January 03 2008

Continuing the work theme, and understanding the mentality of advertisers, here’s another festive commercial tale.

A well-known manufacturer of crisps (that’s potato chips for those of you a few thousand miles west of Cork) decided to have some festive music for their ads this Christmas. I was asked to record 4 familiar Christmas tunes in a ‘Contemporary’ style that ‘reflected’ the brand (!!!!). I’ve been doing this kind of work long enough to know that it’s a waste of time to just steam ahead and record all 4 tunes. I record one and get the feedback and only then record all four with the requests applied to all. I wait. I know that the deadline is looming so I call the agency to see if they have heard anything. They haven’t. They promise to call the client and get back to me that afternoon. The agency ring back. I get my pad and pencil to write the comments down. The piece I selected from the 4 to start with was ‘Jingle Bells’, incidentally.

“I have the feedback”, says Dave.

“I’m ready with my pen,” I say.

“They think it’s, er…..too Christmassy”, says Dave.

‘It’s fucking Jingle Bells”, I say. “Hang on, let me just write this down in case I forget……’too Christmassy”.

Quite frankly, you couldn’t make it up.

I have spent the last few months recording electric guitars the forthcoming Album by the Tangent. Called, as far as I’m aware, ‘Not as good as the Book’ a rather ambitious double album and novel! I sing lead on a couple of tunes, or at least I did last time I heard it. I have yet to hear the finished version. I enjoyed the experience and played considerably more guitar than I would on my own albums. Again not sure just how much is still there and audible on the finished version. There’s talk of some live shows, but nothing concrete as yet. We’ll have to see how it all pans out. Here is part of the artwork for the album:




Django was most impressed. “Dad, you’re a cartoon! Cool”

It’s a proud moment when your son realises you are 2 dimensional.

I have also started writing a track for Pete Sinfield’s new album after he played me a track from the recent John Surman CD. Inspired by this I recorded a demo for him. Pete seems rather fond of it.

Here’s another tale from the music biz that will ring many a bell to those of you who have ever released a record. My recent album, you may recall, was released officially early last year. I was told by the label that we were going for a February release, which is what I told the PR Company that I had employed.

Consequently we were going for reviews and features that coincided with that date. It began to get difficult to get in touch with the label. In March I received an enthusiastic e-mail from a company who told me that they had just been employed to sell the album into the shops. He said the release date they were working to was May! Which means that no one had thought to discuss this point with me and that that I had already paid a good deal of my own money for promotion based on a release date some three months previously. Then, nothing.

I received an e-mail from my pal John who told me that he thought the label was about to into receivership. That this in turn is because a German company that they had done a deal with to manufacture and store product had, themselves, gone bust. This stock, including mine, was impounded. From what I can gather the initial pressings had been used for promotion, reviews and sales via my web site. All of the orders from web shops and retail outlets in the UK and Europe never received copies. Meaning, in commercial terms, that the whole exercise has been a waste of time and (my) money. I am now left with deciding what to do now. Do a deal with another label? Just print up copies my self and sell to a distributor? My favoured option right at this moment is to just forget the whole damn thing. But then I’m rather emotional about this at this point.

Learning to live in the country again.

The week before Christmas we ran out of oil. New to this country living and without being connected to the local gas supply we rely on oil housed in a tank hidden behind the trees in the front garden. No company could deliver before January. It was freezing in the house. By the Thursday Amanda called me to say that the kids couldn’t sleep in this weather, in spite of the electric heater and hot water bottles. Part of the house is a 1946 pre-fab with little or no insulation. We are going to have to knock this down and re-build next year.

When Amanda called I was in the West End buying Christmas gifts prior to my annual meal out with Barry Moorhouse and professor Barry Jones (plastic surgeon to the stars.) Yet again Phil Smee and his wife Ange came to the rescue putting Amanda and the kids up for the night. I kipped on the professor’s couch.

We managed to get some oil on Friday afternoon from a contact of the guy who was operating the digger making a trench for the mains and phone lines into the studio. As ever, It’s not what you know.

Amber was 3 years old on December 20th and we had a party for her on the Saturday.



On Christmas Eve we drove down to Chris Porter’s lovely home in a village in Hampshire, just like we did last Christmas. Just like last year we had a wonderful time, as did the kids.

On the Thursday we travelled to nearby Bournemouth to spend sometime with Amanda’s mother, her sister and kids. Next day we drove home. There was no electricity as the mains had tripped. It was freezing again. We threw out the food in the freezer and found the fruit bowl in the kitchen had been decimated. The mice are back we assumed. Maybe they had chewed through something to fuse the house? In the evening we went to a pub a mile up the road owned by a Thai family who run a good restaurant there. Being able to just meet up with our pals Nick and Liz at the drop of a hat is one of the reasons for this move. It was a lovely evening.

Getting ready for bed on our return Amanda went into the kitchen for some water. She called me to come and look at what she found in there and the reason for the empty fruit bowl we found that afternoon. On the kitchen worktop was a Glis glis, or edible door mouse. Something of a problem round this way. This mammal, a native of central Europe, was brought over by Lord Rothschild in the early 1900’s. He let a few of them out on to his estate and the have now bred in their thousands. Bizarrely they do not move out of a triangle of southern England bordered by Beaconsfield, Aylesbury and Luton. There he sat, looking at Amanda and me, without moving or showing any fear. The local pest controller, who’s been visiting us for the past few weeks, told us that we didn’t need to concern our selves with the dreaded Glis as they hibernate for longer than any other mammal and won’t be back till May. Well he’s here now and sleeping somewhere. He was back in the kitchen the next 2 nights too. You can’t catch them or hurt them, as they are a protected species. We await the pest man’s return.