Thank you Max

Today's blog is a long one, but it goes somewhere, I promise.

I started playing guitar around 2003 after I went to my second festival, and decided that there was a gap in my life that could be filled with playing music and providing me with some emotional fulfilment I wasn't getting at the time.

Times were difficult, and even though I had a reasonably good ear for music anyway and had picked out certain things on the piano, learning guitar was frustrating and troublesome. I stuck at it, and got only half crap by 2004.

I then took lessons for a year with a good teacher who opened up my eyes to a range of different acoustic music, which is where my preference tends to lie.

He taught me to a point where I knew enough to get by, and asked me if I was interested in angling towards recording or playing live. I said I would be more of a recording artist because the thought of playing in front of people intimidated me. He explained to me that it's normal to feel like that, but once you've played live and it's gone well, you're hooked. I took it with a pinch of salt, but still fancied giving it a shot.

The first time I played and sang in front of someone was in front of some family friends in the winter of 2006. I was terrified, but they all seemed to think I was very good and were shocked that I was capable of this, having been very quiet and reserved as a child. The whole family's very musical, and the Grandad asked if I'd like to go down to an acoustic open mic night to try and play a few songs. I agreed reluctantly.

So off I went to the Burnham-on-Sea acoustic club on a Thursday night. I played three songs that I had rehearsed spectacularly frequently, and it didn't go too badly. From thereon, I was addicted and played three or four more times before music took a bit of a back-seat in my life.

Around six months later I picked up an electric guitar and joined a short-lived ill-fated band that was a lot of fun, but was never going to go anywhere. It disbanded four months after I joined, and after a few big changes in my life left me feeling very down and depressed, I decided it was time to give live music another push.

I started off in a pub in Weston-super-Mare where I didn't know anybody with the exception of one friend that I dragged along for the sake of it. I was intimidated by the quality of playing and my first performance didn't go too well.

Due to the rest of the band being very good at what they played and not knowing anything I knew, I found it quite discouraging so decided to go back to the drawing board of open-mic acoustic music. Solo.

My first attempt back at this was in a pub two doors down from the live house band pub. I recognised a few faces and did my best to fit in. A chap who the others instantly recognised and referred to as Max turned up around 9pm, and began to set up.

He did a set on his own for a while with a lot of character and enthusiasm. He was instantly likeable and unassuming, and I found that very encouraging. I volunteered myself to get up immediately after him, and played a song I had written and recorded a few months previous.

The praise he lavished on me was unexpected, extremely flattering and helpful. I agreed to attend a busier night a week later, which, although he didn't attend, I enjoyed and met lots of new people. That extra push Max gave me helped me to get to where I did and to enjoy playing live music with enthusiasm.

I carried on writing, and I don't think my life would be the same as it is now without his hand in my enthusiasm to keep writing and performing music.

Max passed on a few weeks ago, and even though our encounter was brief, he had a big impact on me and I want to say thank you.

So thank you, Max. Rest in peace.

Feel the music

Sometimes when you listen to music for long enough, regular sound effects around you remind you of songs. A rhythm of a heavy-goods train travelling past reminds you of a hip-hop track.
Things that people say to you in regular circumstances match those of lyrics you're very familiar with and you can't help but start singing those lyrics in the song they're present in.

More recently I've started to step up to the next level of this phenomenon. My car has begun harmonising with songs.

Driving my car the other day, I was listening to The mamas and the papas, and couldn't help but notice that "California Dreamin'" had an extra backup singer. Using the windscreen washer jets to squirt water on my windscreen produced a pitch-perfect harmony for the verse.

Geek! Yes, yes. I know.

That's rock 'n roll

It is my dream to one day own a Gibson Les Paul Standard. I think they're absolutely superb guitars, and they're the biggest status symbol that I could possibly dream to own.

I don't think I'm going to own one in the next twelve months, so whenever I see one floating around on TV, I'm desperate to own it.

What really breaks my heart is when I see a £1,300 guitar get smashed into the ground by a "rock star" for the sake of what he or she determines as "rock 'n roll".

Don't be a dick, and don't smash an expensive guitar that some guitarists will never own and some aspire to own for the sake of looking cool.

Now I'm a huge Foo Fighters fan anyway, and Dave Grohl is one of my personal heroes, so you can imagine how much my heart soared when I recently saw a documentary on him filming the music video for The Pretender.

The director instructed Dave to "smash the guitar into the ground at the end".

The guitar is a Gibson Explorer and costs around £400 here.

"Are you serious?" Dave enquired. "This is an $800 guitar."

He relented quite quickly, but nonetheless, it was good to see a real rock star express concern for the value of instruments that some people will never own.

Rock on, Dave.

Long live the small business

Shopping for most people involves a supermarket chain, a large trolley and a deep boot (trunk) in their car for their purchases.

Because of these supermarkets, the small businesses have always suffered with only a few convenience stores such as bakers, butchers and greengrocers surviving on the promise of fresher non-imported produce.

For some however, the promise of good service far outweighs the price difference, and this is what I've found when shopping in small stores.

Take two music shops for example:

Sound Control - A lage music chain that's a veritable sweet shop for musicians with extremely expensive musical equipment on display.

Westside Music - A small music shop on the fringes of Weston-super-Mare Town centre with plenty of imported guitars.

The difference is immense. Sound Control contains Gibson Les Paul Guitars, whereas Westside music contains imported versions of these guitars, often subsidiary contractor companies that Gibson have used in the past to make non-US versions of their equipment. The price difference is often different as well, with Westside having a nose for a bargain and selling on expensive second hand guitars for a reasonable price.

But what makes the biggest difference for me is the level of service.

I went into Sound Control to buy some strings. I stopped and looked at the guitars. Despite the Sound Control staff ratio to customers being 1:5 or so, I was left unattended for the entire ten minutes that I was dribbling over a Gibson hanging some thirty feet above my head.

Signs draped over most areas of the store clearly stated that they would not allow any guitar to be played unless I was a deadly serious customer.

I went to the counter to buy some strings, was met with a friendly yet mostly disinterested face, bought my product and left.

I went into Westside music, and the chap who manages the place came up to me asking me how I was doing, and how I was getting on with the guitar (He remembered that it was a Yamaha LA-8) that I purchased from him some two years ago.

I mentioned that I was in the market for an electric guitar, and before I knew what was going on, I had a stratocaster import in my hands. When I had managed to perch myself on a stool, another guitarist was trying out a Yamaha SG, and swapped my lead for his.

Within fifteen minutes of being in the store, I had started playing a guitar connected to a Marshall stack priced at £699.

I was given answers to all my questions throughout trying two guitars (the SG and the stratocaster), and was then left alone to play the SG for around thirty minutes.

Eventually I decided on the SG having been satisfied by the terrific levels of service.

The price was £450 for the guitar, £150 for the amplifier (not the Marshall, an Australian import), and £35 for the hard case. He discounted this to £550 as a package deal.

Beat that, Sound Control. One extremely happy customer determined to buy strings from only one place. And it ain't you.

Only downloading music?!

I'm reading about people only downloading music these days instead of buying it.

I don't think I'm ever going to understand the mentality of people who solely download music without paying a penny for it, or people who solely pay to download music instead of getting a CD.

The saving is marginal, and unless you've got to sell an extra Big Issue to get a CD instead of a download, I think you're being ridiculous.

If you're looking to buy single tracks, then I guess that's fair enough because buying single CDs has always been an utterly ridiculous concept - you had to pay for a CD that only had one track that you really wanted to hear on it unless you were a collector.

But albums are a totally different kettle of fish. Albums have cover art, sleeve notes, printed lyrics and more importantly, they have art work that has been produced to suit the music.

Having that cover-art with a properly printed CD is something that downloads will not be able to top.

More importantly, unless you're short-sighted, you're going to want to back up all this music you're downloading, or you'll lose it and have to remember what you've downloaded, from where and find out how to download it again.

If you buy the CD, you always have it sat in your record collection ready for transferring into MP3 format at any format you choose, instead of having to take whatever bit-rate the music industry is offering you, and only in MP3.

For single tracks, buying downloads is cool with me.

For buying albums, stop being a cheapskate. Make sure you'll enjoy it by listening to it first, and then go and buy the sodding CD.

Inebriation breeds recollection

In each and every person is a cheesy song-and-dance routine just begging to escape. That song-and-dance routine gets a chance to escape people on the weekend, and on Saturday I bore witness to such a phenomenon.

In the depths of the human brain is their deepest recollection, and their subconscious. Something within our minds that we cannot fully unleash without hypnosis or some sort of catatonic state, one other method including getting absolutely plastered.

When the human body reaches a certain blood / alcohol level, the occupant's brain enters a prehistoric primate state where a ritual is enacted. The host is unaware that this is happening most of the time, and when they are aware, there's nothing they can do about it.

You get drunk, and one of the following songs is played at the bar you're in:

1. Dexy's Midnight Runners - Come on Eileen.
2. Dolly Parton - 9 'till 5.
3. Bon Jovi - Livin' on a prayer.
4. The Foundations - Build me up buttercup.

You hear one of the above. You lose control of your legs, arms, face and most likely, bladder.

You move them around in a random fashion to the music in a way that you think best suits the rhythm. You're always wrong.

This happens every week at every bar on our seaside resort of Weston-super-Mare, and it is now officially scientific fact. The human body only truly enjoys overplayed over-rated and ridiculously cheesy music when drunk.

Case rested.

Marilyn Manson

Today I have set myself the task of listening to his entire back-catalogue (Or all I own, which isn't actually that much. Only 3 albums I think.)

The real challenge of this task is to exit it feeling anything other than despondent.

Can you imagine if everybody listened to him?

There wouldn't be any wars for a start, and Hitler would've been sat in his bedroom at thirty, still living with his foster parents and wondering what the best way to get back at them would be - Self harm, or trying to hang himself.

We wouldn't have a prime minister because we'd all be thinking that everybody else would do a better job. George Bush would've renounced his senator's seat based on the philosophy:

"What's the point? They're only going to try to shoot me down, and they don't know me. They don't know me!"

Don't get me wrong, his music's quite good and well produced, but the guy stands in the way of progress.

God bless you Marilyn, even though you don't seem that keen on him.

Why I hate Scissor Sisters

Everybody seems to love this group. I can't understand it at all.

Oh no, actually I can understand it.

People like them because they fear change.

Take "I don't feel like dancin". If you can't spot the glaring similarities between that and "Oh what a night", you're deaf, you're too young to remember it, or you're choosing to subconsciously ignore it.

"Comfortably numb" is excusable because it's a fairly good cover of a Pink Floyd record that's actually declared as a cover. Most people know it's a cover by default.

"She's my man" - Scissor Sisters' new single. Think Elton John - "Still standin'".

Again, blatant similarities.

The whole sound they produce is based on other peoples' records and hard work that've been changed just enough to skew the listening public into believing it's original music and to avoid getting sued for blatantly stealing other peoples' creativity.

There's a new record at number one in the UK charts at the moment by a chap called Mika that has unignorable similarities to Freddie Mercury. Freddie was one of the best-selling UK artists of all time, and er-go you're going to love his single if you're a Queen fan.

Why not step out of the musical prison cell once in a while and pick something that doesn't sound like somebody else to listen to?

The likelihood of being a serial killer

Behavioural science is the study of why people do what they do. It's applied a lot by the FBI to serial killers and has been publicised a lot in television and literature, notable examples being the US TV show "Criminal Minds", and the bestselling book series on Hannibal Lecter, most notably Silence of the Lambs.

It studies what might cause these people to cause their crimes, and it assists police forces in tracking them down before they can bring many more people to harm.

I wonder what behavioural science says when it comes to music taste amongst the psychologically disturbed?

Hannibal Lecter was portrayed as an intelligent sociopath who appreciated every nuance in a classical piece.

What you don't hear about is the truely disturbed people.

The people who are so disturbed that they own a copy of Russ Abott's "Atmosphere" on vinyl.

The people who are devoted Michael Bolton fans. Those who devote their lives to his powerful lyrics and soulful melodies.

People who are so deluded and disillusioned by the record industry, that they're willing to make an innocent member of the public pay.

Eventually, if turned the wrong way, serial killers can go into a "frenzy" where they just kill random people at a random pace until they are caught, or decide to end it all themselves.

I bet if David Berkowitz or John Wayne Gacy could speak today, they'd be announcing how Michael Bolton and Chris De Burgh are the best things to have happened to the music industry.

To find out more about Lionel Richie fanatics, check out wikipedia's entry on fans of truely awesome music.