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Author: bsa_mar

What on Earth is a Cittern?

Posted on by bsa_mar

Okay I confess. Until December 2013 I knew a cittern was a string instrument in the mandola family but I had never seen one, and if at that time I had been asked to describe one I would have really struggled. So to those who thought I said ‘sitar’ when I replied to their question “what is that instrument you’re playing?” don’t worry, I was also blissful in my ignorance until then.

I bought my first cittern from Johnny Roadhouse in July 2014, six months after picking one off the wall thinking it was a 10 string bouzouki – Bouzouki Plus Plus Plus maybe? So the difference between a standard cittern and a standard bouzouki is probably a good place to start. Most bouzoukis have 8 strings, arranged in four pairs, with the treble strings being the same gauge and the bass strings being octaved (ie: a thick string and a thin string in the same pairing). Most citterns have 10 strings, arranged in five pairs with each pair of strings being the same gauge.

It does of course get much more complicated than that because there are 8 and 12 string citterns, and there are 10 string bouzoukis, and they are all different shapes and sizes according to where in the world they are made and when. Just like the oud and the lute, the string instruments in the mandola family predate the guitar. Their origins lie in the Renaissance period (loosely, the 15th& 16thcenturies) that emerged from the Middle Ages in Europe.

My first cittern is an Ashbury, designed by an Englishman and manufactured to specification in Vietnam. It is a 100% acoustic instrument and I feel like I own a perfect acoustic instrument. Production line instruments can sometimes be a little disappointing, with a flat sound, but the Ashbury is positively choral with a resonance that belies its relatively compact size. It’s only drawback is that it didn’t come with strap knobs, and because it is an awkward shape to hold I have to sit when I’m playing it.

When I had my arch top cittern made in 2017 by Fylde Guitars of ~Penrith, I specified that it should be semi acoustic and that it should have strap knobs! So I now have the freedom to stand and play, which is much more comfortable, enables me to sing louder, and has helped to build my confidence as a performer. Although the Fylde has a more mellow tone than the Ashbury, it is still one of the loudest acoustic instruments, so I warn every sound engineer not to assume they are dealing with just another guitar. The ones that don’t listen generally shout ‘Fucking hell!’ or similar when their battered eardrums finally settle down!

I don’t play the cittern in a traditional way, preferring instead to play it more as a rhythm rock guitar. More folky sounds started to creep in during the recording of The Breeding Ground OF Vile, and my output became more varied in that time. My song writing is almost all done with the cittern. Have a listen to the following songs to hear what a cittern sounds like without any effects added:

https://johnreed.bandcamp.com/track/watergrove-farm

https://johnreed.bandcamp.com/track/dry-the-life-cittern-version

https://johnreed.bandcamp.com/track/bleeding

https://johnreed.bandcamp.com/track/dependence

 

The Dullest Deluge Of Bland

Posted on by bsa_mar

A very long time ago in my youth, I worked a baloon machine for part of the summer on Blackpool Pleasure Beach. It was shaped like a circus clown, and had a red dot in the middle of its garish yellow conical hat. It also had a wand attached to the side with a magnet at its tip and a valve in the clown’s mouth. So when a customer came along to buy a balloon for their little one, I would place the neck of the balloon over the valve and tap the magnetic wand on the red dot to release a 3 second burst of helium to inflate the balloon, tie off the neck, and present it to the delighted child. At least, that was the theory. 

The theory all fell apart in Glasgow fortnight, famed for its nightly fighting in the Foxhall pub near to the Pleasure Beach. The number of children in the park reduced and the number of adults pouring out of the Foxhall at lunchtime proportionately increased for a few hours of playground fun before resuming their belligerent pub activities after 6pm. Originally there were two of us manning the machine, but after just a few days Chris was taken to hospital to have his appendix removed, and I was left in sole charge. 

Much of the time it was quiet, with just the occasional deliriously happy child being attached to a balloon. In those days the pubs closed their doors between 3 and 6pm, so around 3:30pm I was generally inundated with drunken Glaswegians each buying a 3 second burst of helium for direct into their mouths, creating yet another hilarious high pitched voice sound until it eventually wore off. Then just occasionally one of them would attach a condom to the valve. That got boring too, even when a hole was found. Dull. 

Most of the time it wasn’t very warm and I didn’t have any customers, unless you count that summer’s ladybird plague. They bite you know. So I  would have to listen to a diet of unspeakably dull pop records being blurted forth from a radio on an adjacent stall with its volume stuck on ‘only high’. It was 1975 and popular music had really lost its way after a few years where Glam Rock had breathed a bit of life into proceedings. My kind of music was never played on the main radio stations, so I had to tolerate this appalling racket daily. In the end, with just a few weeks left of the holiday before my final year at school, the clown machine owner asked if I would dress as a clown, so that rapidly became my last day! Anyone who knows me well knows I only do fancy dress parties as a gatecrasher. 

Mainstream music is currently repeating that awful history. There are some terrific new bands and singer songwriters who never receive mainstream radio play. The airwaves are once more dominated by cheesy feel good songs or a diet of bland that can only be compared to those desperate days of 1975. Back then it took bands like Dr. Feelgood to break us out of the malaise, and my sense is that it’s about to happen again. Not before time. 

The music awards generally signal when things have reached crisis point. I caught a few seconds of the BBC News the other night when a few of the awards were announced. “Oh shit. That’s not at all good” was my audible reflex reaction. There was nothing remotely new, nothing to inspire. And yesterday I was back in the studio chatting away to Ali Karim, and he has independently sensed something similar. A revolution is afoot. It won’t be punk, because I doubt anyone could fabricate a repeat of that spontaneous outpouring of rebellion, but something will happen, and very likely this year. 

When times are as challenging as they are right now, just as in the mid-70s, most people don’t want challenging further, preferring instead to lighten their lives with safe, unchallenging sounds. However there comes a point where even ‘safe’ stops doing it for people and the genie is well and truly let out of the bottle.  There is, thankfully, an increasing trend towards songs of protest or songs that carry political themes. It doesn’t mean that the writers are always campaigners, just that a trend is underway. From that trend the next Dylan, Marley or Joe Strummer may yet emerge. It’s a growing undercurrent that will certainly gather pace this year, but whether it hits the mainstream just yet remains to be seen. 

I’m currently on the look out for a secondhand clown machine, some cheap balloons, and a supply of helium. There was magic in that wand. 

The Last Day Of The Holiday

Posted on by bsa_mar

This is an account of two days playing solo gigs for homeless people at temporary centres set up by Crisis UK. Temporary. As I sit here writing this in the comfort of my own home, the many hundreds that Crisis volunteers will have helped in London alone are resuming their lives on the streets of the capital city of the 6th largest economy in the world, and the global centre of finance. How shameful is that? So you don’t have to read this, but if you want to read at first hand how Crisis help people in need, and the variety of people they help, please read on. It’s long, but I don’t really give a shit.

For my small contribution, I played seven 45 minute gigs for Crisis this weekend. Crisis kindly invited all performers to promote their presence at the various centres on social media, but I didn’t really feel comfortable doing that. This isn’t about me or the other performers. It’s about a crisis of homelessness that has been allowed to grow under successive governments and accelerated by this and the last. It is wholly unacceptable. 

Battersea to Belfast

After my long drive down from Manchester, I was led into the Food Hall via the shift office and set up my gear by the PA in a separate room. It was lunch time and most people were sat at tables eating and chatting away. The first thing that struck me was that it seemed to be hard to distinguish the volunteers from those who they were supporting. Crisis tries to find ways of giving people options that lead them away from their lives on the streets, and these festive events are one way they achieve that.

After a couple of songs I struck up The Drovers’ Trail and it seemed to grab the attention. One guy started shouting through from the dining room “it’s like Jethro Tull…” and then more bizarrely “…and Marianne Faithful!”. Various shouts of “do you do any Led Zeppelin?” and “do you do Metallica?” later, they finally realised they were just going to have to tolerate me, and the diners came into the gig area to sit and listen and sleep.

There was a contingent of young Polish guys and two or three older men from Glasgow and Northern Ireland, a mix that graced my final performance on the same venue just 28 hours later. There had been so many shouts for different covers I thought I’d better play one, and so picked out Belfast Child (Simple Minds) which went down really well. After the gig one of the Glaswegians came over proudly showing me all his Irish badges because he was actually Belfast born and bred, and thanked me for playing the song. Music is a communicator.

A number of people were curious about my cittern. Nobody had seen or heard one before, so I was able to explain what little I know about the instrument, and it added an extra dimension to some of the later performances. But I didn’t do Metallica. The nearest I got was hammering out a few lines of Wild Thing towards the end of the set.

The Bright Lights of Bermondsey

A bigger, brighter, modern City Academy greeted me after I’d struggled for a street parking space, eventually landing in a “Permit Holder’s Only” space just a few minutes’ walk away. Here there was a properly set up stage with an appreciative audience of about 50 people, with others drifting in and out of the atrium where I played. It was very hot in there, but the gig seemed to go well and the sound guy was excellent. Again the cittern drew curiosity, and I returned to my un-ticketed car (unless they got me via CCTV!).

Hackney Hell?

I arrived in the hall to find a karaoke session delivering its final couple of songs, with this smiley big guy belting out Frank Sinatra numbers in front of a packed early evening crowd. I was starting to feel jaded after my long day, but soon plugged in and started to play. Everything seemed to be going okay until about the fourth number when this diminutive woman walked straight in front of me and told me loudly “Stop it, it’s fucking rubbish!” I told her she wouldn’t have to wait too long before I was off elsewhere, but she continued to stamp and shout for the rest of the gig while volunteers tried to create a diversion, but not before she had somehow appeared behind me in the stage area to thump me between the shoulder blades mid-song!

The only other incursion was when a guy with dreads walked up between songs. I thought he was a volunteer but it transpired not. He asked me to put some more volume into my voice because he wanted to hear my lyrics. I think it might have been the PA because my voice was already straining. He seemed to be listening intently for the remainder of the gig though, which generally went down okay. It was the only venue in the two days which had a slightly unsettling edge but it was then explained to me that it was the penultimate day for the Crisis centre, so people were starting to get a bit down for the last day of their holiday. Well, wouldn’t you?

Live in Leytonstone

The final gig of my marathon day was at a temporary women’s residential centre in Leyton. They had texted me earlier to check I was still intending to perform. For some reason, they had struggled initially to find performers but I never discovered the reason why. I arrived and was able to park on the street, legally this time. This was a secure building with electric gates and an intercom, and I was escorted to and from the stage area.

A combination of that ‘end of day’ feeling plus the ‘holiday’ drawing to a close meant that this final gig was a little subdued, and it felt like it was more to benefit the volunteers than the rest of the women but that was still a privilege. I left there feeling it had been a decent gig with feet tapping to a number of songs, Belfast Child again being picked out as a song they liked, and the cittern drawing attention.

Peace and Quiet in Palmers Green

I eventually arrived at my mate Steve’s place in Palmers Green at about 10:30pm. I was utterly exhausted, losing vision in my right eye and developed severe cramp in my fingers. Back to first world problems for a 60 year old man I guess. Steve hadn’t had a great day so we sat and talked into the early hours. The overriding impact of the day was that much of the time I found it hard to tell the difference between homeless people and volunteers. Some comply with the archetypal image but many have just hit hard times, and for a variety of reasons. When you look around society you see there are those who have everything in life yet lack the dignity that many of these people showed, and I went into a deep 6 hour sleep with that thought.

Croydon Clearance

I was allowed to park in the college principal’s space for this one. No big deal because he/she would be enjoying their Christmas elsewhere while Crisis took over their building. There is an astonishing level or organisation that goes into just one of these centres, and my two days took me to six different locations. So first of all, I am full of admiration for the great work Crisis are doing, and secondly, I join them in hoping that one day their centres will become redundant.

After a two hour drive through Saturday traffic and one diversion due to an accident, I set up again. The holidaymakers had just had their lunch and a number felt sleepy, while others played table tennis or joined in art classes at the back of the room. I started up to shouts of “Can you do a song by The Specials?” and eventually that group of four young-ish guys left the hall, followed by others. While my music may have driven people out, it was explained to me that there is a lot of drifting around because people are trying to get the most out of their short period of respite.

I have always felt that if just one person appreciates or shows interest in my music I feel it’s been worth it, and as I was packing my gear for another gig at a different venue in Bermondsey, a Latvian guy called Janis came over to ask about the cittern, and we had a long conversation about music that led us through the Jethro Tull thing, and into how he grew up with underground music back home at the same time I enjoyed limitless progressive rock and later punk. We talked about illegal radio plays recorded onto x-ray films and a whole range of ingenious methods that he and his friends used to access the music of that time. Then I realised that actually Janis wanted to continue the conversation way beyond my departure for Bermondsey, and it took several goodbye handshakes before I was finally able to make my escape.

Crisis say that a smile, a friendly face, or expressing an interest in the lives of people like Janis outside their homelessness can make a difference. Just like the guy I met in Manchester who inspired my song Wine & Whisky, Janis had bright eyes and an intellect that should not have led him to where he was. He was about the same age as me, 60, and we were able to connect because of our common interest in the music of our youth. There is always a way you can find to connect. You just have to take the time.

Back to Bermondsey

I chose to do the Crisis gigs in the first place because I keeping finding myself feeling intensely angry at the level of rough sleeping, couch surfing, and temporary accommodation that so many of our politicians seem to be prepared to live with. I regularly walk around the city centre of Manchester, and it is impossible not to notice the increasing numbers of doorway sleepers, yet people ignore their fellow human beings. The Tory Party are driving the current agenda, but Her Majesty’s Opposition is not entirely free from guilt because the level of homelessness in this country was also unacceptable before 2010. Initiatives driven by organisations like Crisis, Shelter, and others are given some government funding, but government numbers fail to impress unless there is a clear demonstration that they are also seriously tackling the underlying reasons why people find themselves living on the streets. Making my small contribution for these two days gave me a focus, and helped me to learn more.

One of the things that I find most unacceptable is that many of us DO walk on by, avoiding eye contact with people whose desperation we cannot begin to understand. We don’t care enough. We need to try more. Not enough people are showing the kind of anger on this one subject that might force politicians to significantly improve the level of support they provide, and to make genuine moves to eradicate homelessness. I am not naive. I do understand that eradicating homelessness completely is unlikely to happen, but I cannot accept a situation where in just eight years, the number of people of all ages forced to sleep rough on our country’s streets has increased from 1,768 to 4,751.

This second Bermondsey venue felt really good. It was a full hall (with obligatory table tennis) and an appreciative audience of up to 100. I arrived to find the previous act just finishing off. This guy was singing to a backing track, had the best smile I’ve seen in years, and a voice to die for. Don’t you just love following people like that?!! We had a chat during changeover and it transpired that for several years until 2015 he was living on the streets himself. Now he lives in a warehouse and runs several businesses. I could have talked to him for hours, but he had to move on to his next gig. He absolutely oozed positive attitude. There are many others like him who have not been able to take their opportunities, and that is why Crisis is there to show the way.

This was the nicest of the seven gigs, and being the sixth I was starting to flag again but they say a good audience can carry you through, and it did. I loved every minute, and again had the cittern conversation with a couple of guys at the end, one of whom told me he sold specialist cigarette lighters in places like Chelsea and Putney by way of earning his living. A Portuguese guy joined in the cittern conversation which led so far into the history of string instruments (Guitarras de Portugal) that I was in danger of being late for my final slot back at Battersea.

They Call it Battersea for a Reason!

Being occasionally utterly thick, I hadn’t noticed until I was on approach that my final Battersea gig was at the same location as the first. So this was “Battersea – The Return”, or maybe “Batters he”? Read on. I arrived in the gig area to find a bunch of Polish and Glaswegians having a boisterous rave to music one of the volunteers had on her phone. There was jumping (low false ceiling), somersaulting, and shoving and occasional breakdancing to the ensuing cacophony, and one of the ravers knocked over the mic stand I’d just set up in his (possibly substance fuelled) exuberance.

I decided to switch my set around and play more lively numbers in the early half, even though these guys were supposed to be going for their evening meal. I have never seen anyone dance to The Drovers’ Trail before! It carried on into The Cart when two of the Polish guys invited (or pulled) a couple of young women volunteers on to the dance floor, whereupon all hell broke loose. I played and watched while the (70 year old?) Glaswegian from Belfast who I’d encountered on my previous visit, tried to wrest one of the girls away from the boisterous Polish chappie. After a few handbags at ten paces threats from both sides, the Polish guy shoved the old man across the room and he landed on the floor bashing his head against a chair. He got up and continued the argument. Then others joined and it was hard to work out who was trying to calm the situation and who had become another protagonist. I finished the song and just played my cittern as the whole scene unfolded in front of me, tempers were calmed, and protagonists separated. Oddly, it was possibly the finest piece of instrumental cittern playing I’ve ever achieved. It was calming for me, so hopefully it was contributing to an improving atmosphere.

I slipped a few quieter songs in until bums were back on seats again, declined a Slovakian guy’s request to play tunes on my cittern, and had yet another conversation with someone else about citterns before finishing off with a few more songs, culminating in The Wood, and receiving warm applause from those who had come to listen. I left there bring not entirely sure who had been entertaining who. It transpired that the old Glaswegian from Belfast had not taken his medication and everything seemed calm by the time I left, with everyone shaking hands.

It was the last night of their holiday.

Making a Living Out of Music – You Can’t

Posted on by bsa_mar

The title of this article is not meant to discourage, but more to start with an injection of realism. Most of us have been sucked into streaming music at little or no cost to ourselves, so it would be somewhat hypocritical to lay the responsibility for the de-commoditisation of music entirely at the door of those who were previously accustomed to buying it, and those who do not remember when that was the case. However, we have to at least acknowledge that if there is going to be a strong independent music scene, we have to continue to support independent musicians financially in some way.

Music has never been easier for fans to access, and technically it has never been easier and more cost effective for musicians to create. But there is a cost, and it is largely being borne by the musicians themselves. I promise you this is not the start of a gargantuan whinge, but before continuing this piece I thought it would be useful to list as many of the costs as I could think of off the top of my head. Some are directly relevant to making records, some are just essential costs of creating music in the first place, and this is by no means a definitive list:

  • Instruments and equipment
  • Recording
  • Marketing and promotion
  • Distribution
  • Rehearsal
  • Live performances
  • Travel
  • Accommodation and subsistence
  • Book keeping
  • Insurance
  • Time

 

Yes, time. Few people really consider the time it takes to create the music they listen to. The reality for most musicians is that they are not able to afford to create music without holding down a steady job, or having a second source of income. More often than not it takes a primary source of income to be able to afford to then pursue a life of making music. I am lucky enough to run my own business, and that is what has sustained my music activities since 2014. Music is one of my loves but it is not my living.

It took me a total of 26 months to record my 2018 double album ‘The Breeding Ground Of Vile’. The album comprises 24 tracks. The first songs for the album were written in a holiday cottage in North Wales in the early Spring of 2016 just before the release of my debut album ‘Moorscape’. Later that year I wrote seven songs in a seven day break in the English Lake District. Between those two holidays I was continuously writing, and because some songs didn’t quite meet the album’s theme of protest or its mood, they were set aside for simultaneous EP projects. So Dry The Life was released in January 2017 and The Madness in January 2018.

During those 26 months, my business took me to the USA and Canada, Hong Kong, Kosovo, to Macedonia, Ukraine, Moldova, Mongolia, and Georgia while at the same time managing multiple academic courses in International Trade. I spent most of those months knackered, because when I wasn’t travelling somewhere I was over at HeyGamal’s studio or occasionally driving out into the middle of nowhere with either him or my son Duncan to shoot video footage in interesting places and occasionally to remind ourselves there is also a wonderful life outside of music. But don’t think for one minute that I wasn’t immersed in the making of the album while I was doing all that other stuff. Making records is an all consuming process because you want to represent your art in the best possible way. 26 months means 26 months, even though the actual recording and mixing time during that period was probably only around a month. It never leaves you alone.

One of the true benefits of making music in these last few years is that it has made me better at doing my day job: more focused, more organised, more efficient, and more confident. I have never liked doing things twice and have always operated efficiently because my business is just me, and my reputation and knowledge is what sells my services. However, since 2014 all I have really wanted to spend my life doing is making more music, so I try to work smarter to make sure I can get back to writing or recording. When I’m working, I’m working. When I’m doing music, I’m doing music and the separation of those two parts of my life has helped me to be more efficient with both.

As I write, I have a collection of around 80 sets of song lyrics or completed songs that have not yet seen the light of day. I have a collaborative recording project currently in progress but I also want to get out there and play my songs live, both with and without some or all of The Folded Arms, and to record more of the material I have written. I self-promote, and that always eats up far more time than ever you anticipate. I am burning the candle at both ends because I love what I do.

It is my choice and my preference to be fiercely independent. It’s how I have lived most of my working life. Having run my own business since 2002 I am accustomed to self promotion and that has really helped in putting together the elements that are needed to promote my music as cost effectively as possible. I accepted early on that I may never recover the cost of making my music, so as long as I am working I will be able to afford to do what I do.

I know that crowd funding is one way which musicians have used to afford to carry on, but it has never been a process that fits well with me. I guess I don’t want to be beholding to other people, and to have to return to the same supporters whenever I have a new project, but that’s just a personal preference and how I am made. The roots of that conditioning are based back in the 1980s where I took a job interview with a financial services firm who expected me to sell their products to family and friends. That’s how crowd funding feels to me in its earliest stages, although I know some musicians have found it invaluable and have built a large fan base on the back of it. Good luck to them all!

Now most readers won’t have got this far, so thank you if you did. One of the diseases of modern life is that people no longer seem to give things time. They skim the pages of books, believe newspaper headlines that frequently contradict the body of an article, walk out of a gig if the first impression of the performer is unfavourable, and if a recorded song doesn’t grab within the first few seconds they move on. Now try getting someone to listen intently to a whole album and to buy into its messages.

So here’s my plea. I’m not asking for money. I would just like you to share this article with five other musicians to show they are not alone. It shows what life is like for a musician who CAN afford to make music. Think now about those who have no resource but a huge creative contribution to make. Think about what will happen to music, and what is already happening, if you do not support independent artists in one way or another. Think about all today’s top musicians of whatever genre, how they got to where they are today, and where they started. Most were like you and me. Then think carefully about the alternative to independent music, which is the diet of overproduced, manufactured, industry compliant ‘bland’ that swamps our airwaves, internet and TV advertising. Then realise that while you may not make a bag full of money, you can really make a difference if you stick at your task. Because this is not about the money, it’s about your art….

…and please, LIKE, SHARE, SUBSCRIBE, RECOMMEND, AND BUY music by independent musicians. They are the future of music.

 

SHOPPING BOYCOTT!!

Posted on by bsa_mar

I thought I’d brave the city centre shops today. My ‘Sundays Close To Christmas Strategy’ (SCTCS) has for many years been to park somewhere central by 10:30am and be browsing in one of my target shops before they are open for business at 11. A quick shop, then make my escape within half an hour, to arrive back in Sale before noon. High noon.

One year recently I got caught out. I selected shit loads of things to buy in Debenhams and was first to the checkout and ready for my homeward dash, and there was a problem with the tills. What to do? Walk off in a huff having failed miserably to buy anything? Do more browsing and lose my place in the queue? Or stand in line like a lemon until they fix the tills at nightfall? The lemon option thus selected, it was 1pm before I got home, desperate for a drink, something to eat, and a room without subnormal and debased human activity.

The SCTCS was repeated this morning and Operation Debenhams was first on my radar. I am getting really tired of having to go to shops for underpants and socks. The heel resilience of socks has plummeted over the last thirty years to the point that now, after just one wear, one’s heel starts to show. And I don’t like thick socks. The underpant saga is too long to repeat here, the subject of much trauma and anger management counselling. Suffice to say I am currently in the tenth year of a mission to find a comfortable pair of whose elasticity survives the first few milliseconds of wear.

Unfortunately, the implementation of my strategy fell at the first hurdle. It seems most Manchester city centre shops now only open at 11:00 and sod the browsing half hour, which means you can get maimed or killed in the rush when the shutters are raised and the doors finally open. The speed at which these morons crash the doors is akin to a high performance car menacingly cruising the streets at 20mph then suddenly going from 20 to 100 in 3.4 seconds, except there is nothing remotely impressive about the gaggle of the grotesque and deranged all fighting to squeeze their ample frames through a single revolving doorway. And that’s just the section of the mob who haven’t succumbed to the overpriced coffee in the claustrophobically packed adjacent ‘eateries’. NO!!! They are not fucking ‘eateries’!!! This is Manchester. They are either cafes, coffee shops, or restaurants! THEY ARE NOT FUCKING EATERIES YOU BASTARDS!!! I couldn’t believe how rammed the overpriced corporate coffee shops were. Every table taken, queues out of the doors, and populated by beings with their steely glazed eyes trained on the shutters of the essential shop of their choice.

I was in no mood to join the throng of the stupid outside Debenhams and instead took a brisk walk around town, partly to stop my limbs from seizing up and partly for reconnaissance on other potential targets to assess whether or not a later visit might result in injury to me or to another shopper as tempers frayed and squabbles began and skirmishes and fights turned to World War Three. I must confess that Armageddon or the wholesale slaughter of innocents was never too far from my thoughts as my brisk pace was all too frequently interrupted by grossly overweight couples waddling hand in hand in directionless stupor, resplendent in the ‘his and hers’ light grey towelling track suit bottoms (the ones that show the sweat patches in every crease) and quilted anoraks that enhance the ungainly slowness of their quivering bulk. Market Street should be renamed Type Two Diabetes Way.

My bro Joe and me, with me deploying my ‘avoiding the stink of stale piss’ face

I have a well drilled Debenhams sub-strategy. There’s a door that generally stinks of stale piss at the corner opposite Starbucks. Not many people use that door but it helps me avoid the seemingly endless perfume counters on the ground floor, AKA the ‘Death From Asthma’ department. I prefer the stink of stale piss. On entering the store through said doors, there is a staircase immediately on the right down to Menswear.

So I descended straight down into the dungeon of death to find that there seems to be an ongoing problem with the drains, so the whole basement smelled of one of Ozzy’s more unpleasant post-evening meal outputs. To add insult to injury, while there were occasional racks of woolly socks, there were no underpants to be seen. Purchasing a woolly jumper to make me feel less like a shoplifter, I then scoured the nooks and crannies of the basement floor, eventually to happen upon a wall of Calvin Klein undergarments with a baffling array of names according to how one prefers one’s manhood to hang. The sewer smell had become overpowering. Normally shops increase the tempo of their in-store muzak to prompt customers into buying decisions. Debenhams use an overpowering smell of shit. It was a blessed relief to surface from the dungeon of death through the doorway of stale piss and back into Manchester’s polluted air.

Anyway, this pre-Christmas city centre shopping trauma experience has led to a firm and irreversible decision. I am NEVER NEVER NEVER shopping in Manchester city centre at a weekend between 31st October and 31st January. EVER EVER EVER AGAIN. 

Happy Christmas.

 

THWARTED!

Posted on by bsa_mar

“The best laid plans of mice and men” and all that. After a frustrating few days repeating work that has to be repeated due to software failure, I was looking really forward to a weekend of music making and allotment activity, fresh air, exercise and creativity. Several years ago one of my day job clients manufactured a truly amazing and completely unique environmentally friendly construction product, the sales for which they spectacularly failed to sustain. That was frustrating too! They reneged on promises, went bust, and their product was swallowed whole by a competitor to take it off the market.

One of the few benefits of that project was that I was given a number of their products to use for green roof and other projects, one of which was to build a couple of compost bins for my 325 square metre allotment. They worked quite well but took up space that could usefully be used for something else, so when friend, ligger, merchandiser, video specialist, and driver Gary Whiteside decided to get rid of a couple of compost bins, it seemed logical to re-use them. Each had to be forced into the back of my small car on separate trips, but both are now in full use, and almost full.

A brainwave some weeks ago saw me construct a raised bed for strawberries our of six slabs of this stuff, and it has worked well in spite of the blueness of the air during their construction. Prototype thus established, I worked out that I could probably build a further four raised beds out of the material from dismantling the two compost heaps. So yesterday, I set off to start the task with my fully charged drill, taking apart the first bin in a matter of minutes, then bringing it all back to 12a (my shed – I actually live at number 12) to work out how I was going to improve on the prototype.

The sun was shining and that morning I had recorded a rough video of a new song I am working on for a very special music project, so all was going swimmingly to plan. As I made the final downstroke with my saw for the new construction, I stubbed my thumb really hard on the table of my Black & Decker Workmate. That brought a halt to proceedings, because it was too painful to grip a saw, a screwdriver, and a drill and I later realised I couldn’t grip a plectrum or finger pick. That single downstroke had put paid to any idea of work on the allotment or playing a musical instrument. All I can do at the moment is SHOUT!!!

 

All of which tenuously, extremely tenuously, links to the fact that a few weeks ago when me and Matt Steady took ourselves to Chelmsford for a live performance and radio interview with Folk Union, I spent the morning adding my contributions to his new album “Here be Dragons”. I played cittern, added backing vocals, and shouted. Shouting is really good fun, and I have since asked Matt if I can be the lead shouter on his records. However, I don’t think his neighbours would be too happy.

Chorley Live and Cakes

Posted on by bsa_mar

On Friday evening I enjoyed a peaceful hour sat in my car in a car park minding all the gear between #ChorleyLive gigs, with accompanying potato cakes, and listening to Jennie Abrahamson’s ‘Gemini Gemini’ album (stunning by the way, and highly recommended) while #MattSteady played his third gig of the night. I’d not heard of Jennie Abrahamson before she and Linnea Olsson opened Peter Gabriel’s ‘Back To Front’ Manchester gig a few years back with ‘Snowstorm’. Nor had I heard silence like that in a large auditorium for many, many years as her spellbinding voice took us all to a different place. “How do you get support gigs like that?” I pondered!

The act who me and Matt Steady followed that night at Chorley Central Library was ‘Solo Floyd’, one man with a fabulous voice, a guitar and effects pedals doing Pink Floyd covers. Like me, David plays music that requires listening to, and to a large degree the packed audience were a listening audience. As I stood with my instruments at the back of the hall I became irritated by just a few people who seemed incapable of understanding that in some circumstances you have to shut your mouth: a couple of blokes who had exceeded their beer quota before 9pm that evening; one of the stewards wasn’t exactly being quiet and respectful; and there was a pre-teen boy being a bit of a nuisance, but I was once that boy so it was more easy to understand his position!

Matt and I came through our gig feeling like we’d done well enough but there was no foldback monitor, so we had little idea how we sounded. Matt could barely hear his violin, and while I could hear my voice the bass strings of my cittern seemed to overpower the treble and I was unable to enjoy that feeling of certainty that performers need in order to give of their best. In fairness, the sound guy Daniel had never worked with a cittern before so he was on a steep learning curve, and by the end of the 45 minute set he’d cracked it. Then I changed from cittern to guitar for the final song and screwed it all up for him again!

So we had the foldback conversation and the following evening they had two whopping great monitors for us. Unsurprisingly the difference was staggering, and all Matt and I needed to do was concentrate on the music. It was of course hugely helpful to the sound guy as well because I didn’t need to press ‘boost’ on my preamp to occasionally hear my cittern as I had done the previous evening. Then came the moment of the night, and probably the festival for me.

This was the first time I had used the new preamp at a gig. No amount of practise can mimic a live show, but I was well rehearsed and knew the sounds I wanted from it during the set. I had a slight delay on the cittern but hadn’t been able to hear exactly how it would sound in this larger venue. We played ‘The Smile’ at about the mid-set point. As we got half way through the first chorus I thought “Wow! That preamp is giving me a pretty spectacular sound!” (Matt by the way had exactly the same thought), but then I looked round and saw Daniel on his keyboard!

The spontaneity and spirit of collaboration that you get with other independent musicians is something special, and his unexpected intervention worked stunningly well. I spent part of the drive home wishing that had been one of the tracks that Gary filmed for us, but in the cold light of a working Monday morning I’m just glad to have the special memory. There are many great things about mobile technology and social media, and I’m forever hearing marketing types talking about the ‘experience’. But this wonderful moment in a set that we absolutely nailed is now the domain only of those in the room on the night, at Chorley Live 2018. Now that’s what I call an ‘experience’. Thank you Chorley Live 2018 – see you again next year if you’ll have us!

 

 

 

A Preponderance of Certainty

Posted on by bsa_mar

Many, many years ago, probably in the eyes of some even before time began, I used to call on my friends to see if they wanted a game of football, or listen to the latest album I’d bought (which was generally prominently displayed under my arm in a way that cabinet ministers now carry secret papers they want to world to see as they bounce into Downing Street enthusiastically and apparently in whole and total ignorance of the deliberate exposure they are pretending isn’t happening). That was how I lived my early life and early to mid-teenage. I was almost never in the house.

I would walk either a few hundred yards up the road or about half a mile to one of their houses, and they would be either in or out. It was accepted that not every call had a positive outcome. If they were in they were in. If they weren’t, we’d either find someone else, go on a bike ride, or carry the album back home and play it again. Mobile technology has increased exponentially the probability of someone being in when you call, because it allows us to check first. Unless something urgent or dreadful happens between sending a text or media message and arriving at their front door, you will be able to have that game of football or play that album. But isn’t there something really dull about certainty?

To qualify that, certainty may be the key ingredient for good business but when you get home from work you can take your socks off and put your feet up, and stop thinking about that shit. Part of life has always been that it should flow by you, so you can relax, do things in your own time, recharge your batteries, meditate, enjoy the people you are doing it all for. That way you are better able a) to do the shit you have to do and b) cope with its stresses and challenges. The only true certainty in life is death!

If you stretch elastic far enough it will snap. That’s how you should look at your life. You only have what you have, your body and your mind. So you have to protect it from becoming overburdened. This, by the way, is very much a case of the pot calling the kettle black, and from someone who is in a position where I no longer need to work. I’m also someone who has regularly been under extreme stress, but much of it has been of my own making. You reap what you sow. It’s only now I’m in my sixties that I can see the value of the stuff I learned on a Time Manager International course when I was half this age. It preached (in a fun and agnostic kind of way) that work was only part of life, and that’s what it has now come to mean.

Back in the day, I didn’t think twice about walking half a mile to see a friend, even if he wasn’t in. I would walk much farther to see my girlfriends, generally around three miles, and they were sometime out too – I know, maybe I wasn’t getting the message! It wasn’t that I couldn’t afford the bus, more that I would much rather spend my money on beer and records, which was also perhaps a reason why the girls were not in when I called. It was normal, un-taxing exercise and it was done every day, just as I used to walk to and from school when the weather wasn’t vile.

I used to do all my thinking when I was walking to my various destinations. It cleared my head of clutter so I was generally switched on for a good day or evening on the majority of occasions when I arrived somewhere to find people at home. The most stressful job I’ve ever had was in the early to mid 1990s when for three years I had to put calming classical music on the radio for my 50 minute drive to work. It helped me to deal with the fascist, meat head bully of a Sales Director, and I was the only one who would stand up to him. Not brave. Just very necessary. I would leave work every day feeling like every nerve in my body was inflamed. One day I went to see the doctor. I wasn’t even sure why. I told him I was low on energy and couldn’t sleep and… and… “I eat my sandwiches at my desk while I’m still working Doc”. He told me very firmly what I already knew. I should get out at lunch and go for a walk. It helped for the period between then and when I left for another job a few months later.

They call it social media, but I’m afraid I see it as one of the most anti-social developments of my 60 years. A complete misnomer. It’s got so bad on this small island that people rarely phone each other, let alone drop round for coffee. Don’t get me wrong, I think the principle of social media is fabulous, but we human beings obsess about the fabulous and can’t leave it alone, to the point where it becomes functional rather than fabulous. However, it has also been a massive boon to people who live in remote communities. So once in a while, leave your device at home when you go and see a relative or friend. Your attention will be on what is important not the thing we have become conditioned to think is important. If they aren’t in, find someone who is, or walk back home and play some great music!

So Here It Is….

Posted on by bsa_mar

For me, there is something incomplete about producing an EP or album until I finally receive the physical CDs. So first, here is #TheBreedingGroundOfVile in its physical form. It looks great. It sounds great. It takes time and a big effort from a whole bunch of people to get a CD to look right, and to reflect the mood of the music it delivers, and I am very pleased with the results.

I now have three physical CDs: #Moorscape, #DryTheLife, and #TheBreedingGroundOfVile. There is one more work #TheMadnessEP which you can find at https://johnreed.bandcamp.com/album/the-madness-ep that happened due to one of the increasing number of happy accidents that has accompanied me on my music journey since I bought my first #cittern in July 2014. The Madness was released in January 2017 when we were in the early stages of recording The Breeding Ground – more of that later.

Before #Moorscape I had not experienced the process of putting together an album, so everything was new to me. At that time I had done some work with a young marketing company in Leigh, Greater Manchester – https://www.thinkcre8.co.uk– who had produced a couple of roll up banners and promotional leaflets for my business. Their work was so good that I asked them if they would like the challenge of creating a CD cover. I don’t think they were ever going to say no!

So I sent them a bunch of photographs and my mock up ideas without really considering how superior their efforts would be. What they came back with was simple, eye catching, and properly dimensioned, yet missed none of the detail I had included in the brief either in the CD sleeve or the face of the actual disc. They quickly became my ‘Go To’ accomplices for any kind of promotion for my music, and they raised the standard with the follow up #DryTheLife EP cover … because that’s what they do, and it generally takes a couple of weeks for them to perform their magic.

CR8 don’t print the actual CDs. They get the design to a point where you know anything sent to a CD printer will be exactly as you want it. The process involves proofs being sent back and forth a few times before the design is signed off and sent to their CD printing partner – https://www.showcasecreative.com– who organise the glass master from which the final physicals are printed. Showcase’s process takes between 7 and 10 working days.

Everything is still a learning process for this collaboration, and one day when I was harvesting stuff on my allotment I had a call from Lauren at CR8 to say that both they and Showcase had realised their quotations had not taken into account the fact that The Breeding Ground was a double CD. Nor had I!! So an accommodation was reached and 10 days later a couple of boxes arrived at my front door.

   

Meanwhile #TheMadnessEP still has no physical CD…or does it? There are plans afoot to do something a little different for 2019.

The buzz you get from seeing something you have created finally arrives with you beats any temporary excitement that an online release might give. It’s partly because you have something physical that feels less transient, that feels like more of a gift to those who choose to buy it, but it’s also the result of a process that involves a lot of good people, from the musicians and the producer to the people that help with the design process. Thank you all for making this possible.

You can buy #TheBreedingGroundOfVile and all of my music at https://johnreed.bandcamp.com

Road to Chelmsford

Posted on by bsa_mar

There is something about the number 2. It took 2 years and 2 months to complete The Breeding Ground of Vile. The physical CDs will be with me next week (ish) and because it’s a double album there are 2 CDs. Then yesterday, had I driven direct down the M6 and M1 on my journey to Chelmsford from Sale the distance would have been 222 miles, but instead I collected Matt from his home in Leicester, where we both rehearsed our evening set and did a spot of recording for his new album, so the 2 of us could drive on from there. My long day trip saw me returning home 22 hours after I left the previous morning. Well that’s the contrived stats out of the way.

So why Chelmsford? The only time I can recall spending time in (or maybe near) Chelmsford previously was a) when I was trying to sell a woodworking machine to a manufacturer of cricket bats, and b) when a bunch of us went to a party, of which all I can remember is Graham Fisher eating a daffodil. I was much younger then, so last night’s experience was a significantly more sober and very much more fulfilling visit to Moulsham Mill to play a set of our songs for Folk Union on Chelmsford Community Radio, hosted by Carl Spaul.

I made an early start to try and get as close as possible to Leicester before the M1 motorway suffered its usual morning congestion, stopping at Leicester Forest East service station exactly 2 hours after setting off because I could see a massive queue ahead. My car was packed to the gunnels with instruments and P.A. equipment so I couldn’t leave it unattended, and sat in the car park listening the radio and answering a few work emails to minimise the chance of disturbance to my day. That half hour gave me a rest from driving and the traffic cleared enough for me to resume my journey to Matt’s house.

Matt wasn’t originally on the ticket for this adventure. I’d been talking for a while to Carl about playing an acoustic set and doing an interview with him about the new album. Our first effort was scuppered due to ongoing refurbishment of the studio. Chelmsford Community Radio is run by volunteers, so whether it’s presenting a show or maintaining the studio, it’s done in whatever spare time the good people of Chelmsford can spare. You feel the atmosphere at Moulsham Mill. There’s something very warming and positive about the place. I’m good on atmospheres!

I was talking to Matt about the new date and it occurred to us that we could share the journey and play some songs together, so Carl got ‘two for the price of one’. The original intention was for me/us to play a few songs acoustically, but I had been itching to try out a few new gismos and a discussion about how we were going to do everything, the number of inputs on Carl’s equipment etc. led to me taking my P.A. It felt like overkill but it was probably the right thing to have done!

The large cup of coffee that greeted me at Matt’s was very welcome as I arrived, and we quickly set to work on a rehearsal of some of my songs we have played together, some of my songs we have never played together, and some of his that I have never previously played on. Ironing out some (but not all) of the gremlins, we then recorded a few of my contributions to Matt’s next album “Here be Dragons”, then more rehearsing between lunch and collecting his 2 daughters from school.

The journey to Chelmsford on a Friday mid-late afternoon was likely to provide additional traffic challenges, so we set off around 3:30pm and took the route suggested by Matt’s phone, down the M1 and clockwise round the M25. We had a really good run down the M1, listening through his excellent new album, and the M25 was running free. Yes, that was too good to be true. It ground to a halt due to an accident and put back our original ETA by 40 minutes or so. We arrived more or less on time, set up the P.A. between sips of tea, and were ready to roll just after 7:40pm.

The resulting live performance and interviews will be aired next Friday 14thSeptember at 11pm and will be available on Mixcloud thereafterwards. So we will leave you to decide how well (or not) we did after our epic journey. The long day flew by, and our chat with Carl could easily have lasted a very long time. He is a really good guy, affable, professional, knowledgeable, and passionate about playing his part in highlighting the music of independent musicians like us. We very much appreciate the level of effort and support shown by from Carl and other non-profit and community radio stations, and we urge you to support them in return with your music, your time, or your money. Every little helps!