You are allowed to enjoy this…

Going through those old tapes the other day got me in a nostalgic mood and I started sorting through some of my old songs. When I finish the new collection, I want one of the CDs to be a vocal disc and so I was looking back at some of my old vocal songs to see if any were good enough to revive. I settled on “When I Was Young”, a track I originally put down in 1999. I got the original drum track and just built it up from there. I’m pleased with the result. I’m not the greatest singer, but the new microphone certainly helps (and beats the £20 Tandy jobby I was using previously).
Here’s the old version of the song:

Direct download: CLICK HERE
And here’s the new version, recorded this very afternoon:

Direct download: CLICK HERE
And here are the words, so you can all sing-a-long at home:
When I Was Young
When I was young
I could do what I pleased
When I was young
Bring the world to its knees
When I was young
I just didn’t care
Sometimes,
I wonder where the time has gone
Sometimes,
I wonder why it turned out wrong
Sometimes,
I wonder when the fire burned out
Sometimes,
I wonder why my life’s full of doubt
When I was young
I knew what I wanted
When I was young
I went on undaunted
When I was young
Nothing got in my way
Remember the days of self-conscious youth
When we all had something
Something to prove
Time takes its toll
Anger gives way to joy
As the better man
Replaces the boy
When I was young
I could od what I liked
When I was young
I knew I was right
When I was young
Nothing was fair
When I was young
I just grew my hair
When I was young
I knew what to say
When I was young
I squandered the day
When I was young
I needed respect
When I was young
I was a pain in the neck

Yesterday, on our front path leading to the front door, a badly decomposed frog had been deposited. Who had dropped this croaked croaker is still a mystery. The general consensus of opinion believes that a bird, possibly a crow, may be the culprit. Here’s a gory picture:

A couple of weeks ago, I applied for a job that I really, really wanted. Unfortunately, the position was located in Ealing Broadway, a staggering 29 or so stops away on the Central Line. Despite this, I was heartened to get a reply from the company involved, but then quickly disheartened when all they wanted me in for was to do a test. Now, I am 35 years old and I am past doing tests. I’ve done tests for my O-levels, for my A-levels and for my degree. I know what I can do and I didn’t feel like making a 3+ hour round trip to sit a writing test I could do with my eyes closed, only for them to not call me back for an interview because it was an internal promotion all along. Well, anyway, I replied to their email politely declining the chance of a test and wished them the best in finding a suitable candidate.
Well blow me, that was a week ago and yesterday I got a reply from some stuffed shirt there lecturing me on how everyone applying for the job would be in the same position, blah, blah, blah. It’s my fricking prerogative if I attended the test and it riled me somewhat. So again I replied saying how I would have preferred an interview and a small test on the same day, as I can sell myself better in interviews and again wished them luck in finding a suitable candidate.
You are probably thinking: “Oooh look at him. He thinks he’s King Big Bollocks, not needing a test.” Maybe, maybe not. One of the things I resent about being in this profession is that you get tested at every opportunity. The jobs I’ve got have never had tests, the tests I’ve had never get me the job. So I just know that I don’t perform well in tests. I perform better in the real world. I just want to talk to these people face to face and let them get to know me. A test can’t do that – and great grammar and wonderful spelling and the right haircut does not a model employee make. Or maybe I am just completely objectionable and unemployable. I don’t know. Oh well, their loss, eh?
In the post: Slow Music – Live at the Croc. This was generously sent to me gratis from Don Mackenzie or JTMACK, as he likes to be called. There’s very little generosity in this world and it is a quality that I admire and try to exercise when I can. The only problem with being of a generous nature is that people either become suspicious of you (What do they want?) or people take advantage of you.
I enjoyed the CD greatly, which was a surprise because I wasn’t expecting to. The only shocking thing about it is it took all those musicians to make this noise when we all know it can be done by one man with the right gear. Demarcation, brothers. But yeah, I’ve played it several times and I thank JTMACK for giving me the chance to hear it (while the powers that be don’t give me the chance to hear it, if you know what I mean).
In an email conversation with my old recording chum, Andrew Osborne, I did my best to give him some advice and ended up sounding like Old Pa Fripp by accident. Out of the e-slurry, one line appealed to Mr O: You need to somehow define that it is your intention for the bass to be the lead instrument in the piece. Anyway, I hope my advice has pushed him in the right direction as I’ve been trying to get the guy to record properly for ages, but I don’t know if my nagging is paying off or not.

So I am on guard because my bird box has a family of Blue Tits in it. I can now confirm that these are Blue Tits because I identified them using the big poster that came with The Guardian this week. Of course, I jest. I knew the genus of bird already. Anyhow, both birds are darting back and forth and the other morning I noticed a neighbour’s cat sitting on top of the shed, spying on a returning bird. The blue tit was alarmed and could see his foe and began to panic. I immediately stopped what I was doing in the kitchen and ran out into the garden, scaring the cat off the shed roof. The blue tit then immediately flew into the box with his precious cargo and zipped right back out again. They don’t seem to be too alarmed at me in the garden, but don’t like the cats. Well I managed to snap this picture of the bird about to fly into the box. OK – I am not David Bailey and I don’t have a huge lens on my camera – it’s just a Sony point-and-click handheld jobby, but this is the best I could do:

By my reckoning, the fledglings should be appearing sometime at the end of next week. I’ve been reading all about blue tits and it says that families tend to stay close together once they nest, with the year’s new chicks not straying any further than 1Km from their parents. Maybe we’ll have a blue tit enclave at Chez Lock? Maybe I need to buy some more bird boxes?

It was meant to be one of those days when you set out to do one job and you accidentally open another can of worms and get completely side-tracked. I was intending to clear all the old cassettes from the cupboard in my room/office. I’ve got a case of old music cassettes, mainly old prog like Hackett, KC and Oldfield and intended to take them to the charity shop. But to get to those cassettes, I had to lift down another case which had all my old cassette masters of my musical noodlings before I got into computer recording.
I was a late starter in music. At sixteen, I begged my grandmother to buy me a bass guitar so that I could join the band that my schoolmates were forming. Unfortunately, by the time I got the bass, that band had split up and those friends had moved on, leaving me alone in the sixth form doing A-levels with a bass I couldn’t play and no band. I didn’t get my first guitar until a good few years later – I think I was 19 then – so I started playing late and wasn’t particularly good at it. I don’t think I have natural talent for music like some people have, those who can hear a tune and play it note-for-note after one listen. Those are true musicians. For me, music is a bit tougher and even though you might hear a simple tune when I put stuff up on here, it is a hard road travelled by me to get it together.
Anyway, in the beginning, I managed to figure out how to overdub my musical noodlings using my JVC ghetto blaster. I can’t remember how I did it, but I could record something onto tape, then rewind and dub another layer over the top. Unforunately, the first track was degraded by the second and because this wasn’t a professional tape machine everything ran at different speeds, rendering the “song” or more appopriately jam, completely out of tune. Either that or I was really, really bad. I think a little from column A and column B might be right in this case. Anyhow, I could jam along to myself without the need for a band. I thought this was really clever and recorded some of these jams and subsequent lost them.
Well, I found them the other day while going through these cassettes. They have to be the worst recordings ever made. They are toe-curlingly bad and if I had a skull and crossbones warning sign (or one of those biohazard spiky symbols) I would be warning you all to turn away now. I like a healthy portion of humble pie served in a rich humility sauce, so I am posting this hideous recordings below. These are historical or hysterical depending on how you look at them, so try not to split your sides laughing. Instead of having guitar lessons, I spent my time recording myself and my mistakes and gradually improving (well, I like to think I am improving).
The equipment used was a Columbus Gibson Les Paul copy that weighed a ton and cost £50 second-hand from Allan Marshall Guitars in Markhouse Road, Walthamstow, run through a Zoom 9000 FX unit, a Encore Coaster bass (which I still have in the cupboard for sentimental reasons) and a Casio MT32 keyboard I bought for £20 that provided the backbeat. These first sonic shitstorms were put down in 1990 (I think):

First Thing

Second Thing

If you managed to get through all that, I am so sorry. I did warn you and it’s not like I twisted your arm or anything. Feel free to pass these on to your chums and use them to poke fun at me. It is OK, my back is broad.
On another tape, I found some mixes of tunes I had completely forgotten about. They were never finished or put down properly. These were recorded on a Vestax MR44 four-track and by this time it was 1994 and I think I had my first GR-1 guitar synth and a great Alesis HR-16B drum machine. The guitar was a Yamaha RGX121 and I regret selling that one because it was a good little instrument, despite being a bit “heavy metal” in appearance. This next track is a bit long, but I think it had some potential especially call and return of the lead guitar. When I played this songs back to The Missus, she said: “Oh yeah, I remember those.” This was a bit shocking as I had completely forgotten about them, whereas she had those remnants of musical memory tucked at the back of her mind. Poor cow, no-one deserves to suffer like that…

On Bright

Here you go, have a novel:
http://www.deadrockstar.co.uk/

This time last week, I was applying for a job I had seen on the Internet. It was a job doing something very similar to what I used to do way back in my glory days. I liked the sound of it but my only reservation was that the company involved was based near White City, west London…or so I thought. So anyway, I get an invite to go for a test this afternoon. Yes, in my line of work you get tested before you even get an interview. I can take a 75 minute proofing and writing test and the best people will get called back for the interview proper. Oooh, I can’t wait. Then I check out exactly where these people are: Ealing Broadway. The very words Ealing and Broadway are perfectly harmless when rendered separately, but when you bring them together in that particular configuration it just brings back deep-seated feelings of misery and woe.
You see, I spent my fallow youth as a student at Ealing College. I did a BA degree in Information Management and Publishing and this meant that every day (because it was a 5 days a week course), I got up at seven in the morning, travelled for over 1 hour 45 minutes and returned home at 7pm. This happened for three years and it can really grind you down travelling the entire length of the Central Line. It was more like a full time job that a have-it-away, drink-as-much-as-you-can, fuck-anything-that-moves kind of University type experience. In fact, I didn’t start drinking hard until I was 24 and ensconced in my first long-term assignment.
Anyway, so now I am presented with the choice. I can either just toss this one aside and say “no, I am not doing that” or I can go for it. Now I’d really like the job…really…really…really like the job. I need the money. I need to actually get into a social environment again and it would be good for my general esteem and demeanour. The only problem is that I know the travelling will rip me to shreds in a couple of weeks. Oh well, that’s life I guess.
Plus, I also believe that Ealing is cursed, but that’s another story for another time. I might tell you if you ask nicely, gentle reader.
In the meantime, here’s some clever computer animation with music and stuff:

Well I cut short my viewing of The Apprentice to write this missive and general have a good venting session. Arsehole. Absolute arsehole. Alan Sugar obviously has fluff for brains and proves why the UK version of the show is a shadow of the staggering magnificent beast Stateside hosted by the comically coiffured Donald Trump. Firstly, Trump is a genuine high-flier and not some East End Del Boy Trotter figure and secondly because the decision making process of Sugar is decidedly iffy.
If Michelle Dewberry had faced the wrath of Trump in the US, he would have asked her that despite her event being superior, why her sales were virtually half of her rivals? He would have then grilled her some more, bringing in her team to baste her further, before turning up the heat some more and then firing her. But in the UK, we go for the underdog. We love a good sob story. We love doe eyes and cleavage. We love a loser. Ruth Badger would have won the US purely on the basis of her superior selling skills and the fact that she could sell a terrible event at full markup. That takes some skill. But this is Planet Sugar were we get product placement shots of the failed Amstrad E-Mailer Phone every episode.
I knew Michelle was going to win because it was obvious that Syed would want to knob the winner – he’s that kind of guy, you know. But I thought she might have actually done it with a remarkable whitewash against Ruth. You know…a David vs Goliath conflict. Instead, we got sold short. I like a fair game with a good win, but this was a bit disappointing. Twelve weeks for a bleeding heart story…do you feel cheated? I know I do. But I also realise that I have been spoilt by the sensibility and laser-like logic of the US series.
At the end of the show, I vowed not to watch the next series, preferring to stick to the superior US version. Of course, when the promotional material for the new series makes the rounds early 2007, I’ll be salivating like the Pavlovian dog that I am. Who is the arsehole now, Mr Lock?