Well I guess it was partly down to my decision to take a year out in 2007. That required taking some time out for “me” and kind of created the opportunity. Additionally putting together the novelistme web site made me look a little more objectively at how important creating was to me. Initially when I kicked off the website prokect my mind was mainly focussed on writing. However in writing 100,000+ words of a travelogue I think I exorcised that demon (for a while at least) and so in getting back to the UK in May I found myself with the luxury of time that I’d never had before. That combined with the fact I now had a Mac and with that came a recording package called Garageband that allowed you to come up with pretty amazing results that a few years ago would have cost hundreds/thousands to achieve in a professional studio. When I started I was initially thinking of just doing a few songs, then as I saw the results it became an album and now at the time of writing this it’s almost too long for a single CD! The trickiest things for me in doing this were getting my head around the fact this wouldn’t be a band record. It was all me. There were no more excuses. For the past 10 years I’d been telling myself it would be great to be in a band again. When I heard crap songs I thought I could do better than that. Only if I had a band… But putting together bands are hard things. I’d love to now and as I’ve said I hope to perform this next year but it’s so difficult. First of all you have to like your band members that in itself isn’t easy. Then you have to get people of the right ability – there’s nothing more depressing that having to carry someone musically. Then you have to find people who have the same level of motivation as you otherwise your on a hiding to nothing. If they have less than you then getting anything done will be a nightmare. If they want more than you’re prepared to give then it’s ultimately going to get tense for everyone. Writing lyrics and singing were daunting prospects for me. I know I’m not a great singer but that’s never really stopped anyone knocking it out and there are plenty of great bands out there with crap singers. Besides for the purpose of the album I only had to get it right on a recording which is quite a different prospect from knocking it out live (that’s the next challenge!) The real challenge for me was writing lyrics. Whilst I’d written voraciously since my early teens the song form was always a difficult one for me. I could write poetry and I could write prose but songs I found difficult. I’d managed to write lyrics for a few of the early Vent songs but they weren’t great. But I’d already told myself no excuses. So in throwing myself into the task I just got on with it and it became easier and easier as I went. I still think I’m stronger at the music side of things but I’m proud of pretty much everything that has made it onto the album. |
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8) Sideproject (2007) |