Music Guidance. Thinking About... Who You Are

This article originally appeared on the blog at Songeist.com.

In this special weekly guidance series we're going to be exploring three key aspects of your band's existence and encouraging you to consider these elements of your act with as much thought and deliberation as you write your songs. Simply expecting the inertia of creativity to steer your ship into the right direction is rarely enough; your band's command of who you are, what you do and how you come across are all hugely important to consider. Across the series, Barney will use some real-world examples to illustrate how important these factors are and help you to apply these concepts to your own band.

READ PART 2: THINKING ABOUT... WHAT YOU ARE HERE.

THINKING ABOUT... AN INTRODUCTION

Within four months in my current band, we managed to make more headway then we had in four years in our previous band. Within a year we were firmly established in our scene, being regularly played on BBC Radio 1, taken on a package tour with our heroes and signed to one of the biggest independent punk-related labels in the UK.

While playing the same songs we'd played in our old band.

I’ll be honest. We didn’t do this by suddenly being the best band around or by having the best songs and the best singing voices. Learning to write good songs and play great live shows and all those other things arguably(!) came later and, like all bands, we’re still learning. In fact, all we did was disband one band and start another with a small shuffle of members six months later. But this time we had a clear, defined, and mutually understood philosophy of who we were, what we did and how we looked.

 Even Kurt Cobain had to think about these things.

NO CONSIDERABLE MUSICAL CHANGE

By considering the factors that I will discuss in these blogs and tweaking your approach accordingly, you too may be able to go from languishing local band to being an established part of the national gigging circuit with no considerable musical change. If my last series From The Garage To The Stage was about thinking about everything that happens on stage other than the music, this series is about everything that defines a band other than the music. And these factors are actually just as important as the songs you write.

These blogs will be most beneficial if used as a jump-off point for discussion between you and your band members. The whole idea is that you, as an emerging band, get on the same page about who you are, what you do and how you look. If you have a unified vision, it's half the battle. Organise a band meeting, hash these things out and I guarantee you'll be making a positive and productive step for your band.

What's that coming over the hill? It's a band that know WHO THEY ARE.

DEFINE YOURSELF

First things first. Who are you? What are you giving to people that they can't already get? They're questions, whether consciously or not, that every successful band can answer. The first, and most important, thing to do is to define yourself. What are you giving to music? Where do you fit into what is going on? In terms of members, each band is as unique as a fingerprint. The make-up of no two bands is exactly the same and the music can reflect the various influences, personalities and talents of the people who make it up. Of course, that doesn’t mean switching genres every single song to account for your different tastes. It means that you figure out what unique sounds this distinct combination of musicians can create together and can slot into what is happening in music now. And then focus on that.

Sounds obvious right? Well, you'd be surprised how many bands get together based on liking similar music and 'jam' to 'find their sound'. All well and good, but then they forget to sit down and identify what it is. Just one aspect of your act that's unique is enough make you memorable. Even now, speak to anyone about Welsh indie-rockers The Automatic and they'll probably say 'is that the indie band with the screaming guy on keyboards?' Of course, what sets you apart doesn't have to be something as visceral as a screaming keyboard player. It can be anything that makes you a band that are doing something distinctive among the other bands out there that aren't. What is distinctive could be anything from your vocal accent to using a certain instrument or just a new twist on an old idea.

I can feel some of the purists out there raising their eyebrows... perhaps this feels contrived and gimmicky? Maybe this seems contrary to the creative process? But why is it a gimmick to identify something that came naturally to your group of musicians and set out to explore it in the hope of creating something truly original? The simplest way to look at it is that if you’ve invented yourself, even if people don’t like you, they remember you. You'll always be that band that did that thing. And that thing will work in your advantage as long as there are other bands out there to give a context to what you do.

Radiohead. Blowing Genres To Smithereens Since Kid A.

CONTEXT

'Inventing yourself' doesn’t mean that you need to concoct a new genre of music from the ground up; as long as you can creatively frame what originality you have with other contemporary music and it makes sense - be it one step more extreme or one step towards a different style - then you are a unique snowflake in the musical sky. Very few artists are as pioneering as say, The Streets, who appeared, apparently cut from whole cloth, with a truly unique sound. But even The Streets' influences rang so loud from every song on ‘Original Pirate Material’ that the context of where he fitted into the pantheon of British dance and pop between The Specials, The Prodigy and everything else was obvious to all. Conceptually, you, me and the majority of bands out there are actually just steps away from another.

Think about those old Rock Family Tree diagrams. Now, instead of the act's line-ups and histories, think of those Rock Family Trees in terms of genres. Most successful acts in any genre are really only small steps away from each other in style and tone. Consider Muse's chart-friendly pomp-rock distillation of Radiohead's prog excess and back to Imagine Dragons' latter-day facelift of early Muse. Like it or not, pop and rock music exists in a place and time and the zeitgeist is a crucial element of commercial music. Attempts to ignore these road-signs, or even kick down the traffic cones, are ill-advised for an emerging band. Sure, Radiohead now straddle entire genres of music, but it's important to remember that didn't happen overnight. For years they were a British guitar band navigating their way through the alternative rock landscape before blowing everything to smithereens with Kid A. I see emerging bands out there attempting to make their premature version of Kid A, expelling all their influences, talent and passion without a vision or context to hold it all in place.

Enter Shikari. Master of Context.

IT'S NOT WHERE YOU'RE AT... IT'S WHERE YOU'RE FROM

With bands like Klaxons, Friendly Fires and Enter Shikari actively blurring the lines between what it is to be a guitar act and a dance act, popular music has never been so stylistically open. But while it seems like those acts are just throwing together their record collections and making music, it's crucial to understand that the mechanics of those band's genre-crossovers are deceptively sophisticated. They expertly blend a prescribed mix of styles that make sense for their audience and fit within the lineage of the bands that have come before them and the scene they're in. Even though they flirt with dance music and DJ culture, they utilise these ideas as rock acts that understand their crowd's distinct tastes and frames of reference. If you know, like these bands, that your audience can contextualise, and enjoy, the specific mix of genres that you can uniquely provide, then hey... there's your context. But remember that, by design, these guys make it look easy and one man's record collection is another man's jumble sale.

As well as the context of the musical landscape, it's vital to think just as deliberately about your cultural context. Successful music generally relays an authentic truth about the culture of the people in the band and the place they're from. The Red Hot Chili Peppers have a strong cultural context as tattooed, perma-tanned funk-rockers from Hollywood. It's hard to imagine a band from Grimsby, tattooed and perma-tanned or not, having the same success with the same songs. The cultural context of a band is a part of its strength. Think about bands like Oasis and Pulp and how the identities and cultural context of Manchester and Sheffield are indivisible from their music. Ask yourself, does your music say something about who you are and where you are from?

THINKING ABOUT... WHAT YOU DO

Thanks for reading. Next week, in 'Thinking About... What You Do' I'll put across my argument about why success for emerging bands doesn't start by aiming for the stars at all... but by aiming for the roots. For now, don't forget to let me know what you think of the blog and please share it!

Playmobil shot courtesy Xurxo Martínez‘s Flickr used under Creative Commons License.
The Automatic shot courtesy beana_cheese‘s Flickr used under Creative Commons License.
Radiohead shot courtesy Taras Khimchak‘s Flickr used under Creative Commons License.
Enter Shikari shot courtesy Natalie Aja's Flickr used under Creative Commons License.

Closing in For The KillBillies

This article originally appeared on the blog at Songeist.com.

Killbillies are Ben Childs, Micah Scott and Zak Mahoney. This brutally hardworking three piece can be found playing their jammed-out mix of impassioned originals with classic bluegrass, country and folk, somewhere in a bar in Miami, Florida on every night of every weekend. As the band drop their second album, Transplant Life - which you can hear and buy on Songeist now - Barney catches up with his ex-bandmate and British ex-pat Ben Childs to fill us in on everything we could ever want to know about mashing together British folk and Americana but were afraid to ask.

The Killbillies (from left) Micah, Ben, Zak.

B. Hello Ben! How the devil are you? For those of us that don’t know, can you give us a brief introduction to Killbillies? How did you guys get together and how would you describe your style?

BC. Hi Barney! Well thank you. Long time, no see, Old Bean! In answer to your question, the style of music we play is very influenced by the instruments we play. We have feet drums, a standup bass, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, guitar and accordion. This gives us a palette through most kinds of European folk music to bluegrass, country and Americana. It's a rough and ready folky sound that draws from a lot of influences. Although we take stylistic conventions seriously we also enjoy a lot of different types of music and this is evident in the noises we make. We go where the songs and instruments take us and the last thing you could accuse us of is purism!

B. The album Transplant Life has dropped recently and the tracks are available on Songeist now. It’s the strongest and most coherent statement that Killbillies have made to date. Transplant Life presumably refers to your moving from the UK to Florida. Do you actually see the album as a concept album around that theme or is it just a cool title?
BC. I agree it is our best one so far although our début self-titled record can hold its own! We have been writing for a while and quite a few songs didn't make it. The creativity that we have found however bodes well for the imminence of the next album. The name of the album speaks of the unifying factor between the members of the band. None of us are original Floridians. All of us have moved here in our early adulthood. The songs speak of where we have come from, where we are and where we are going. We all have songs on the album and they describe our loves and losses, mistakes we have made, successes achieved, the oddities of our new surroundings and some social commentary on both Florida and where we hail from. It isn't a concept album as it has no unifying narrative but as a collection of songs it describes our lives as transplants. It's also a cool title.


B. One thing that interested me is the ties, and differences, between British folk traditions and Americana stylings that you manage to combine on the record. Across the album, I think you do a wonderful job of mixing the sounds and it feels like, from song to song, the styles often lean one way or the other. I hear the British pastoral echoes of Nick Drake on 'Invocation' and straight-up US bluegrass on 'Bring The Light' and 'Alligator Smile'. Are these slight shifts in style the result of having different song-writers in the group? Do you discuss and plan out the balance between British folk and US Country and Western or is it something you just go with as it comes?

BC. This is a good question! It's not planned out but rather the end result of having both European and American songwriters. Micah and I have been developing a sound since the conception of the band and we have always had different ideas of where songs should go, how they should move and what we are trying to say through the music. We have found that with this record, songwriting took precedence over stylistic concerns. Micah wrote 'Bring the Light' and Zak and I wrote 'Alligator Smile'. Both songs were written very much in the American tradition. Zak wrote 'Long Way Down', the most Irish sounding song and he is American.

With 'Alligator Smile', Zak brought a riff and I wrote the words and chords very quickly upon hearing it as I had been ruminating over something like this for a while. Then we jammed it as a band and played it live a few times to get the structure right.

Micah's favorite music is blues and old time Americana and this has had a huge effect on our writing and playing. His song, 'Bring the Light', that you mentioned displays this prominently. In direct contrast to this is his waltz 'Quarries of Pawlet' which sounds very European and almost Beatles-ish at times.

B. The album has a live sound, with all the instruments arranged and played in one take as they would be at a concert, with very little post-production, which sounds like a very conscious choice on your part. Was this something you considered? Is it making a statement about current production values or did you simply feel that this production style would showcase your talents in a more natural, and therefore more exciting, way? Or was it simply a financial decision to cut down on hours in the studio?

BC. Yes we did think about it. We recorded many of the songs prior to our recording at Blackwood Studios in Lake Worth with Chad Palmer. Previously I had recorded them and we were all unhappy with how regimented the sound became. I have, through living in Manchester for many years and playing in Sonic Boom Six, a dance and rock/punk background where you want the music to hit as hard as possible and be right. Not always with punk but certainly with dance music.

What we found is that the way we were recording was drying up the spontaneity of the music and we were left with a collection of songs that sounded nothing like each other. I, and I'm sure Micah would agree, wanted the music to sound like it does when we play it. Many of the takes are first takes. It isn't necessarily about making a statement about modern production values, it is about making music that you like the sound of. Music is a subjective medium!

In answer to the last part of your question, we could have pored over the album in post production and weeded out imperfections and we spoke at length about this but my personal feeling is "on to the next one!"

Killbillies love it live.

B. When the band started out, there were just three members, and you were using quite novel approaches to the rhythm section between the members. How has the band developed in terms of members and instrumentation and why have you made the choice to expand? Do you feel you’ve lost any of the novel nature of the act by expanding it or is it freeing not to have to consider playing drums with your feet any more?
BC. Killbillies was started by Micah and I in 2011. The current nuts and bolts version of the band is still just a three piece- Zak, Micah and I. We still use the feet drums. It has proven an excellent guerrilla approach to the Palm Beaches! However, we have had many other people play with us over the 3 or so years. The most recent and integral to to the band is Virgil Price. He supplies the accordion parts that drive much of this album, co-wrote the last track 'Paper Aeroplane' and was playing with us for a good long time. Another great musician, Neel Shukla, provided the drums for the album and played with us for the release party. Neel is a beast of a drummer and a very nice man!

B. 'Cradle To The Grave' is the song you chose to go with a video with. Can you speak on the style and lyrics of the song? What prompted you to choose this song as the song to represent the band in video? And is that your motorbike?!

BC. It wasn't really a video choice but more of a promotional thing. We had a bunch of footage from the album launch show that Patty Shukla (Neel's wife) recorded and I was trying to keep busy and get it out there. When I was piecing it together on my computer I thought "well hell, I'll have a stab at a video!" As it so happened, my brother-in-law, PJ, was wheeling his bike in while I was editing and I thought "It's now or never!" This is my effort at pushing the songs a little. We are going to release some official videos in the near future so keep your peepers open.

B. My personal favourite on the album is 'Long Way Down'. Across the song it relays different situations in your life and relates them to a central concept. It’s definitely a song I think could be interpreted in different ways by the listener. Can you give some background on the ideas being explored in the song? I don’t want to look behind the wizard’s curtain too much but I’d love to know a little more about where you’re coming from.

BC. Zak came to me with this song and said "Oh my god this a banger!" I quickly agreed. Zak and I worked on the lyrics together and then we jammed it into the song that it is on the album by further working on it at shows and practices. Zak says that his eight-year-old idealistic and eager self would be pissed off with the man he is today. He is a man who has felt the heavy tides of lost love, tasted addiction and grappled with the vacuum of irretrievable innocence. But when you part with your childhood frivolity you do gain the ability to see a little more beauty.

B. How did your time spent in the UK and worldwide punk scene over the years influence your approach to being in The Killbillies? Which part of the DIY philosophy have you applied to your band?

BC. My time spent in the UK punk scene made me feel like a rockstar and I enjoyed it!

I was scared when I moved to Florida because I didn't know how to make money. I spoke to Micah. He was a few years ahead of me in terms of migration. He knew how and we started a band. That is the root of all of this music.

Everything I did with Sonic Boom Six enriched me. You remain my deepest, firmest go-to's for knowledge and insight and love. DIY means do it yourself. We are. For a long time we have paid our way playing our music in different towns every weekend. Being a working musician is a dying breed and not to be sniffed at. We work hard at keeping that concept alive.

Speak to Micah Scott about DIY. He is without doubt the leader of that side of the band and achieves it with style and grace.

To quote Jimmy Cliff.... "You can get it if you really want".

B. On a more general note, how does the US live music scene differ from the UK live scene? Pros and Cons? From here it looks like you’re playing live lots, in venues that look like American bars, very different from the live venues of British cities. Can you speak on that?

BC. I find that in this area it is easy to get a gig... but a certain type of gig. We own our PA. We play 3-4 hours at most gigs and play 3-5 times a weekend. The main places we play currently are bars but also, concert halls and festivals.

It is hard to say how it compares because West Palm Beach is not a good cross section of America. We have been out on the road, up the east coast and found ourselves in similar venues to that of the UK. There is more similarity among cities in different countries than there is between city and suburbia in the same country.

My answer is that to become a festival level band is just as hard to attain here as it is in Europe.

B. Final questions, let us know what you guys have got coming up? Any plans to tour the UK?

BC. We are coming over soon. We have been figuring out the touring unit. Finally I'll persuade Zak to put oars through his double bass and you won't be able to get rid of us!

The future holds many possibilities and our UK trip is LONG overdue.

You can listen and purchase Transplant Life by Killbillies on Songeist HERE.

Let’s Get Engaged (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Book)

This is the original version of a music guidance blog that I wrote for US site Music Clout HERE and the UK version for Fresh on The Net HERE.

Facebook Pages. For a musician, they are an increasingly frustrating proposition. Their functionality, features and business model are still developing while over forty-two million users can only observe and react to the changes taking place. Month after month, it seems that your Page’s non-paid reach is less and less. The platform has simply become another advertising avenue for acts and businesses with deep pockets to use. It’s easy to become despondent. Complain about this on Facebook and some bright spark on your timeline will quickly point out you’re moaning about the free resource you’re currently using. But while the platform is free, it seems only fair that fans that have taken the time to 'like' you on Facebook should receive your updates and not have the site’s content generator getting between you. So what can we do about it? The truth of the matter is, and I hate to say it, that your annoying Facebook-defending buddy is actually right; complaining about a free site performs isn't going to get anything changed. At the Music Biz 2014 conference this week in Los Angeles, Facebook representatives were less than forthcoming with answers for an angry artist asking them why he has to pay to reach his fans. With no indication that this trend is going to reverse it means that our perspective, techniques and understanding of Facebook Pages needs to change along with the technology. We might not like this fact but unless we’re going to pay for the service, we have to face it.

I manage a Facebook band Page with nearly 24,000 fans. That may sound like a lot, but between albums and promotional pushes, the Facebook Page can actually be a profoundly lonely place. Photographs struggle to get in double-figures of 'likes'. Unanswered questions bounce around the wall like echoes down a ravine. Every now and then, we'll have an unpredictably viral post, be it a photograph of Flea with his bass guitar unplugged or a funny-looking shot of Beyoncé, heavily shared and seeded from our photo upload. While the reach these successes gave our profile was welcome, they were not without their drawbacks. Many strangers to our band met the posts with direct hostility, often engaging with the content but not bothering to read the neutral accompanying messages and assuming we were attacking the artist. Some of our established fans actually 'unliked' us, accusing us of gossip-mongering. While proving that engagement in a hot topic is a route to Facebook Page traffic, unless I was going to change the site to a Superbowl half-time gossip column, these excursions into hundreds of shares weren't adding much to the page’s overall purpose.


BEYONCE. POST WITH CAUTION.

FED UP WITH FACEBOOK
In the face of such emasculation and loneliness I went on the offensive. These are our fans, god-dammit! Why should we have to pay to speak to them Facebook?! As have many bands before me, I sent an image in our mailout asking that fans actively add themselves into the ‘Get Notification’ category for the page. Rather pathetically I also did it on our Facebook and asked fans to share it. It never really occurred to me that for this to have any tangible effect, I’d have to do it at least once a week, cluttering up my feed with more requests for attention and taking up a precious post that could be used for some engaging, original content. I was fed up with Facebook.

It was while I was writing a blog detailing some mistakes that bands make when addressing crowds at gigs (which you can check out on Songeist.com HERE) that it struck me. There I was in my blog, complaining about the bands that stand onstage and tell their fans that they've ‘driven here for hours’ and ‘have no money’ so ‘please buy our CD.’ And yet, there I was doing the same thing on our Facebook page. I was practically telling our fans, ‘you like us’ so please ‘go out of your way to complete this convoluted process’ because ‘Facebook isn’t fair’. I sounded just like one of those whiney bands that always irritated me with their demands on their audience. Looking back, I should think myself lucky that nobody posted a ‘Call the Wambulance’ meme.


PLEASE BUY OUR CD!

A DIFFERENT APPROACH
We can't change what Facebook’s algorithms are doing to our non-paid reach, but we can change our approach. If we want to use our Facebook Page to boost our exposure, and not simply respond to it, it is no longer viable to simply use the page to pass on information and expect a result. We must actively engage and then use the fallout from the engagement to pass information on. For emerging artists and businesses in quiet periods we need to assert ourselves and deliberately stoke the coals of our user’s reactions. With this home-truth realised, I became inspired to see if I could make something happen on Facebook by grabbing some impressions and extending our reach. I came up with a small branded promotional image to test the theory. Just over a week later, the image has had nearly half a million impressions and is still going strong with no boosting and just a small push from me. It truly is just a case of putting a little thought, creativity and work into our Pages and reaping the rewards.

The idea came to me one afternoon when I happened upon a ‘What’s Your MC Name?’ Facebook post from a radio station and saw the colossal amount of shares it had accrued. It was a simple variant on the old ‘first letter of first name / first letter of last name to denote a new name’ gimmick. It wasn’t anything mind-blowing but here it was with millions of impressions. I considered the post’s success and I realised that this worked on a similar principle to another viral post I’d shared days before. A video which promised that 95% of people, after completing a maths problem, think of ‘red hammer’ when asked to think of a colour and a tool had duped me into sharing it. The amount of people who answer ‘red hammer’ is actually significantly lower than 95%, but it's enough that people like me, who did think of ‘red hammer’, are amazed by the video’s ability to read their minds. And so they share it. The penny dropped that a key to engaging people is providing the user with a post experience where they feel their own result is worthy of discussion. A list of rappers is mundane until you include the user's own name in the process. When the image reveals the distinctive MC name it seems unique, original and worth a share, even when, in reality, the same names come up again and again.


What’s Your MC Name? MINE’S DEADLY MONEY. So is many other people’s.

WHAT’S YOUR SKA NAME?
I went home that night and did a Sonic Boom Six variant on the name generator. After making sure that the idea was original by doing a quick Google search, I threw together my own ska name generator. I added a small band logo and hashtag at the bottom of the image, careful that the branding wouldn't get in the way of the content. The process of devising it was simple enough. I broke down around forty-eight names of old ska singers, making sure to never include a first name and surname that could together result in an actual ska act’s name, i.e. for ‘Prince Buster’ I would only use either Prince or Buster, ultimately meaning that every name was original. I added a few vector graphics of dancing ska men, neatly processed the image using Adobe Illustrator and posted the image on our Facebook. I then messaged a handful of the ska sites around the world just to get the ball rolling. While I did post it on Twitter and Tumblr pages, I was careful to prioritise the Facebook post in my efforts. The image was conceived to promote the Facebook Page and there would be no point cannibalising my audience. After two days the sharing really began to take off exponentially across other act's and promotion's pages.

One thing to remember is that it’s important to stay on top of the shares and track the places where your viral image appears. With any successful image, it is inevitable that some people will re-upload it without sharing it directly from your site but you don’t have to stand by and do nothing. The SB6 Page was deprived of impressions when one of the leading ska bands in the world innocently re-uploaded the image and posted it. Rather than ignore this, I messaged them and politely pointed out what had happened and they were good enough to re-share it direct from the Sonic Boom Six Facebook Page. By the end of the week, in a large part due to the band re-posting it, my page’s reach was over 800% further than the week before with hundreds of thousands of users 'talking about' the band. For days afterwards, my new photos were hitting double the 'likes' than they had previously. My little experiment proved that we don’t have to pay to get our Facebook posts out there, but we do have to work.


What’s Your Ska Name? Daft but half a million people have seen the name of our new album.

It is now over a week ago that I posted the image. Slowly but surely the engagement is creeping back down to the level it was at before posting it. Am I upset about that? Whether I am or not, there doesn’t seem to be a lot I can do about it. This blog isn’t an attempt to justify Facebook’s commercial decisions; it’s an attempt to face up to them. Ultimately, I would never advise that a band puts all its eggs in the basket of another site. I’ve seen bands spend years concentrating solely on building up their Myspace, Facebooks and now Tumblrs only to lose all that equity once those sites outstay their moment of popularity. It’s a hare and the tortoise analogy; bands should maintain their own website and mailing list to have an independent platform protected from the whims and decisions of the ‘hot’ sites of the day. What this exercise did prove is that if you need a boost from your Facebook page you can realise that challenge with a touch of creativity and a little hard work. Every day I’m thinking of different ways to engage and it’s had a knock-on effect on my attention to detail on our own website, improving interaction between us and our fans beyond Facebook. If the silver lining of their campaign to monetise our interaction is that we all have to reconsider how we communicate with fans and give them a better user-experience across the net, that’s something. I’ve proven that something as simple as an engaging image can extend our reach. Now I just have to come up with the next one.

Think of a colour, and a tool…

Barney

From The Garage to The Stage Part 6: Set Times and the Sound Man

If you're just starting out as an artist, there are many hard lessons to be learned onstage that don't necessarily appear in the 'how to play' manuals or educational music books. To help you along, we've enlisted our very own Barney to impart his hard-earned gigging wisdom in this ongoing series of weekly blogs. If you're recently started playing live or even if you haven't yet done a gig yet, we at Songeist believe that these blogs will be a great asset to help you to consider all the aspects of your live show. We'll be posting a new entry every Wednesday around midday for the coming weeks so don't forget to visit!

READ PART 1: MAKING A SPLASH HERE.
READ PART 2: STRUCTURING YOUR SET HERE.
READ PART 3: SEGUES AND SPEECHES HERE.
READ PART 4: CONFIDENCE AND CONNECTION HERE.
READ PART 5: CAMARADERIE AND CONTROL HERE.

Remember to comment and let us know any live tips and tricks you have...

FROM THE GARAGE TO THE STAGE PART 6: SET TIMES AND THE SOUND MAN

Over the past five weeks we have talked about everything that goes into the conceptual side of planning a set. We've discussed tricks and tips to deal with stage-fright, the right way to address the crowd and even strategies to relate to your other band members. I hope that I’ve imparted at least a little hard-earned wisdom! But for the last piece of the puzzle I’m going to extend some advice about dealing with the people outside your band and crowd that are nonetheless essential participants to make sure that your gig goes well. The sound engineers, crew and tour managers.

YOUR CONDUCT IS MORE IMPRESSIVE THAN YOUR SONGS
A crucial thing to understand about live music is that the majority of crew, sound engineers and tour managers don’t really care about your music. They've heard quite enough music, thank you very much. They simply care that you don’t make their life any harder than it already is. Yet crucially, they are very the people who often hold the key to that sweet support slot you want to grab. It isn’t always writing the killer tune that gets you the tour. It’s getting on and offstage quickly and efficiently, acting courteously and professionally to crew and being friendly and respectful to the headline band. As with each of these blogs, there are exceptions to the rule. I’ve certainly met massively popular bands out there that act like a bunch of school kids (and, appropriately, they often are the ones who achieve fame just out of school). But if you follow the guidelines below you shouldn’t go far wrong.

How much tech would a drum tech tech, if a drum tech could tech drums?
THE SOUND ENGINEER IS YOUR FRIEND, WHETHER YOU LIKE HIM OR NOT
Let’s get this out of the way. Being a local band isn’t fair. Often the venue will promise you a soundcheck and you get bumped because time is running late. Often there are sound issues onstage. Often you get no dressing room at all and have to pile your gear in a tiny, spider-infested corner. But these are simply things you need to accept and attempt to overcome. The first thing to relate this week is that it’s always advantageous to show courtesy and respect to all the crew, from the roadies to the tour manager to the promoter but especially to the sound engineer. He or she has the power to make or break your set. Learn their name, be polite, and be considerate of what they need.

The first place to get this right is during soundcheck. If the crew are setting up the stage, be aware of this and try not to get in their way too much. You’d be amazed at the bands I’ve seen jamming, blissfully ignorant, at full blast as a visibly seething sound engineer changes drum mics. Drummers are often the worst, thrashing the hell out of their kits or tuning their snare while the sound man changes the kick drum mic at a distance that makes it tantamount to assault. Until you have your own crew and plenty of allotted time, this really isn’t the time to jam that tune from rehearsal while everyone else waits around because you read that U2 wrote 'One' during a soundcheck. Listen to the sound engineer when he asks you to play and be reasonable and intelligent with what you do play. Drummers, play a repeated groove that covers the full kit, guitarists and bassists play a riff that's a solid loop and covers a reasonable range. Granted, no matter how well-behaved you are, some sound engineers will inevitably treat you like an irritating nuisance. Some will be nice and laugh along with your japes and learn your name. You never know. Just be aware that whatever their demeanor, their experience with you is naturally likely to affect the work they do for you when you’re up on stage.

The sound engineer is your friend, whether he likes it or not.

SPEAKING TO THE SOUND ENGINEERS DURING THE SET
Every now and then, dealing with sound issues while onstage during the set will be necessary, but remember, just as we covered last week, nine times out of ten the crowd aren't hearing that squeal that comes from your monitor every time you lean over, so don't draw attention to it. If you look like things are falling apart just because there's a hum coming from a guitar amp then, even if they can't hear the difference, people are going to assume that things are falling apart. If you need to communicate monitor directions by using hand signals (pointing at your guitar, then to the monitor, and then up in the air to denote that you need more in the monitor for instance) remember to be as calm and clear as you can and stay in control. Don't even bother mouthing words as it will draw the crowd's attention to the issue. I’ve watched sets where the drummer has spent over half his time on stage scowling and pointing in different directions at the hapless monitor engineer and, although I as a musician feel his pain, I also realize he’s oblivious to the energy of his screwed-up face and attitude spilling all over the stage. If the sound is that bad, it's better to stop the set between songs, get it sorted and then move on than be in a constant gushing leak of panic and anger, letting the crowd that there was something wrong during the set, though they had no idea what it was.

If hand signals aren’t going to cut it, there is an art to speaking to the sound engineer between songs. Never start making demands through the mic the very second that a song finishes and the crowd is still clapping. This will confuse the audience and kill the appreciative energy in the room dead. Instead, being sure to indicate to the rest of the band that you want them to wait, calmly thank the crowd as normal, maybe even add a little comment about how the gig is going, and then address the sound engineer with a polite ‘Mr Soundman, I need a little more of me in my monitor’. Thank the crowd, let the mood settle, then put your demands out there in a clear and friendly tone, owning the moment.

That's the face you get when you start copping a 'tude at a sound engineer.

GET ONSTAGE ON TIME
It seems strange to me that I even have to make a point of this, but I still go to gigs and at the stage time the support band are due onstage, someone from the venue is running around trying to find the band. That scenario is simply unacceptable to anyone involved in live music and, believe me, it’s absolutely abhorrent to the tour manager of the headline band. Unless otherwise clearly stated by the headline band’s TM or the promoter, the stage times are NOT a rough guideline of how they want the night to go. They are strict, absolute orders about where your slot is in the running of the night. Feckless local bands often break this rule because no one has ever really sat them down and pointed this out. It simply goes unspoken. You see it so often in live music, as a band or tour manager you sometimes can’t even be bothered saying anything until the band runs over by ten minutes. But here’s the rub, this isn’t school, you don’t get detention. YOU SIMPLY DON’T GET BOOKED AGAIN TO SUPPORT THE BAND. That ten minutes was ten minutes less time at the end of the night where the headline band could have sold their merch. You mess with their bottom line, and things get personal!

If you’re opening, you will have the luxury of leaving your gear set up, so in that instance there’s even less of a reason for lateness. Getting onstage when you're the second band on, with just a quarter-of-an-hour slot to do it in, is stressful so it’s absolutely essential you’ve planned in advance. Have your cables and gear ready and accessible so you can get straight on and give the band that preceded you space and time to get off. It’s totally acceptable to help them get their stuff off. Not only does it make things quicker, it asserts the point that you want them to move off the stage ASAP. There will be times when, through no fault of your own, the changeover overruns. Nine out of ten times in this situation, as long as the overrun wasn’t your fault, the tour manager or sound engineer will reimburse you an extra five minutes at the end of your set to compensate, especially at festivals. If this isn't forthcoming, there’s nothing wrong with asking if this is possible, but never assume. Overrunning is a bigger sin even than getting on late. In fact, it’s the most sure-fire way for you to never get booked as support to a professional band again.

There may be only two fans watching, but remember, the TM is ALWAYS WATCHING.

GETTING OFFSTAGE.
This is the most important rule in this whole series of blogs. If you follow every other point to a tee, but overrun your set by seven minutes at every show you’re going to be the greatest band in your local toilet venue for the next four decades. Get off on time. No ifs ands or buts. Drop a song if you need to. GET OFF ON TIME.

When you do get off, get off as quickly as possible. After the intensity of the set, you'll feel the world slow down. It's natural that getting off stage feels like it should be a stress-free, peaceful affair done with your face flushed with happiness, basking in the glory of your wonderful concert. But there's another band to get on! Getting offstage is a hurried, stressful and almost always slightly unpleasant chore and you must hustle as quickly as possible. Feel free to walk off stage to underline the end of your performance but then get straight back up there and work to get your gear off efficiently and into the designated zone. Help each other and be aware of the crew, who will almost always give you a hand. Get this job done, then go and chill. You've earned it!

The first time SB6 really experienced a hard lesson in getting offstage was touring with The Levellers in 2009. The Levellers are a big, cult band and their crew are professionals with no time for holding the hands of some punk band just because they can’t afford a crew. The change-over time was forty-five minutes, plenty of time we thought, seeing as though The Levellers were already set up. So on the first night we got off stage and afterwards we relaxed for a moment together, drinking water behind the curtains, ready to go back on and grab our gear. The crew proceeded to storm the stage, and, faced with our gear set-up, tore our guitar pedals off the floor and pretty much threw them at us. Suffice to say, we didn’t hang about after the set the next night and the lesson that we learned that day was a good one. There is simply no excuse. Get off stage on time and get off as quickly as humanly possible.

And, if you hadn’t already figured this out, if you are not the headlining band, never, ever, ever do an encore!

Follow all the rules, and this is how you'll feel.

FINAL THOUGHTS
There are ‘local band’ nights all over the country where venues simply want the friends and family of bands to come and drink at the bar to keep the business running. The venue and 'promoters' don't care about the bands, they care about the drinks being bought, and often the rules I've outlined above are not enforced or even laid out. At these nights, bands pick up bad habits. But you try pulling out those habits supporting a touring band with a tour manager and you simply aren’t going to get tours. And don't expect them to tell you why, because they don't have to.

At the beginning, being in a band is very tough. In the UK, at local gigs, you get treated as the lowest of the low, often not getting a dressing room, food or drinks. You see the headline band swanning about with their grub and lager and passes in their dressing room, not watching the local bands, and tend to think they’re stuck-up idiots. But what you need to remember is that they have all been in the same place as you have. And you’ll find that when you’ve not been home for three weeks and have driven for 7 hours previously, a beer and a sit down without having music blaring in your face is not that much to ask. By all means, politely introduce yourselves and ask them to watch you, but be prepared for the fact that they might choose not to, and that's their prerogative.

Finally, remember that at this stage, for you, watching the other bands is important. Grassroots music scenes work through friendships, not strength of demos, and the difference between being shunned by a scene and being immersed and accepted into it really is about what you put in. People can smell a band that are only out for themselves, so returning favours and being an active participant at live shows at this point will reap rewards that your songwriting might not.

And that's that. It's time to get out there and rock.

Barney

Thanks for reading this blog series and all your support and feedback. I have a special case study blog coming up where I impart some more general rules and philosophies to being in a band but what I’d really love right now is to hear any questions you guys have about music as it pertains to emerging artists.

Please email me your thoughts, suggestions and questions to barney@songeist.com

Drum Tech photo courtesy Gareth Harfoot's Flickr used under Creative Commons License.
Sound Engineer photo courtesy Howard Stanbury's Flickr used under Creative Commons License.
Sound Engineer 2 photo courtesy Andrei Rusu's Flickr used under Creative Commons License.
Tour Manager Photo courtesy David Jones's Flickr used under Creative Commons License.
Onstage photo courtesy Annais Ferreira's Flickr used under Creative Commons License.

From The Garage to The Stage Part 4: Confidence and Connection

This article originally appeared on the blog at Songeist.com.

If you're just starting out as an artist, there are many hard lessons to be learned onstage that don't necessarily appear in the 'how to play' manuals or educational music books. To help you along, we've enlisted our very own Barney to impart his hard-earned gigging wisdom in this ongoing series of weekly blogs. If you're recently started playing live or even if you haven't yet done a gig yet, we at Songeist believe that these blogs will be a great asset to help you to consider all the aspects of your live show. We'll be posting a new entry every Wednesday around midday for the coming weeks so don't forget to visit!

READ PART 1: MAKING A SPLASH HERE.
READ PART 2: STRUCTURING YOUR SET HERE.
READ PART 3: SEGUES AND SPEECHES HERE.
READ PART 5: CAMARADERIE AND CONTROL HERE.
READ PART 6: SET TIMES AND THE SOUND MAN HERE.

Remember to comment and let us know any live tips and tricks you have...

FROM THE GARAGE TO THE STAGE PART 4: CONFIDENCE AND CONNECTION

During a live gig, especially a club show, the dynamic between the crowd and act is very different from one of simply Performer and Audience. The relationship is probably more analogous to that of a stand-up comedy show than to a classical pianist and a hall full of patrons, or a crowd watching a game at a sports event. There is very little separation between the parties and a huge deal of direct interaction, both explicit and subliminal. Emotions are high and the audience and band feed and react to them. Sometimes the crowd speaks back. Bluff and self-assurance are essential and, like with so much in life, confidence is the key.

PEOPLE LIKE CONFIDENCE
Consider this. A stand-up comedian can perform to a room with great material but if he stutters nervously through his set, avoids eye-contact with the room, or acts hostile and complains about the crowd’s sense of humour he will leave the stage to silence or boos. A comedian with poor material who projects confidence and a sense of ease, or simply a likeable presence, can create a bond with the crowd and leave the stage with polite applause or even cheers. It’s exactly the same with a band, especially in a support slot. A band's music is a smaller part of a live show than most music journalists get paid to tell you it is and certainly far less than most punters consciously realise when they watch a live show. The crowd wants to like you so don't give them a reason not to. If a band looks as if they’re enjoying their music and come across as confident and cocksure, that will convince a crowd as much as the songs. Conversely, bands that look shy and embarrassed will make the crowd feel awkward and that negative emotion becomes associated with their music. With this in mind, if, like me, you don’t have the kind of natural boundless confidence that lights up the room every time you walk in it, it could be time to put some strategies and concepts into action.

Matt Reynolds, ex-guitarist and singer of rock band Howard’s Alias and now fronting folk act Big Fin, played guitar for Sonic Boom Six for a few tours at the end of 2009. A veteran of live gigs, Matt conveyed a striking live music philosophy to me on stage in Europe that stopped me in my tracks. Its simplicity was its genius. He said ‘every second that you look away from the crowd during a live show is a moment that you are cheating from them’. Over time it's become clear to me that as a general mantra to follow, it's a tremendously effective motivator. Of course, it’s not advised to stand on the edge of the stage and stare dementedly at the crowd for the entirety of the set. And as musicians, it’s great to share eye-contact and moments with your fellow musicians during the performance. But it’s also important to bear in mind that if you look at each other for the whole set, you are depriving your attention from the very place it needs to go… into the audience. Matt’s philosophy is the perfect concept to keep pushing you to do that. And looking at the crowd and conveying your energy, passion and belief in your music is what creates connection.

Matt Reynolds, looking AT a crowd and not cheating them.

CREATING THE CONNECTION
The idea of connection is a great way to conceptualise it. We've all been to sold-out arena gigs where there is a lack of a bond between the band and the audience, yet we've seen half-empty club shows where every single thing the band does has an effect on the mood and causes a reaction in the crowd. Equally we've watched festival headliners electrify thousands but stood through bands in tiny venues getting no reaction in a cold room. It's not the size of the show, it's the connection that creates a truly exhilarating live performance. For those of us petrified of performing that find ourselves looking down and smiling nervously throughout a live set, we need to put some thought into ways of avoiding this behaviour because it inhibits our connection. A good trick to start with can simply be looking over the audience, choosing a spot on the back wall of the venue just above the crowd's eye line and literally performing to that. Initially, your main goal is simply to get the energy out there and not elsewhere on the stage and to get comfortable doing it.

Eye contact is difficult for many people and feeling exposed on stage can increase one's self-consciousness. You may have heard how, to keep eye contact in police interviews, hardened criminals look between the eyes or at the eyebrows of those giving them a grilling. Start by using this technique. Smile at people. Connect with people. You don’t want to give all your attention to the same group of people through the entire set; look to the spot in the back of the room, then to the mass of people in the centre of the room, then give some time to those at the front. There have been times on stage where I have consciously tested this, observing the visceral difference in the body language of the people before me when I look and emote to them as opposed to looking elsewhere. You really do have the power in your body language to convey the energy of your music and to will people to enjoy it the way that you enjoy it. But you have to work at it.

Look, a lovely bunch of foreheads to connect with.

CONTROLLING THE CONNECTION
The paradox of creating connection, is that it's an exercise in controlling energy rather than unleashing it. We've all seen bands that think the key to a great live performance is to leap around the stage and thrash about like maniacs. Rather than encouraging the crowd to get involved, this can have the opposite effect, serving only to underline the lack of excitement in the rest of the room. The contrast between the energy of an act trying so hard and the ambivalent atmosphere in a venue can seem absurd, pathetic even, and this breaks the connection. Onstage, you may feel like you want to leap out of your skin but you need to harness that nervousness and adrenaline and focus your energy to coax the crowd to get involved, not to compel them to.

At the risk of sounding a little 'New Age', the best live acts can adapt to the vibrations in a room, focus them and then amplify them. This goes right back to the 'turning of the screw' through the first part of the setlist that we discussed in Part 2. When you hit the right vibration and take a cold, still room to a heaving mass of sweaty bodies in the space of three songs, it's the greatest feeling in the world. The gigs we all live for are those when the crowd erupts and you no longer need to worry about any of these blog subjects and you can lose yourself completely. But it's important to remember that you and the crowd go through the process together, not separately. Physical reaction and dancing from the crowd is a goal that inexperienced bands often pursue above all else, yet movement is not always the indicator of the best show. A gig's overall connection can even be broken by over-enthusiastic pockets of fans being super-served, moshing violently or chanting louder than the rest of the crowd. The most powerful, memorable and life-affirming gigs are those where the connection across the room between crowd and band is strongest. And the trick to connecting is more often implosion than explosion. It's reaction rather than action.

A mic, between songs. Remember, you don't HAVE to use it.

KEEPING THE CONNECTION
If there's one place where even the best bands lose their confidence, let their guard down and break the spell of the connection, it's between songs. There’s always a certain amount of discomfort in the act of being on stage with a mic and talking to a crowd and it’s only natural that it feels odd. I don’t want to belabour the point, but to emote clearly and briefly is far preferable than mumbling. If what you do and say between songs is affecting the connection between you and the crowd, then just say very little. There's no rule saying you have to say anything. Don't ruin the mood with stupid jokes if you're not a natural comedian, or, as we covered in Part 3, don't say the same thing again and again for the sake of it. Don't create a cliquey atmosphere by sharing private conversations between you and your friends in the crowd. It's a tempting crutch to lean on but the people in the audience that aren't in your close circle of friends will not know about that mad thing that happened to Batshit Barry at Reading 2007, and frankly won't care, so don't bring it up.

A good way to look at it is that if you get the feeling that you might possibly, maybe, perhaps, just a little bit, be mumbling rubbish into a mic between songs then you definitely are. Next week we'll continue these ideas about projecting a good positive atmosphere onstage and communicating with each other, and others, with efficiency and wisdom before, during and after the show.

Until next time...

Barney

Crowd shot courtesy Cabaret Voltaire's Flickr used under Creative Commons License.
Mic shot courtesty Ashley Collins' Flickr used under Creative Commons License.

From The Garage to The Stage Part 1: Making a Splash

This article originally appeared on the blog at Songeist.com.

If you're just starting out as an artist, there are many hard lessons to be learned onstage that don't necessarily appear in the 'how to play' manuals or educational music books. To help you along, we've enlisted our very own Barney to impart his hard-earned gigging wisdom in this ongoing series of weekly blogs. If you're recently started playing live or even if you haven't yet done a gig yet, we at Songeist believe that these blogs will be a great asset to help you to consider all the aspects of your live show. We'll be posting a new entry every Wednesday around midday for the coming months so don't forget to visit!

READ PART 2: STRUCTURING YOUR SET HERE.
READ PART 3: SEGUES AND SPEECHES HERE.
READ PART 4: CONFIDENCE AND CONNECTION HERE.
READ PART 5: CAMARADERIE AND CONTROL HERE.
READ PART 6: SET TIMES AND THE SOUND MAN HERE.

Remember to comment and let us know any live tips and tricks you have...

FROM THE GARAGE TO THE STAGE PART 1: MAKING A SPLASH

You’ve got your songs written. You’ve memorised your lyrics. You’ve rehearsed every verse, chorus and bridge so many times that you’ve got blisters on your fingertips. You’ve got your guitar, leads, spare strings and you’ve borrowed Uncle Barry’s van.

You’re ready to do a gig.

For the purposes of getting better as a band, there is no alternative to doing gigs. As soon as you are able, get out there and do it. Chances are, you’ll learn more in one gig than ten rehearsals. But the lessons learned during a live performance are subtle. Many of them are personal. You won’t find these lessons in a ‘100 Hot Guitar Licks’ book but they are just as important as nailing that gnarly bend during your extended solo. There are no hard-and-fast-rules to playing live, but across this series of blogs I’m going to attempt to impart some live music advice that I have picked up which, if nothing else, should stimulate a few thoughts about your approach to your live show.

OPENING THE SHOW
What better place to start than… the start! I can’t tell you the amount of times that I’ve witnessed this scene. The crowd stands in the venue, waiting for the next band to play after the opener has finished. The band is busy swapping around their equipment, tuning up, testing mics. The guitarist idly plays the riff from ‘Layla’. The drummer sits behind the kit and last-minute tunes his toms. BONG, BONG, PLOP. The crowd is murmuring, some watching this going on, some not watching. The band gradually settles into their places, still nervously playing little riffs and tapping away. At some point the singer mouths ‘you guys ready?’ to the rest of the band. They nod and the singer shuffles to the front and says ‘hello, er, we are The Ferrets and we hope you like us’. 1, 2, 3, 4 and it’s into the set. Half the crowd aren’t even watching. The performance fizzles into existence, rather than explodes.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of amazing bands that, without even thinking about it, can storm the stage and say ‘hello, we are The Ferrets’ and kick into a deafening roar of rock that can knock the socks off everyone in the venue. But for most of us, we need to put a little thought behind how we can start the set with a bang.

"BONG, BONG, PLOP."

DEALING WITH DRUMMERS (AND NOODLERS)
Once the preceding band’s gear is off the stage and your amp or drums are line-tested and set up and you have a few minutes to spare there is NO REASON to stay on the stage. Granted, in small venues there are times that a drummer may have a difficult route to negotiate so may need to stay on the stage. But there is no excuse for sitting there tuning drums and tapping unless absolutely necessary. A drummer will not understand why this is, so we may have to explain this to them. It is a truth of live music that the atmosphere of anticipation of a good, hard rocking is much more palpable and dramatic without the backdrop of BONG, BONG, PLOP reverberating across the venue.

Once your gear is set-up, get off the stage. Get into a group. Maybe even a little football-team huddle. Focus on what you’re about to do. When the time is right, storm the stage, with purpose, wave to the crowd, together. Would you believe that an experienced band can get a round of cheers to a room of complete strangers by doing this before even playing a note? They can, we can and YOU CAN just by looking the part and acting the part. Even if the venue is so small it has no backstage, or even stage, to speak of, a band can still get to the side and then, at the right time, descend on their gear together. This will still get a reaction.

Simply put, an empty stage is a metaphor. It symbolises the potential of the new band about to fill it. Stormed by a band with purpose and swagger at the right moment it fills with excitement. Then ‘Hello, we are The Ferret’s’ is performed, rather than just happening.

Wave your hands in the air like you mean it... and they will too. It's science.

CREATE SOME IMPACT

Another question is, is the ‘Hello, we are The Ferret’s’ really what you want to do? As I said, many bands can pull this generic entrance off but there are so many alternatives to this that are way more effective. A great trick to grab the crowd's attention is to simply crash down as loud and hard as you can together on crash cymbals and open strings repeatedly to really create some impact before kicking into the first song. Another way to approach it is opening with a short instrumental piece, perhaps simply an extended intro of your first song. I enjoy an instrumental set-opener because it allows you to get used to the sound of the room and the feel of your instrument before starting to sing or go into a song for real. The right piece of music can really build up an atmosphere before the songs start. A way that we will often approach an intro is to come on stage together, without the vocalist, and play a short instrumental before pausing and letting the vocalist walk on, which really ramps up the drama and aura around the singer.

A final option you might well want to think about is if your intro could be complimented by theme music? The intro music of a good TV show, film or such can work wonders to set the scene for the carnage you are about to unleash. Most sound guys will be totally happy to whack a CD on for you if you sort it in advance.

The right theme music can get them moving before you even come on...

So there we are. Remember, it’s not my intention to say one way is right and one is wrong. It’s my intention to get you asking yourself which of these options is right for you, rather than not thinking about it until you’ve already started the gig.

Next week in 'From The Garage to the Stage' we'll deal with the dark art of writing a setlist. Not just throwing a few songs on a list, but putting together a flow of music that will maximise the impact and impression you make with that thirty minutes you have up there. See you next Wednesday!

Until then...

Barney

Barney is a founder member of Manchester’s Sonic Boom Six. Sonic Boom Six has released 4 studio albums and two full-length compilations with countless singles, EPs and compilation appearances. 'The Boom' has performed headline tours of Europe, America and Japan as well as slots at festivals including Glastonbury, Download, Sonisphere and the main stage at Reading and Leeds Festival. SB6 has written and performed songs that have appeared on BBC Radio 1, Channel 4, BBC 2 (TV), Rock Band and Sims 3 video games.

Syria Hysteria or How Gary Got His Gun and Learned To Stop Worrying About Miley Cyrus.

For the last few days I've been somewhat-guiltily avoiding the coverage of the Syria situation, making do with stolen earfuls from Radio 4 in the morning before switching over to something less weighty. After the nuclear weekend of Reading and Leeds, it’s taken this old dog a few days to get back into the swing of things so I've been distracting myself with my newly-acquired Netflix and being earth-shatteringly un-fussed about Miley Cyrus looking a bit daft on the telly. But last night's defeat of David Cameron in the House of Commons, and today's fallout from that, has shaken me out of my Twerk-induced reverie and I've spent the past couple of hours catching up on the details. I wouldn't feel comfortable waxing lyrical on the specifics of global military responsibility in this particular fray, but I can certainly say that I was as pleased as punch to see the House of Commons voting against our involvement in it.

From what I've seen, the focus of the media analysis tends to be on the back-bench discord rather than the global ramifications of the decision. Today I've heard more talk of the 'high emotions' and red-faces in Parliament and the subsequent implications for the Labour vs Tory punch-up than of high-tech military conflict and the potential deaths of thousands of human beings. Cameron's half-salesman-like, half-pouty synopsis that 'it is clear to me that the British parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action' comes across as oddly like that thing shamed celebrities do when they say 'I apologise to those who were offended'. International War's place in this domestic game of political one-upsmanship is almost farcical, like some dream you’d have on Christmas evening after watching The Thick of it followed by Dr Strangelove then falling into a deep pudding-fueled sleep.

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the War Room!"

But, for a lot of us, this is a big day. One doesn't want to overstate the magnitude of it, but last time the British people didn't want to go to war, at all, we did anyway. We remember the protests on telly, the statistics against the war, the 'sexing up' of documents. Hell, many of us remember marching against our military involvement in America's Crusade ourselves and it didn't change a thing. The worst feeling at that time was the sense of hopelessness, the loss of democracy. If the nation would have been all for it, while you personally against it, it would have been one thing but it was quite another when the Government openly ignored the will of the people and plunged our money and soldiers into a warzone.

Today, not so. Even if the result of the vote was more the positive outcome of a decidedly political spat than a true manifestation of the 'will of the people', today brings a sense of hope. But hope for what? Hopefully it’s that after the lessons of the past decade, our leaders are going to think twice about running our young men and women on global military errands that the populous is against. This brings me nicely to answering a question that I've avoided answering for some time. I could never quite find the words. I could never quite establish a way to write what the song is about without potentially offending people. Without potentially offending soldiers. Which is perhaps why 'Gary Got a Gun' is a song, not a blog, in the first place.

Some of our fans in the armed forces have been irked by the song. Some of them have alluded to it in Facbeook posts, others have written candid and interesting arguments and accounts of their military experience. Ex-sqaddie Philip Mudhir sent me a very convincing litany of why soldiers are heroes. So, even if I can't please everyone with this blog, I can at least offer a response to those asking for clarity.

First things first, and sorry to be a pretentious artist, but ultimately the lyrics mean what you take from them. The song is the song and is going to be there a lot longer than this blog. If someone hears 'Gary' as a song that laments the hopelessness and injustice of our government sending young men out to die in wars that the country is against because they don't have that much to do with us, you're probably on the right lines. If you hear it as a pointed finger and a shrug of the shoulders towards the newspapers and TV stations that oppose our country's military actions while glorifying our army you're even nearer where I was coming from. But if you hear it as a direct criticism to those who choose to join the ranks of an army knowing that they will have to obey orders that do not stand up to the scrutiny of their own morals then that's how you hear it. I don't know that I ever meant to say that a soldier isn't a 'hero' but rhyming it with 'amount to zero' on the next line certainly presents that implication. Lyrics, by their nature, are open to interpretation. I only hope that our government's refusal to be drawn into another war last night can put the context of the song somewhat into the past tense and even lend a little credence to the intention behind the song. Hopefully, now I can explain the song's genesis without being perceived as someone who, and I quote, ‘hates soldiers'.



Of course, when writing it, I knew the song would be contentious. It's such a massively contentious subject. But the only part of it that I can say has been actually misconstrued from my original intentions is that 'you amount to zero' line. I'm not saying that I think they amount to zero. I'm saying that with the flimsy justification we went following America into military action over the last dozen years, it's questionable that the lives of soldiers are worth very much more than that to those that are sending them into war. 

And that song's been done a million times, many times much more articulately than I could ever hope to achieve. But that's not where the idea of the song came from. The impetus behind this song was an article in a certain Red Top newspaper that distinguished itself from the other Red Tops post-2001 by centralising itself politically and making its views against the military action in Afghanistan and Iraq clear. While the other tabloids were remaining obsequious to our colonial overlords and contrite in their 'support for our boys', would moving into an anti-war editorial for this newspaper provoke a shift in perspective towards our soldiers? The answer was, of course, no. Far from avoiding the issue, their tone remained at the least, supportive and encouraging, and at the most, celebratory, lionising and downright patronising. And when presented with an interview with the grieving mother of another brave and valiant 19-year-old soldier, decrying his pointless loss of life in a war we didn't even need to be in, I was wary of the editorial tight-rope the paper was balanced upon. We hate the war. We love the soldiers.

This point of view is commonly expressed as 'against the war, for the troops'. I understand that stance. I understand where it comes from. Joining the army shouldn't have to mean that you're sent to do stuff that you are inherently against. Those decisions are not a soldier’s job. But, taken literally, can it be anything other than lip service? I've got to say it... if you're against what the military have been asked to do for the last 12 years, how can you in good conscience encourage someone to join the army? The fact remains that to implicate soldiers as having any responsibility for choosing a line of work where they will have to unquestioningly follow the questionable orders of their superiors is still terribly taboo.

Our brave and heroic boy, whose actions we don't agree with.

Policemen were open to scrutiny. Teachers were, NHS staff were. We all know that priests were. But in the mid-noughties soldiers, as a whole, were still treated in even anti-war papers with a kind of detached reverence. Just like 'the gun thing' in America, people were afraid to go there. If it's Emperor’s New Clothes, I just wanted to be that kid and point at it. I'm not saying that the papers should be attacking and criticising soldiers every single day. I'm saying if they were openly critical of the way our country was using our military, it was somewhat duplicitous to have anti-war editorials on one page then advertisements for 'Be The Best' and talk of being a hero on the next. The caricature of a soldier as an unthinking heroic drone, ready to deploy his orders for a government he devotedly loves, is as insulting to the soldiers themselves as it is to the reader. If discussion about the responsibilities, duties and opinions of soldiers was less controversial, would there be more pressure on the people making the decisions using them as collateral in the courtship of our Special Relationship with the US in situations like Afghanistan? I wasn't talking about soldiers questioning orders; I was talking about bursting the subservient media bubble that existed around the discussion of soldiers. And I was questioning the strong influence that subservience can have on the decisions of young men and women thinking about starting a career in the very organisation the newspaper purported to oppose the behaviour of.

So, hopefully I’ve explained where I was coming from and maybe we can put this to bed. Perhaps, if only for today, our army is once again our army. And hopefully last night signifies a sea-change in the UK, and our spiritual, and literal, compasses can re-align towards endeavours that are less morally suspect or at least more democratic in their scope. Of course soldiers can be heroes, and I believe that the vast majority of them join the army to be heroes, to protect and serve their country. I respect them. I just don't think that a lot of what they've been sent to do over the last 13 years has been, in a moral sense, very heroic and I think as much as anything, that's an injustice to them.

Until The Sunlight Comes...

Barney x 

Gary Got a Gun (P.Barnes)

Gary got a gun, a camouflage uniform and a journey to a strange land,
Never even saw the eyes of the man whose shot left him bleeding into the sand
Out in the headlines they call him ‘hero’
But if they can send you to war just to settle a score then I’m sorry my friend you amount to zero

It was his life-long dream
Wanted to “Be the Best” like it said on the screen
So it’s straight into the infantry age of 18
6 months later takes a bullet for the team
Shot him down
Insurgent with a gun in an occupied town
Shot him down
And he’s hit in the side hour later he died and he’s homebound

All he ever knew
Was to follow through
Any order they would ask for him to do
Any place that they would choose to send him into.

Gary got a gun, a camouflage uniform and a journey to a strange land,
Never even saw the eyes of the man whose shot left him bleeding into the sand
Out in the headlines they call him ‘hero’
But if they can send you to war just to settle a score then I’m sorry my friend you amount to zero

And so the story goes
The photos of the troops and our super heroes
But every tribute to the boys it just propagate the lie
Of course he’s fucking brave if you’re sending him to die
Shot him down
A nineteen year old kid with an average background
Shot him down
The story should be “why the hell was he there in the first place?”

All he ever knew
Was to follow through
Any order they would ask for him to do
Anywhere that they would choose to send him into.

Gary got a gun, a camouflage uniform and a journey to a strange land,
Never even saw the eyes of the man whose shot left him bleeding into the sand
Out in the headlines they call him ‘hero’
But if they can send you to war just to settle a score then I’m sorry my friend you amount to zero

And poor old mum
Hangs his photo in the hall
And all the words they printed
They do not help at all

Gary got a gun, a camouflage uniform and a journey to a strange land,
Never even saw the eyes of the man whose shot left him bleeding into the sand
Out in the headlines they call him ‘hero’
But if they can send you to war just to settle a score then I’m sorry my friend you amount to zero

The worth that they gave to your premature grave was zero
If they can send you to war just to settle a score you amount to zero
If they can send you to war just to settle a score you amount to zero
If they can send you to war does it mean any more now they call you hero?

Backing Tracks, Cabinet Backs and kicking the facts about REAL MUSIC.

One of the more bemusing recent internet scandals was over a controversial photograph of Black Veil Brides on the Warped Tour taken from behind their guitar amps. Instead of having the standard black hardwood casing on the back of the cabinet, the cab was open, revealing that there was - gasp - nothing inside. Judging by the response online, the Oz-like unveiling that the amplification onstage isn’t really what’s pumping the music out into the great beyond evidently came to the surprise of many. Like Dorothy’s lament of ‘oh, you’re a very bad man!’, The Brides (as I’m sure they’re known) were inundated by a social legion of latent audio experts with cries of ‘sell outs’, ‘poseurs’ and ‘that’s not how you credibly amplify a guitar signal through a festival PA across a 40,000 cap site’. But unlike Oz, BVB didn’t reply with ‘I’m a Humbug’, instead opting for a pithy Twitter retort that likened their onstage set to the singer’s tattoos… something obviously a part of a show. The truth of the matter is that the revelation that those cabs weren’t being used to do very much at all surprised a grand total of no one who has ever played music on a stage bigger than that of a pub. So far, so internet.

Yesterday a character called J Willgoose Esq of dance-rock duo Public Service Broadcasting was upheld by The Independent newspaper’s online service to, seemingly unwillingly, represent the ‘keep music live’ guard and challenge the use of backing tracks in live music. You can read the article HERE. Maybe the accompanying photograph of him behind a sequencer should ring alarm bells that his technological broadside is being taken way out of context but in the article he decries acts that rely on hidden laptops, stating that 'live music should have an element of risk and an element of danger'. Well, on the subject of risk and danger, he’s presumably never tried running a laptop on a keyboard stand onstage at some of the dives we’ve played. The article proceeds to wildly scrawl big, thick, clumsy lines from his statements, (originally quoted in Q magazine) across to Deadmau5's DJing and then over to Coldplay’s use of sequenced strings. From there the article has been copied and pasted by various internet music sites as a kick-off for discussion about backing tracks in live sets and it’s off to the races for everyone who has ever wanted to bloody the noses of us cheating, no-good laptop-using BASTARDS.

Of course, in reality the difference between enhancing your line-up with the advantages of new technology and ‘playing to backing tracks’ is infinite in its scope. But on the internet, we don’t bother ourselves with such pesky notions as perspective. It’s a lot easier, and more fun, to stick your thumb up or down at the subject, like some cyber-Caesar staring at a gladiator who’s just used a futuristic laser gun to kill a lion. A fairly recent thread on the UK’s leading punk forum about backing tracks uncovered an overwhelmingly negative response to the concept. The trouble with all this discussion it it is indeed the concept that is met with mistrust, rather than the result. In my experience, at a gig most of the audience don’t know, and don’t care, how either an amp or laptop is specifically used in the live context. And yet when confronted with the question ‘do you approve of backing tracks?’, or presented with a funny photo of a hollow cab, the response is to suddenly appropriate the staunch Rock n Roll purism of a 1974 Led Zeppelin roadie. And yes, we’ve all seen the amazing live performances and, true, those lads didn’t need bloody backing tracks or fake amps. But they didn’t need cut scenes where Jimmy Page stopped shagging a 14 year-old long enough to dress as a wizard and climb mountains either but we had to put up with them didn’t we?

Like The Independent's liberal associations around J Willgoose Esq’s original interview, I may be drawing broad lines between these two stories. But while the specifics are different, much of the reactions are not. Underneath Facebook re-productions of the articles in question are a litany of comments decrying ‘cheating’, ‘fake musicians’ and the lack of this, that and the blinking other in music today. While the hankering for the straight-up spirit of Rock n Roll is charming, it’s all slightly misguided. And more often it shows internet commentary at its frothy-mouthed worst, passing absolute, Sword of Damocles judgments over intensely multifaceted topics while on the toilet at work. In 140 characters or less.

There are a number of reasons why the spat dummies over ‘that’ photo are ridiculous. It may well just capture an unorthodox onstage amping set-up that the guitarist or the sound engineer have devised, with all the guitar going through onstage wedges and in-ear monitors. For a whole host of very sensible audio reasons, their amps could be at the side of the stage. In that, frankly very likely, case, I don’t think it’s in anyone’s interest to have a guitarist standing in front of nothing like a kid with a tennis racquet. On the other side of the coin, perhaps the guy from BVB is miming and he can’t play guitar at all. Maybe he prefers to survey the crowd with a cold, steely glare and pick out the bevy of hot rock tottie he’s going to denigrate just seconds after his final fake chord rings silently out from his empty cab. Who knows? Unless everyone’s been keeping their profound expertise in the art of onstage festival audio design from me, there’s no way to conclude the specifics of that guitarist’s set-up from that photo alone. But it’s a perfect photo for anyone with no knowledge of this subject to confirm a prejudice they already had about a particular band being 'fakes'.

Jimmy Page, yesterday

The cabs are up there to create a strong onstage visual. And there’s nothing wrong with that at all. Rock n Roll is about that. And if that’s not punk, tell The Ramones to stop dressing like each other. It’s just part of the show. You can argue it’s giving the crowd value for money. From the coolest indie band to the grandest metal band through the whole spectrum of Rock n Roll, there’s more dummy Marshall cabs onstage than there are MySpace Band Profiles gathering dust in cyberspace. Hell, we’ve done it ourselves. It’s only because these particular cabs have no back on them that anyone on the outside is let into that little secret. If the issue is that every cab in the vicinity of a band has to be projecting live, pure, old-fashioned MUSIC then what about those bands playing in front of their silent amps in their videos hey?! Like every band ever! Fakes!!! WHO ARE WE TRYING TO KID!?!?

The upshot of this whole thing is that the photo struck a nerve with people and sums up a lot of feelings about that band’s reliance on image over music. The photo was taken by the drummer from The Bronx, a tremendous band and one with a lot of credibility. He took this image and used it to illustrate that he didn’t have a lot of respect for BVB, and possibly to make a statement about the booking of that particular tour, for reasons we can probably guess. Fair enough. But, judging by the resultant online uproar, I didn’t perceive that many of the commentators fully understood the context of what was being said with the image. And I disagree with that in principle because it’s a tabloid tactic to twist an image into something else because that’s what you want it to represent. Ultimately, I’m uneasy with the fallout of that photo, as straight-forward as the intentions may have been behind it.

To put it another way, if you want to rag on that band, don’t rag on their dummy amps, rag on the fact that the shameless painted buggers charge their daft fans for the pleasure of meeting their greedy arses. But that’s another blog.

I cry foul of the reaction to this photo because it feeds into this naïve and, frankly silly, notion that the only way to be credible as a band is to go up there, stripped down and ‘do it live’. It’s a lazy exercise in limiting the parameters of what you appreciate in a live performance so that anything that falls outside that becomes somehow substandard. It’s exactly the same mentality as people that call out DJs for ‘playing other people’s records’ because they’ve never considered the fact that the art form is ‘playing other people’s records’ in a way that connects with people and works a dancefloor into a frenzy and the myriad of other intangibles that goes into the art of being a DJ. And further down the spiral, it’s the same mentality as people that decry all electronica, pop, dance music, or whatever isn’t played by white people with guitars, as ‘not real music’. It’s a limited way of looking at music that begins and ends with what you can be bothered to understand. And that leads me neatly into my issues with the inferences thrown up by The Independent via the comments of J Willgoose Esq.

Of course, from the article we don’t know to what exact extent J Willgoose Esq is knocking backing tracks. He might very well hear Sonic Boom Six play live and go ‘oh no, THAT’s OK, I was talking about those OTHER backing tracks’. But that’s the problem with where the article takes his discourse. The resultant broad discussion about the subject means that without calling specific bands out, it’s akin to saying that all bands with double-bass pedals are cheats because they should be able to do it with one foot. And it makes bands like mine feel slightly ‘got at’ for using loops and samples as part of our live show. And with articles like this, that perception is only going to get worse. With the sum of the article being ‘guitar good, laptop bad’ we fall upon the ire of the internet musical commentators who turn off their Cream albums long enough to scream that using backing tracks over their pure, white, unpolluted live music is, and I quote, ‘boring and cowardly’, before moving on to the next round of Candy Crush Saga.

J Willgoose Esq, about to kick a sequencer off the stage.

That's not to say that there aren't bands who use backing tracks to prop up a bad performance. But they're just bad bands, like there have always been bad bands, with an iPod running in the background. And the crowd will pick up on that, whether they know why or not. An obvious backing track is just another symptom of an overall lack of quality rather than the cause of the problem. And it's the band's job to make the tracks work. Last year I saw a show by the pop side-project of a leading post-hardcore band's singer, whose set came across as uninspired and insipid and was panned by the magazines and punters alike. The set was shackled to glaring, pre-produced tracks. The reliance on the tracks was just one aspect of the larger problem of a badly-conceived live show that lacked any onstage spark and utilised a skeleton crew of a band that looked like they didn't want to be there in the first place. Meticulously-produced audio pumping out into the room or not, listening to the grumbling fans leaving Sound Control in Manchester with disappointed faces, the fact that the band had misused backing tracks was just one of the complaints about an overall lacklustre product.

J Willgoose Esq rightly posits that 'there should also be room for improvisation, even if only in small measures. How else are you supposed to be able to tell a good performance from a bad one?' The thing is, the aforementioned pop band were the exception that proves the rule. I’ve rarely seen a band so dominated by backing tracks that there isn’t room for improvisation, in small measures or not. Certainly the mammoth productions and tremendously talented backing bands of most leading pop acts don’t fall into that category. And for any act out there simply miming to pre-recorded backings - maybe some Pop Idol also-ran that’s playing a few shopping centres - I’d credit the crowd with enough intelligence to be completely turned off, without even necessarily knowing, or caring, why. Conversely, if a band like The Streets or Enter Shikari or Hadouken! or Skindred even Sonic Boom Sodding Six, use backing tracks in a way that’s fun and inventive and enhances the show then the crowd forget all about all the ‘cheating’ going on and enjoy the show. As long as we don’t talk about it. It’s kind of like an audio Fight Club.

The most galling facet of the anti-backing tracks mentality is that it misses out a whole aspect of music that has come into play with the availability of software like Ableton Live which allows synched backing tracks to be accessible to all bands, not just those with elaborate stage sets and multitudes of expensive equipment, as was the case not too many years ago. This technology allows bands to be creative, adventurous and integrated with their use of backing tracks from day one. Lest we forget, when acoustic guitars were first amplified, members of the music community saw that amplification itself as cheating. Yes, there were Luddites that would see me climbing onto the stage with anything less than a double bass projecting out notes with my bare, swollen digits as fraudulent. Absurd, but no more absurd than the notion that all use of backing tracks onstage is dragging the music away from a position of honesty. Seeing backing tracks as ‘cheating’ robs one of the opportunity to appreciate backing tracks, samples, loops and electronic elements being used in a way that is as interesting and inspired as any guitar solo. Listening to James talk to Skindred for hours on end about the specifics of their set-up is enough to convince even the most ardent skeptic that this is a very involved process indeed. Fucking ragga-metal FRAUDS that they are.

Ask yourself where the music on the backing tracks comes from. You don’t walk out of the studio and get presented with a burnt disc with 'cheat mode' written on it in Sharpie and hand it to the soundman. Integrating tracks into your set takes time and skill. We work for hours in rehearsals on our arrangements like any band, but for us, the instrument of the laptop is another layer in that process. Making the performance emulate what is there on record, but still allowing for the 'live band' sound to come through, is a major factor of that development. Playing along with the drums to a click is no mean feat in itself but creating triggered loop points within songs which allow for improvisation and formulating segues is every bit as demanding as it is having a bass, guitar and drums vamp on a blues riff for a few bars while the vocalist talks. In fact, I’ll go there. It’s WAY more demanding than that. That’s well easy! And that’s the total and utter Billy Bollocks of the whole debate. For any band using backing tracks in the way we do, it is more involved, demanding, and dare I say it, difficult than it was when we didn’t use them. And the bottom line is that our current music, and lots of other music that dares to deviate from the bass, drums, guitar archetype, wasn’t written to be heard ‘stripped down’. Far from running scared from that exposure, we were thinking bigger. As big as technology allows.

Sonic Boom Six, today, in their magic backing tracks factory, preparing to cheat the music world.

As a final case in point, Coldplay is a band named in the article as a band who have come under fire for their use of backing tracks. Like them or not, Coldplay is a band that can play. And SING. No matter what’s added, you’re going to be able to hear the performances of the incredibly talented principle four musicians, without a great deal of trouble, which Chris never meant to cause you, of course. And I for one would rather hear that accompanied by all the grandeur that the live arena and technology allows, and all the creative elbow-room that entails. If I wanted to hear them, or us, or any decent band stripped down and ‘real’, then there are always the acoustic performances. If the crowd are singing along at the show I think most of them agree. But attack them for using backing tracks on a blog and a lot of that same crowd might grit their teeth and bang out things like ‘cheating’, ‘boring’ and ‘cowardly’ before watching Charlie Bit My Finger.

People talk about backing tracks, and dummy amps, and equate them with ‘faking it’. People harp on about technology reducing the art of live pop and rock music. I think the opposite is true. Music technology is increasing the scope of live music performance. Music technology can enhance production of the live experience in the largest arena and the smallest toilet venue, as long as artists and sound engineers are willing to be inventive and creative with it. I give the crowd credit. If the music is stifled by the technology, they’re gonna hear it. If it adds to the music, they’re gonna cheer it beyond all the lip service we give what we consider ‘real’. That’s the bottom line. That’s the art. Bear in mind that The Beatles apparently stopped playing live because they could no longer emulate the sounds that they could create in the studio. It's hard to picture them making that argument today. The scope that this technology presents us with is only as limited as our imaginations and this should be celebrated and embraced. It should be appreciated at the very least. Keith Richards said ‘Rock n Roll is music for the neck down’ and that’s certainly the philosophy I endorse. Appreciate a band on the basis of what’s presented to you out in the crowd, not from a stolen photo behind the curtain. And, whatever you do, don’t read the comments section.

Until The Sunlight Comes...

Barney x