Thinking about the Dum Dums just then started me on their second album demos. There’s 18 tracks all in – if they’d just picked twelve, it would’ve been a great record. The song that grabbed me when I first heard any of them was Closer To You (mp3). I wasn’t allowed to keep the CD of demos my friend Kelly played me the first time – so I wrote out the lyrics in an attempt to remember the song. That bit of paper is still on my wall today – note to self, must redecorate!
After two nights of going out, tonight we seem to be sitting around the flat, though I think we’re going out for a quick drink in a bit. JP and Max are working on a remix, Leo has been on his laptop – I think working on a song, judging by the midi keyboard on his lap – and Chris and I are playing around on Hype Machine. Last night we went out around Friedrichstrasse, and in the day I wandered up through Tiergarten – the biggest park in Berlin, with the Brandenburg Gate at the edge of it where Tiergarten joins with Mitte (the central district).
Chris, JP and I went to the Kennedy Museum earlier today. It’s mainly a photo exhibition and was very very good. Being here I keep on thinking who on earth thought the Wall was a good idea – it’s so weird seeing where it divided the city – but the city’s recovered so well. Leo and I were talking about it last night – there’s a lot of acknowledgement of what went on in the past hundred years here, and it’s not been forgotten, but it’s all moved on.
This is what I’ve been listening to. Oxford Comma on a near enough repeat, lots of Black Kids, and a lot of Hot Chip and their associated remixes. The CSS Streetlife DJs mix is Let’s Make Love over one of my favourite songs, Wordy Rappinghood by Tom Tom Club – so that’s pretty neat too. We heard it out last night and I’ve heard it before in London, so I’m glad I’ve finally bothered to track it down.
My merry band of four, also known as GoodBooks, go to Berlin tomorrow. They are there until the 30th, and they are quite excited. The purpose of the trip is mainly I think to get some non-touring/music industry based experience under their belts, and somehow – I can’t think how – Sevenoaks has ceased to fuel their imaginations. They’re taking some gear, renting a flat, and hoping to come back with a shedload of new songs. I have every faith. Seeing them play tonight (corporate shows fund this stuff, ya dig?), including one new song, made me a bit excited weak-at-the-knees Good Lord you’re good, I remember why I didn’t go to university now.
I’m going to Berlin on Thursday, and coming back the following Friday. It’s quite a while, but I’ll get out of their way. I’ve not been anywhere other than London for more than about four days for four or maybe five years – my holidays have merely been long weekends for quite some time. I’m excited about being away from London for a week. I’m excited about hanging out with the boys without any “yes we’ve got a meeting now” or “yeah you’re on stage in 45 minutes, we need to get dinner, kebab?” type pressures. And I’m looking forward to learning Berlin itself. I honestly can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be going – Berlin feels chunky and straightforward. I don’t know why that’s my impression of it, but I feel like I’m going to another place to live for a week, rather than in somewhere like Barcelona or even Paris where it feels like one is visiting. Perhaps that’s due to the nature of the trip. I guess we’ll see. I’m excited, though.
The whole thing makes me want to be in a band. Sitting down yesterday with the boys was fantastic because this trip has come entirely from them, and it feels like they’re putting the fun back into working hard. The past year has been tough on many occasions and felt too much like hard work and no fun a lot of the time. But it feels now like the four young men in GoodBooks are reclaiming this band as their own, forgetting all the “critically acclaimed” “not selling enough” “didn’t work at radio” crap and doing what they want to be doing. I think they’ll be all the better for it – and I suppose it’s what being in a band is really about.
The iTunes Festival is on throughout July at the ICA in London. Lovely lovely venue. There are a lot of established acts playing (Paul McCartney to name but one) every night of the month and it’s being filmed for Channel 4, recorded for iTunes and broadcast on Xfm/Capital (well, some of them anyway). GoodBooks were supporting Editors last night there.
It’s a funny set up because all of the tickets are free and given out to fans of the headline band – so after a hectic day (post office closures/broken amplifiers/free clothes/buying black sheets all part of it) the band played to a room a quarter full in a venue they’d nearly sold out themselves two months ago. Jamie from the ICA told me beforehand that they’d had that problem with Loney, Dear last week too, and that iTunes were trying to sort it out. It didn’t help our situation that the band were told to go on at 7.30pm, 15 minutes before we’d been told and therefore told everyone – including our record company! I had to run out as they started to tell Ollie that they were on, and then leave the venue (no reception there. The only bad thing about the place!) to call our marketing guy Chris. But it all came good in the end – the band played brilliantly and all looked great, the lights were ace and the three trumpeters we got to play in Passchendaele were fantastic too (thanks chaps).
Afterwards I watched some of Editors – great live band – and then discovered ‘the green room’, which had a bizarre ceiling like a water bed, a massive freezer full of little tubs of ice cream, and a nice fridge which came in use because we’d finished the rider. I introduced myself and the band to Ged, Sony BMG UK’s Chairman, who as yet hasn’t seen GoodBooks live (and missed both bands last night) and is apparently embarrassed about it. Given that they’re the best new band on his label (yeah, I went there. Gash, gash, and kind of all right, to name but three) he probably should be. Anyway, despite my waryness towards major label chairmen we had a good chat, partly about blogs and how Ged thinks there’s no reason not to be honest or transparent in writing them. Which bodes well for my Ali Love criticism, then. That aside, I think honesty should be true for all levels of the industry – too much of music is sort of shrouded in this mystery and people not wanting to share tactics or secrets or whatever. GoodBooks – probably me as well – went through a phase of treating music like a competition in terms of “beating” other bands and it took a lot for us all to get out of that way of thinking. There aren’t a finite number of successful bands and talking about how to make good ones successful shouldn’t feel like you are always watching your back.
Still, there’s politics involved, and for every manager who’d carry an amp home from Finsbury Park on the bus at 11pm for their keyboard player (that would be me, then) there’s others in the team who have other acts to focus on too – I guess it’s all about reaching the top of their pile. And that sort of is a competition. Bloody hell. I’m not sure where I’m going with this…
Tonight GoodBooks are at the Buffalo Bar so I’m headed down there in a bit. Fingers crossed it’ll all go to plan. I am going to drive there so that I don’t drink, because when open fridges and aftershows are involved the next day always seems a little fuzzy.
I want to test out this videos thing, so here is the video for Passchendaele by GoodBooks. The single is out next week. Preorder?
Last week I kept on eating bacon despite it being bad for me. On Thursday morning I had a revolutionary experience in the form of posh breakfasts – Gareth (of Drowned in Sound/I Was A Cub Scout managerial fame) and I decided to hit up the Wolseley on Piccadilly and were so taken by its genius and brilliance that we reckoned we’d go there as often as possible with as many different people as possible.
From the Wolseley/DiS offices I went on to Glastonbury. That was a good weekend. As everyone ever has said long before me, Bjork and Arcade Fire were among the highlights. My best moment, though, has to be Africa Express on the Park stage on Saturday night. Damon Albarn, Baba Maal, The Magic Numbers, Tony Allen, Fatboy Slim and Terry Hall, amongst others, all on a little stage just jamming away. I used my production pass to great effect and ended up side of stage when they did Rock The Casbah – it was absolutely brilliant. My only regret of the weekend is not spending more time with The Magic Numbers – we seemed to keep on missing each other which I think was mostly my fault – but hopefully I’ll see them soon.
Can’t remember the past week at all really. GoodBooks did Loose Ends on Radio 4 on Saturday which was good fun – BBC bacon sandwiches are top notch – though meeting Rupert Everett and David Suchet first thing in the morning was quite bizarre. I went to the pub in the afternoon with Dan our Digital Man where we bonded and discussed the dullness of weekends. There’s nothing like working out how to exploit Facebook to sell records on a Saturday afternoon, and so that was good.
This week holds booking some gigs for Le Tetsuo and preparing for GoodBooks ICA gig for the iTunes Festival, plus a trip to Canterbury on Wednesday to see GB in the studio. I’ve only been to Canterbury once, I think, but I’m far more excited about hearing new GoodBooks tracks for the first time in a couple of months than I am with the prospect of a new cathedral to add to my non existant list of ‘Cathedrals What That I Have Gone To’.
Got back from Birmingham this afternoon. I came home to read the papers and generally not be so hardcore as to go straight back to the office, only to discover that tennis has indeed returned to my television set with the advent of Stella Artois at Queens. I’m a little bit worried that I won’t go to the office again for the rest of June now that there’s tennis to watch from my sofa. When I was at school and the tennis was on I’d wander off to the caretakers’ room to sit with John and Danny. We drank tea and cheered on Andy Roddick. All kinds of fun.
Birmingham was good. The band were in good moods and played great too. Looking forward to the Mean Fiddler tomorrow night so they can show their wares to the folk of London.
This evening I had an excellent bacon sandwich before going for a run at about 10pm. That’s the latest I have ever been running, and I quite enjoyed it. For some reason I didn’t really run out of runnygy (I just made that word up. Running energy. Ya dig?) so just kept on trucking with Silent Alarm by Bloc Party as my soundtrack till it stopped feeling sensible. And I also worked out – this is a bit gross – that one of the things I love the most about running is the sweat behind my ears. It makes me feel a bit like a cat. Or something like that.
I got back from my run (oh, running. Starting to run again after getting the cast off my broken wrist feels like the beginning of a new romance. But that’s another day) this evening to find emails from GoodBooks with all of their ‘thank yous’ for their album sleeve. Reading it over – and calling them back to check about adding in people here and there – triggers off thinking about all of these people and what they’ve done in the past two years (and more) for the band. The document runs onto two A4 pages with the collective band thanks and individual thanks – just goes to show, I suppose, how many people there are behind the scenes! It feels crazy to think that we’re at this point now of doing the credits in the album – feels like something of an end point to the making of this record. Of course it won’t be done until the artwork’s all put to bed and we’re holding the stock and discovering the typos really. They’ve spent so long, though, working on the actual record that it’s cool to get to a point where we’re just packaging it up and making it look as special as it sounds.
A few years ago I really wanted to make an album, but that was pretty much mostly because I wanted to write a thank yous list. I’m pretty sure I spent more time thinking about that than the actually making songs – so I’ve been quite jealous this evening reading all of theirs! One of the perils of starting off as their friend and not manager is feeling at times like I should share in all the perks that they get (writing thank yous, free clothes, free Playstations, all that jazz) – it’s a good reminder when I don’t that there is a distinction between where I end and they begin. Boundaries that are necessary and welcome…I don’t think I’d like being in a band.
Tomorrow I’m off up to Birmingham to see GoodBooks and will catch up with a couple of old friends when I’m there. Should be good I hope. I have a feeling this week might be a bit gruelling, but I’m quite looking forward to that – recent conversations with those close to me have made me feel a bit more gung ho, all militant and full of the “Yeah!” spirit, so if I can keep on acting like that (new motto: Be more hardcore) then good things should happen. And good things happen when good things happen.
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