Jumping

I went to see I'm From Barcelona last night. They were amazing! It was a cross between a rock gig, a rave and a kiddies party. Their frontman was unbelievable... jumping around, getting the crowd going, running around the stage, climbing on the monitor speakers. I was willing him to do it and he eventually did... he stage dived. I've never seen anyone do that before. Fantastic!

Again, it just proves to me what different things music can be. Music doesn't have to be all po-faced and quiet, or cool and up its own arse. It can be just pure elation.

Two

For God's sake! No Sharp Objects are at number two in the Latest Magazine music chart. Who the hell listens to this crap!

Hooks

I showcased my new song, Junior Architect to my songwriting class on Friday. Here's what the tutor, Heidi Berry, wrote:

Simon gave a strong performance on guitar and vocals of a song based on ‘back to the drawing board’. This used a wide variety of imagery (e.g. the architects and his plans) and the group felt this was a strong song. I suggested playing some open mic nights to gain confidence in performing live.

She also asked me if she could have a recording of it!

I was so nervous when I was playing it! I managed to keep my voice under control, even though I could hear it wobbling and I was running out of breath very easily. But my guitar playing was awful! It felt like I had hooks for hands. I think my tutor's suggestion of playing open mic nights is a good one.

Only thing is there's a film festival on in Brighton at the moment so I'm too busy to be doing much else. (Excuses!)

List

I'm coming to realise I've got quite a lot to do. Here's my online to-do list:

• Write several more songs
  
• Record songs (Jayne and Adam at Blue Eyed Sounds should be doing this with me - hooray!)
• Design artwork for CD cover and label
• Duplicate 50 CDs with printed label
• Print artwork on to gorgeous Arigato Paks (maybe do it myself at BIP)
  
• Design/produce and print CD inlay (I want it to be a nice product)
  
• Do a week of open mic nights
• Get some singing lessons from Annie
  
• Finish my songwriting class
• Album launch/Portland warm-up gig
  
• Buy plane ticket to Portland
• Find accommodation in Portland
• Find excursions around Oregon
• Find gigs to play in Portland
• Find people to come to gigs

I'm sure each one of these could be broken down further too but at least it's a start.

Week

I've come up with a side-project that will help me in my goal of getting to Portland. I'm going to do a whole week of open mic nights. Sunday to Friday (I try to avoid Brighton on Saturday nights). There are so many open mics in Brighton that I'm sure it would be possible to do two every night of the week. Especially seeing as Brighton has reputedly got a pub for every day of the year.

I went to an open mic night at The Brunswick last night and played guitar with Annie Whittingham. It was a really nice place to play.

Here's my list of Brighton open mic nights that I'll update until I fill all the days:

Sunday: The Globe (though you have to register online to do this one)
Monday: The Roundhill (pub at the end of my street)
Tuesday: The Brunswick
Wednesday:
Thursday: The Druids
Friday:

Toy

I've written a new song! I'm quite chuffed with it actually. I finished it last night, did a quick recording and then had it going round in my head all night - which, I think, is a good sign.

I quite like the recording (it's on my MySpace). It's very rough and I get a lot of it wrong but you can hear my girlfriend getting ready for bed in the background and it's a nice record of about the second time I played it all the way through.

It's called Junior Architect and I got the idea from the songwriting class that I'm going to. We had to think of an everyday saying that is a metaphor, then write a letter to someone using imagery from that metaphor without using the actual words it. It had to be about a relationship and it had to be in the first person. We were asked to write it in a verse/chorus structure and to write at least 2 verses. Quite a specific brief, but I found it's actually easier to have something to work to like this.

What I found most useful was writing lots in the letter before I started to write the actual song. I wrote pages and pages of thoughts and phrases, sometimes repeating sentences - just writing them out again - before song lines started to pop out. I'll definitely use this technique again.

I used the metaphor "back to the drawing board" as it made me think of a lowly architect, working away, getting things wrong and always having his plans rejected. I thought there were some good meanings to be gleaned from that.

I still managed to torture myself over the writing of this song though. The day before yesterday I was trying really hard to write the song and it just wouldn't come and everything I wrote sounded contrived and meaningless and I thought I wouldn't be able to do it and I went to bed in a foul mood.

But last night I just calmly sat down with my guitar and my notes and wrote it.

I feel very pleased to have written something I'm happy with again. It's like having a new toy. I was excited all night to go and listen to it again.

Now I just need to keep this momentum up!

Appreciation

I went to a house-gig in Brighton last night. My friend, Sharon Lewis, was playing. She was amazing as always, but what really made her something special last night was that another friend, Anjuli, was singing backing vocals with her. They sounded great together but, no offence to Sharon, I was just waiting for Anjuli's vocals in every song they did together. It just gave it that soulful edge without overpowering Sharon's beautiful voice. I was really wowed.

I want to see more music like this in settings like this. It was great sitting in someone's front room listening to great music. Everyone was quiet and paid full attention to the singers. I think that's all I want from an audience, a bit of attention and appreciation.

I met a singer last night who I instantly didn't like. I'd seen videos of him on YouTube before then and knew I wasn't going to like him. He sat next to me and I didn't like him. He sang and I didn't like him. He called me Si when I'd introduced myself as Simon which made me like him even less. And finally he said "Is it different weather up there, Si?", in a cheap jibe about my height (I'm 6 foot 7) which pretty much put the final nail in the coffin.

I thought I never had a problem about whether people called me Si or Simon. But I realised it's my oldest friends and family and people who are really close to me who abbreviate my name to Si. It feels like a liberty when people use Si when they don't know me. Especially when they're middle class, jumped up, public school boy, Damien Rice wannabes.