I’m always coming up with spontaneous ideas. Usually, the most they amount to is an email to Mickeleh or Alan, or occasionally Hank and John (if it’s YouTube/DFTBA related), saying “what if there was a club at DFTBA, where every month people get sent a CD with a cracked case for free?” or “what if we sold blank decks of playing cards so my subscribers could recreate my video endings?” or “what if I give out a thousand free copies of my album at VidCon?”. (In summary, the first one won’t work if more than three people sign up, the second is something we might do, and the last one is actually something I’m gonna be kind-of doing … I’m gonna burn a seven-track CD with a few Parrot Stories tracks, a few World Is Mine tracks, and one track from the 117% Complete EP, and give it out for free as a ‘demo’ CD thing on plain ol’ CD-R at VidCon.)

So yesterday after I wrote that blog about community spirit, I emailed Alan saying:

Wrote a blog about how it’s nice when artists help each other out and stuff, and it made me think for a bit about those ‘celebrity playlists’ you get on iTunes, where you can find out who Miley Cyrus’s favourite music is and buy it yourself or whatever.

What would be a cool way to do something similar on DFTBA? Maybe every month one of the CDs gets reduced in price, or free shipping on any purchases involving that CD, just for that month – on the recommendation of another DFTBA artist? We’re not allowed to pick anything we profit from, Tom can’t pick Taking Leave or Parrot Stories, but he could pick (for example) Silent Echoes maybe, so then that gets a little incentive and promotion for the month. Like an artist-chosen Pick Of The Month. And then next month, Dr Noise could pick someone.

Problem with this though is we don’t want the same CD getting discounted six times in a year cos everyone loves Hank’s music or Driftless Pony Club or whatever, so maybe this might not work. Or, maybe it’s just a separate idea. What else could we do that publicly showcases artists’ tastes within the label and gives people an opportunity to invest in them?

(Cos that’s always the first thing I do when I suggest an idea – point out all the problems and end with a vague ‘well, maybe this won’t work’ but then I still send it.)

What Alan worked out – and what went live today on the DFTBA website – is the idea of DFTBA artist playlists. Kind of like a Top Ten Chart for DFTBA, available once a month and decided by a different signed artist, allowing us to recommend our favourite DFTBA-branded music to the masses.

(For those that didn’t know I released physical copies of Parrot Stories – I’m signed to an independent record/distribution label called DFTBA Records, co-founded by Alan Lastufka of the fiveawesomeguys and Hank Green of the vlogbrothers.)

I even tried to rank them in order like a proper chart and gave my own little thoughts on each one. Unfortunately, given that I’m the first artist on the site, I won’t get my turn again for at least another year, but I would keenly encourage you all to clicky and give it a read :D I gave Alan all the relevant links so if you wanna hear the songs I recommended, you can click through to the artist’s DFTBA or bandcamp page or iTunes store section.

Yay for helping each other out!

x

{ 25 comments }

I think, as part of the booklet for The World Is Mine, I’m gonna write about unsigned acts I like. Just recommended people to check out. Not that much, maybe my top three with a little YouTube link or something. Cos one of the things I love most with all this is the community spirit. (My original idea of rattling on at length about the ideas and meanings behind the album was deemed, by me, incredibly pretentious and boring. So now I’ll fill it with fun little facts and such.)

Since I make more than enough from DFTBA sales, I figure the least I can do is buy CDs from other artists when they’re released. So I have – nearly – every release (I never got a physical of Expert because Craig gave me the files when I met him last year, but I’ll order it soon). The DFTBA artists have had a couple ideas to work on collaborations together; we discussed a fun one a while back where we all cover each other’s songs.

Anyway, someone who’s not on DFTBA but is very very cool needs my help, and I thought in the spirit of this entry that I’d help her out. I used to play acoustic shows with her, where she would outshine me night after night, cos it was three years ago and I had no stage presence and played cheesy crappy songs like “Smile” (“when I see her smile at me, it gives me strength, my room to breathe” – OH MY GOD). The only song from those days that made it on to Parrot Stories is ‘Sicily’ – think of that, Sicily being the strongest song in a set of songs.

Anyway, Fran’s wonderful, and she’s in the Vodafone Live And Unsigned competition in the UK, for which she tells me she’s through to the regional final :) If you clicky here, you’ll be able to listen to some tracks and help her out in the competition if you like them. It’d surely mean a lot to both of us if you did ^_^

(No, we’re not dating, you crazy gossips.)

Oh, one last thing to run by you – Parrot Stories. Since I’m releasing The World Is Mine in a digipak (on account of digipaks being more durable and lighter to transport), I’m thinking of converting Parrot Stories to a digipak too. So once we sell our first order of a thousand jewel cases, I’ll just order them in digipaks from then on. BUT: as part of this, since I’m improving the product, I thought it’d be nice to revise the booklet, and make it what I now think booklets should be, filled with fun facts instead of just lyrics.

So thought I’d put that out there, that’s a plan for the future. =) (No, I’m NOT asking you to buy it again :p)

x

{ 21 comments }

Today was absolutely crazy. =D

There were about a hundred of you, all screaming and going crazy. Before anything had happened. Literally, as I stepped out of Covent Garden station, a mob of people just cheered and screamed simply because I’d arrived.

We only got two shots filmed – the ones with huge crowd scenes – and we’re gonna film the rest in the next week or two. It’ll look great. To anyone reading this that came along, thank you so much :)

x

{ 64 comments }

It’s a pun, cos of snow.

I’m getting about ten messages a day from people saying “is London still on? THERE’S SO MUCH SNOW OH MY GOD” before them and their computer gets physically shunted under a pile of snow, leaving them only to click ‘Send’ and cling to what’s left of their lives while they wait for rescue from the snow fairy.

There’s not THAT much snow – trains are still running, everything’s fine, and yes tomorrow is still on. I of course would have announced if it wasn’t.

Background for those unaware; I’m filming a music video for Hearts in London tomorrow, details here:

So that’s still going on. Now, of course, it IS likely that it will be snowy and icy and we won’t be able to film anything at all. But if that happens, it’ll just be a gathering. xD However, we should be fine.

x

{ 13 comments }

I recently watched a TED talk on creativity led by Elizabeth Gilbert, recommended to me by Charlie. As part of this talk, Elizabeth (I hate referring to professionals by their last names) put forward an alternate perception of the creative process to take the pressure off creative individuals; she talked about how it often feels like a song (or a poem, or a piece of art, whatever your forté) just comes to you as if given by something external. She said that when you picture the source of your creativity as something outside of yourself, rather than something you’re always capable of yourself but only rarely able to access, you lose the constant feelings of frustration associated with the inability to tap into said muse. Elizabeth likes to think of creative ideas in the same way dream catchers approach dreams; that they will briefly breeze through you, able to be captured, but if let go will simply drift over to the next creative individual ready to play catch.

So it was, then, that having written the ten tracks for my album, I wrote an eleventh this afternoon, because the winds happened to be heading my way.

It’s called You And Me and I like it a lot – very Impossible Dreams, only without the emotional weight attached. In my track list, it comes third – between Georgia and The World Is Mine. I was inspired by a dreamy Evanescence song I recently rediscovered called ‘Anywhere‘ – I love the lyrics.

Anyway, I’ve started recording what I call my definitives – crappy recordings of the songs on my MacBook, the best I can do without assistance, but that capture the songs exactly as I intend them to sound, with all the pauses and melodic phrases in exactly the right places. I can then listen to these over and over in the build-up to my album recording, making sure I remember the song exactly the way I want to when it comes time to do it properly.

Incidentally, I’ve now booked my recording sessions for the album with my studio engineer Oli. The first session will take place on the 25th of January – the day after the recording of the 117% Complete EP – and then there will be four sessions in February, a four-day block from the 1st to the 4th of March, and a final two days on March 19th and 20th (giving us time in-between to reflect on what we’ve done up to that point and make necessary changes). That also leaves us time to book an additional session or two in April to finish everything off and make it really perfect.

A few people have been asking me lately how I can afford to do this – both the recordings, and the general living my life as a musician. The studio ain’t cheap, let me point out: Parrot Stories cost £550 to record, and The World Is Mine already looks like it’s gonna cost at least one thousand five hundred. I’ve just been very lucky, and very good with the money that’s come my way.

Chameleon Circuit, first of all, was recorded for free, and that continues to sell very well, such that I always get several hundred pounds a month from its sales. I don’t really go out drinking or partying, so most of that goes away in savings. That money paid for Parrot Stories, which has also sold well so far (and which I get a bigger cut of, because Chameleon Circuit has four members), and the money from them both will go towards The World Is Mine. Currently, I have £10,000 in my savings account, some of which I’ll be investing in an equity ISA (when did life become so boring?), the rest I’ll use to invest in things like album recordings and to spontaneously go to New York when Tom’s playing a gig there xD (I sold all my CDs in New York, though, so that helped pay that all back.)

Anyway; the money from Chameleon Circuit paid for Parrot Stories, and the money from that is gonna pay for The World Is Mine, which I’m purposely spending a lot more time on because I can afford to do so and think it’ll definitely be worth it as a result. =)

The best thing I recommend anybody do is, if you really wanna put out a CD, spend a month noting down every single penny you spend, and exactly what you spend it on. (I did it last October and called it K-TOMM – Keep Track Of Money Month.) At the end of it, you may notice you always buy the large meals from McDonalds but never finish them, in which case you can save by buying the mediums. Or you notice that you eat at McDonalds twice a week but could afford to cut back. I noticed that I’m always spending £3 at every Starbucks buying chai tea lattes when I could just buy a Capri-Sun for 70p. All that money adds up. And once you’re saving, just funnel all of it into the album. You don’t get anywhere without taking risks. It doesn’t matter how many subscribers you have – if you make a fucking great CD, it only takes one person to come across it for the ball to start rolling. And it’ll end up paying for itself anyway.

x

{ 24 comments }

Earlier today, I had a look around YouTube to see if anyone had covered one of my songs or reviewed my album, and I stumbled upon this video.

The idea was done by jonnydarkmusic at first; to take the lyrics of a popular song, translate them into another language and then back into English, and then sing the translated version.

Charlie and myself spent the rest of the afternoon singing songs we’d written, translated back from Yiddish. xD

Of particular interest is this line from Don’t Look Back:

“I can see my breath in front of me, dancing in the air with yours
We both know what we want but we can’t cos we’re so unsure“

It got translated to:

“Before I can hold my breath and dance with you
We both think that we cannot know who we are“

Which, as Becky pointed out, is ‘oddly beautiful’.

Later in the day, while failing to write Trock, Charlie played this Spanish uke solo over an old chord progression I had and made it sound all fun and new, so using the broken Don’t Look Back lyrics as a basis, I wrote THE MYTHICAL TRACK 5.

It’s called Hometown. I have to fiddle with it a bit, but it’s interesting and just what I was looking for – an interesting, different middle song to bridge the gap between Living On The Underground and Dead And Gone.

(Not all the translations were so poetic. “When it gets to midnight, can you take my freezing hands and dance?” became “In the evening I opened the freezer to get a dance?“)

x

{ 24 comments }

Ten fun facts about the songs on Parrot Stories, GO:

1) A Thousand Hours, No Sacrifice and Hearts were all written in the same week during December 2008, a month when I had no internet access and was subsequently far more productive. I wrote Don’t Look Back a few weeks afterward, as well as three other songs that didn’t make it on the album. (Bonus facts – Holding On and No More were written around the same time in summer 2008, and Impossible Dreams was the last song for the album, written in summer 2009 several months after the rest of the tracks were finished).

2) The line I’m proudest of on the album is “If you ever need me, I’m only a vodka away from you” from No More.

3) My least favourite line is the description of “perfect glossy hair” in Hearts. Imagine being asked to describe someone’s hair in two words and saying: ‘perfect. And glossy!’ – What a tosser.

4) Holding On took its production style from a song by Roses Kings Castles called ‘Horses‘ – in the studio I played the song for Tom and said ‘we need to make it sound like this’.

5) Candy Floss was written under a tree one night with Mhairi in an attempt to write a cute song similar to ‘Birds‘ by Kate Nash.

6) Impossible Dreams was inspired by the rhythm of a Slipknot song called ‘Circle‘.

7) Some of my lyrics sound really creepy. Most of the ones on the new album do, including lines like “Now I know how to make you mine … I won’t let you go” (from You Can’t Trust Me), and “lay down and close your eyes – all things have to die” (from Not Just Yet) but the creepiest one on Parrot Stories is ”She was gonna go, but I said ‘no, I don’t think so’ ” from Candy Floss xD

8) How We Were nearly didn’t make it on the CD. On the night before the final day of recording, I decided to take one of the planned tracks (titled Standing In One Piece, a uke song) off the album and replace it with this one. (It was a good decision.)

9) In the CD booklet for Parrot Stories, Lex is described as doing ‘lighting’ because our engineer in the studio had a lamp shaped like a duck, and Lex looks a bit like a duck (a recurring joke to the joy of all but Lex).

10) The font on the cover of the CD – and the logo of my name on this website – is a completely original font, because it’s the handwriting of Alan (co-owner of DFTBA Records).

ALSO: A worrying amount of people in my last blog post said “wait … you sell physical CDs of Parrot Stories?” – yep, see how on my blog on the right hand side there’s a link that says ‘buy on CD’, and you notice how on every music video I upload there’s a link that says ‘buy on CD’? RAWWR. THIS IS NOT MY FAULT.

Yes, I sell physicals. xD And the physicals have a HIDDEN TRACK (well, sort of) so you’re totally missing out. If the link on the right of this page isn’t enough for you – maybe you’re seeing this through an RSS reader – here’s the link again. Bonus last fact: the last time I checked, I’d sold 599 copies of my album, so you could be the six hundredth! :D

x

{ 28 comments }

(I just saw a debate show on TV called ‘The Big Questions’ and the question they asked was ‘is the pub more important than the church’ – WHAT? There were a load of ming-mongs all saying “they’re both important in different ways” and at no point did someone stand up and cry “WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE DOING?!”)

According to dictionary.com, ‘pedantic’ is:

overly concerned with minute details or formalisms.

When I was about 3 or 4 (having been able to read much earlier than the other kids in my class), I managed to say this word. Somehow. I don’t know. But instead of going with ‘picky’, I told someone not to be ‘pedantic’.

Which is proof, if anything, that I AM pedantic.

(Another smart-ass story from my childhood; some idiot thug kid walked up to me when I was 12 and said “do you think you’re smarter than me?”, to which I answered “relatively”. He said “what the fuck does relatively mean?” and I said “well, if you don’t know…”)

This brings me on to the issue of CD booklets.

My view is that if someone’s made the effort to buy the physical CD instead of just downloading it on iTunes, they deserve a really cool CD booklet. And I failed on that with Parrot Stories. I just threw the lyrics in, like all CD booklets do, without really thinking about WHAT a CD booklet should actually do. I mean, all the lyrics and the chords to my songs are on this site, so the booklet’s all-but-redundant.

For The World Is Mine I want the booklet to be something I put just as much thought into as the arrangement of the music, not something I put together at the end. I’m thinking of just writing it all, so it’s literally a literary accompaniment to the album – a pamphlet – with meanings of songs, and some of my thoughts, and stuff like that.

Same with the CD artwork and the CD face. I want you to get something out of having it beyond just owning it, and I also want those designs to sum up the duality I’m getting across on the album. When Charlie and I interviewed Carrie Grant for the Chartjackers project, she emphasised how important it was that the music, the voice, the style, the artwork etc all need to say the same thing. It needs to all work together.

I’ll be thinking about this a while, if this conversation I had with Alan during the finishing of Parrot Stories is anything to go by:

Alex Day
Can you put the swirls on in the background, just on that thank-you page for now, and see how that looks?

AlanDistro
sure

Alex Day
cheers

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories4.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
Okay, I’d say to take that horse disclaimer and space it so there’s an even gap between the text above it and the bottom of the sheet. Aside from that I think it’s fine. Or maybe not that far down if it looks weird, but a little further down than it is now at least.

AlanDistro
ok done.

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories5.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
okay cool, cheers. One other thing is I think the quote at the top should have the same thing done to it – moving up so there’s the same amount of space at top and bottom. Aside from that it looks beautiful

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories6.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
Could you move the Parrot Stories title up a bit? Or maybe the quote and the title. And also I think the multi-coloured swirls would be best on the thank-you page, and the single colour swirls on each of the lyric pages.

AlanDistro
good call

Alex Day
I think it’s just that title/subtitle that needs to be moved up a bit actually, not the quote

AlanDistro
ok

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories7.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
Could you move the ‘Alex Day Parrot Stories’ block up a tiny bit? Everything else is spot on, the thank you bit is fine now I think.

AlanDistro
on the front cover?

Alex Day
mhm

AlanDistro
kk

Alex Day
there’s just a little more space above it than below

AlanDistro
well, that is for bleed, that will be cut off, look at the grey cut lines to the right of it, and that will show you where it will be cut

Alex Day
Even with that cut at the top I think it needs a slight upward movement, even if it’s just a few pixels

AlanDistro
ok, let me fix the title and then I’ll send over the 8th and hoepfully final version =)

Alex Day
haha, sorry to be so picky

Alex Day
It should be the last yeah

Alex Day
WAIT

Alex Day
Before you send it

Alex Day
Do you think the name ‘Blanche’ should be unitalicized?

AlanDistro
it does look better unitalicized

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories8.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
I just measured, and the Alex Day/Parrot Stories block needs moving up three more pixels

AlanDistro sent file “booklet-parrot-stories9.pdf” to members of this chat

Alex Day
Hahahaha. The text looks exactly the same.

AlanDistro
it’s not, it’s three pixels higher =)

Alex Day
I’m being a twat. It’s fine. I approve. Go. No more of this. xD

I’ve reverted back to my original plan of having the artwork in orange (the artwork originally planned for the non-album Epigrams And Interludes, for those loyal long-time readers). So that’s where my head’s at now. More to follow.

x

{ 50 comments }

Incase that’s hard to read:

1. Together Tonight
2. Georgia
3. The World Is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything)
4. Living On The Underground
5. xxxxxx
6. Dead And Gone
7. Missing You
8. Stay With Me
9. You Can’t Trust Me
10. Not Just Yet

You’ll notice, first of all, that track 5 is missing. In working out the order for the songs this morning, I realised that “If I Was Peter Pan” wouldn’t really fit with the rest, and that means there’s a gap. My process was as follows:

-I knew track 1 and track 2 would be Together Tonight/Georgia, and tracks 9 and 10 would be You Can’t Trust Me/Not Just Yet. So they went in first.

-I knew that The World Is Mine and Living On The Underground would be either tracks 3 and 4 or 4 and 5, hence that first box (I decided 3 and 4), and that I wanted Missing You and Stay With Me to run together in either order at the 7/8 position, hence the second box (I decided Missing You would go first).

-That left Dead And Gone slotting nicely before Missing You at track 6, and one space open.

You’ll also notice in the corner that I grouped them by act. This is really just for production, I’m not sure if I’ll divide them up in any visible way on the back of the CD, but I do want it to sound quite orchestral and musical, so I divided them thus:

1. Together Tonight
2. Georgia
3. The World Is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything)
-
4. Living On The Underground
5. xxxxxx
6. Dead And Gone
7. Missing You
-
8. Stay With Me
9. You Can’t Trust Me
10. Not Just Yet

I’ll get to work on that final song. I’m very excited about this :D

x

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It’s the last day of the decade. I only get to say that once every ten years. Next time I’m in this position, I’ll be thirty. How exciting :D

I’m going out for the day to London, because I’ve been meaning to go to the London Transport Museum for months and Becky said that if I went to the British Museum with her, she’d go to the Transport Museum with me. So that’s what we’re doing :)

I finished a rough version of You Can’t Trust Me last night – I think it’s quite cool. It’ll be the song before the end. I learned a lot about repetition from a Beatles song called Polythene Pam – especially since it was pointed out to me that it sounds pretty similar to Georgia xD It needs a lot of melody construction but it’ll be done soon enough.

I don’t have a full track order worked out, but I know roughly where things will go: I know Together Tonight and Georgia will be the first two, and You Can’t Trust Me and Not Just Yet will be the last two.

I should probably tell you guys that I’m aiming to start recording The World Is Mine in February for release in June. Parrot Stories was recorded over four days, we did three songs a day, but for this I plan to spend a full day on every song, over the period of a month or two, so I can go away and listen and work out the best things to do for each track. In the meantime, I’m going into the studio on January 23rd/24th to record the 117% Complete EP, and that’ll be out in March.

Hope your New Year is fun :D

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

w00 Boxing Day YEEEAH

My mum lied – turned out she DID get that big duvet for me, and surprised me with it, throwing me off the trail with LIES. So I slept in it and it’s very cosy <3

We had a big roast, watched The Incredibles and Doctor Who on BBC1 (the episode was mostly setup, but WHAT AN ENDING) – my mum didn’t know it was a two-part episode, so she’d braced herself for Tennant’s regeneration, and it was an even bigger cliffhanger for her when that didn’t happen xD

I also got (among other things) this book of puzzles and riddles from Becky, so we spent the evening reading them to each other in silly voices and then trying to solve them.

I played all the new songs I’ve written for The World Is Mine to Becky for her thoughts, which so far is eight finished songs and two half-finished ones. And I read lots of Don’t Look Back comments, including one saying I’m ‘trying too hard to sound like Lily Allen’. It’s not my fault we’re both from London xD Someone brought up that I didn’t sound like that in the past, implying that I’d intentionally changed my singing style in an attempt to sound more commercial or whatever, and that’s not true at all – I just grew out of singing in an American accent and started using my own voice. If anything, it was a move designed for me to be more true to myself.

I’ll stop going on about it in a bit, but I just wanna gush again about how proud I am of the Don’t Look Back video xD I’ve watched it so many times. And I really like that some people on YouTube don’t like it. Maybe I’ve been hanging out with Tom too much, but people who say that they wish the video had matched the music better, or that I should have used a tripod, or that I accidentally left some of the sound in … all these moves were made completely intentionally, and I did everything to get across the feel that the song has to me and what it means in my eyes. It makes me feel glad that people don’t just like whatever I do because it’s me, and that the people who understand the feelings of loneliness and self-destruction in Don’t Look Back will see that the playful video is a perfect counterpart.

This is starting to sound a bit Nietzschian so I’m gonna leave it there.

x

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I’ve just finished the Don’t Look Back video :D I’m really proud of it.

Christmas morning in London is what you’d expect – desolate and freezing. We were really limited on time, so I missed a lot of shots that I wanted to get at St Pauls, Oxford Circus and Covent Garden, meaning that the version of the song in the video is slightly shorter than the one on the album because I literally had to use every shot I filmed to fill up the time I had.

The general spirit of the video is treating London like a playground and just having fun, which I think works really well to contrast with the message of the song (that being self-indulgent can be harmful to others). I love it <3 And I’m sure you guys will love it – let me know in the comments what you think. I can’t wait to do more videos in the new year; I think a lot of people on YouTube still consider me ‘a guy that sometimes sings’ instead of ‘a serious musician’, like my music is more of a hobby to me than a career, and making regular music videos to showcase my work is a perfect remedy to that attitude.

I got a lot of comments from people who got Parrot Stories as a Christmas present, so that’s awesome. Thanks for telling me you got the CD and I hope you enjoy the music ^^

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The idea of storyboarding used to be something I hated. I don’t like drawing, I don’t like drawing out pictures of scenes in my head – which is always what I was taught storyboarding was. But tonight I just spent two and a half hours storyboarding Don’t Look Back, which meant a lot of talking out loud, listening to the song through in sequence, making grand gestures in my living room while I paced it, picturing angles and cuts and noting them all down as lines of text in my phone with directions and abbreviations, picturing them in my head, until I had the entire video in sequence from start to finish. The experience was a lot more me. (I’m a very logical person.)

Let me tell you, in my head it looks great xD If London really is empty tomorrow morning, it’ll look beautiful. And it’s my chance to really direct something impressive beyond straight cuts in a vlog. (Holding On doesn’t count really, as Charlie edited that.)

I’m excited. But now it’s officially Christmas Day, and I need to go to sleep.

Thanks for all your comments so far on the last blog entry, btw <3 You guys rule. I’ll digest them properly in a couple days.

(EDIT: I hit eighty thousand subscribers on YouTube just before midnight, so thanks for that too :D It’s like a Christmas present from you to me … does this mean I have to get you something in return? :/)

x

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

I’ve just finished wrapping all my Christmas presents ON MY OWN. Well, pretty much on my own – my friend Emma was holding down the sellotape for me. (As I understand it, Americans don’t call it sellotape, they call it ’scotch tape’. So that’s what that is.) But I’ve never really done that before, so … milestone, innit.

Emma’s staying here tonight because tomorrow morning she’s doing me the kind favour of driving me into London and back. I plan to film a music video for Don’t Look Back, consisting of walking around London while it’s empty, getting cool shots of all the empty landmarks, and then be back in time for lunch with my family <3

I’m planning to do a music video every month for my channel, because I’ve been complacent with that and really should have followed up Holding On with something cool – do you guys have any requests? At the moment I definitely wanna do Hearts, and maybe A Thousand Hours and/or No Sacrifice. But I’ve heard from a lot of people that No More is one of my best songs, so should I do that instead? This isn’t a “whatever you say, I’ll do” type deal, my mind’s pretty much made up, but I will take your opinions into consideration :)

Speaking of music, as I always do in this blog because I’m a boring one-dimensional person, I’ve booked a recording session on the weekend of January 23rd to record the 117% Complete EP, the three-track video game extravaganza. The plan is to film music videos for all three songs and release them on my channel over 117 hours, which is about five days :D

My mum just gave me one of my Christmas presents early, as I’ve just upgraded from a single bed to a double. I say upgraded; it’s not like phone companies, the bed people didn’t put me on an 18-month double bed plan, with 300 free hours of sleep a month. That would be nonsensical. But given that I now have a double bed, I need a new duvet that fits the double bed.

My mum didn’t give me the duvet for the double bed. What she gave me was a duvet cover for a double bed. I said, “do you have a double bed duvet that I can use?”

And in a moment of genius, she genuinely responded with: “no, I’m going to wait till after Christmas so I can get one in the sales”.

Heartfelt Christmas gifts for all xD

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Right, I suppose I should write with some reasonable consideration now.

On November 16th 2009, “I’ve Got Nothing” entered the charts at number 36. The song was developed, written and recorded completely through internet submissions, and was the culmination of a project that began ten weeks earlier when myself and three other YouTubers started a new YouTube channel called “Chartjackers”. The aim was to document the progress of an internet-constructed single to be released for charity. The melody, the lyrics, all of it was contributed by the online community, and we purposefully made something very cheesy, something that harks back to the days before pop took itself seriously. (The song is still available on iTunes and the money from every sale goes to Children In Need. You can see the music video here and watch the finished half-hour documentary here – the BBC filmed us on our journey).

We were aiming for number 1, but we had a number of roadblocks in our path. In my opinion, the biggest problem we had was that we relied too much on traditional media. Our internet community were amazing, getting the word ‘Chartjackers’ in the trending topics on Twitter no less than four times, emailing radio stations and DJs, but that was the thing – our show was on television. We asked traditional radio to play the song. We asked newspapers and magazines for coverage. When they turned us down we were disheartened. But we never saw that we had plenty of power all our own. Instead of using the online community to get the attention of the people that (we thought) had the real means to support us, we should have realised that we could have mobilised the internet ourselves and took over the charts without needing traditional media at all.

The Rage campaign, by contrast, is a perfect example of how it should have been done. No old media included. Nobody played Killing In The Name on the radio or on TV this week – they didn’t have to. It was never about that. If they’d emailed radio DJs and said “play Killing In The Name, get it to number 1″ – they wouldn’t have. The media are reactive. So they just did it themselves. And (perhaps ironically) enough people cared about the Rage campaign that traditional media DID start paying attention. Now, I’d argue that this is also because the “beat the X Factor” idea is much more appealing than the “let’s see what the internet can do” idea, because the former incorporates the latter – but I think there’s a lot to be learned from this.

I loved the Chartjackers project and wouldn’t change anything that happened. We didn’t get to number 1, but we DID get to number 36, we raised over ten thousand pounds for Children In Need, and now just over a month later, the internet have controlled the charts again in a much more significant way and raised even more money for charity (over sixty thousand pounds has been donated to Shelter by fans of Killing In The Name).

What I’m trying to say is that I feel like these two events are the start of something. We’re at a turning point for the music industry, where the people get more say and, in the words of Rage, won’t do what they tell us.

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I’m listening to the Radio 1 Chart Show right now for the first time since Chartjackers to find out if Rage Against The Machine got more sales than the winner of The X Factor this week. I’m rooting for Rage.

Bad Romance by Lady GaGa is the official Number 3, which is lovely :) That song is the anthem of our holiday, rather unexpectedly.

It’s not gonna be a problem if Rage aren’t Number 1 – it’ll just mean more people bought Joe’s song. That makes it completely fair. He deserves it if more people like him than like Rage, even if the internet makes it feel like people don’t. The sales speak for themselves.

…

YES!!!!!!! FUCK!!!!!! <3333333

WHAT THE HELL GUYS?!?!?!?! THE INTERNET WINS!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH ^____^

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I did some work on music today – fixed/improved some melodies, added two extra lines to Together Tonight, and just finished a new song called Missing You. It’s a bit strange – it’s in three different parts, a bit like Jesus Of Suburbia, except fluctuating between fast bits and slow bits. That’s what I’ve tried to do with the new songs, to get across that duality – half The World Is Mine and half I Don’t Know Anything – that the songs are like an internal battle between what I want to say and what I need to say.

Anyway, I just sent it to Tom, so if he hates it you’ll never hear about it again, cos he produces my music. But I like it :)

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“Get me back; get me back to New York
She’s got something I’m looking for

And from that moment on
My life would never be the same”
-”She’s Got Something“, Greg Holden

I just finished writing a new song called Not Just Yet. It’s about waiting for something you can’t have. I started it last night and finished it just now and it’s nice.

I also started another one on the plane, a jumpy lively one called You Can’t Trust Me, which I haven’t put any guitar to yet, but it’s in the key of A, if that interests you.

So that’s my life so far – I’ve updated the videos page with a song from the NY show, if you’re interested in that :) Just clicky on here.

(Also I’m playing at VidCon shhh)

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This day has definitely been the most fun. The gig was incredible, but today was great overall.

To give you some perspective, it started with Tom recounting a story about how, while trying to get to sleep last night, he ended up in this half-awake half-asleep hallucination where he spent thirty minutes unravelling a wristband he was wearing, and when he finally completed the task he declared triumphantly, “I’ve done it! I’ve discovered the meaning of life!” – and then he just fell back to sleep again.

We didn’t plan it to be one, but today ended up as a YouTube gathering, just cos we kept inviting more and more people. In the end there were ten of us (including – most notably – meekakitty, who was lovely and who I had never met before). While waiting for some of our party to arrive at Grand Central Station (which I got excited about cos I recognised it from the pilot of Gossip Girl: what a loser), a homeless guy walked up to us asking for two bucks. He said he was sick and wanted a pint. Tom said, “what, a pint of medicine?” The guy said his name was Timmy and he wanted to share the pint with his brother Jimmy. I gave him a buck. He took my hand to shake it and then held it there, looking at me with his soulless eyes, and saying:

“I’m an alcoholic.”

And then he just held my gaze.

What the fuck was I supposed to do? I’d just given him money for alcohol!

Fortunately the dilemma was interrupted by further surrealism, cos the guy started saying he was friends with Eminem and did we want to hear him rap?!

So he just started rapping, right there, in front of us. There was nothing we could do.

That evening we arranged to have dinner with Maureen Johnson at a Chinese restaurant, and on the way we passed a tattoo place. Ed suggested we all get tattoos. Tom sparked the following ad-lib:

“Yeah, you should do it. Get an eagle. Across your entire back. No – TWO eagles. Two eagles KISSING. OH, and then underneath the two eagles kissing, it could say ‘equal opportunities’. NO – ‘EAGLE OPPORTUNITIES’!”

(I realise this blog is mostly ‘I have a friend called Tom what is funny’.)

The day ended with Michael Aranda losing one of the lenses of his sunglasses into the koi pond at the Chinese restaurant. The final scene had Aranda standing to the side of the pond, looking fretful, while a worried restaurant worker tried to fish the lens out of the pond with a pair of chopsticks.

You can’t make this stuff up.

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I went to a They Might Be Giants gig yesterday :D It was my first TMBG experience and I absolutely loved them. They don’t have the typically boisterous/cocky stage persona I’m used to, but they still have a huge presence on stage, so I found that very interesting to watch, and got a couple ideas for songs just from hearing theirs. They’re very good.

They were promoting their new album “Here Comes Science”, and as such were performing in the New York Hall Of Science in Queens, so after the gig finished (I stole their setlist to give to Tom), we got to explore and learn science things. =D

That evening was spent chilling out playing pool – the highlight of which was when Ed took a mighty stance, commanded “double-team!” and sunk two balls at once – until Ed said he wanted to play us his new album, so that’s what we did. We found an empty ball room type place on the first floor, and Melody, Tom and myself sat in a row and listened to Ed play the whole of his upcoming album, in order, on my guitar. It was fantastic. I think I’ll always associate that album with that night. If I woke up now from a lifelong dream, I’d make sure to write it down; cos I’d like to think that I’ve learned some things … but it’s too late now.

I’ll put up videos from the gig as soon as I get home – the internet here is very slow.

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Faithful readers of my blog; the evening of Saturday December 12th was the best night of my life. <3

I’m going to try and be brief, because I’m still in New York and I like it here and don’t want to be on my computer, but here are some sexy briefs to give you an idea of my night:

We left the hostel for the gig, in a taxi, and as it pulled away the driver said “where to?” Charlie, Tom, Ed and myself all looked at each other, and it became clear that none of us knew what the address was. So that delayed us somewhat.

When we finally arrived, we were greeted by Liane from the fiveawesomegirls, and I saw Sam Friedman, and then there were PEOPLE. SO MANY PEOPLE. We walked in. People squealed. As we walked through the crowd, one of them thrust a copy of New Moon into my hands and said “you can keep that!” Throughout the night I also got given a K9 Christmas card, several handmade bracelets, a letter, and a banana with a girl’s phone number on it. Definitely the most inventive way of being given a phone number I’ve ever experienced. It’s also the first time I’ve ever been given a gift with a shelf life.

The people. Oh, the beautiful beautiful people. I didn’t get to speak to them personally but Greg Holden and Maureen Johnson were both there, I saw them in the crowd, but thought it best not to say “LOOK! MAUREEN JOHNSON! EVERYONE LOOK!” And the crowd, oh my goodness. It’s the best show I’ve ever played by about a million times. Everyone was so excited, and so pretty, and everyone had fun things to say. I specifically remember Olivia, and Camille, both of which should definitely message me on YouTube so that I can personally tell them how amazing they are. (And no fakers. I remember what they were both wearing. There will be tests. =p) And MELISSA, who it turns out is my biggest fan. So if I ever meet anyone who claims to be my biggest fan, I can say “NO YOU’RE NOT! I’VE MET HER! HER NAME IS MELISSA!” This girl had my song lyrics written all over her ‘pants’ (by which I mean trousers).

The gig was so fun. We were all so high energy. Tom started his set with Porphyrophobia and Indigo, and it was just fantastic. Ed got a great response for all his songs. I got to finish my set by saying “thank you New York”, thus living a dream right there. People keep saying to me “these big crowds of YouTube girls all there for you, I suppose you get used to it” – I DON’T GET USED TO IT. The gleeful expression mounted on my face for the entirety of last night is proof of this.

And then, before his last song … Tom drags Charlie on stage. Charlie didn’t know this would happen. Nobody did. Charlie, put on the spot, plays Acne Song, culminating in a lengthy improvised version of his crazy mouth scat section. It left me crying with laughter. The crowd went CRAZY. It was incredible. Everyone was incredible. Ahhhhhhh <33

I SOLD OUT OF EVERYTHING. Chameleon Circuit, Parrot Stories, ALL OF IT.

And then, after being mobbed by people (including the aforementioned Camille and Olivia), we staggered home to the hostel bed. Charlie and I were shattered. Everyone else except us and Melody went out for pizza. Charlie went straight to sleep, Melody and I chatted for ages and then fell asleep.

When I woke up, I saw Tom in the bed opposite me, and in his half-asleep stupor, he reached out and grabbed this cuddly penguin he has, and curled up with it. :D

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This flight’s gone by pretty fast, considering it’s eight hours. My eyes have felt achey – you know when you’re tired but you can’t sleep – so I haven’t had enough will to read or do anything too exciting. I watched episode 4 of FlashForward, about to watch episode 5. Dominic Monaghan’s just appeared. That’s exciting. Listened to some old episodes of the Ricky Gervais podcast. Charlie’s been watching stuff on the in-flight system. Tom fell asleep watching Up. Claire’s been reading The Time Traveller’s Wife, if you’re interested in what she’s up to. I had beef for lunch, and a choc-ice, and this is the most boring entry I’ve ever written.

The reason for the update is that I also started thinking about The World Is Mine, and coming up with ideas for the direction I want the music and the songs to go in. I want it to have a kind of duality, like the title – like the music is trying to mask my true feelings but they keep slipping out, and it’s this constant battle. Together Tonight (which at the moment is the first track) is half slow and half speedy so that works nicely. I also renamed I Love You to Stay With Me, which is a little less cheesy (I thought about calling it ‘Funhead’, but I just couldn’t do it). I also played around a little with the track order and the ideas behind the songs, and what I’m trying to convey with each, and how the music can help tell the story, something Tom’s been helping me out a lot with lately.

I don’t think I’ll push the album past ten songs. That’ll make sure that between now and next spring (when I hope to start recording) I’ll be able to keep writing and filtering and picking the very best things I come up with for final inclusion. I did that with Parrot Stories – I had 11 tracks, and then every time I wrote something new, I’d put a new track on and get rid of an old one, because I didn’t want it to be too bloated. Though of course, if I happen to write 11 or 12 songs I think are great and really want to share, then I’ll happily do that :)

I can fit one more episode of FlashForward in before the plane descends.

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My old online diary caused much controversy through its many years online. I started it in 2003, when I was 14, and kept it until just a few months ago. I referred to it as a diary, not a blog, because it was very candid and honest. I grew up a lot in that time, and I used my diary to help understand the new thoughts and feelings I had. I’ve always been happy to expose myself like that; when I was 15 I bleached my hair because I had issues with self-confidence, figuring that if I drew all the attention to me, such that I couldn’t get away from it, I’d HAVE to learn to deal with it. I tend to do things in extremes. And it worked, incidentally. My point is I’ve always believed that the biggest problem in the world is miscommunication, and that if someone feels something, they should be proud of those feelings, and not try and hide them away.

Anyway, this is all a digression: the point is that this blog is designed with a more professional veneer. It’s a blog, not a diary. I’m still trying to be me, and be candid, and not just update whenever I have a gig to play, but I won’t go on at length about the new girl I’m dating, or my own personal friendship dramas. (I think that the people who read this blog will think ‘he’s so open!’ but the people who used to read my diary will think ‘he’s so guarded!’)

But out of everything I wrote in that diary over those six years, the thing I loved the most was when I wrote about travelling. I love travel anecdotes. I’ve never had any travel experience that didn’t contain at least one or two completely unique and surreal moments.

Charlie, Tom and myself are on a plane to New York right now :D Virgin Atlantic flight VS045. I’m in their flying club, so I got a lot of miles for this trip. Tom and I tried to blag our way into first class earlier by chatting to the woman at bag drop – her name was Lucy – and saying all this stuff about how we were launching a CD, and playing a gig, and would you like a copy of my album Parrot Stories

Here we are in economy, one CD down. xD And I think I’ll be giving another copy to the girl sitting next to Tom; a financial advisor named Claire, who seems just lovely.

Boarding this flight was the most hectic experience I’ve ever had at an airport. We went to get food. And then the food took ages, such that we only had five minutes to eat it, because the flight had already started boarding by the time it was served. I’ve never eaten a full English so quickly. And I remembered I had to buy shampoo so I raced off to do that, and we raced off to Gate 20 only to discover that Tom had left his ukulele in the security area, so he headed back and found it:

“That’s my ukulele!” he said in a panic, “can I have it please?”

The dreary-eyed woman at the security desk threw a casual glance over her shoulder at the instrument in its black carry-case, and replied at a pace that held no regard for our urgency, “how do I know this is your ukulele, sir?”

Tom and I looked at each other. “We do have a plane to catch,” I said, with that hopeful ‘give a guy a break’ face.

The woman decided to ask two questions to prove the authenticity of Tom’s ownership.

“What colour is it?” She said. “How many strings does it have?”

Tom came alive.

“Four! And … ukulele-coloured!” He didn’t know how else to describe that orangey-brown stringed instrument tinge.

And although correctly answering those questions required only that you know what a ukulele IS, Tom got his instrument back. She didn’t even check the bag. He could have said “green! It’s green, with sparkles, and the machine-heads are made of gold, and it tunes itself, and all the vowels are the wrong way round so we call it an ekulalo!”

We pegged it back to Gate 20 and made it on the flight in time, Tom played me an album by The Flaming Lips because he’s trying to broaden my musical horizons to anything beyond Green Day, and now I sit here writing this. Charlie is on my right watching District 9; Tom is on my left watching Family Guy; and I’m gonna open up the next episode of Flashforward and watch myself a treat.

(EDIT: Tom is now watching Up. <3)

The pilot just said, “welcome aboard this flight; on board today we have 324 passengers and two cats!”

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Tonight was fantastic :D

Tom, Charlie, Becky and I headed to Disney’s corporate office in London, although I use the term ‘corporate office’ very loosely. There was a giant silver Mickey statue in the main lobby and the banisters had Mickey head emblems on them.

The waiting area to see the film was also lovely, filled with memorabilia, a bust of Walt Disney, sketch artwork, production stills, a giant WALL·E … I asked the woman who’d invited us, Grace, if she could show us around any other areas of the building, and officially I am not allowed to tell you that we got to see the Disney/Pixar meeting room. It didn’t happen. (The lifts played the High School Musical soundtrack :D)

The women’s loo had an EVE print on it, and the men’s (I’m told) used to have a matching WALL·E print <3 WALL·E is my favourite film of all time, so that was nice.

We also snuck through a door into ‘Café Disney’, the canteen area, which was filled with more Disney charm and a massive mural containing every Disney-owned property in one huge wall-size picture. I took the following small picture containing a key to the image, showing what everything is – if anyone can find the full-size one online, link me and I’ll amend this post:

I really hope someone finds it, cos I wanna showcase the full thing.

The film itself was brilliant. It took me a little while to get into, but it had everything that the old Disney classics had – music, theatrics, warmth, skinny villains, anthropomorphic comedy relief, princes and princesses, a musical acid sequence, a crazy wise person who hits the protagonist with a stick, THE LOT. The third act in particular was masterful; everything tied itself together beautifully.

I got to meet Mia Rose, by which I mean I watched Mia Rose walk up to Charlie and not look at/acknowledge the rest of us in any way while she spoke to him, until right at the end when she shook our hands briefly out of politeness and vanished into the music industry. (Charlie said jokingly, “I just overtook you in subscribers!” and she replied a little condescendingly, “oh, I don’t pay attention to any of that stuff. But I’m so happy for you!”)

I also saw Bryony, who actually cared enough to say hello and engage me in conversation, so that’s nice. If you’re thinking of subscribing to Mia, don’t worry about it; go sub to Bryony instead :)

That’s about all. My typing is keeping Becky awake, so I shall sign off. Tomorrow’s gonna be busy on account of me PACKING FOR NEW YORK OH YES.

(If you wanna see The Princess And The Frog – and I definitely recommend that you do – it’s out on general release from December 11th in the US, February 5th in the UK, and other times in other countries that I don’t care enough to mention here.)

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I spent yesterday evening at the Hat Trick christmas party, which was nice. Last year I went to the 19 Management christmas party; I’m hoping that swanky corporate parties can be a Yuletide tradition of mine. Charlie and I had a lovely chat on the train home, just talking about childhood experiences and stuff, and then we played New Super Mario Bros Wii (which he has left here for me to play some more <3). It’s a great game for one person, but the gameplay is problematic with two.

I’ve taken Out On The Town and my re-written version of Tonight off the list of songs for potential inclusion on The World Is Mine – I was never into either of them that much – so that leaves me with six tracks; Dead And Gone, Together Tonight, The World Is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything), Georgia, Living On The Underground and I Love You.

In two days time, I’ll be in New York. Very exciting :D This evening, I’m attending a blog screening of Disney’s new 2d-animated film The Princess And The Frog – Charlie does some stuff with Disney and he had a spare ticket – so that’s good :)

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Yo blog people, if you click the ‘Videos’ tab here on my site, you can see two live videos from the gig on Saturday, courtesy of LondoniPhone :)

And for those of you in the RSS feed, just click here!

Also, NEW COMMENT SYSTEM! Now we have a little reply button, so we can have threaded conversations just like YouTube – so I can reply to people in there instead of making everybody read our little conversations =)

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Yesterday marked my first experience playing my songs in front of a live audience. Much fun <3

The event was to celebrate the release of Tom’s new album Painfully Mainstream. I supported him by playing Candy Floss, Hearts, Don’t Look Back, Holding On and No Sacrifice. It went really well ^_^ We had microphone issues when I started, so I just unplugged the uke and sung Candy Floss completely acoustically. There were a few girls (and my friend Lewis) up front who wanted to hear No More, which was sweet, so I’ll definitely put that in the next set I do in the UK. But after the New York gig this Saturday I won’t be gigging for a while – Tom, Ed and I are gonna focus on rehearsing as a full band with a bassist and drummer, and then rock the UK in the spring :)

There was a point during Don’t Look Back where I closed my eyes and my voice started breaking and being all emotional, and when I looked at the crowd again, they looked really concerned xD I do tend to break down a bit whenever I sing that song.

Oh, and I made £110, cos I sold lots of CDs :) So that pays for my hostel in New York.

Thank you to everyone who was there, especially those who were singing along <3

(Ed and Tom have written their own blogs about the event here and here.)

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Saw a few blog comments I wanted to reply to :)

Kristen: “Hey Alex, would you mind telling us what some of your favorite bands are? I know you love Green Day but that’s all I’ve heard you mention. I’m aways looking for new music and I have a feeling you’ve got great taste in bands.“

My top 3 favourite bands are Green Day, McFly and The Beatles. I used to include Linkin Park, Evanescence, Maroon 5 and My Chemical Romance in there, but sadly I don’t listen to them so much anymore, though I still rotate The Black Parade quite a lot on my iPod. To be honest though, most of the artists I listen to regularly are YouTube/unsigned acts: Greg Holden, Eddplant, Tom Milsom, Hank Green, Dr Noise, ALL CAPS, Raven Zoë, Blue Skies and Julia Nunes, and many others I haven’t mentioned for sake of space.

jennasie: “who is it that sings on your song hearts? im searching all over and cannot figure it out at all.“

Did you look on DFTBA.com? :p Hearts and Candy Floss both have Lex Croucher filling in on vocals.

Lauren: “I just don’t understand at all how anyone can see these things that you mentioned you were amazed at and not think, “wow, there MUST be someone or something planning all this” I mean, you mentioned things like the bicycle, and the computer. These things did not just come into existence on their own. They started with an idea from someone, and then they CREATED it. All these variables that work out just perfect are not some complete amazing accident. How could they possibly be?“

Well I tried to explain that, to me, it’s MORE amazing that they WEREN’T created. No, the bicycle didn’t come into existence on its own. But imagine IF IT HAD!

If you take the argument that the more complex something is, the less likely it is to have appeared from nowhere … what’s more complex than an all-powerful omnipresent supreme deity? Your argument actually makes it EVEN LESS LIKELY that God exists.

Also, I find religious people give too much credit to the world. You said “all these variables that work out just perfect are not some complete amazing accident” – we’re not perfect! Nowhere near! Example: people use the banana as proof of the existence of God, because it’s so ‘perfectly’ designed for humans to use: it fits nicely in the ridges of our hand; you open it like a ring pull; the food is ‘perfectly’ contained inside. Now, not having a go at the banana, but what about bruising? And have you TRIED peeling a banana lately? Sometimes they can be a right bitch to get into. And what about all the foods that AREN’T as easy to get through as the banana?

We WERE an ‘amazing accident’. If you bear in mind that things have been developing over millions and millions of years, on all the planets that could exist in the known universe … eventually, it’s not hard to imagine that one of them got it a bit right. On our planet alone, there are over a MILLION different species of animal, and we’re the only ones (arguably) that have real complex thought. Out of a MILLION species, we’re the only ones with complex thought; it MUST have been an accident, or there would be others like us.

The conditions just happened to be perfect. THAT’S why it’s amazing: because there was NO man behind the curtain pulling the strings. It happened all on its own.

I used to think alien life existed on other planets because the universe is huge, so huge that there must be something else out there somewhere; but that’s not true. The chances of US being here are so tiny, I doubt there could be anything else as well.

I don’t wanna turn this into the Alex Atheist Question Blog, so I’m not gonna keep responding to religious arguments or whatever; but that one comment seemed to have missed the point of my original entry, so I wanted to touch on it again.

(I finished that song “Together Tonight” by the way. I’m pleased with it, but now I have a song for my new album called Together Tonight and another called Tonight, so I need to fix that xD)

FANKS 4 REEDIN LOL

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I have a song in my head right now – I came up with the melody for it just before I got on the train to London (wrap party for Chartjackers tonight), and wrote most of the lyrics on the train, and I’ve recorded it on to my phone, but it’s really frustrating not having access to a guitar until I get home tonight. (Tom said that the sensation of developing a new song is not unlike vomiting, where you have to just get the idea out there and shape it so that you can move on with your life. He’s approached strangers at train stations before so that he can borrow their pen and paper to write down musical notations.)

Anyway, I’ve been working on lyrics that can be sung at a show and would create a great moment – the lyrics from this song include “so here we are, together tonight, having the time of our lives”. I’m not ashamed to say I stole the melody from the chorus of a song by Miley Cyrus called “Goodbye”. God, Breakout’s a good album.

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I listened to an audiobook by Julia Sweeney today and it got me thinking about the world – specifically the negative, hopeless view that atheists are perceived to have of the world. (I am an atheist. I know, scary stuff. As Sweeney said: “it’s one thing to say you don’t believe in God. It’s quite another to say you’re an ATHEIST.”)

Tim Minchin put it well when he said he does believe in things – “I believe in rocks, and gravity.” The natural world is amazing, and taking away a creator doesn’t diminish the amazement of our existence; for me, it enhances it. “You mean we developed to this level ON OUR OWN?!?”

Richard Dawkins said that all of the circumstances that led to our being alive, all put together, are so unlikely to happen – my mum could have just not slept with my dad, or a different sperm could have got through, or they’d have never met because my mum chose not to work at the bakery, or a million other things. Someone else could have been here instead of me, and it’s likely that these unborn ‘ghosts’ that never will be would include better musicians than Mozart, better writers than Shakespeare; and yet, I’m the one who gets his little moment to do things in his brief time on this planet.

And what’s great is, humans are fantastic tool-builders. Steve Jobs recounted a story of a survey he read, where various species were all being compared on their speed, and humans scored unremarkably about third or fourth from the bottom; but then they tested the other animals against a human on a bicycle, and we won outright. We’re great at using tools and inventing things. Everything that’s around us, everything man-made that we have, started off as nothing more than an idea in someone’s head, just like the ideas we all have every day. (Incidentally, Steve told this story because he described the computer as a ‘bicycle for our minds’.)

So we’ve evolved to a point where we can put strings on wood and make sounds, and change the shapes of our fingers to put like sounds together, and then here I am all this time later, listening to Green Day do just that – IN MY EARS! That’s AMAZING! So even though the scope of my existence doesn’t accommodate a supreme being, I still have plenty of reasons to look at the things around me with wonder.

I was reading Katy Perry’s wikipedia page earlier, and noticed she has really cool fashion. I’ve been focusing lately on making my image better, and concluded that bright ‘n’ tight was the way to go forward. But it’s not particularly innovative. Even the people like Perry and Lady Gaga, who are said to have great fashion sense, are just taking styles that were big decades ago and using them now. Nobody’s putting trousers on their heads and exposing half an arse cheek, which would be really different – and if they did, they’d just look silly anyway. I guess my stance on this is that as long as you’re comfortable and pick stuff you personally like without trying to fit in with what everyone else likes, it doesn’t matter. (Billie Joe Armstrong was once asked by a kid ‘what’s punk?’ So Billie Joe kicked over a trash can and said ‘that’s punk’. The kid kicked over a second trash can and said ‘that’s punk?’ and Billie Joe said ‘no, that’s trendy.’)

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Blimey.

I’m retreating into the meet world for a while, gonna watch more Flashforward. (First episode was AMAZING – it’s like 24 mixed with Lost. Crazy sci-fi situation; real-world srs bznz building. They had an Oceanic banner! And Alex Kingston! And Seth McFarlane?! Dominic Monaghan hasn’t even ENTERED yet. <3)

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So by now you’ll have heard the story:

Yesterday I got about eight thousand hits here, and then it collapsed under all the awesome xD

The website has now been reinforced to withstand all possible awesome. <3

Thank you to everyone reading this – even though there’s nothing bad about this site, there will still be people who won’t care enough to click on the link here, despite it being free music. You can’t please everyone, and shouldn’t try to, that’s just how the world is. So I’m really grateful to everyone that made the effort to come here :) I’m excited that thousands of you are hearing my album right now, and some of you might like it enough to get it on iTunes, or buy physical copies maybe for yourselves or for friends. You’re all lovely, thanks for making this so fun!

Bracket slash cheese

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Dear Alex Day,
Hi My name is Georgia Handscomb and i am 13 and i go to school at (SCHOOL NAME CENSORED FOR MY BLOG).
I just wanted to let you know that I AM that Georgia. I am flattered that ou made a song about me although I have to hear it every day of my life via classmates’s.

Anyway thanks again, it was erm… fun. :) thanks
Georgia
P.S I didn’t leave x

:D <3

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My new video is sitting, uploaded, waiting for me to make it public and alert my seventy thousand subscribers that this website exists. Very exciting. :D Thousands of people are about to hear my album for the first time. <3 I’m waiting till midnight to send it live, because it has a plug for Tom’s album in it, and his album doesn’t appear on iTunes till midnight. (It’s registered for the charts by the way, so if you wanna buy it, buy it this week! Wouldn’t it be ace to see Indigo in the charts?)

I also filmed chapters 3 and 4 of Twilight the other day, so they’ll go up in a few days or so.

Made a couple changes here – if you go on one of the chord/lyric pages, there’s now a little player where you can listen along to the track while you play/sing. Mickeleh gets full credit for that idea. (I’d better see this blog in Q4, Mike ~_^)

That’s about all I have to say. Thanks to all the people helping with naming my next album. I’m definitely calling the next release ‘The World Is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything)‘ – I’m consulting with a good friend of mine about album artwork, cos I have a different idea for this title, which is why I can’t use the orange. I’ll save that for when Epigrams eventually does make its way into the world.

Couple of questions in comments that I thought I’d answer – I’m 20 years old, and if you click up in the press section at the top you will have this fact confirmed (along with various other achievements, quotes, and a list of all the CDs that I sing on or helped write).

And yes, you can use my music for your podcast :p All my music’s available to do whatever you want with, as is Chameleon Circuit. In fact there’s a page on DFTBA’s website that has details of all the albums available for you to use music from, in the backgrounds of your videos or whatever.

In a couple weeks, we’ll all be reminiscing about the early days when only twenty people commented :p Thanks for being one of the early ones, you guys. I love that you’re here.

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Oh no.

I was afraid this would happen.

I’ve found an album title that’s better than Epigrams And Interludes.

This throws off everything! I was gonna name all my albums after quotes from books! Parrot Stories, then Epigrams And Interludes, and then I was gonna hunt through An Abundance Of Katherines (my favourite of the John Green bibliography) to find a quote for the third. But now this! Blimey!

Let’s be clear, I think Epigrams And Interludes is a lovely phrase. I’ll use it for my third album if I don’t use it for this one. (I came up with using it as an album name in 2007, so it’s already been kept there for ages, I won’t forget.)

But that new song I wrote, The World Is Mine, has this lovely repetition in it where every third line I sing the words “I don’t know anything”. I actually thought of naming the song that, at first.

So, I think a great name for my album would be:

The World Is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything)

It’s so good! Imagine people asking me what my album’s called, and I say “the world is mine! Brackets: I don’t know anything.” – easy laughs, and it’s fun, and it’s named after a song! And bands name albums after songs a lot, but they never name albums after songs with brackets in them xD

Also, that song sounds quite different from my other stuff. With the exception of Living On The Underground, everything I’m writing at the moment sounds quite Parrot Stories-y. Tonight sounds like Hearts; Georgia sounds like No Sacrifice; but The World Is Mine is different. Longer, and more complex, and more interesting. If I write an album of songs like that, I’ll be proud to have it on the front of the CD.

My only problem right now is that it’s a bit wordy. Try fitting “The World Is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything)” on the side of a jewel case. It’s even longer than Tom’s first album name, “Awkward Ballads For The Easily Pleased”.

Also I like that orange cover in my head. The orange cover only works with Epigrams.

Thoughts?

x

EDIT: Comments so far suggest that I shouldn’t/won’t name the album until it’s finished, but that’s not how I work at all. Parrot Stories came out this October; I named it in December last year, and sat on that title for ten months. I need to have project names, cos I’m not just putting a load of songs together, I’m creating an album; it needs to have a name that I need to know.

EDIT: The orange cover won’t work because I have a better idea for the new title xD

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Thanks for the comments on the ‘who the songs are about’ thing. It does change the way you hear them, but I think that’s cool – that there’s this deeper level to the songs that you didn’t know/think about previously. When I found out that Wake Me Up When September Ends was about Billie Joe’s father, I heard it in a new light, the same as when I re-read Paper Towns looking for all the times the characters brush hair out of their face.

Anyway, I have this really old song called Tonight, which I decided to re-write after seeing how beautiful the chords to ‘Something’ by the Beatles are (C, Cmaj7, C7 and F). Tonight was in the same key as Something, so it inspired me. (Though it’s not anymore – I moved it to A to strengthen the melody.) Anyway, while filming a video of me playing the song to send to Tom and Ed, I thought up a band name to call them in the video – ‘My Strings Are Broken And My Heart Is Out Of Tune’ – and then thought “that’s way too good for a band name! I’m using that in a song!”

So from that I wrote ANOTHER song, called The World Is Mine, giving me a total of seven songs for album consideration right now. Very exciting.

You have no idea how much I wanna just upload the video I filmed to this blog and let you guys hear it, but I won’t. It’s hard to resist, but I won’t. Reasons for not doing this:

1) You all like me, that’s why you’re reading, so you’ll probably all like it, and I’ll think “yay my song’s a hit!” and forget that the audience is biased.

2) It’ll spoil the song. When we released Chameleon Circuit, people were sad that we didn’t use Charlie’s acoustic version of Blink on the album, because they’d grown attached to it. If I play a song now and then add stuff to it later, you might not like it.

3) Not getting feedback is good. In our internet culture, it’s easy to say ‘done this!’ and throw it out there, get instant feedback in seconds, and then move on to the next thing. I need to learn patience, which means keeping the songs to myself until they’re ready.

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Jessie: “I just realized that you linked to and openly mentioned who you wrote the song about/for. That’s honest and requires bravery.”

Thank you, but I disagree – if I’m gonna write a song for/about someone, they’re as much of the songwriting process as I am. Without them, that song wouldn’t exist. It’s only fair they get credit for that. I think it’s weird if anybody writes a song for person and then doesn’t reveal who that person is. It’s like they’re exploiting them. Or at least that’s how I’d feel.

Christy – “Ever think about writing songs about Buffy? I’ve always wondered, are you team angel or team spike? I’m all for Spike :D”

First of all, I should point out that when you leave a comment, you have to put your email address in. Christy got round this by typing “none@none.com” :D

I haven’t written any Buffy-rock, and if I did, I’d just make it subtle so it wasn’t necessarily about Buffy and then put it on the next album. If you DO want some Buffy-rock, though, search ‘Joss Is The Boss’ on iTunes. There’s a whole album of that stuff, it’s fantastic.

Peter – “Why do you want to get signed by a label? That probably sounds like a dumb question, but really? As a musician, isn’t your goal to make the best music? I hardly see what being signed to a label has to do with that. Unless you’re just in it for the money and the bitches, in which case, by all means, go for the label.”

People’s goals vary on what they want to get out of music. Some is to make money. Some is to be remembered. Mine is to connect with people. I make music because I want to create an experience and have people share it. Music does that better than anything. If I was signed to a major, my music would reach more people, therefore more people could come to my shows, so the shared experience would be greater.

This is why, really, the best thing any fans of my music can do is tell people. Spread the word however you can, so we get more and more people coming to shows and getting a buzz going :)

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So, my Twilight video went viral. That’s nice :D

I should probably jump on that and do Chapter 3 sharpish. I’ll film it tomorrow, I think. Tomorrow’s gonna be one of those gloriously lazy days when I have nobody here and nothing I need to be doing. I have a video ready for December 1st, which is when I’m properly publicly launching this site in video form (so far it’s been hidden in profile links and sidebars) – I’m excited for everyone to find out they can hear the whole album for free =) Anyway, after that video, I guess I’ll prioritise Chapter 3. Seems wise.

I wanna film a video for Don’t Look Back that involves walking around London on Christmas morning, when there will be no people, so it’ll be all deserted. I wanted to do it last year to Shipwrecked (from Chameleon Circuit) but couldn’t find a way into town. This year I’ve decided I’ll walk home from London if I have to, even if it takes my iPhone’s predicted walking time of six hours, because I wanna get this done.

Anyway, none of that is the reason I started writing this entry. I wrote it to say that I’ve spent the last hour emailing every single person on staff at BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 with a link to the Holding On music video saying ‘please help me get this played!’. I was fortunate enough to come across a list of contact addresses, and such an opportunity shouldn’t be wasted. (I was at the Radio 1 building a few weeks ago for Chartjackers, too, and posted some copies of Parrot Stories into the pigeonholes for Jo Whiley, Annie Mac, Fearne Cotton etc while I was there, but nothing’s come of it yet.)

I bring this all up because I notice these details are usually absent when looking at a musician’s history. It’s all “early life, early life, early life” and then in one sentence: “they got signed” and then all “career, career, career”.

Examples from wikipedia:

“Shortly after leaving the Army, he was signed to EMI music publishers” – James Blunt

“she began writing for artists signed to Akon’s Konvict label, as well as Fergie, the Pussycat Dolls, Britney Spears, and New Kids on the Block.” – Lady Gaga

“signed to Mercury Records in 1970” – Queen

“In 2003, the band signed a deal with Reprise Records.” – My Chemical Romance

“Newton subsequently signed with Sony BMG records and on the 30 July 2007 he released his début album Hand Built By Robots.” – Newton Faulkner

I wanna know about that middle bit! That’s right where I am now! Signing a record deal isn’t like signing on to the dole, you don’t just turn up at Reprise and get it sorted – how did they get signed? What did they do?

(I use wikipedia, by the way, because I think it’s the most trustworthy source of news we have. Unlike newspapers or television media, news on the wiki has no agenda, no political slant; its only aim is to be as accurate as possible. I’m happy to occasionally read the word ‘penis’ in my articles if it means preserving neutrality.)

So hopefully, when my wikipedia article gets written, you’ll have a comprehensive idea of what I actually had to do. And hopefully it’ll start with spamming everyone at BBC radio with emails and CDs.

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Ahh, the unemployed life. I just microwaved a chicken and mushroom risotto in three minutes, and made a cup of tea to go with that, and am now sitting alone in front of my computer watching a low-res rip of Saw 6. I’m trying to be productive - I’ve opened GarageBand and started a file called ‘Georgia’, kidding myself that at some point tonight I’ll record acoustic demos of the songs I’ve written so far – but I’ve also opened the first episode of FlashForward, which I can see being a show I will get into. (People said it’s going downhill now, but they said that about Lost, and Lost is categorically the best show on television.)

Thank you SO much to everybody who actually made it through that epic last post. It was very sweet of you :)

If you’re looking for a new book to read, I recommend Stargirl. It was Mhairi’s favourite book, who incidentally I wrote Holding On for, and it’s about a boy called Leo who falls in love with a new girl at his school called Stargirl Caraway.

So if you were wondering whether the Leo line was a Titanic reference or something astrological, now you know <3

One final thing – I’ve been getting quite a few people saying they’ve not heard my music or only heard one or two songs. You know you can just click that player there in the sidebar, pick a track and hear them all for free, right? ;)

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A comment on my last blog entry:

“I find it so bizarre that you write a song that you like and then it’s immediately on the album. Not knocking you at all, you clearly have ambition and that’s wonderful.

“two of them are slow, so I’ll try not to write more slow ones” seems so clinical, I don’t know.

If you do find song-writing easy… well, not easy, but if you’re able to write a song that you’re proud of in one morning, then that’s very good going. But, it might be an idea to write much much much more material than you need for one album and then choose the tunes which you’re most proud of. Wouldn’t it be truer that way? Please disagree with me if you wish. It’s just the ‘I’ve got to write 12 songs and then I’ll have an album’ mind-set, is odd to me.”

This is from ‘Edwood’. Hello! :)

Right, first of all, I should clarify two things.

1) I do write songs quickly. Holding On took me about twenty-five minutes. Once I’m inspired, I can put everything together very easily and it doesn’t take me long at all, the most I think I’ve spent is an hour.

That said:

2) Parrot Stories took me three years.

So when I write a song that I think is great, and I’ll think “awesome, that can go on the album!” – it’s not that I’m just trying to write enough to fill the space, but more that I’ve so far been successful in writing five songs I feel are interesting and different enough to share with people on my next release (because I’ve been pushing myself creatively and looking for new ideas, and I think that’s been showing in the finished new material). There are of course times when I write a song that I think is a bit boring. And there are also songs for the second album that I like, but don’t like as much as others. Out On The Town, for example, is a fun song that I’m glad to have written, but Dead And Gone and I Love You are (in my eyes) better. So if it turned out I could only choose two more songs for the album, and I had those three to pick, Out On The Town wouldn’t make the cut. It doesn’t mean the songs aren’t good.

I should also point out here that something I’ve learned very quickly in the last week or so is that there’s no clear one approach to music, so this is just mine, it’s not meant as a manual or even a guidebook.

It’s true that I could do what I did with Parrot Stories and spend the next three years writing over thirty songs, all the time narrowing down and changing and keeping the ones that I’m proudest of for the final release, but the only reason I did that was because of complications with studio time and such, it wasn’t an intentional choice. The fact is, when I have enough songs ready that I want to share with people, I think I will definitely do that. Holding off for a year or longer will guarantee that the resulting album will be stronger, yes, but so would holding it off for another year after that, or five, or ten. The reason I do all this is because I like connecting with people. I promise it has nothing to do with the financial benefits of putting out one album a year vs one every two years or longer – I just like music, I like writing music, and when I write my music I get excited to put it together, make it great and let people hear it.

Besides, these five songs aren’t set in stone. In three or four months I might start writing consistently GREAT songs, and then all of the five I have so far will be relegated to the B-side folder where they will remain unheard forever, because I’ll have progressed and got better. But for now, in the place I’m at, I’m ready for people to hear these songs, I think they’re good, and I’m looking forward to working on more of them. And all of it is subjective – people will vastly disagree on what ‘great’ music is, so if I write enough songs that feel great to me, and get an album done that I can be proud of, I’ll be fine.

Finally, a comment on the clinical thing you mentioned, that I said “I’ll make sure next songs aren’t so slow”. What I mean by this is: when I write, I pick a chord, and sing a melody, or I’ll make up a melody and find a chord that fits it, but the speed I’m singing/playing at, the rhythm, the way the chords change, that’s all decided consciously by me, depending on whether the lyrics feel like they should be part of a fast or a slower song, and how I’m feeling at the time, and other factors. Parrot Stories was the product of me splurging out my feelings whenever I felt down, and as a result it has No More, Holding On, Impossible Dreams, Sicily and Don’t Look Back – FIVE slow songs on ONE album, nearly half the whole CD! (Trivia: I recorded Parrot Stories in four days, and day two was when we did Impossible Dreams, Sicily and Don’t Look Back all at once – having done Candy Floss the previous day – we hit a low that evening, it felt so depressing.) So next time I pick up the guitar, I’ll mess around with fast chord progressions, lively things, or try to come up with a lyric that’s punchy, or a melody that sounds more like a clap-along shout-along anthem than a sway-along serenade. Those are the choices I can influence. That said, if I’m in the mood to write a particularly slow song, I won’t deny myself that. (If I start to write a lot though, such that they won’t all NEED to be on the same CD, I’ll cut some out.)

One of the things I’m proudest of with Parrot Stories is that the songs sound different, something even a lot of fantastic musicians struggle to achieve. I try to make every song unique, giving it a different progression of chords, or looking at the number of verses and mixing them up a bit, or building the instruments in a different way. So if I write any similar-sounding songs here, they won’t all make it on.

It sounds cold, but it’s not. Tom put it best when he pointed out to me that although I’m one of the most logical people he knows, all of that logic is founded in a place of emotion. I want to create art, and stir emotions in people, and make people feel like part of an experience when they listen to my music – but my approach to that is through methodical chord structures, and tempo structure, and all that stuff. Being reasonable and thinking things through intelligently is the only way I’ve ever known how to do things, so it’s no different even if the thing I’m thinking about is creative. I listened to Colours Of The Wind from the film Pocahontas, and as I listened to it I analysed the way the melody rises and falls, and used that pattern as the basis of the melody for Living On The Underground. I have graphs drawn in my room of Green Day melodies, I scribbled them out in graph form because I tried to find patterns, like how often it returns to the same note, and where the melody lines start and end, so I can use that information for myself. (What I learned: the first note of the chorus in Holiday, American Idiot and Boulevard Of Broken Dreams is always the highest note in the verse. Useful tip if I need a starting point for a chorus, see?)

Anyway, I just thought that response would be worth writing down. I’ll make the next entry interesting. It’ll have farts or something.

(I also got a comment from someone who says I am “a lot more intelligent than they previously thought”, which is nice :D)

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So lately, I’ve been trying to analyse what makes music great, paying particular attention to The Beatles.

Ed and Tom (as well as Alan and Mickeleh) will attest that I’m constantly emailing them questions like “what made the Beatles so big?”, “how can that be recreated?”, “Hank sold 1500 copies of his new album – how? What can I learn from his strategy?” etc.

Anyway, yesterday I thought I should take a bit of a step back from this analysis. The songs I’m writing at the moment are technically good, but they don’t have much of the me factor. The songs on Parrot Stories work because they’re so honest and very much my own feelings, at least that’s what everybody tells me. Nearly everyone who messages me to compliment the album says “it’s great – I really love your lyrics”. And I don’t wanna try and ‘craft’ the next album, cos people will hear it and say “oh, well the songs are better, but they’re not distinctive to you at all”.

To that end, this morning I picked up the guitar after watching a Beatles documentary and seeing the sheer joy on their faces. The band were shamelessly fun, in their lyrics, in their performance, in themselves, they were just enjoying every second and I wanted that to come across. They had that same honesty.

So I wrote a simple song in D major called I Love You, and I’m really proud of it :D

Along with Dead And Gone, Living On The Underground, Georgia and Out On The Town, that makes five songs for my next album, all of which I really like. That’s … half an album. Half-written. Already. Blimey.

Now I have those five, I can look at what they do and don’t have to help with the rest: two of them are slow, so I’ll try not to write more slow ones; few of them are as honest as Parrot Stories was, so I’ll work on that, etc.

But for now I have a footlong Subway sandwich waiting for me – my standard preference, chicken breast on white or italian bread with lettuce and cucumber. Next time you’re in Subway, ask for the Nerimon.

(The Nerimon used to have ketchup in it. BAD move.)

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About a month ago, Tom Milsom declared to me that “Trock is dead” and I was very sad.

But today, I wrote a new Chameleon Circuit song with Charlie :D

I won’t reveal too much – suspense and hype worked very well for us last time – apart from these three things:

1) The song is about interplanetary travel (an idea I’ve had since before CC’s release)
2) It’s called “Don’t Drink The Water”
3) I successfully managed to get the words ‘blue the moon’ into the song <3

Oh, and we have an album title already. =)

This is my tenth entry. There should be cake.

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I just asked Becky “if you were in Saw, what would be your trap?”

(I’ve been watching all the Saw films lately, having never seen them before, and am now caught up to 6.)

Becky said, “I’d probably have to write an essay, and if I didn’t I’d … get killed by pens.”

I gently pointed out that Jigsaw’s traps were more sinister than that, citing the razor wire trap as an example, where a guy who cuts himself has to run through a mesh of razor wire to reach the exit of the room. I said that if that was a true Jigsaw trap, it’d probably be a fountain pen she’d have to stab her arm with and use her blood to write the whole essay, and if she did it before she bled out, she would live.

Becky said, “yeah, it’d be a timed essay.”

Charlie pitched in with “yeah, I forgot how evil Jigsaw was. A TIMED essay. One guy will have to shoot his girlfriend in the face before the girlfriend bites her own tongue off, and you’ll be writing an essay. They’re gonna hate you.”

Then Becky asked me what mine would be, and I said (having thought about this before) that I’d wake up with my cock in a vice, and would have to crush it off before the time elapsed in order to save myself from being killed in some rubbish way, like sliced up or whatever.

Basically I’m just writing this so I can open the floor to you guys. Comments: what would your Saw trap be?

My Eminem lyric of the day:
“When I go out, I’m gonna go out shootin;
I don’t mean when I die, I mean when I go down to the club, stupid”
-’Remember Me?’ by Eminem (featuring “Sticky Fingaz”)

(Becky called me “Nerinem” :D)

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Charlie and I were interviewed by Digital Spy today. They’re doing a feature on David Tennant’s Top Ten moments in the run-up to his Christmas episode, and we are gonna be among the talking heads discussing our favourite bits :) They’re also using An Awful Lot Of Running as the theme tune, which is nice. (Clarification for those who are unaware – Charlie and I are in a band that write songs about Doctor Who. The music video for one of the songs is up in the Videos section, and you can hear a couple others here.)

Yesterday, Ed, Tom and I were reading the DFTBA wiki and marvelling at the dreadful inaccuracies on our lyrics. I gave badwolftv (the only person who ever seems to edit the wiki) my email address so he/she can check anything me-related with me personally, since I don’t want false info floating about, especially on a website associated with my record label. Anyway, part of the lyrics to Tom’s song “Indigo” are formed of a lengthy list of colours; one part – “International Klein Blue, maroon” – was mistyped as “international klein blue the moon“. This was only slightly better than a mistyped line from Tom’s “Song For The Painfully Indie” – “don’t bother finding somebody to play the skin recorder” – a misrepresentation of ”don’t bother finding somebody to play descant recorder“.

With that in mind, I thought I would go through the lyrics to Parrot Stories and share my five favourite mistakes :D

1) “Tears up to the moon” – Holding On
The full line is “I could bake a chocolate cake for you with tiers up to the moon”. When a cake is layered, like a wedding cake, each layer is called a ‘tier’, the lovely idea being that I’m so fucking in love that I could bake a cake all the way up to the sky cos I’m lovely. This alternate interpretation suggests that I could bake a chocolate cake while crying so much that I flood the Earth, causing some kind of watery eclipse.

2) “Stopping me want you” – No Sacrifice
I’m a little more lenient with this one because the lyrics are quite fast, but then again, this lyric doesn’t make any kind of sense. The original line is “memories are remedies to stop me wanting you too much” – y’know, that I can think on the good times and thus help my wailing heart, or whatever. The full line on the wiki, however, was (read this aloud): “memories and remedies are stopping me want you too much“. How does that make sense at all? “It doesn’t seem right, but it’s what I heard, so it must be.” No!

3) “Shine-sharing” – Impossible Dreams
This song was the last one that was written for the album, and it came to me after I spent the evening at a chai place with a girl called Melyssa. (It was my first time drinking chai, incidentally; for those who haven’t tried it, masala chai is like tea but it has traces of Indian spices to give it a bit of a kick. It’s great.) So the song was kinda contemplative and contains the line “who else can I share my chai with?” which has been brilliantly re-imagined as “who else can I share my shine with?”

4) “The liftup” – Sicily
The song’s full of Roman-holiday-type things; tapestries, archways, villas, etc. The first line of the second verse, in fact, is “cliff-top is our tapestry“. But not anymore! On the wiki it was written as “the liftup is our tapestry“. I guess badwolftv just assumed I was being arty and incoherent cos I’m a musician and stuff. Sicily also gets another cheeky mention for butchering the line “clicking camera shutters catch bewildered foreign stares“, changing it to “flicking camera shutters catch bewildered form in stares“. Do camera shutters ‘flick’?

5) “Closer to our where?” – How We Were
How We Were has a few weird lines. The general idea is that I hope we can last and make things work and etc, and for this I used the rather illustrative statement “if they bring us pearls for us to wear on Judgement Day, we can think ourselves quite lucky that we haven’t worn away“. On the wiki, this became the frankly incoherent “if they bring us closer to our where on Judgement Day“, which is just fucking weird.

That about wraps this up. I’ve now corrected all the entries on the wiki so they match the lyrics on this website, but always check here in future if you want to confirm something for sure :) The general rule I wanna go by with this site is that if it’s not on here, it’s not happening.

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I had a dream this morning that I was in New York with a group of people – presumably Tom, Ed, Charlie, Mickeleh, Vee and Melody, our New York party – and we were walking through a suburban area. These guys with caps like Tom Deacon were playing frisbee across the street, and one of the guys near me missed, and the frisbee landed near me. I picked it up, threw it back; at first it went into the tree nearby, and I felt like a fail, and then it soared out at a perfect arc down to the guy opposite, who caught it with ease. I cheered. Everyone cheered. As we kept walking, bathing in the mirth, I caught the eye of a thin blonde girl who was with the frisbee crowd, and went to high-five her. Our hands connected, and I held it, pulling it down so her fingers were interlaced with mine and saying, “what’s your name?”

She told me. Then I leaned forward and kissed her. Then I just kept walking, not looking back, like some sexy Jesus. I heard everyone else behind me gasping and cheering as this happened, at the sheer COOLNESS OF ME.

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Right, I should probably talk about music, innit.

(Btw, I just watched Jedward leave the X Factor, and found myself focusing the whole time on how much I loved their outfits. White jeans for the winz :D)

Parrot Stories is something I’m deeply proud of. It’s heartfelt and personal, and that’s what I wanted. We went into the studio with the aim to reflect that it was just me in a studio, not too loud, not too emotionless; like my videos, we wanted it to feel honest.

I’m gonna start properly touring with Tom and Ed early next year, once we rehearse as a full five-piece band. I’ll also talk about what all those songs on that album mean at some point, but in the meantime, I’ve started writing new stuff. So far I have four songs: Georgia, Out On The Town, Living On The Underground and Dead And Gone. All of them are fast and sound like Green Day, apart from Dead And Gone, which sounds like one of Green Day’s ballads. (I like Green Day a lot.)

I’m torn for the album cover at the moment. I know it’s early to think about such things, but I’m not just making music, I’m putting that music into a collection, and as such I’m already excited to think about it. I have the name – Epigrams And Interludes – and I know the cover will be orange, but my two options are:

a) A boy and a girl, in the corner of the picture, silhouetted, sharing a pair of headphones, huddling under an umbrella in clip-arty rain that covers the rest of the cover

OR

b) My glasses-and-hat-wearing face, posterized.

It’ll probably be a), because my image doesn’t consistently have a hat and glasses in it. But I do like the idea of having my face on the cover. Tom’s done it too; maybe it’s some kind of second-album syndrome.

ANYWAY: before all that, I’m releasing a three-track EP in February(ish) titled 117% Complete. It’s about videogames – the title is a reference to the percentage completion you get when you fully complete Spyro 3: Year Of The Dragon and the tracks are:

1) Sonic Doesn’t Need A Story
2) I Hate Mario Kart Wii
3) Pokémon, What Happened To You?

As you can see, there’s a general theme of lament.

The songs will be all electronic and videogamey – we’re using the Ape Escape soundtrack as a heavy influence (‘we’ being me and Tom, who produces my music) – so it’ll be quite nice and different to my normal stuff.

(Ed insists that a three-song EP isn’t an EP, but a triple A-side. I disagree.)

So we’ll be recording that in December :)

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I’m on the train home with Lex Croucher’s song ‘Teeth’ serenading my ears. I’ve had a lovely evening with Tom Milsom and Eddplant. (The latter doesn’t like people using his real name, so I shall not encourage it.)

Being in their company does nothing to curb my spending habits. There’s this absurd system where you buy everyone’s drinks, and then everyone else buys your drinks. It’s fine if you’re not a struggling musician trying to save money for a New York holiday in two weeks, but as it is I can’t afford pints. (I should clarify that this system has somehow become standard pub procedure among not just us, but the world.)

Yes, the band are headed to New York on December 10th. We’re not technically a band; we change our name every time we perform. (Personal favourites include ‘The Ford Theatre Experience’, ‘The Decline Of The British Coal Mining Industry’, ‘A Pigeon Shat Inside My Brain’ and ‘Walt Disney Was Frozen’.) But how it works is that when I play live, Ed and Tom will back me up, and in return for this charitable act, I back them up when they play live, so we all get a turn in the spotlight and we get triple the normal amount of people attending each of our gigs. We’re a three-act show with no waiting, in short.

Tom is launching his second album, ‘Painfully Mainstream’, on December 1st – I just finished using my techno Chartjackers knowledge to register it for the UK Charts – so we’re having a launch party on December 5th in London and December 12th in New York. Charlieisso McDonnell will also be there :) Full details are in the sidebar. No, the topbar. OOOOH.

So that’s why we’re headed to New York, is the point. US album launch, innit. We all love New York better than other US cities – it’s all real and urban and gritty.

The conversation this evening, I feel, hit its most pleasing peak when Tom discussed the behaviour of relationships, suggesting that throughout a monogamous entanglement both partners will continue to make themselves attractive to their significant other, thus holding their interest. I found this theory engaging. I love consuming Tom’s ideas.

(You’ll come to learn, by the way, that when I’ve been drinking I will use longer words to compensate. “See? I’m fine! I said ‘monogamous entanglement’! SEE?!”)

We also got a lot of rehearsing done – we can play all of Painfully Mainstream as a three-piece except for They, Wintersong and Song For The Painfully Indie, and we worked on some of my songs, mainly Hearts – but the main thing I took away from this night was that having friends is a really lovely thing. I’ve now been with this lot for over two years, and I realised the significance of this when Ed reminded me of a time when I used to not drink (and subtly condemn those that did). I thought this because all my experiences around drunk people had been with those who couldn’t handle it, or who were changed by it in a significantly negative way that I concluded ‘people can’t be trusted with this stuff!’ But I am now fortunate to have met people who can, and I opened my view. That was a change. I had a change. A big life change. And I have friends who I’ve had for long enough that they’ve seen me go through said big life change. That’s exciting.

Basically, I’m looking forward to New York. =)

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It’s Helvetica now.

(Trivia: Helvetica is – typographically speaking – the most aesthetically pleasing font ever.)

My N-Dubz lyric of the day:
“Fuck all the kissing and cuddling
Why don’t you grab my balls and try juggling”
-’Sex’ by N-Dubz

(Attempting to juggle your balls would presumably cause sustained injury so I wouldn’t recommend that. Also you’d need three.)

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If you’ve spent a bit of time exploring my website, you’ll have hopefully found the whole thing easy to use and everything simple to find.

I wanted the site to reflect my own opinions towards the internet, and towards life in general. I favour practicality and minimalism and don’t like anything to be distracting. I wanted the site to be something I could navigate around with simplicity. And I included things like chords/lyrics because I wanted to design a site that I would wanna visit myself if I was a fan of me.

Wow, this entry’s been hardcore. Two fun facts to finish off with:

1) The ‘meet world’ on the front page is what I call ‘real life’. Someone once asked me what it was like meeting people ‘in the meet world’ and I thought it was brilliant. Ever since then, I’ve taken to saying “I can’t wait to meet you IMW!” to online friends.

2) The font on this whole site, I discovered, is called “Georgia”. =D

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