the nicest label in the world, who happen to be based very near us. We have been going kind of slowly recently, cos we can't commit to many gigs. Nat Jelas is playing bass for us in the absence of soon-departing Bert (xoxoxoxoxo).

My best gig with Nat and us was at OMG! in Manchester. It seemed pretty rammed, which is something I would happily get used to. I really want the summer to be super-busy, to make the most of the free time we have. I definitely feel like personally I have regained a bit of MUSIC DESIRE in the last few weeks and it is paying off in terms of new song quantity, at least.

The Local Kid record will probably be late this year, which seems a long time away, but actually isn't. We aren't getting any younger though, that's for true.

I Would Love To Be On This List

2009-01-26T12:04:00.000Z

The 50 people who wrecked Britain

Read it as parody and it is possible to get to the end without wanting to kill the author. Princess Diana being on there is the most hypocritical thing in the history of the world, I would guess.

(I was imagining the author as really, really old, but then I realised that there is picture of him at the top of the page, and he is only 30-something. It is kind of sad that he has so long left to live.)

pt. 2 - Richard Dawkins is on it!

Brrrrrrrrrrrring!

2009-01-26T11:33:00.000Z

Thursday we got a good review from Organ magazine:

http://www.organart.demon.co.uk/neworgan.htm

Us, 1 - The Jelas, 2

---

We have a gig at The Croft soon - there is a listings website that says:

The Bumblebees, Paraffins
The Brixfold-based four-piece.

What they've done there is looked at our myspace and taken 'lennie laptop' to be ....not a laptop, and Brixfold to be an actual place (it is just Bristol and Oxford mashed up together). And their description is not even a real sentence.

Really excited about the gigs. REALLY excited.

Worst Music Writing Ever

2009-01-18T22:39:00.000Z

Drowned in Sound saves major label ass.

Who do they think they are, Panorama?

The user comments I read on this article are mostly right. The logically fallacies and absurd editorial style aside, the worst thing is that Sean Adams concludes by arguing ISPs should have full access to monitoring and control over how their customers use the internet. Net neutrality? Bah. The most important thing isn't civil liberty, it's making sure that everyone who downloads Viva La Vida pays their share to the record execs. This apparently 'indie' site condoning corporate control to this extent (and making comparisons to internet security in China with the implied message - "this is how it should be done"!) would be so off-the-mark as to be funny if it weren't for the possibility that someone might read the article and be convinced by it.

We have just sent our EP to Drowned in Sound hoping they might want to review it.

Sounds Illegal

2009-01-16T23:19:00.000Z

There is a website called Legalsounds and it sells music downloads. For $0.09 (nine cents) you can get pretty much any track you like. You would think there must be some kind of catch.

They are selling Cool Science! By.....us! For $0.09 (nine cents)!

The most annoying things about this are:

It's the DEMO of Cool Science.
We gave away the demo for FREE.

Needless to say they didn't contact us for permission and won't reply to us. Don't think I will post a link to it but it is easy enough to find. Maybe your band is on there. I guess we should be kind of flattered but it is just really annoying that sites like this can exist and make money - nine cents seems like nowt but for them it is pretty much all profit, they only need a few hundred customers a day to make it a decent earning.

Anyway I don't think I had a really coherent point to make so that's this post done.

Insomnia

2009-01-14T11:55:00.000Z

Listening to Einstein On The Beach, watching snooker on mute. And I still can't sleep. This should be some sort of literal impossiblity.

Iggy Pop Convinces No-one To Get Swiftcovered

2009-01-13T22:59:00.000Z

Not a new year resolution to get on here again, but just a perfectly natural any-time-of-year resolution to stop wasting free time playing flippin' online games. What a loser. I must remember I have a lot of free time until February, but that does not mean I am not allowed to do anything productive. Quick Fire Pool is not productive, even if I'm on the high score list (I'm not, I just said that to make a joke).

Saw City lose to Portsmouth tonight (undeservedly - counter-attacks that fast should count as a form of cheating), the most interesting thing was the East End singng "we hate Setanta". The game was being broadcast live on Setanta. (For the uninitiated, Setanta is a paid subscription sports channel, I think the resentment comes from the price-to-games-shown ratio, seeing as Sky Sports is pretty similar but is treated with something approaching reverence. Or maybe people just don't want to shell out twice, and Sky got there first.) It is kind of brilliant subversion of what is expected of us as fans. Nick Hornby or Garry Nelson, I can't remember which, touched on the idea that the fans are essentially part of the product that TV is buying, and that consumers buy from TV. What can you do when the product revolts in this way? Fuck all, for now. One day it will be a offence punishable by lifetime ban to insult the sponsor.

I read 'A Confederacy Of Dunces' over Christmas. It is really amazing and brilliant, but I recognise Ignatius in my self now everyday. J.K. Toole must have done so also, which makes it more brilliant I think.

Rodney Mullen

2008-11-18T16:15:00.001Z

I feel really bad because I completely missed October - in blog terms, at least. And November is pretty much gone too. These are the main changes in my life over the past eight weeks or so:

I want to be a pro skateboarder.
......

That's it really, I desperately want to be a skater. I am not even sure why. It is some early-life crisis maybe, a reaction against academia and Oxford being full of bikes. I used to skate when I was 13 but stopped when after six months I couldn't even stand on the board for any length of time. I am a bit better now. Roz and I went to a skatepark in Hutton nr W-S-M, and I was okay at going up the ramp, turning, and coming back down. I could probably do it four times before falling over. Then I was really silly and tried to go down a quarter pipe just on my feet, and it was slippy and I fell and hurt my head. I am not put off though - I just need to find a helmet big enough for my oversized head.

Some of my time not spent dreaming about kickflips is spent doing People & Planet stuff, they are ace. I am on the committee which means I get to do grown-up stuff like collect the key before the meeting. Other time is spent reading, or eating cashews, or worrying about money. If anyone wants to come skate with me, that would be great, I am scared in case I fall over in front of strangers.

Today I have been mostly: Getting the 'k' and 't' the wrong way round and Googling "how to stake".

I Wish I Was A Tourist

2008-09-28T23:07:00.000+01:00

Uni is great and I am a real geek. I have been typing up my lecture notes and everything. Oxford is such a busy city. (It has a 'Past Times'! You know, that shop that sells quaint crap like wooden puzzles and soap shaped like gallows or whatever? Honestly, Oxford does not need a Past Times - every shop sells that crap!) Anyway there is a load to do here, I have been life drawing once. The shop I have been in most is Debenhams.

On my way back from Brighton (helping Roz move in) to Oxford (where I now live), I saw the most amazing advert in Victoria station. For those of you who aren't quite done mourning the death of the People's Princess.....spend your way through freaky bereavement with... THE PRINCESS DIANA TRIBUTE PHONECARD!!! I wish I could find a link but I can't, so you will have to believe that these exist. There are different pictures for £5, £10 and £20 cards. I don't think I will ever stop thinking about this.

Gormless Mallard

2008-09-20T20:07:00.000+01:00

I have been at uni for a week now, pretty much. Tons of stuff has happened but in a way nothing has. Sometimes I feel confident but often I feel like an outcast. I feel like that in Bristol too though so I am not overly worried.

There are football trials tomorrow. I went and bought some boots today (I also bought Football Manager - what the hell am I doing? I have BILLIONZ of things to do and some part of me is instructing myself to fritter my life away! Seriously, it's not like I have a million books to read....I don't want to play that stupid game!) I am kinda scared about playing football for the first time in ages. I will report back.

Rest Day

2008-09-13T10:31:00.000+01:00

We are home now. That means we have finished our tour. It was a good tour. We rocked seven cities. We caught all our trains. We saw many Starbucks. There were no massive peaks or troughs. I liked it in York when we were locked inside and had to lug ourselves and all our stuff out of a window. I didn't like it in Leeds.

Sheffield was a great line-up. My favourite band were Mexican Kids At Home. Pete described them as 'slacker pop on a tatty skateboard', and that is pretty much exactly what they sounded like. In a good way, obviously. We stayed at Pete's house and he made us the greatest (veggie) sausage bap for breakfast. He writes for When Saturday Comes! That made my tour.

We played in London at a place called The Macbeth. It seemed pretty trendy. Apparently the bassist from Radiohead was there. I don't think he watched us though. Most people just seemed to chat.

Our setlist by the end of the tour looked like this:

My Kaleidoscope
Perfect Holiday
The Internal World
Mysterious Guitar
Understanding Parents
(I Won't Forget) The Way
Fluffy Clouds Of Joy
Cool Science

I'm leaving for uni tomorrow, and I am not really nervous or excited or anything, just pretty tired.

York Suspense

2008-09-07T20:35:00.000+01:00

Our York gig has been cancelled, due to the promoter's brother needing an operation. There isn't really much you can say about that. Don't know what we will do instead, we already had the tickets so we are heading there right now.

Glasgow was pretty good. Support was The Paraffins, who are actually just one Paraffin, called Billy. I thought he was really great, kind of like Jonathan Richman mixed with Talking Heads, only somehow (despite wearing panda pajamas) a bit more sinister. We went on at about half twelve (in the morning!) having spent eight hours on the train. The crowd didn't seem very interested. We rocked it anyway. I did my usual trick of saying something fairly offensive without meaning to. Most of what we saw of Glasgow came between 3-5am, when we waited two hours for a taxi to take us to the promoter's house. Needless to say, it wasn't that pretty. Or warm.

Berwick Inevitable

2008-09-06T17:01:00.000+01:00

We are on a train, and have been for about five hours. God has pissed all over Scotland and now we are waiting in one of his puddles for a man to drive to near our train, then walk to it, then pull us to Berwick.

So far the tour has been good to middling. Oxford was a pretty nice pub called The Jericho Arms. The headline band were massive pricks in ways that I can't begin to describe. Everyone else was nice.

Birmingham I really thought was fun. We rocked it. People did a clapping thing in the Cool Science breakdown. The band after us were called Ace Bushy Striptease and they were really cute. I loved them. Josh was there and he went round flogging our EP. It worked - we could really use him every gig. We missed Das Wanderlust cos we had to get our train.

Leeds last night was pretty ridiculous. We arrived at the Cardigan Arms and some locals told us to go upstairs. We were met upstairs by the sound of a vicious bark, followed by the sight of vicious fangs, owned by a vicious dog. If it weren't for the stool handily located between Cerberus and me, I am pretty sure I would be dead now. Someone upstairs gruffly pointed us towards the "Harmonic Room", which was mainly CRAP, with curtains made of rolls of paper. The sound engineer was quite keen to tell us stories of how notoriously useless the promoter was, and when Roz asked where he was, the sound engineer told her "Madrid."

The door was run by three of his friends who took the piss out of everyone who came in, and left before the last band had finished (taking with them the night's takings from the five or so paying audience. The other bands were pretty nice though, we sold a few EPs. I just don't see what the motivation is for Moog "Promotions" to put on bands is. The bands don't get anything from it, the audience is non-existent, and any money they are making is surely not worth the bother.

Glasgow later on should be completely ace, we played a new one last night (nothing to lose, really) so hopefully it will stay for tonight. If we get there in time.

Ellis Jones: Gig Promoter

2008-09-02T09:33:00.001+01:00

We kicked off our tour with a Bristol gig last night. I put it on at The Junction. I really love that place. I don't think it is doing very well, I really hope it survives. I think they are offering free hire gigs now, so everyone should really take advantage of this place else it might not be here when you need it.

Roxy was her usual effervescent self. Attack + Defend were awesome. I felt like I put on a good gig. Our set was ridiculously shambolic. Mainly my fault. Maybe my future is in running a massive live music empire, not being in a massive live band. I doubt it though. Thanks to everyone who came.

We are leaving for Oxford today. There is still loads to do, and I am wasting my time and yours by filling up this blog! What a fool.

Strim

2008-08-15T17:54:00.000+01:00

I was strimming some grass in the garden and it went wrong and I strimmed my toes. Roz had told me not to use it but I didn't listen. It was silly of me to forget how incompetent I can be. I'm nicely bandaged now though, and probably will be able to walk soon, hopefully.

The Jelas rocked it at The Junction on Wednesday. As always. Last night we went to the Thekla with Emlee and Bert and Jon. The music was pretty crap, or maybe very crap. The DJs were really utterly annoying. OKAY?

Bye Bye Baby

2008-07-29T23:57:00.000+01:00

We sent off our promo of Cool Science yesterday. We bought lots of envelopes, blank CDs, ink, and we wrote a press release. We done it proper. We sent it to lots of radio stations. We blanked out the 'fuck' so that it could be played in the daytime. I know, we are sell-outs. Roz did some lovely CD art. You can see a picture of just how lovely it looks on our Bumblebees Tumblr page.

Tour booking continues, it is getting shorter and shorter notice. I'm not we'll be 100% full. We have been offered a lot of gigs, but we really aren't very flexible with dates at the moment so we have had to turn a lot down. Hopefully it will make it easier for next time though.

We were featured on A New Band A Day today. That was very nice of them. However I'm starting to think I will never be happy with anything anyone ever says about us. The write-up is pretty positive, but it paints us as overly twee I think. What do I know, maybe we are...

Blood Smash

2008-07-18T23:54:00.000+01:00

Bristol-based experimental boy/girl band The Jelas are readying the release of their latest EP "Blood Smash" on Ingue Records (pronounced 'ang'). Bert said to me when he heard the demo that he didn't really know how it could be improved. The answer, unbeknown to us at the time, was to get me in on the glockenspiel.

I feel like I have heard enough in progress to know its evolution a little bit, and I'm really suprised it's ended up sounding like this. There is more texture than previous Jelas, and I don't even know what texture really means. I just know that Blood Smash has it. I did a tiny bit of mixing and also some mastering on it which makes me proud. Hopefully I will get a copy but if not then I will buy one. And you should too.

The Jelas

Friendly Blog

2008-07-05T20:06:00.000+01:00

My friend Ian writes in a blog here. It is named after himself, I think. If you were about to read my blog then you should stop at the end of this sentence and go and read Ian's instead.

...

Data Entry

2008-07-01T20:34:00.000+01:00

I saw in the news today that Cherie Blair is scared for her children, because so many young people have been killed in London. I'm sure as rife as knife-crime is on her estate (different kind), her children are amongst the safest in the world. Personally I am more worried about London teenagers not related to an ex-Prime Minister.

I have been feeling pretty carp lately, I am right now working part-time in the field of Data Entry. My life is really shit for four hours a day. Still trying to sort a Bumblebees tour, it is fucking hard work and not the good kind. I try to be good and send lovely messages to promoters and stuff but pretty much all of them don't get a response. When they do it is usually 'no'. But from what I can gather (from my CONTACTS) this is pretty much the norm, even for better, more popular bands than us.

BORED

Hampshire Retreat

2008-06-14T16:37:00.000+01:00

We're going to the New Forest tomorrow. We're going for a week with Daisy and Oli (who are sort of like a better version of us - they gave us a thorough beating in badminton yesterday), and I don't know if the place we are going will have the internet. It probably won't. So this is my reason for maybe not replying to things. I hope it doesn't get in the way of the tourmaking.

I wanted to take a mic and get most of the vocals for the EP done, but I haven't even done the drums and guitar yet, so there's no point. Bought a new mic yesterday to record EVERYTHING with (it is an SM57, so far it sounds pretty good). I know it will be a fun holiday, but I can hardly wait to get back and start recording.

See you later.

Old 4

2008-06-14T14:04:00.000+01:00

Just a different version of a folky guitar thing I posted before. This was an old recording of it though, which I did for college. It's way nicer. It is called Balloon Disaster.

Still tourbooking, going okay I think. It will be hard to tell until a couple of weeks time.

Hobbits / Century FC / Oldie

2008-06-09T13:31:00.000+01:00

On Thursday we played Hobbits which is a rockclub in Weston-Super-Mare. I didn't really enjoy the gig that much. The crowd was quite young (average probably 14 or 15 years) and I don't think they liked us very much. Which I suppose is okay because I don't think I liked them either. They were doing a weird fake-mosh. They did the macarena to Mysterious Guitar. Thinking back, that is quite funny. I spent most of the gig thinking of the sentence that would most devastatingly show them the inane mediocrity of every facet of their lives. I am still thinking.

We don't have any more gigs booked, I don't think we'll do one now until Bert gets back. I confirmed our first gig so far in the tour - a clubnight in Glasgow. I just hope we can play some place somewhere between Bristol and Scotland.

Yesterday Steve and I went to be part of a Feral Choir, a hundred people doing vocal improvisations using signals and stuff. It was good fun. I don't know how fun it would have been to listen to, but some bits sounded really impressive from where I was standing.

Old song called Meter I have put up. Not really a song, just crap electronica/dance. A song, like most of mine, that if someone else had done I would think them a boring talentless hack. Not me, no way.

Classic 2

2008-06-04T15:23:00.001+01:00

This song is a guitar instrumental. Probably inspired by Mogwai or something like that, and it is from when I wanted to be Johnny Marr. (I still love Johnny Marr, I just don't actually want to be in his skin.)

The title is a quote from A Hard Day's Night, the best film of all time. It is a scene where George stumbles into an inteview for a TV fashion show, the director of which doesn't recognise him, and proceeds to tell George how unimportant he is (the irony being HE"S IN THE BEATLES!!!). The script is literally amazing:

SIMON
We want you to give us your opinion on some
clothes for teenagers.

GEORGE
Oh, by all means, I'd be quite prepared for
that eventuality.

SIMON
Well, not your real opinion, naturally. It'll
be written out and you'll learn it.
(to secretary)
Can he read?

GEORGE
Of course I can.

SIMON
I mean lines, ducky, can you handle lines?

GEORGE
I'll have a bash.

SIMON
Good. Hart, get him whatever it is they drink,
a cokearama?

GEORGE
Ta.

SIMON
Well, at least he's polite. Show him the
shirts, Adrian.

A collection of shirts are produced and GEORGE looks at them. While he
is doing this SIMON briefs him.

SIMON
Now, you'll like these. You really "dig" them.
They're "fab" and all the other pimply
hyperboles.

GEORGE
I wouldn't be seen dead in them. They're dead
grotty.

SIMON
Grotty?

GEORGE
Yeah, grotesque.

SIMON
(to secretary)
Make a note of that word and give it to Susan.
I think it's rather touching really. Here's
this kid trying to give me his utterly
valueless opinion when I know for a fact within
four weeks he'll be suffering from a violent
inferiority complex and loss of status if he
isn't wearing one of these nasty things. Of
course they're grotty, you wretched nit, that's
why they were designed, but that's what you'll
want.

GEORGE
But I won't.

SIMON
You can be replaced you know, chicky baby.

GEORGE
I don't care.

SIMON
And that pose is out too, Sunny Jim. The new
thing is to care passionately, and be right
wing. Anyway, you won't meet Susan if you don't
cooperate.

GEORGE
And who's this Susan when she's at home?

SIMON
(playing his ace)
Only Susan Campey, our resident teenager.
You'll have to love her. She's your symbol.

GEORGE
Oh, you mean that posh bird who gets
everything wrong?

SIMON
I beg your pardon?

GEORGE
Oh, yes, the lads frequently gather round the
T.V. set to watch her for a giggle. Once we
even all sat down and wrote these letters
saying how gear she was and all that rubbish.

SIMON
She's a trend setter. It's her profession!

GEORGE
She's a drag. A well-known drag. We turn the
sound down on her and say rude things.

SIMON
Get him out of here!!

GEORGE
(genuinely surprised)
Have I said something amiss?

SIMON
Get him out of here. He's knocking the
programme's image!!

The underlings hustle GEORGE to the door.

GEORGE
(smiling)
Sorry about the shirts.

He is ejected through the door.

SIMON
Get him out.
(he stops in mid-shout)
You don't think he's a new phenomenon, do you?

SECRETARY
You mean an early clue to the new direction?

SIMON
(rummaging in his desk)
Where's the calendar?
(he finds it)
No, he's just a trouble maker. The change isn't
due for three weeks. All the same, make a note
not to extend Susan's contract. Let's not take
any unnecessary chances!

Anyway here's the song:

The New Thing Is To Care Passionately

Oldies Classic Time

2008-06-03T23:38:00.000+01:00

I got some of my old songs from Roz's old computer. Ones that I lost about two or three computers ago but had sent to her (I still never get round to backing things up because I trust technology too much). So for the next few days I am going to post songs that I have done ages ago.

This first one is called "Maybe I'm Like This All The Time". It was written before Roz and I were going out (which makes it maybe eighteen months old, probably more) and I wrote it to impress her. It is a song about her being a couple of minutes late when we met up one time.

Maybe I'm Like This All The Time

Bee More Interesting

2008-06-01T13:50:00.000+01:00

We played the Croft on Thursday, a gig organised in part by one of our friends as part of a monthly charity-fundraising thing. It was good fun. We had another new song, which is my favourite type of song.

This is what we played:

My Kaleidoscope
Understanding Parents
Fluffy Clouds Of Joy
Cool Science
Perfect Holiday
Mysterious Guitar
The Internal World

Things are looking a bit exciting for us at the moment. We're trying to book ourselves a tour for early September to coincide with putting out our first CD at about that time (I have made a massively exciting SPREADSHEET to hopefully keep track of where we can play and when). We haven't properly started recording yet but that might start this weekend. We've been asked to do a 7" for Cloudberry Records later in the year, and be on a Series Two Records compilation. Both of those we are probably going to do. Cool, right?

God Fearing

2008-05-30T02:10:00.000+01:00

Roz and I watched Jesus Camp on Tuesday (after getting back from Deceptacon). It was one of the most disturbing things ever. It is a documentary about a summer camp run by evangelicals where they train kids to hate anyone different from themselves. They are taught to channel the spirit of the lord, misuse science, feel sinful for having natural desires, oppose abortion, etc. They are not ever taught to question the nature of anything, but to live by the fear of God alone.

These children are absolutely and completely used and manipulated in a completely calculated way. And these kids are helpless - they love being told how special they are and that they have been chosen to "take back American for Christ" (there is a horrible nationalist subtext behind most of the teachings), but you cannot help but find them unbearably smug and idiotic. (Christian children are the most annoying type of children, and evangelicals are the most annoying type of Christian.) I hope that at least some of them will grow up to question what they have been indoctrinated with, but some of them won't at all. So it will keep on going, for centuries at least.

If you haven't seen Jesus Camp then it is probably on YouTube, I'm guessing with hundreds of comments from godnuts countering athiests with stuff like "fine if u want the devil to have ur ass in hell fag" (that is a real comment I saw once). There is a nice cameo from Ted Haggard, who you might recognise as the anti-drugs anti-gay preacher who was revealed as a gay drug-user. Sweet.

It makes me happy that we have Cool Science, but I wish the lyrics were a bit more specific, a bit more direct. It is a bit of a confused song (like most of ours). I might change the words a tiny amount when we record our EP. I think that's allowed - like John Lennon recording Revolution twice and saying "count me in" on one version and "count me out" on another. He wasn't being careless or covering his back; he was documenting his own confusion on a massive issue that was impossible to cover in a three minute song. I want Cool Science to be accurate to us when we record it.

Second Ever Football Post

2008-05-26T00:18:00.000+01:00

Bleurgh. This time regarding Wembley loss. I don't think football could make me cry, but it did come very close on Saturday. A sort of success beckoned that is not guaranteed to happen every lifetime (see Rochdale's 34 years without promotion or even relegation), and it is hard to not to get caught up. It is weird to pay to feel so crap, it is sickening to hear 40,000 people feel absolutely and truly jubilant. Wembley is tainted (until The Bumblebees play there).

There is always next year. But next year will be crap, I think everyone secretly knows that - sometimes this year is all you get. We went from being 1 game away, to being 46 games away, and that seems like a pretty huge jump backwards. Luckily I will be in Oxford next year, so I can watch us fail from a numbing distance.

Catch-Up Two

2008-05-20T02:46:00.000+01:00

Last Sunday was SHOP, which is a sweet place on Christmas Steps, which is a pretty sweet place in itself. We played without the laptop, which was nice because we could rallentando our little hearts out. It went pretty well, we kept the banter to a minimum to maximise rocking time. Roxanne:theearlyyears played after us, with Chris, who is from New York. They were quiet and intimate, and probably suited the gig better than us. Roxy has a really nice voice. Winston Echo was generally great. "Bureau de Change" was my favourite.

Tuesday we played at St James' Wine Vaults in Bath. We played quite badly, and it was my fault. After us were Drunkard's Ball who we didn't watch cos we didn't like their soundcheck, Oxygen Thief who I absolutely loved, and Lego Castles who I got bored of quickly. Tuesday night was also the time that City beat Palace, so I was mainly interested in that, really. It was a potentially cool place to play, but we didn't have that much fun. Oxygen Thief (who is also sometimes called Barry) gave us a lift home, making me think him even more brilliant.

Dull catch-up complete. I have to go now THANKS.

Long Weekend, Check-In

2008-05-08T20:20:00.000+01:00

One week of non-blogging has passed. So put the kettle on, I have lots of words to type.

Last Thursday we had our ONLY Bumblebees practice in preparement for three gigs in three days. We had three new songs to practice, and happily we pretty much made them sound good. We stuck to the same setlist for all the gigs, mainly because it meant we didn't have to swap the drum tracks around.

This was the setlist:

Perfect Holiday
My Kaleidoscope
The Internal World
Beachy
Fluffy Clouds Of Joy
Mysterious Guitar
Cool Science

The next morning Roz and I went outfit shopping, whilst Bert was at work doing whatever he does at work. We got some yellow t-shirts, some black ribbon, and some artificial flowers. We stuck the ribbon on the shirts. The idea was to be bee-like, but I'm not sure how well it worked. We only wore it on the Friday in the end, just cos it got really sweaty and the ribbon started falling off. I like the idea of outfits though - it's like being in the army, only fun.

Friday night we played at The Cooler. It's quite a big venue, but is never really that full, and is generally considered to be the loudest place in the world. So the sound is never that good, and it was not that good on this night. Some of our friends came and watched, but not as many as I thought might. I don't think they missed much though. We were a bit under-rehearsed, and it made us a bit lacking in confidence. Near the end I broke my D string. I didn't really recover. Arctic Circle were on after us and great as always. The main difference was the sharp upturn in danciness from their previous sets - I would say they are verging towards twee-funk. Or, twunk.

On Saturday we played our first London gig, supporting Zipper at Monkey Chews in Camden. (Venue fact: we saw an Amy Winhouse documentary the other night and someone was interviewed in the very place that we played! I'm pretty sure that means we've made it...) It was probably our most exciting gig so far. I broke my D string again, this time on literally the first note I played. I asked if I could borrow someone else's, and the guitarist from Zipper (whose name sadly I don't know and haven't looked up) said I could use his. Not only that but whilst we were playing he changed my string for me! The rest of the gig went really well I think. Despite no monitors or owt, the sound seemed really good from where we were standing, and we hardly mucked up at all. Zipper Man's guitar was really nice - apparently it is an old Spanish one that you can't get anymore.

All the other bands were really good (fuzzpop monsters Horowitz, indiepop troubadour MJ Hibbett, and especially Zipper, who literally made me dance). The gig finished with a disco - they played "Canada" by the Field Mice which was nice, cos I requested it.We stayed at Ian's house - he is one of the promoters, and probably is a frontrunner for the World's Nicest Person award. The four of us (three Bees and a Byrion, our friend turned keyboard-stand-carrier) stayed in his front room, which had a double bed in. Bert saw fit to share that with me and Roz. He snored loads.

Sunday morning we said our goodbyes to Ian and went to Camden Market (with directions from Ian's impeccable map). I think if there is a good way to visit Camden Market on a Sunday, it probably doesn't involve carrying guitars, rucksacks, a synth and a keyboard stand. And it probably involves knowing that Camden Town tube station is closed before lugging all the aforementioned equipment there. Still we got some food that was nice. We said goodbye to Byrion at Victoria cos he was going off to see a friend. The rest of us hopped on the Megabus and headed home, and more specifically to the Louisiana, where were the city of Bristol was gathering to welcome their heroes home.

When I say 'the city of Bristol', what I actually mean is Duncan, the sound guy. We were supporting Land Of Talk, an band from Montreal. This time I broke my A string in soundcheck. The other band playing were Meet Me Today, a POWER TRIO of 16-yr-olds playing their first ever gig. This meant that for the first time in Bumblebees history, we weren't the opening band. Hopefully this will happen more and more. They were what MJ Hibbett would call "professional, competent, rocking and tight". We were all that and more. I am really getting into Mysterious Guitar, I think it's great. Sadly not many people were there to witness it (only one member of Land Of Talk watched, I guess the other two couldn't find their way out of the dressing room). Land Of Talk were pretty boring, like a bland Rilo Kiley, if you can imagine such a thing.

We have now played six gigs in total, in about eight months of formal band existence. I think that is pretty good, but I would love to have more. Luckily, we do - one on Sunday in Bristol, and one on Tuesday in Bath! YES!

Bumblebee Gig Frenzy!

2008-05-02T00:30:00.000+01:00

We have spent the last couple of weeks trying to get as many gigs as possible. This is how it is working out currently.

2nd May - The Cooler, Bristol. Supporting Arctic Circle at Espionage.

3rd May - Monkey Chews, Chalk Farm, London. Supporting Zipper, MJ Hibbett and Horowitz.

4th May - Louisiana, Bristol. Supporting Land Of Talk. They are from Montreal.

11th May - SHOP, Bristol. Supporting roxanne:theearlyyears and Winston Echo.

5th June - Hobbits, Weston-Super-Mare. Supporting some bands.

It's not bad going, but I wish there were more. Gigs are amazing fun.

Andorra-Out

2008-05-01T07:31:00.000+01:00

Home and tired, tired and home. It is very nice to be back, I had started to forget what my dog looked like.

Andorra Settle

2008-04-20T13:43:00.000+01:00

I had a dream last night that I was killed, strangled in fact, by a terrorist. I woke up this morning and it was snowing. Coincedence? You decide...

Either way it seems to be settling, so hopefully we can go tobogganing later. At the moment the snow is interfering with the TV reception. This seems like a pretty heavy price to pay for a little bit of extreme weather. If it's a choice between Going Outdoors or Watching TV, I know which one I'd rather sit around and do.

Andorra Infection

2008-04-18T00:19:00.001+01:00

It has been a pretty lackluster couple of days - Roz and I have not really done anything fun for a while. I don't think I'm bored of the view yet, but I would like it to stop raining.

On Wednesday Roz felt very ill and was very sick on a very large number of occasions. So we went to the hospital and they gave her glucose through a tube and kept her in a bed for about six hours. I sat in a chair next to the bed, and also slept on the floor for a bit. It costs money to go to the hospital here. Quite a lot of money. Maybe that is something we will have to get used to. Roz is mainly better now, in case you were fretting.

I'm really slowly working on an RAS thing, probably an EP or something. I have done about two songs, but I think there will be five or six or seven. It sounds kind of echo-y but also cluttered. In a good way hopefully. It's going quite naturally. Anyway I will try and finish it before we leave but along with Bumblebees stuff I will probably start feeling unnecessarily stressed in about.....three hours. And I have started about twelve "EPs" before and always seem to delete them in a fitful click blizzard. It's an ego thing, probably. I want to be better than I am.

We have just finished watching Midsomer Murders. I had never seen it before, but I really liked it. That is my recommendation for today. Either that or watch lots of long-range swerving goals on YouTube. Or both.

Andorra Staggered

2008-04-13T01:06:00.000+01:00

Our friends have gradually departed, and now it is just Roz and I in the house. Robin left on the 9th, Daisy and Lindsay on the 10th, and Bert left yesterday. I hope everyone enjoyed themselves. We didn't get to do a huge amount of Fun Things, but it was still a Fun Holiday I think. We drank quite a lot, sometimes.

I don't know what we're going to do with the next couple of weeks. The only plan I have is to 'not do nothing'. That is a vague itinerary I can imagine modifying to involve watching Neighbours every day. Don't let me let this happen.

Andorra Parched

2008-04-06T12:58:00.000+01:00

I have really dry lips. I yawned today and they started bleeding. It is pretty hot here so I suppose that explains it, although no-one else has it really. Maybe Bert a little bit.

Andorra is going pretty well so far. It is relaxing or strenuous, depending on whether you are walking up a hill or not. There are loads of hills. So far we have not got any Bumblebee things done really, after walking the dog twice and feeing ourselves and the animals, there is less time than you would probably imagine. We do still plan on making an EP or mini-album or something along those lines, but it is quite hard to be motivated here.

I think this picture is pretty cool, but we have quite a lot of pictures. It is probably our favourite activity, after eating. We will probably break Facebook.

Andorra-In

2008-03-31T14:16:00.000+01:00

We got to Andorra yesterday. As journeys go, this was a tiring one. It is very snowy at the moment. This was the view from our window this morning. Because we are looking after the house so we have to learn what jobs we have to do whilst Roz's parents are away. One of them is cleaning out the cats' litter tray. Sadly Roz felt ill around this time, so went for a lie-down. Roz's dad showed me how to do it, then I had to do it. I think I did it okay. More soon.

Beatles Related Death

2008-03-24T17:09:00.000Z

Neil Aspinall died today. Of all the Beatles entourage, he was probably one of the main ones. It makes me a bit sad whenever anyone dies, and especially when they were even slightly involved with something that I love. Neil Aspinall was probably no more talented or interesting than the average Liverpudlian, but he just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Well done him.

Oh, and my favourite quote from the BBC obit:

Despite no musical training, he sang in the chorus of "Yellow Submarine".

Can you believe it?

Andorra Approach

2008-03-24T04:37:00.000Z

Roz and I leave for Andorra in seven days time, and we will be there for a whole month. That sounds pretty amazing, and hopefully it will be. I am no Magellan, but I think Andorra is the nicest place I have ever visited, and I am ultraexcited about going back there. It is possibly not the most exciting place in the world, but we have friends coming with us, so boredom is literally off the agenda.

Bert is coming, so hopefully we can get some Bumblebee fun going, possibly even making an album or EP or something. At the very least we need to prepare for a spate of gigging when we get back. We seem to be the sort of band that doesn't have regular practises. It's a bit weird really, cos we really like the songs, and we get on really well, so there is no reason not to. I guess with The Lauras and our other mildly time-consuming commitments, we don't want to make The Bumblebees start feeling like a chore. I feel like some of my songs especially could begin to grate very easily. Hmm?

Until Andorra all I have to do is get my haircut, go to the Post Office and play football once. It sounds like a really brilliant week.

By Far The Greatest Team

2008-03-22T18:33:00.000Z

I literally never write about football. And I don't really intend to make a habit of it (probably). But it is a really brilliant sport and if you don't like football then I still don't think it is very good just to say 'bleurgh' whenever it is mentioned.

Bristol City are the team that I support. They are currently doing better than they EVER have in my lifetime. Their amazing run of success has sort of coincided with me not really going to watch them anymore. During their third-tier years, I was a season ticket holder. I think I went to every home game for three years, as well as countless away trips to what Bill Bryson refers to as "northern B-towns" - those innumerable industrial outposts that make up most of Lancashire.

Anyway. I've put in the graft, is what I'm saying. And although I've only been to about five games this season, Bristol City are my team and this success makes me happy. We are six games away from our second consecutive promotion. I have probably just jinxed it. In fact, we seem to be on the verge of letting it slip through our fingers. (Is it possible to write about football without drowning in a sea of clichés?) So this is just an advance warning that if we do indeed fail at the final hurdle(s), this may become less blog more rant.

It Hurts To See You Blog So Well

2008-03-13T19:14:00.000Z

Bert out of top bop-pop band The Lauras has created a blog. It is going swimmingly. You read it here.

He goes to Canada today. He is on a plane right now. Lucky!

Song-Write Why?

2008-03-12T21:39:00.000Z

Writing songs does make me really very happy. But I wonder why I do it sometimes. I want to be writing songs basically all of the time, but I don't really know what I want out of it. I know what I don't want out of it. I don't want people to say it's okay, and I don't want people to be in the NME Cool List (unless I am number one). And I don't want EMI to say they would like to sign me up for a billion pounds.

I think I would quite like lots of people to like my songs, but I would much rather The Bumblebees were a few people's favourite band then one that lots of people quite liked. But that is obvious. I think it makes sense that I would write things that sound similar to other songs that I have loved. Because I want the same audience as the bands I like? Or because I what to feel what it would have felt like to write a song like that? Is it actually talent to re-organise your influences in an order that seems original? Or is that actually original in itself? Bleurgh. I write like Carrie Bradshaw.

I really love the challenge of writing a song. I would say it is like having a blank canvas, but it is not really. When I write a song, there are things that I know I don't want, and limitations to what I can make happen. For a Bumblebees song, for example, it has to be playable on the instruments that we play, it can't really have more than three vocal parts because there are only three of us, and it has to have a drumbeat that we can follow, because we have a drum machine. But those are fun limitations to have. We have chosen to be a quite normal pop band and there is a lot of flexibility to be a bit subversive and also be dancey and fun and accessible.

The idea of a song having the potential to be aboslutely anything is really scary and amazing. But everyone is limited by their brain.

I think I have quite often written songs that sound like someone else. I'm not really sure how I feel about that. I really absolutely love when you hear something in a song that you think is absolutely completely new. But I really like poppy songs that stay in your head. Is it a bit wrong to try and sound weird when all you want to do is stay in people's heads? Because I think if you try and be a little bit weird then you are not really trying to be that at all. Is it alright to try and be a bit weird just because you don't want to be boring, or bored by yourself? I hope not. We try not to be the same as anything, but we are definitely very similar to quite a few things that we like.

The only bit I don't really think about very much is lyrics. Lyrics and structure. I find that they are just true for me. I just do whatever words I think are the best and I write about basically whatever I am thinking about at the time. Usually that is illness and death, but sometimes it is just words for words sake. That happens less now though.

It is possibly a bad idea even to think about songs in such depth. But I can't help it now, so it's too late. And I think that it can make better songs. It is better than just knocking off songs like you don't care about them. I'm pretty sure every band I love has thought about their songs a lot, and it shows in a good way - they don't forced, they just sound considered. And that is fine. I like it when you listen to a song and think that every second of it has had hours of thought put into it.

I have made a couple of songs that I quite like recently. That helps me be a bit more assured in knowing that I can actually do what I want to do. I think of writing blocks as a bit like stages that you have to get past. Like on a game. And once you get past it, you are a better player.

Recorded Song

2008-03-12T05:20:00.000Z

This is a thing that I wrote about two years ago and recorded yesterday. I have to play a piece at Oxford Brookes if I want them to let me in, so I'm going to play a slightly better version of this. The guitar I played this on has a weird disease where the fretboard has an allergic reaction to the body, so the action is ridiculously high once you get past the fourth or fifth fret. It's literally impossible to tune.

Anyway this is the most technically impressive thing I have ever created:

Railway Bridge Balloon Disaster 1949

I did quite a cool piano part on top of it but it sounds really cluttered unless you listen to it on headphones so I've left it off. It's probably worth warning you that this song has LOUD FEEDBACK at the start. Watch out for that.

Bad Lauras Review

2008-03-10T23:59:00.000Z

As previously mentioned, The Lauras had a gig at the Thekla on Wednesday. Bert found a bad review of us today. I guess that it is fine if someone doesn't like us, but I do think published reviews have a responsibility to be accurate. It is hard to not to rail against a bad review without sounded embittered and righteous. So I guess I won't. But it's annoying.

Mulch Pt. 2

2008-03-08T14:46:00.000Z

I still need to listen to the Jelas album, but my ears hurt too much. I am really gigged out. Bert and Byrion and me went to see them yesterday in a fishtank in Bath. When they finished we had to drink really quickly and then run to get the last bus. It is my new favourite post-gig activity.

It was the best Jelas gig yet. The most fun, I think. They are really good lyrically which is something I didn't notice the first couple of times. There is a really brilliant bit in Blood Smash that is one of those bits in music that makes me sort of fizz up and spasm a little bit. I can't really write well because I am aware that the Jelas might read this. The only other thing I will say is that most bands get much worse when you listen to them with earplugs in, but the Jelas got a lot better.

I've been listening to music with my eyes shut quite a lot recently. It probably makes me look like an idiot but you can focus on it a lot more and you don't get swayed by atrocious haircuts or whatever. I'm going to do it more from now on.

Thought-out posts coming soon.

Spineless Mulch Prattle

2008-03-06T14:12:00.000Z

This week is kind of busy. Tuesday, Wednesday (yesterday), Thursday (today) and Friday I am/have going/gone to a gig. My ears are hurting already. Tuesday was Lands End / Fringes / Dressed In Wires. Fringes are really quite good I think. They are my favourite band with a saxophone in.

Yesterday we (The Lauras) played the Thekla, supporting Oh No! Oh My! I think we did pretty well, I probably enjoyed it the most of our gigs so far. We have a new song that is really fun to play. They all are really though, once you get into them. I was really amazed by how good Oh No! Oh My! sounded. Not that they were life-changing, but they were much better than what I'd heard before,

Today is Creationism, but we haven't done much promoting of it because it always shuts early. So we are just going to rely on Turbowolf bringing lots of people, and hope that we can keep them there with our wicked tunes.

Tomorrow is The Jelas in Bath. It will probably be brilliant, but I can't say for sure yet.

I have to write a story to send to Manchester Met, if I want to go there next year. So I've started that. It's quite good but I don't think it will be finished in time, so I will just have to send a poem that I wrote ages ago. Like most things I have ever written, it's about not being able to write very well (or at all). Hopefully it will be good enough to get me in.

There is always loads of stuff I want to do and I get round to doing about 10% of it. But I have even more stuff I want to do at the moment, so even if I do 10% of it, I will consider it a massive triumph.

Louisiana

2008-02-28T12:08:00.000Z

I left my job on Tuesday. It was only going to be for a month more anyway, but I got very bored quite quickly, and I really don't value money very much, I don't think. I would much rather have my day free to watch Wipeout. I was quite enjoying doing the Lunchbox songs, but even that got a bit tiring because I didn't leave time to eat enough. I almost fainted one day, I think.

Tuesday was also the day of our Bumblebees gig at the Loui, which I enjoyed more than any gig before. I think it will keep feeling easier and better for a while, as we get used to the blinding lights. Talking between songs is still a problem, but I problem that I secretly sort of enjoy. 12 people came, three of which were our parents, three of which were Jelas, one of which were Byrion, four of which were Jon and his friends, one of which were Oli. We got paid £12, so all of those people can now lawfully consider themselves our employers. Or shareholders. We are going to use the money on getting the bus to Bath to see the Jelas play.

This was the setlist (which I have coloured maroon):

To Bee Or Not To Bee
My Kaleidoscope
The Velocity Of Money
Beetroot
Fluffy Clouds Of Joy
Beachy
Cool Science

Cool Science had feedback on. I was petulant.

We played with Nina's Cafe, The Bloody Tourists and The Monaros. None of them were amazing, but The Bloody Tourists were really nice. The drummer from Nina's Cafe said, as we were coming off stage, "we're probably the weirdest band on tonight". What a weird thing to say. We didn't watch them, we went to get some chips.

We won't be gigging until May now, due to various holidays and stuff, so we have plenty of time to make a couple of new songs, and possibly to try and find a drummer. If you are reading this and you are one, or know one, we probably want to know.

Lunchbox No. 7: New Forest Barn

2008-02-26T02:33:00.000Z

Me and Roz have been away for the weekend. This song is about that weekend, in a vague way. I think it's one of my favourite ones so far! It feels like I've done more than seven. Do you like this one?

New Forest Barn

I am really ever so bored of work now, in a way that is unimaginable to the human mind. When I get some time I want to write about the last Creationism, and I want to write about The Jelas and Islands. Right now though we have to practise because the Bumblebees have a gig tomorrow! We truly are on the up and up. We got played on Radio Bristol at about 2am on Sunday morning. Hopefully that means we qualify for a rider now.

I might not have time to put up the Lunchbox tomorrow. See you all at the Louisiana!

Lunchbox No. 6: Office Talk

2008-02-21T01:46:00.000Z

I didn't spend that long on this one, I was really hungry and sick feeling. It's vaguely about not really liking being in an office, but it's not really about anything. If you are only going to download one out of this one and the one before, make it the one before.

Office Talk

I think I will stop doing Lunchboxes for this week cos the park is getting a bit too busy. And I want to go to the pub for lunch tomorrow.

Lunchbox No. 5: Gown Lament

2008-02-21T01:42:00.000Z

I am pretty pleased with this one, I don't know why. I think it sounds a bit more complicated than it is. I did the vocals today but all the rest of it yesterday.

It is based on a true story that happens every morning when I have to get out of my Mark & Spencer dressing gown and into my work shirt. Every day it gets colder (despite the popular myth about it getting warmer towards Spring) and therefore harder to make the transition from laziness to business.

Gown Lament

Go Hungry

2008-02-19T23:22:00.000Z

Oh. For anyone who has stayed up past their bedtime awaiting the next installment in my cult "Lunchbox" series, I'm afraid there is no lunch for anyone today. I made my usual trip to the park to do the song, but unfortunately it was buzzing with child-like flies. They were children. Sadly I had forgotten it was half-term.

I kept thinking they would leave for some food or something (they were all so fat I'm amazed they even thought of going to a park), but alas ...they didn't. If only I lived in Bridgend, eh? So I done all the music but I didn't do any singing. And it doesn't sound very good without the singing. So I'm going to finish it tomorrow, along with a WHOLE NEW LUNCHBOX! That's right, there will be two songs tomorrow. And if that doesn't make you want to kill yourself, I don't know what would...

Sorry this post is so late as well, I had to go straight from work to Bumblebees practise. I'm still hoping on getting another song ready before the gig, but seeing as it's only a week away and we're only going to have one more practise, and I haven't actually written the song yet, it's probably a bit optimistic.

Lunchbox No. 4: Art Loss Rep

2008-02-18T17:52:00.000Z

I really didn't feel like doing a song today. I hope that partially explains why this is the worst sound ever created outside of a Kooks gig. I hope I don't have to work for much longer.

Art Loss Rep

Lunchbox No. 3: Marmite By Blockbuster

2008-02-16T03:07:00.000Z

Hullo! This one is a bit late cos I got a bus home (rather than a lift), and I've had tea and watched Fresh Prince and done some emails and stuff. I did it from about 1.10 to 1.55 cos I had to phone the Job Centre and have a satsuma. I did literally no mixing on it when I got home, cos it's quite simple. Anyway I quite like this one, it's based on a true story.

Marmite By Blockbuster

More writing soon hopefully, making this more blog less dumping ground.

Lunchbox No. 2: Notre Dame Valentine

2008-02-15T01:57:00.000Z

I did this between 1 and 2. It's not so hot, but the brilliant thing about this is I always have a very good excuse for making a rubbish song. I did about ten minutes mixing on it when I got home cos it sounded worse than I remembered.

Notre Dame Valentine

Bye!

Lunchbox No. 1: Weird Spider Dream

2008-02-14T02:26:00.000Z

I did this between 12.30 and 13.30pm, and I mastered it at ten past six, cos it took ages to get home and then I got some food. The last half hour I was figuring out how to put it on here. Anyway I've done that now. This song is about a dream I had last night.

Weird Spider Dream

I have to go do Bumblebees practise now. Hopefully there will be another song tomorrow!

Plan Of Attack

2008-02-12T18:37:00.000Z

Yesterday night I thought of a really cool idea. I should take my MacBook to work and use it in my lunch break to make a song! I didn't do it though because I was really tired and forgot about it. So I'm going to do it tomorrow, and for every other day that I have to be in a boring office for ages.

It works this way:

1. I have all morning to think up a song, all the words and the tune and stuff.
2. In my hour lunch break I go to the park and record the song, all the singing and percussion and softsynths.
3. I can use the journey home to EQ, mix, compress, whatever.
4. When I get home I post the song here! The deadline is 6pm....or something

I call it "WHAT'S IN ELLIS' LUNCHBOX?"

You'll have to wait and see...

Quantity Street

2008-02-11T19:05:00.000Z

Eurgh. Somehow, without trying very hard, I have found myself working 9 t'5 at an office. I sort of needed a job, but not badly enough to actually get one. But then the agency phoned with work and I found myself saying 'okay then'. So for the next few weeks I am ADMIN ASSISTANT first, musician second. Probably tea-maker third. I am in a Loss Adjusters, which is the most boring work in the world (no offence Jon- I'm sure it depends which office you happen to be in - mine is a dull one). It will last for a couple of weeks, which will pay for Andorra in April, and maybe some treats for the two of us.

Still, I didn't mean to start on a DULL NOTE - the last few days have been generally really good, some of the best in ages. Thursday was our club night, and despite it closing early, I still enjoyed it. But we need to sort out how much control we actually have over closing time, because if we really pull out all the stops to get people to come and it still shuts at half twelve then we'll have been wasting our time and more importantly our friends and 'punters' money. People were coming around the time it was shutting, which just added to the annoyance. Matthew and Mike (Milky Way DJs) arrived just as they stopped letting people in and, having finished up, we met the Jelas on Park Street on their way to our now non-existent night. We wandered round with them a bit, and they gave us a lift home.

Friday, Roz and I went to a Pancake Party at Cafe Kino, with Daisy and Oli and Steve, who are all really nice. It was ALL YOU CAN EAT. The only problem was you could only order one pancake at a time, and supply was substantially outweighed by ferocious, ferocious demand. We got through a selection of toppings, sweet and savoury. Us two and Daisy and Oli went on to Start The Bus, which is new. The music was a bit loud. I thought I saw the bassist from Kotki Dwa. It was like:

"Hey are you the bassist from Kotki Dwa?!"
"No, but I am a bassist!"
"Don't lie! I know you are....what's your name then?"
"What should my name be?"
"Umm. I think it was Tom, or Tristan..."
"Nah, it's Ian."
"Oh alright. Someone thought I was in Munch Munch once."

A friend for life. Anyway we didn't love the place but the decor is kinda alright. We'd like to play there. We went on to Renato's and I did some jammin' blues piano with someone wearing a waistcoat (I think). It was a really nice night. We don't really go out very much but with the right people it's fun.

Went swimmin' on the weekend, it was like welcome to exerciseville. I think it is the sort of thing we (or everybody) should do regularly, so we'll try to. We also did a bit of work on the new Bumblebees' songs, they sound much better than before. I don't think they are worldbeaters (or as good as some of the old ones) but they are workable and I more excited less nervous about our next gig now, and less worried that I'll never be able to finish another song.

Anyway I'm writing here only because I've made myself, and it shows. So BYE.

Bouncebackability

2008-02-06T14:10:00.000Z

Brrrr. I am still not feeling very great. I have felt much worse, but I have never felt so consistently low for this long. I have forced myself to finish some Bumblebees songs because we have a gig quite soon. They are okay. I have to keep telling myself that there is no way I would peak as a songwriter aged eighteen. I just have to relax a bit and be patient.

Roz and me have Creationism tomorrow. I really hope that some people come, and that those people enjoy it, because I really like doing it, and I feel like we've put enough effort in to deserve to have people there. It would be a bit much to say that doing a clubnight is difficult, but I wouldn't say that it is easy. Roz took about three days doing the poster (I spent about ten minutes making it FLASH in an extremely garish manner), we spent a day putting posters up around Bristol, and an evening handing out flyers to anyone who looked even mildly 'indie'. Since then we have been practising, worrying, and trying to find new bands that aren't Vampire Weekend. (I don't mind them, but c'mon, overhyped much? Paul Simon rinsed that hi-life shit years ago...)

p.s. If America really has to have a President, I want it to be Barack Obama.

Crud

2008-01-26T23:34:00.000Z

I always mean to write in here about the times when I feel rubbish and uncreative. But when I feel like that I tend not to feel like writing. I tend not to feel like doing anything, really, but sleeping and waiting until I feel better. When I feel uncreative I usually feel depressed, and vice versa.

Recently I have been feeling pretty uncreative a lot of the time - since Monday at least, and I think probably a lot longer. I have made no progress on any Bumblebees songs, and I have completed abandoned the Rescue Aid Society EP I was working on. I want to start that again because I never get tired with the idea of putting out music. I just get frustrated with trying to make it. The Bumblebees stuff is quite important, cos we have a gig in a month and we really want new songs. Some of the current ones are just embarrassing. But the only ideas I have are reworkings of old ideas, and I can't even finish them. I feel like I am not creative at all.

Sometimes I think that I am just an assortment of other peoples' personalities, and that I don't have the potential to think up anything new at all. Most of the songs I write just sound like whatever I've been listening to lately. I think some people see the world in a unique way, and I don't think I am one of those people. (Here is the time to say that THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION is a really fantastic book that made me think about lots of things.)

Making music is something, maybe the only thing, that I can get absolutely lost in. I know I have a passion for music. I feel like one of those desperate failures on X-Factor who simply won't believe that they are not god's gift to pop music. Do you think they know, in the back of their minds, that in this instance Simon Cowell is probably in a better position to judge? I feel like if I were on a reality show, families would be shouting "GIVE UP!" in unison at their screens.

I'm sure not all musicians have a consistently inspired worldview. I'm sure some are just grafters; the musical equivalent of, say, Kevin Kilbane. People who wrote really good (and possibly very distinctive) songs by emulating songs they liked. Super Furry Animals or something. But Super Furry Animals never made me want to explode, and they never made me want to cry. Making a career out of decent power-pop is definitely better than filling envelopes, but I don't think I would ever be happy with myself.

I'll probably feel better soon, I usually do.

Custard Lovely Custard

2008-01-22T13:51:00.000Z

The Bumblebees did our second gig ever on Monday, and it was alright. I'm getting a bit bored of having nothing very exciting to write about our gigs, which leads me to the possible conclusion that our gigs aren't very exciting. It was quite short notice because The Lauras were meant to be playing but Oli went on holiday instead so Bert said us 'Bees should do it, and Dean (promoter) said that was fine.

We played, lucky for us, with the mighty Jelas, Chipping Sodbury's finest deconstructivist power trio, who are not only brilliant, but really nice. They brought us a keyboard stand! They don't even have a keyboardist! They did a really good set, better than last time I saw them. I was quite jealous. JELA-ous. Yeah?

Despite not exactly setting the place alight, we got through all our songs without dying and I didn't say anything horrendously embarrassing between the tunes. I think I get into singing a bit too much, but I can't really help it. It just seems like it matters a lot.... maybe it doesn't. But it felt like a proper beginning for us, a more 'real' gig than the Oxford one. We're going to do some new songs (because I feel a bit embarrassed by some of them) and then start gigging pretty much anywhere we can.

I've been sleeping quite badly recently.

Don't Call It A Comeback

2008-01-21T05:57:00.000Z

I didn't write here for a bit because I wanted to do other stuff. Mainly I didn't get round to doing anything other than eating, sleeping and talking. So here I am back with my tail between my legs. Christmas was quite fun, New Year's was rather dull, nothing mind-blowingly fantastic to report.

But other than WASTING it, here is what I've been doing with my time:-

APPLYING FOR UNIVERSITY. I decided to apply at the last minute, mainly because I thought I might end up regretting it if I didn't, and decided I want to go in a few months time. But now I've finished applying I'm actually getting quite excited at the thought of it. A new city, new friend(s?), new clothes! I've been waiting to re-invent myself since I was about eleven. I am taking English Language and Literature. I will probably not be at a particularly good university, but that is because I am not very good at learning. Mostly I want to go to Manchester, I think.

PRACTICING FOR THE BUMBLEBEES GIG. We have a gig on Monday at The Croft, at about a week's notice. It was meant to be a Lauras gig but someone (who I won't name but whose name is Oli) booked holiday without knowing or remembering that we were meant to be playing... So Bert suggested the Bumblebees step in and so we are going to. It's not the ideal way to play our first Bristol gig (we wanted to write a few new songs for one thing - a couple of them I am just EMBARRASSED by) but it will help expel nerves and it's better than staying in on a Monday evening. We made a myspace as well, it's here.

TRYING TO MAKE SONGS. This is the thing that has taken the most time, and the thing I've made the least progress with. I have done about three songs, none of which I am really taken with, but I think I am beyond the stage of wanting to like my songs. I am just going to finish what I told myself I would finish and then 'release' it. I think I am going to release it properly, as in send it to places that will review it and to places that might play it. This means organising myself properly and trying to think, at least slightly, in a business mindset. (Not in the "all very good, but will it SELL?" sense, but just keeping track of how much money I'm losing.) This excites me quite a lot because as previously mentioned, I have always wanted to start a record label. So that's all been planned a bit, which I will write about another time.

Anyway it seems like all I've done in the last month is let my writing DETERIORATE so I'll leave it here for now. If you happen to be reading this before the Bumblebees gig, please come. Thanks.

Break

2007-12-24T21:46:00.000Z

I am not going to write on here until The New Year because I want to get loads of music done and stop kidding myself that The Internet is a valid place to spend time whilst waiting for creativity to strike. Happy Winterval!

I Am What I Play

2007-12-22T11:57:00.000Z

Club Creationism, Roz and I's shambolic venture into Playing Records For People, continued on Thursday with our first night at The Cooler. Dean from Off Beat Promotions has said we can do this after all his gigs there, which means every 1st and 3rd Thursday, and this one was special because it was his special Christmas Party special. Roz couldn't do it though because she wasn't feeling good, and so I had to do it by myself because both my other friends were busy.

Dean had warned that people have a habit of not sticking around after the bands (as evidenced by the last time the Lauras played there, when literally no-one stayed for the DJing), so I was getting a bit worried when as Brandon Steep announced their last song, half the crowd began looking for their bags and coats. I did have a couple of friends there though, as well as Big Jeff, so in persuading him to stay, I figured at least people would know what they were supposed to be doing - DANCING!

The clubnight that used to be on after Dean's gigs was called 'Beat Surrender', and was run by someone called John The Mod. So I took a risk and kicked off with The Jam. No-one danced, which perhaps explains why John The Mod now finds himself minus a clubnight, I thought to myself. So I played basically what I wanted to play, new and old, and it actually went quite well. From an empty dancefloor it slowly filled up until the majority of people were involved in some sort of pile-on to "Sound And Vision". The best bit was when someone recognised "I Was Born (A Unicorn)" from the drum intro. The second best bit was when I told someone No, I don't have any JOE LEAN, fucking hell. Bizarrely they were both the same person (I think it was Brandon Steep's keyboardist). Someone took my number and said that he does a lot of parties and he wanted me to DJ or something.

It started to wane about quarter to one and everyone went home. I got paid some money that will go towards Christmas presents. I felt a bit lonely being the last person to leave (except the bar-people, a race of their own), and more lonely again as I walked home with a very heavy CD case. But it was a pretty good night, I didn't fuck up really at all, and Roz and I have the chance to work on making this a Real and Established Clubnight, rather than an afterthought for people who aren't drunk enough to go home yet.

Bumblebits

2007-12-17T13:54:00.001Z

It's a Monday, which means yesterday was Sunday, which means today is the day after the day THE BUMBLEBEES made their live debut. Roz and Bert and Me (and our loyal fans Zoe And Jon And Bert's Dad) crammed in Bert's Dad's Van and headed up to Oxford, or more specifically the Port Mahon pub, where we were going to be the 2nd of 6 bands in an all-day gig put on by our friend Hog.

After being thoroughly confused by Oxford's one-way system, we arrived for soundcheck and managed to squeeze out a couple of songs to a less than enraptured crowd of bored-looking musicians (the eventual crowd of about twenty would not respond much better). The sound system in use at the Port Mahon was temperamental to say the least, and although it sounded alright from Up On The Stage, it was impossible to guess what was coming through the PA. Going by the sound of the other bands we saw (all of whom were ENJOYABLE or better), the mix was probably quite BAD.

I thought the gig, in terms of performance, went pretty well. I felt like I sang with feeling and mainly in-tune, I didn't forget many words, and I remembered pretty much all the chords. We didn't lose track of the drum machine (although there was a horrible bit at the start when it made weird noises and I couldn't figure out why - it turned out to be the power lead), we started and finished all the songs at the same time, and we didn't say anything that offensive to the crowd (apart from "shut up", which I retracted quite soon afterwards).

We ran through all our sure-fire hits, from the athiest-funk of "Cool Science, to the animal-rights-funk of "Fluffy Clouds Of Joy", but we didn't seem to go down that well. I don't know whether we were a bit too plain for that crowd, or whether our music is just unlikable, but most songs were greeted with blank stares, or the bowed heads of people texting their friends, presumably to tell them not to hurry to the gig just yet. But..... it was a fun gig all the same. I need to have a bit more confidence, and not just give up because some people don't like us. Obviously I would rather we'd been carried home to ecstatic cheering from newly converted Bumblebees devotees, but it was still a good way to get rid of our performance nerves, and to figure out what worked and what didn't before we get ourselves a local gig. I just hope Bristolians have BETTER TASTE.

Working Sentences

2007-12-13T02:45:00.000Z

I've just finished a twelve-hour shift sorting post at Royal Mail. My legs quite literally hurt. It is a temporary Christmas job and it pays quite bad money and has really bad hours. I am doing it because I owe a few people various amounts of money (including the bank) and I realised that I couldn't just wait until my talent was recognised to pay them back.

I did four hours overtime today mainly so I could see Roz, who is working opposite shifts to me, so unless I worked afternoons as well, we wouldn't see each other at all during the week. It was definitely worth it, and the time flew by (not literally).

What I have learnt so far is that Royal Mail is a very inefficient company. Lots of time and energy is wasted by doing things at the wrong time in the wrong way. On the way back from work me and Toby saw about a dozen fire engines (plus police and ambulans) heading to the Filton Royal Mail building, so hopefully there won't be any post left for us tomorrow...

Timbaland vs. A Finnish Person

2007-12-12T04:53:00.000Z

"Do It" is Nelly Furtado's latest single. It was produced by Timbaland, a largely excellent producer. There have been claims that he based the song around a stolen sample from an obscure Finnish demoscene composer. I'm pretty convinced these claims are true.

There has been a video on YouTube for flippin' ages that exposes Timbaland as a thief, but it only came back into my mind once I started hearing "Do It" twice a day on the radio. I absolutely can't believe that with the internet being quite a big deal nowadays, this hasn't been discussed on a larger platform, that no court case has ensued, and that mainstream radio either has no idea of the scale of fraud being committed here, or knows and does not care.

With this song being a single (albeit a fairly lesser one from Nelly Furtado's album), it's likely that worldwide it'll sell about a million copies, making a couple of million dollars split between Evil Stores, Evil Distributors, Evil Record Companies, Evil Managers, and last of all Timbaland (and Nelly Furtado). At it stands, none of that money will go to Janne Suni, arguably the main composer of the song.

On Timbaland's Wikipedia page, it says this on the subject: Timbaland, while admitting the sampling, has called the issue "ridiculous" but also says he is "in legal discussions" and is therefore unable to comment. It might be libellous to say this, but I think the only "ridiculous" thing is that Timbaland has been caught red-handed, but won't admit to defrauding the public for the sake of his reputation. (Timbaland's full rather... inarticulate reply is just here. Part of his defence is that he just didn't know whether it was public domain. Again, I reiterate, he is a famous producer with a huge company behind him. If it isn't clearly public domain material, don't use it!!)

My opinion is this: Firstly, I am dead against copyright laws, and think that sampling is great fun and should be free. Early rap used samples in fresh and exciting ways, and this potential still exists. BUT..... basically it is down to Record Labels Always Wanting More Money that sampling is now mainly illegal without permission (read payment), with the exception of copyleft material. So when a huge and very famous rich producer steals from a near unknown composer and doesn't even MENTION him, I don't think it can be considered Fair Use in any way, and I think in court he would be found guilty, and I think he (and more importantly Universal, basically the biggest music company around with a twenty-five per cent market share) should suffer the consequences. The song isn't even that good!

Overheard

2007-12-11T23:27:00.000Z

Sometimes snippets of a conversation are more than enough. Overheard today, two boys trying to outdo each other in regards to how broken their respective familes were. The winner:

"My parents have been split up eight years, I mainly live at my aunt's... so I get three advent calendars!"

Lucky kid!

Brainless Blogging

2007-12-10T20:50:00.001Z

I know it's pretty laaaaaazy to post videos instead of practising my writing but it's been a laaaaaaazy day and somehow it's made me tired. So this is just a YouTube video of one of my favourite songs ever. There is nothing really special about the construction of the song, or the melody, or the production, or the words, but somehow I find specialness in it.

It's a Beatles song, written and recorded in 1977 by John Lennon, completed by the Rest Of Them in 1995 as part of a big re-issue/Anthology thing. It got to number two I think, which is pretty decent considering it's the sort of mid-tempo soft-rock that is quite easy to forget, even as you're listening to it. It's pretty crap, considering it's THE BEATLES. Anyway I really love it and rather than spending the next four minutes reading whatever I might have had to say, I'd rather you watched this video:

(Just one sentence about today: In the morning I got a BRAND NEW MACBOOK and in the evening I played 5-a-side and the game was abandoned because there was a punch-up involving everyone except for me - I guess I'm just not passionate enough.)

We Are (The) Cooler Than You

2007-12-08T01:13:00.000Z

Last night was gig night! The Lauras headlined The Cooler, which is a VERY LOUD venue in the middle of Park Street. We hadn't played there before, but everyone was very nice, the soundman was bouncing around like a bunny, and the promoter was much chattier than most. Even the bouncers managed more than a grunt!

Sound-check was at half-five and we weren't on til eleven, so we had plenty of time to get a bit drunk and lark about in the way that a certain type of indie bands do in really crap videos. Jon's friend Steven kept picking me up, I don't know why. I accidentally kissed Jon but we've both forgotten about that now.

We got back to The Cooler about twenty minutes before going on - we didn't watch the first two support bands because we are too big for that shit now. Main support Ulysses were listenable in a dinosaurish sort of way, but I can't really remember anything specific about them. Apparently they are quite famous around Bristol, which sounds plausible, but obviously not that famous else they would have refused to go on before such a ramshackle act as The Lauras.

Doing our songs was much more fun than it usually is - it was probably the smallest crowd we've played to, but I would easily put it in my Top Three Gigs Of All Time (That I Played In), because:

There was a nice big stage for dancing
I was exactly the right amount drunk
The Jelas were there and they danced

And to Top It All Off, the promoter said me and Roz could take over DJing on his nights, after the bands finish. Which basically means we get a great venue for free, every fortnight, from 11 til 2, with an audience already there and waiting for our great tunes!

See you there!

Interview Technique

2007-12-07T00:55:00.001Z

I had an interview today for a job I really wanted. It was working for a well-known vegan and vegetarian charity that I won't name just in case it's against the Data Protection Act or something. This is roughly how it went:

Interviewer: Hiya Ellis, thanks very much for coming.
Me: HULLO
Now tell me, what do you think was the main reason for you turning vegan?
BUH?
Interesting. And what do would you say to someone in order to convince them to turn vegan?
MEH.
Cool! Do you have any experience with in research and organisation?
PHRM?
Great. And what do you think you could bring to the position?
BUH!
Excellent! Thanks very much for your time, Ellis. Bye-bye!
BUH-BUH!

I got an email with a half hour of leaving, telling me I hadn't got the job. More Tact Needed.

And If The Live Show Is Strong

2007-12-06T02:49:00.000Z

So, on 16th December the Bumblebees make their live debut. The Bumblees are Roz, Bert and Me, and we're playing at the Port Mahon in Oxford as part of an all-dayer organised by our friend Hog. We are sort of hard to describe, but I would say it's sort of post-punk + tweepop. We've practised together a total of two times so far, and we probably won't get many more opportunities, what with me and Roz working completely opposite shifts until Christmas, and Bertie Bass(-ett) busting his ass in a 9-to-5 hellhole for ha'penny per day. I'm sure we will still be brilliant, but I do feel like there's a lot to worry about.

I'm mainly concerned about it being my singing debut (aside from one acoustic gig with Bert), but also concerned about how we'll play as a band, whether the drum machine will work, how many people will be there, what the mix will be like, and whether the other bands will be miles better than us. With so much to worry about, I'll probably render it all irrelevant by forgetting my guitar or something....

In actuality it will probably not be that bad, and hopefully after we've played in front of strangers, we'll be able to come home and impress our friends with a Rocking Bristol Debut.

Q: Is Morrissey Racist Or Is The NME Shit?

2007-12-02T23:13:00.001Z

A: BOTH?

Firstly the obvious stuff: the NME is a terrible magazine that exists only to make money, that promotes regressive music made pretty much entirely by bulletheaded stupid men. They create and dismantle "scenes" like Lego with no regard for talent or ability, they write as voice-of-a-generation yet seem to write to a generation of eight year olds, and under IPC give the impression that they would say literally anything to sell more of their shit. They are consuma cultcha embodied and forced into skinny jeans.

In contrast, Morrissey is a well-regarded indie superstar with a long career built on writing brilliant songs (well, once upon a time), who generally seems to talk sense, and more importantly talks with great wit and eloquence. Aside from one previous brush with the NME (and a few questionable lyrics), his record is pretty much clean, unlike the filthy magazine.

So when the uniformly Bad NME puts the consistently Good Morrissey at the centre of a row over racism, I think the intelligent music fan could be forgiven for not immediately setting their Smiths collection alight. However, on actually reading the interview and giving it a while to sink in, it's Morrissey who comes across as out-of-touch, regressive and simplistic. His suggestion that Britain has been destroyed by immigration is not only ridiculous, but offensive to any immigrant of any nationality. If I were an immigrant Morrissey fan, I don't see how I could fail to be disgusted by his fierce nationalist streak, and even as a fairly obsessive Smiths fan myself I can't help but liken him to the grand-dad at the dinner party who doesn't even seem to realise why he is so completely wrong. What's more, his claim is completely absurd: immigration generally has a diverse, positive effect on culture. From what I can tell, Morrissey's vision of Modern Britain would be a stagnating pool of baudy, northern comics and dashing, aesthetic-obsessed playwrights. How boring.

Just quickly skimming the internet on the subject, it's easy to see that Morrissey has not alienated all of his fans with his .....edgy views, quite the opposite in fact. One of the many Facebook groups set up in the aftermath of the controversy has a topic entitled "If Morrissey actually WAS a racist.......................would you care?", with not a pinch of sarcasm evident. The type of brainless Morrissey fans who attack NME scenesters for blindly following the magazine ought to see that brainlessly following an aging singer is just as bad, because when he says something that you really should disagree with, you're more likely to make excuses, or try and understand, or at worst just blindly believe him.

I don't think I'm being overly PC or touchy when I say that almost the majority of Morrissey fans that posted on the groups on Facebook contained something equally offensive to me as Morrissey's comments, whether it was latent racism, homophobia (the irony!) or just the "if you don't agree with me then you're a soft cunt" argument. This is not debate about immigration, in the same way that Moz's Mafia claim the NME did not debate it. This is rats following the Pied Piper in the same way that the Topshop-hoardes follow the NME. Incidentally, the NME and The Smiths share the same musical lineage, namely the endless stream of skinny, male, guitar bands that obsess over the minutae of a British suburbia that no longer exists, obsessed with emulating rather than geniunely creating. (Just a note on the fickle nature of the whole thing, my favourite group concerning this on Facebook has this fantastic quote: "Make it known to the NME that you won't stand for the slack music journalism approach by not buying the next couple of issues.")

In my opinion (which I suppose is what matters here), the British identity is a manufactured concept, and in Morrissey's case an entirely imagined one. People have been complaining about immigration for literally centuries. But people have been unemployed, victims of crime, and slaves to wage-labour for centuries more. Immigration is not the problem in the lives of the working class. But that is another story for another day. In the meantime, the court will decide whether either side is legally in the right (no, not that sort of 'right') or wrong. But if, as interviewer Tim Jonze has claimed, all the Morrissey quotes printed are 100% accurate, then what exactly is he sueing them for? He has had his say, and both sides have come out looking ignorant, pompous and stubborn.

We Benefit Kino

2007-12-02T01:52:00.000Z

Thursday night was great fun, cause me and Roz did what I like to call "inter-band-DJing" at a Cafe Kino benefit (as previously mentioned) held at Cube Cinema. In truth it was more like inter-band-iPoding and only involved sitting around whilst occasionally adding to our On-The-Go playlist. It wasn't the sort of night that involved lots of dancing, but no-one said anything bad about our choices and some people complimented certain tracks, which was nice.

It felt nice just to be at the Cube doing something rather than viewing or listening. Not that we were an integral part of the night or anything, but it meant that if someone asked who I was I could say "I'm Ellis, we're DJing tonight", rather than "I'm Roz's boyfriend", which is how I usually sort of feel. Anyway all the bands that played between our songs (we paused the playlist) were fun to watch, especially I Know I Have No Collar, who made managed to make a whole show fun based on one gimmick (the pre-recorded "satelite link" to an absent band member).

At the end of the night when the bands had finished and the tidying up had begun, there was a cute moment where four of us danced quite vigourously to Le Tigre, then sort of absent mindedly wandered off to other duties. It was like a really aimless, poorly-attended flash mob (in the best possible way), and if I were the central role in an over-aspiring indie film, I might have thought to myself that our lives are but a series of moments; created by circumstance and destroyed by time. But I'm not and they aren't so I didn't, and we stopped off in the 24-hour supermarket for Bourbons on the way home.