I guess that, reading the above on the day between Friday and Sunday, it would appear to be obvious, immutable even, that today was a Saturday but having been a freelance musician/illustrator (or whatever it is I do nowadays) for the past eighteen years every day is Saturday, every night is Friday night. That’s not necessarily a good thing. The weeks and months slip beneath one’s feet, blurring and drifting without the weekend anchor to root you to any kind of calender. The body clock is fucked, birthdays are forgotten and whole seasons are missed. Do we have seasons anymore? Yesterday was warm and sunny, I was waiting for Mary after swimming last night and people were out in short sleeves and the tiny skirts and yet there are Christmas Trees in the windows of many of the bars around Cardiff.
Christmas Trees? Wasn’t it August three weeks ago?
The reason today feels different is because we’ve had so much work this week. As well as the whole Bandstocks thing, I’ve had my illustration for the Times, a commissioned illustration to finish and a design/layout job for Los Campesinos that we accepted even though we’ve never done any layout work before and it meant having to put ourselves through intensive crash course lessons in various software we’ve never used. we did it though, finished last night which is why I feel light as a feather this morning. That’s not to say I don’t work hard normally, it’s just that my brain was having to work in a different way. We need as much work as we can at the minute, we’re about to go from being a freewheelin’ couple to being a family on low income. It’s exciting though, I remember trudging to work in Birkenhead,twenty years ago, thinking that my entire life was mapped out in front of me in a dismal grey, formless sludge. I was determined to find the escape hatch and I did, not having to go into that office every day, to work for people and concepts that were alien to me, is the single greatest victory of my life and even if I have to go back, if things don’t work out, then at least I have tasted the air on a weekday morning in February, with nowhere to go, no-one to see, no bells to ring and no buttons to push. Somedays I would alight at Hamilton Square Station and walk in the opposite direction, take the ferry over to Liverpool and wander the streets, looking in windows and dreaming in Squares. Is that what I want from my son? I have no idea what I want for him. To be safe, warm and happy, that’ll do for now.
I worked in the red building (top). A place so dull that this was the only image of it I could find on the web.
So this week I’ve been staring at my computer for twelve hours a day, I’ve got a permanent headache and I’m crazier than a shithouse rat but I know things that I didn’t know at the beginning of the week and that’s what it’s all about. I forgot to mention in my last post that I’d seen my friend Adam last week. Adam used to be in a band called Swervedriver who were one of my favourites at the time (’Ravedown’ still sounds amazing) and we are good mates. He’s lived in the States for the last few years and we haven’t seen much of each other but he was in Cardiff to mix his album with Charlie Francis and Mary and I drove over to Roath to hang out for a while and listen to some of the (ace) tracks he was working on. He invited us to the Swervie reform gig at the Scala on Tuesday but, despite us having been in London that day, we didn’t make it. We went back to Cait’s to pick up the last of our stuff and I had a meeting with my manager. We left Cardiff at about six thirty am, got to Cait’s around ten and then I spent three hours packing and loading the van. After tubing it to Farringdon and then Hackney Wick (to view a not very nice flat) we got back to Caits around seven thirty, completely fucked. Cait made us some dinner -she is such a great lady- and then I drove back to Cardiff getting in around eleven. I slept well that night.
Mary had some breastfeeding workshops this week which was good practice for driving to the hospital. Her belly is huge now and she’s uncomfortable but she’s working hard and I’m immensely proud of her. It’s her birthday on Monday and I have no money to take her out of buy her anything nice, that’s not a great feeling. I’ll have to put a ribbon around the cat.
Gareth from Los Campesinos came over on Thursday to go through the DVD booklet that we’re working on. He’s a lovely lad, he was telling us that he’d been watching old Top of The Pops clips on youtube which brought visions of The Regents, Tourists and Pan’s People to my mind but he was talking about Blur and Oasis! Eh? I’m more than twice his age, fuck. He was lamenting the fact that there has been no real credible scene since Britpop which I had always considered a laughable concept. Bad music with no positive or maverick agenda, an establishment scene. But he would have been seven or eight at the time and I was in my mid to late twenties and the whole thing felt very silly. Mind you, I think that Two Tone was a worldwide revolution when in fact it was probably two or three records and some fucking great badges.
A friend of mine is pitching for some monument sculpture thing in the Valleys somewhere and he’s asked me to come up with a six note melody for bells. I’m not even sure what he’s talking about. I said yes though, of course I did. Always say YES!
My friend Miki sent me a couple fo great youtube things this week.
After having received a bunch of investments through Paypal I realise that if I am to make 50k rather than lose it then I’m going to have to add £1 on to every share. This is down to Paypal charges and the charge that the Bandstocks site throws at you when you upload money on your card.
So, please, if you want to invest. Send £11 pounds through Paypal to fingertipsaint.com
Thanks very much and thanks to all those who have already invested and sent me so many letters of support.
So last week I signed the Bandstocks contract and made the move back to Cardiff. In some ways it is a backwards step but time was running out and it is great to be back in our house with all our shit and our little welsh cat, Chickpea. The move took two trips and I’ve still got to go back and get more stuff. I don’t know how we manage to accumulate so much crap, it’s like she’s made of velcro and I’m made of sticky tape.
It’s been one hell of a year though. In the last twelve months I’ve learned to drive, stopped smoking (except for a couple of wee blips), recorded an album, got pregnant (kind of) started a business, started working for a national newspaper, spent six months living in somebody else’s house, sold art from a market stall and grown a rather splendid fro. No wonder I can’t stop napping.
The bandstocks thing (and you must be tired of hearing about this now) is going to be hard, hard work. I need to do something drastic, such as doing an acoustic tour with a new born baby, if I’m going to spread the word. It would be worth it though, if it came off. No question about that at all.
The house was spotless when we got back which we were very grateful for, not just the fact that all we had to do was unpack and settle back in but for the fact that we put our trust into people we didn’t know that well and that trust proved to be well founded. It means we’ll trust again which makes the world, even if it’s just an infinitesimal degree, a better place.
We drove back to Liverpool over the weekend to see my mum and check out the huge La Machine spider that was already crawling through the city. I had been in London a couple of summers ago and have always regretted not seeing the Sultan’s Elephant and Giant Little Girl that wandered through it’s broad avenues.
Just before Birmingham we encountered the worst weather I’ve ever had to drive through. The traffic on the M5 slowed to about thirty mph and I couldn’t see a fucking thing. It was ace! We met up with my mum at Lime Street and headed off to look for the Spider. We didn’t have to search for long. Church Street was rammed and helicopters buzzed overhead, I squeezed my through the crowds while Mary and my mum watched from further up the street. It looked incredible and was a beautiful golden colour. There was a bloke in front of me with his brolly in everybody’s way even though, as I pointed out to him, it wasn’t raining and he had no hair. I HATE umberellas, when I am king etc
I didn’t see any movement from the spider which was disappointing but a policemen told me that it would be on the move a bit later on so we walked down to the docks and had a ridiculously overpriced drink in one of the bars down there. We chatted and watched the sun disappear behind the old warehouses. I took some pictures, it’s ages since I’ve been out with my camera, I need to get back into the habit.
Later we made our way back up Hanover Street for another look. I tried to remember where Planet X was, the place where we spent most of our days in the late eighties and supported bands like Primal Scream when they came through Liverpool, but everything has changed so much. I narrowed it down to a couple of doorways and shut my eyes and tried to recall the distant senses and foggy sounds of twenty years ago.
Back at the top of Church Street we stood near the place where we thought the spider would end up. There was a large enclosure with huge pipes around which a mass of people waited patiently, we were beyond that, near a cordon of coppers who were stopping people from getting any closer which was frustrating. We waited anyway, and waited, and waited.
An hour later I could see the giant legs winding up the street followed by a live band that were being transported in individual cranes, high above the crowd. It was just getting dark and the noise of the spider, the crowd and the music was gripping. It was genuinely exciting, it would have been even better if we had been closer.
It stopped within the enclosure and had a kind of water fight with the pipes that were shooting out flames, that bit didn’t look too impressive but then, just as I was getting a bit bored and started wondering how the hell we were going to get through this massive crowd, the security people started yelling at us to move back and the gates came down and the fucking thing started walking through us. It was unbelievable, the noise and the spectacle of this 50ft wooden/mechanical arachnid stalking over our heads followed by a horde of musicians banging away in the sky was thrilling as hardly anything ever is these days.
And then it was gone and everyone just stood there grinning and clapping and why isn’t there more magic in the world? If it doesn’t exist then let’s invent it. This was the least cynical, genuine piece of theatre I’ve seen for a long, long tome and it didn’t cost me a penny. And I think about the times we stumbled around those same streets, out of our heads on acid, imagine if we’d have seen a giant spider, a real one I mean. We’d never have gone home again.
We went up the hill towards the Philarmonic, past Roscoe Street where I once had a flat and had dinner in a fantastic French Restaurant. I’ve given up beer (yeah right, let’s see how long this lasts) and have decided to become a wino so my mum and I drank a bottle of Merlot while Mary gorged on, er, soda water. We put my mum in a cab and drove ourselves back to the house where my mum got the photo boxes out so that Mary could laugh at my baby pictures. Honestly, you’ve never seen a head like it. I drank a bottle of Rioja (I could get used to this) and fell into bed about half two.
The following morning we went for a walk in the Breck. It used to be the grounds of a large mansion but was dug out to build the nearby motorway. It’s now an overgrown spot with rocky outcrops and I spent much of my childhood down here.
My mum had never seen the place which I couldn’t believe. I wanted to climb Granny’s Rock which we used to do whenever we came down. I hadn’t set foot in the place for over twenty five years and it didn’t look any different except maybe it was a bit wilder. I didn’t get to the top of Granny’s Rock, I’m too fat and old and scared but I gave it a go, it’s not even that high. All the old handholds are there and my hands and feet knew where to go after all these years.
I have many dreams about this place, or rather this place is the venue for much of my dreaming. It was also completely deserted. Wallasey feels like a ghost town to me, there are thousands of houses, hundreds of shops but I don’t know where all the people are. I hated living here as a youth and don’t like to spend much time here even now but a trip to the old school was in order and we trudged up to Liscard to see if St Albans was still standing. Walking up one of the roads approaching the school with the water tower in the distance felt really weird, like nothing had happened inbetween.
I was here from 1976-1979, I don’t remember fighting the punk wars but we did have a legendary Jubilee party at which the whole school had the biggest food fight I’ve ever been a part of. We got away with it as well, what were they going to do? Cane us all? Come to think of it, we were punk as fuck.
They’ve had new windows put in and the entrance is a bit different and the playground has completely changed but I guess you should expect that. We also walked past the small fence outside the second hand car lot that I would spend half an hour each day jumping over as a seven year old with too much energy. I lasted three this time. Not minutes, times.
Then it was back home for some serious napping, lunch and telly. We kissed my mum goodbye and hit the motorway. This will be my mum’s first Grandchild and she is VERY EXCITED. We haven’t told her that she is bringing him up yet, we don’t want her going overboard with gratitude.
We stopped off in Stafford to see Boo who is married to Mary’s brother, Muffin (who also happens to be MY HERO!). She had a van full of baby clothes, car seats, blow up swimming things and all kinds of stuff that the baby will need; how ace is that? She had also, with the help of her two wee girls, Hannah Banana and Gracie Goggins (I’m not making this up) made us some lush cornflake and marshmallow cakes. Result.
The subsequent drive home was long and poor Marylou was uncomfortable throughout. Still, we listened to Chet Baker all the way and nothing is ever hard when Chet sings.
Well, it’s up there. Are there five thousand people in the UK who care enough to invest? Are there five thousand people who have even heard the name Martin Carr?
I have no idea.
Seeing my name there, with no money next to it is terrifying but it’s exciting too and I’m glad I’ve done this. I was unsure at first, wondering whether or not I should wait to see what happens with the first acts, maybe leaving it until the next album, but I became really fired up by this idea and I want to be the first.
I do know that some people are dismissing the whole concept out of hand. I’ve found the most common points that have been raised, mainly on the internet, and here I will try to answer them as simply as possible which should be easy because the concept is very simple.
Caroline Sullivan wrote an article for the Guardian website last week. Let’s look at some of the points she raised:
“I predict that music lovers won’t jump at the chance of suddenly turning into the man. For them to be part of that process, receiving profit statements and attending AGMs, would divest music of the romanticism that every fan cherishes.”
Ok, she may have her tongue in her cheek here but the facts are that investors have no say in any aspect of the record they are investing in. The point of this system is to eliminate ‘the man’, whoever that may be. That doesn’t mean that Bandstocks is in competition with record labels, no more than they are with each other anyway. In fact, once the money has been raised the process is almost identical.
“The devil’s liniment that is The X-Factor has done enough damage with its campaign to turn pop into a faceless commodity; no righteous fan is going to want to finish the job by investing in Bandstocks.”
I don’t see the parallel between X-Factor and Bandstocks at all. The investor is merely replacing the record company. I don’t know what record companies Sullivan has visited but they as faceless like any other office. Believe me, there is nothing glamorous about a record label. The album is released the usual way, advertised the usual way, toured the usual way, sold the usual way and charts (or not) the usual way. The only difference is the way that the money is raised.
The acts on Bandstocks have been signed up, just like an act signed to an ordinary record company have been. You can’t just stick your band on the site and hope to raise the cash. To call this a talent contest is to paint the last eighty or so years of the music industry the same colour.
“No matter how much quirky pleasure there may be in bankrolling your own pop star, it’s one of the chanciest things you could sink your money into. Of hundreds of new acts launched every year, the great majority fails to sell”
For your ten pounds you get a download album plus a credit mention (I do doubt these would be on the cover, they would be on an insert or within a booklet). If the project fails to reach it’s intended target THE INVESTOR GETS THEIR MONEY BACK. There is no risk, no chance. I spent money intended for my mortgage on making this record and with a baby on the way I would say that’s a wee risk but this is my life and it’s worth it, I wouldn’t ask anybody else to take anything like that risk on my behalf.
“To pull a name at random from the current issue of Music Week, the 2007 debut album by American rapper Plies sold a total of 222 copies in Britain, and that was with the might of Atlantic Records behind him.”
That’s because Plies is shit. Is she saying that we should continue to stick with record labels because they, with all their money and marketing might, can only sell a couple of hundred records?
“Since your artist’s marketing budget would depend on how much has been invested, she/he might record the best album of the year, only for it to remain unheard because there’s not enough cash for advertising.”
The budget is done at the beginning. It’s all there on the site. If you haven’t budgeted enough for marketing you are a fool. Anyway, as Caroline points out, all the marketing in the world can’t sell a Plies record. If it’s a good record it will be reviewed and played on the radio. Adverts never sold a record.
Robert Andrews on digital media economy site paidConetnt:UK says
“The concept is basically a carbon copy of Sellaband and Slicethepie before it”
Not true. These two models are open to anyone and are full of bands who can’t get signed elsewhere. All the artists on Bandstocks have had offers but have chosen Bandstocks because they believe in it (and because the contract they sign is incredibly artist friendly).
When I was on Radio 5 talking about this a couple of weeks ago, somebody texted in to say:
“Why should we pay your recording costs?”
Well, who do you think pays for them now? The band pay out of their advance which is recoupable and is recouped through sales ie YOU pay for them. All expenditure is recouped by the record company, now more than ever. They used to take it from record sales but now you have to sign away merchandising money and tour fees. Yes, you are paying the studio cost (and ten pounds is quite cheap) but this time YOU will recoup if sales go well. Imagine if Oasis had bankrolled their first album this way, or The Stone Roses, we’d all be rich HA HA HA HA etc
I could go on, please feel free to ask post any questions after this post and I will answer every one. The only people who can make it work is us. It won’t happen by itself and it’s easy to sneer and be cynical. It’s harder to get involved and work at it. Ten pounds and word of mouth and we can be the first.
Marylou and I spent thursday morning at Akira’s house singing and playing guitar on this big song he has called ‘The Answer to the Anti-life Equation’ a composition that veers from melancholic introspection to big beat hip hop and a strange bit that I haven’t got me head round yet. Sounds like something off ‘OK Computer’ which is not what you’d expect from Adam which is always what you can expect from Adam. Jeres came round to work on his Son of King Rebel album and we sang harmonies on ‘I Don’t Love Jesus No More’ which has an ace chorus, I can’t wait to hear the finished thing. Adam works hard, I think he had three or four sessions going on that day. Respect. I made everyone breakfast and Adam poured scalding coffee all over his hand and cooker. Sweet.
Then Mary and I drove over to Clapton to see Stacey and he kids and show them the DVD we got from the 4D scan place which freaked the kids out and bored me to tears. When Penny told us she had seventeen minutes of footage what she meant was that she had three minutes of footage repeated six times. Poor. He’s a lovely wee orange blob though, I think we’re going to like him. I’ve known Stacey’s kids since the day they were born and I love them even though Betsi is always trying to get me involved in dollhouse games and Hank doesn’t appear to own any clothes.
Cait and Pete are away so a couple of her younger siblings threw a party which was still going when we got up the next morning. It was full of Cambridge nobs and the music was intensely bad. If you’re trying to sleep at four in the morning and the Stereophonics are grating away at punishing volumes then pray there is no shotgun in the house because if there is somebody is going down. Nobody died and the police didn’t come so it wasn’t really a party, more of a debate with booze. There was a serious amount of alcohol being consumed, they are that age where it doesn’t touch the sides. I get giddy on a couple of Kronies nowadays so hats off to ‘em. Apparently Jimmy, Cait’s teenage brother, got his fruity little leather satchel on at 7am, announced he was an important banker and set off down the hill towards Crouch End. Now that’s class. Jimmy is studying Theology at Cambridge and has spent his whole summer holidays studying the Bible so a breakdown was deffo on the cards. He calls me ‘lad’. When he’s speaking to me I can never work out if he thinks that I’m his Grandad or if he thinks that he’s my Grandad.
I was up until three doing this weeks illustration for the Times which involved a Tory MP seated at a kitchen table with his family with his head blown off in front of a depiction of the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus (ahh) in her arms only I’d put Thatchers face on her and Cameron’s face on him. There is no way they’re going to accept it but I submitted it anyway because I’m a curly haired sleepy rebel.
So after not much sleep I had to climb into the back of a BBC cab which picked it’s way through the morning traffic before arriving at White City and the home of the British Broadcasting Company where I was to talk about Bandstocks on Radio 5’s Victoria Derbyshire’s show. I was there early and I had downed two huge coffees by the time I, Bandstocks founder, Andrew Lewis and fellow Bandstocks artist, Jersey Budd were ushered into the studio a good half an hour after we were due on. We then had to listen to the news, weather, sport and traffic before being introduced. With precious little time left to explain something relatively simple but new (new is hard to explain to most people it seems) we were interrupted almost immediately by Derbyshire reading out the breaking news story that was this year contestants on Strictly Come Dancing. After she had read it out she asked me why I had had my head in my hands throughout. What I wanted to say was that in doing what she had just done, interrupted a discussion on a new way of presenting music that benefits both the Artist and the music lover to read out a list of low rent ‘celebrities’ that are appearing on some reality tv show she had shone a light on what is so badly wrong with our culture, or lack therof, today. But I didn’t. I dunno, maybe I bottled it, maybe I didn’t want to waste precious time arguing but I mumbled something about not recognising most of the names (not true) and holding a torch for Cherie Lunghi (I’m afraid that is true).
So finally we were on, I don’t remember much about it. They played a couple of Boo Radleys songs which was absurd and some woman texted in to say that good music will always win through and why should she pay for our recording costs. I don’t know who she thinks pays for recording costs now but it sure ain’t the bands or the labels. That one question worried me, are people really that dumb? Are they happy to fund record company execs coke habits rather than be a part of the whole experience. She’s happy to pay a tenner for a record that won’t make money for her or the band but won’t countenance paying a tenner for a record where both she and the band could make money, where owning the record and having her name on the sleeve is the very least she could expect. i don’t want to get evangelical about this, that was never my attention but complacency and fear of the unknown are two things I cannot abide so I might have to start standing on mountaintops wrapped in a sheet, wielding a mighty shitty stick and chucking about lightening bolts of righteous fury. I’ll need to rethink my hair though, it’s not being taken seriously for the artistic statement that it immutably is.
Afterwards, still angry, which surprised me, I met up with Marylou. Her embrace chased my dark thoughts down Great Portland Street and kicked the shit out of them in some dark alley full of cardboard boxes and fire escapes. Then we met up with my old friend Keefo and his lovely wife Jen. We had lunch in the Clachan where Keefo and I have been going since the mid nineties. We talked about babies (they have a young boy named Hamish who, at the advanced age of two, is a sturdy and handsome wee chap) and Joy Division and Bandstocks and Queen and Fleet Foxes and the Creation book (not the Bible) and babies again. Once home I checked my mail and my illustration had been accepted without further comment which saved me some time which we used by passing out cold on the bed for a couple of hours.
Then to Hackney for dinner at a friend’s house. Nicki is an interior designer and a friend of Mary’s from Cardiff. She cooked a lovely meal and we met some ace people and I’m afraid I got drunk and had to be taken home and put to bed. Amen.
This week I’m going to sign the contract with Bandstocks. Thanks to all those who responded with advice, warnings, love and threats, it will all be taken on board. I think I would regret it if I didn’t do it, if I signed with another label and went through all the same old shit once more. For those who don’t know what I’m on about it’s all here. I will post a F.A.Q about it soon. I’ve never done one before, do I wait until they are F.A.Q’s or do I second guess what people will want to know and put them up first? I’m leaning towards the latter.
So, two months to earn fifty grand. Two months to raise more money than I’ve managed in ten years. I guess it’s down to whether or not people are as tired of the industry ’system’ as the people involved in Bandstocks are and if so, whether they are prepared to commit to and contribute towards some kind of change or are happy merely download their music for free. I have never worried too much about illegal downloading, I’ve nabbed the odd thing or two myself when my patience won’t countenance a two day wait from Amazon, Eil or Ebay. I’m not proud and I make sure to buy whatever it is if I like it but that’s a whole other issue and I’ll write about it some other time. For me, personally, it’s an ideal setup. Everything is transparent, you know exactly, down to the last penny, where your money has gone and hopefully you may even make it back whereas I get to continue making music without having to go cap in hand to the suits. I can release stuff on vinyl, include handwritten lyric sheets, include artwork etc so that when you buy an album from me you won’t feel ripped off. I sound like a bloody door to door salesman now don’t I? I was one once, for two dismal weeks in back in the late eighties when I was about eighteen. I was unemployed, unemployable, and answered an ad in the paper for one of those ‘Travel the country and earn £100 a week’ (a fortune then) ads. There was nothing happening jobwise, Sice and I would go to the job centre regularly and stare at the solitary card on the wall advertising a post for a panel beater at something like ten grand a day (or so it seemed). We resolved to find out what the hell a panel beater was and how we would go about becoming one but always ended up back in on of our bedrooms, trying to work out the chords to ‘Jean’s Not Happening’ by The Pale Fountains.
I got an interview for the job, it was in Southport. My dad drove me up there and I said I’d see him back home the following day (the company were putting us up in a hotel, things were looking good). My interview lasted about five minutes, I think they just wanted to see if I could speak English and I was given a room that I was to share with three or four other lads. That night they took us to a nightclub and got us hammered, it was the best job I’d ever had and I still didn’t know what it was. The next day though, instead of going home we were driven to Banbury near Oxford and given an intensive training course in door to door sales or, as it turned out, bullying old women and pressurising the vulnerable into buying our smoke alarms. I was useless, utterly useless. I would knock at a door, after seven hours of traipsing the freezing streets of Oxford, some old dear would answer and I could smell dinner cooking and hear Coronation St starting somewhere behind her and I would feel dreadfully homesick. I’d give some half hearted pitch and then be on my way down the path before she could say ‘Sorry son, I can’t afford…’. I hated myself for even asking. I sold two in two weeks, to a couple of insane people who would have bought whatever it was I had in my pocket.
We stayed in a small compound in Banbury, after the first week we were told that our £100 pounds would be minus the cost of the Southport Hotel, the Banbury rooms, food and kit leaving us with practically nothing. We had to shoplift food the week after and I had had enough. A few of us were planning on doing a runner but they caught wind of it, finally agreeing to drive us back to Liverpool where they dropped us as far away from the city centre as they could and that was that. I arrived home, skint and depressed, the future seemed so bleak back then. I borrowed a couple of quid from my brother, Calum, called at Sice’s and went to the pub.
I think I’m doing alright at the Times. Last week they rang and asked me illustrate Ken Russell’s column which will appear tomorrow and when Caitlin went on holiday they asked me to illustrate her replacements column. This week she wrote about the English and their bicycles.
I’m trying to animate a video for one of the songs from the album but I’m absolutely clueless. I’m trying animate photoshop layers in Premiere. Any ideas?
Marylou and I are moving back to Cardiff this week. We haven’t been able to find somewhere to live that we really like and we’re desperate for some time alone and so going to have the baby in our lovely house in Canton. We’ve been so lucky here, living with Cait and her family and we’re going to miss them very much. We’re putting the Cardiff house up for sale at Christmas and hopefully we’ll be back in London as soon as possible. Mary is well and full of energy, she’s working on a new website at the minute. It was a mistake to try and combine our business site with my music one so all of this will be far less confusing within the next few weeks.
I’ve been reading Adam Ant’s biography over the last couple of days. I’m astounded by how driven that man was. As a kid I loved his records from ‘Dirk Wears White Sox’ onwards. I might be meeting him to talk about songwriting soon. Even if nothing comes of it, and I’ve never met anyone who I’ve wanted to write with before (except Akira the Don), at least I’ll be able to talk about music for an hour or so with somebody who was a big part of my childhood.
As most of you probably know I recorded an album earlier this year in Cardiff with producer Charlie Francis and a few friends. What with all the other things I’ve been doing I just haven’t had the time to work out the form in which it will be released.
One of the things I’ve been looking at is Bandstocks. A new model which bypasses record companies and allows the music fan (I’m guessing that’s you) to invest in the artist (that’ll be me). There are already a number of these things around but the difference is that this one is A+R’d. Bandstocks have to want you to do it, it’s not for bands who can’t get a record deal. Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think.. I’ll post more info soon.
Today feels like Saturday. 
