So, for those that don't know, I currently split my life between the Channel Islands and home, two weeks here, weekend at home and so on. Being in a flat without the usual, pleasurable distractions of family leaves an awful lot of time to consider life, the universe and everything, practice and, on occasion, write some music. This situation means that we, as a band, spend a lot of time communicating by e-mail, dropping ideas onto dropbox, creating websites and facebook pages and writing and recording in the comfort of our residences wherever they may be at any given time. In turn this leads me to consider how much technology enables us to do that and how far the world has advanced in our lifetime and how much impact that's had on music and the way it's made.
I first met Steve thirty five years ago. Life was simple and we had no ambition other than to be older so we could do cool stuff! As a consequence we stumbled into the world of the band musician by accident. I was a classical trumpet player, something I'd done since the age of six (I still have my original trumpet forty years on), and didn't consider playing anything else in a band as an option. I mean, where would I start? Steve had drum lessons with my trumpet teacher (weird, I know). Somewhere along the line I was asked to jump in on a project that Steve had with another guy and I ended up teaching myself to play the bass. Being a muso then was pretty easy. Plug in, crank it up and get someone to set up a couple of mics and record it on a two track cassette tape. Send demo, organise gigs and piously hope that an A&R man from a major label would see you and sign you there and then. Even in the studio it was very similar it was just the tape that was bigger! So we practiced, gigged and eventually it all falls apart through creative differences. You move on, find another band and repeat as necessary until proper work, house ownership, marriage, kids brings it all to a halt and you write it off as part of your history......................but you never really let it go and you keep playing, just in case.
Thirty five years on and you're in a flat, listening to Muse, drinking tea and wishing that the tenancy agreement allowed you to smoke in the flat! Here you are, typing a blog so that people with an interest in the band get to know us a little better and realising that we're all very much connected on a 24/7 basis thanks to a little invention known as the internet. That, of course, is an interest in a band that eighteen months ago was just an incidental dream in my head and which wouldn't have come about but for the encouragement of my family. The funny thing is that we've spoken about getting back on the horse in rehearsals and generally none of us had missed it until we did it again. Now it would be difficult to give it up. Had I been in this situation thirty years ago and come out here to work it would have stopped. Communication would have been by phone, fax maybe, letter. I'd never have been able to keep up with what the band was doing in my absence and the two weekly rehearsals that I got to would have been spent catching up rather than playing as a band. It just wouldn't have been feasible. Yet I am still in the band and get recordings of rehearsals that I'm not at so I can write my basslines and be up to speed when I am there. Its brilliant!
I can sit here, record up to forty tracks on my laptop, convert it to an MP3 and drop it into dropbox and wait for the guys to tell me if it's any good (they're generally very kind when I write something). It's the same for them too. Instant gratification and we love it. Advertising gigs on Facebook, Lemonrock or wherever, communicating with our 'followers' (sounds a bit cultish doesn't it?) sticking vids on YouTube. All of this allows any modern musician to get their music out there with relative ease. Here's a slightly disturbing fact; if you take our, let's be a bit pretentious here, fanbase and their friends, and the friends of friends and so on, we have potential access to over 30,000 FB pages. Isn't that amazing? All we need is our 168 followers to share our page and for their shares to share and we could fill a stadium.......well, half fill at least! And so we progress, move on to the next technological advancement. Thank go no ones invented a device for making bad singers sound good..........oh, they have? Auto tune? That's daft 'cos that'd mean that people with no talent could be famous without putting any work in at all................Oh, I see. They already do that..........
Cheers
Dunc
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