Arborial Labour and Open Mic Etiquette for Beginners

I hate my hedge. And my garden, come to think of it. Well, not hate so much "don't have time for". I don't hate flora & fauna at all, and some of my most favoured memories have occurred in picturesque gardens so peaceful as to make you wonder whether you'd gone deaf, were you to experience them.

No, my trouble is just maintenance. Endless, bloody maintenance that instead of enjoying, I force myself to think of the things I could be doing instead of sweating it out with hedge trimmers, a broom and a bin-bag. Making a cup of tea, listening to the radio, writing or recording a song, strumming my favourite cover of the week (this week: Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac), going for a walk with my mp3 player jammed into my ears, making time zip past at three times its normal pace on Facebook/Twitter/PlayStation 3, sticking a white-hot knitting needle in my ears - all of these hobbies are, to me, infinitely more satisfying than arborial labour.

That said, I have managed to fit an awful lot into this weekend. In fact, the whole week has been jam-packed (if anyone knows the derivation of this phrase, I would love for you to enlighten me - comment/tweet/Facebook/e-mail me with your knowledge or theories!). I went to Birmingham with my Dead Radio Society friend Matt Tyrer to a pub called The Station, meeting up with his bandmate Sam Hayler, and Ania Maxwell, Kate Wilkins, John Bell & Rosemary Pearce (lovely people all) for the open mic night that takes place there every Thursday. It was a great night, the company was superb & the music first rate. There was a peculiar moment during my song "Imagine If We Fell In Love", where I looked down, and just happened to notice the tiniest of money-spiders slip between two floorboards. It's so very odd when you see something so tiny amid a big room full of people. Well, not so much full but populated.

By the way folks, especially the musicians among you, Open Mic Etiquette Tip: DON'T just piss off once you've played your set. I fully appreciate that some people may travel great distances or have to leave for a specific reason, but you know what musicians respect? Respect. Yes, that's right. We love to play to a full room of attentive people, and cannot bear an empty room or a bar full of beered-up gibbons bellowing over the PA. So it was baffling to see someone get up & announce to the assembled throng that he really wanted to become a part of the "Birmingham music scene", then proceed to play his songs, finish his pint and leave without stopping to listen to what the Birmingham music scene had to offer.

(Admittedly, half the Birmingham Music Scene that night came from outside the area, but we'll ignore that.)

 

This week I also completed my first home demo of a song called 'Sea Glass', which you can listen to either on my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/mrjohnmacleod) or my actual website (http://www.wix.com/mrjohnmacleod/music - this site is currently flash-only, just so you know). It was great to finally start experimenting with sounds again after a long time with no access to my eight-track recorder, and doing my own drumming on a record was magic & exciting. My previous recordings have had me programming the drums on a machine, which is ok in terms of it being fairly quick, structured and mistake-free, but you hear the difference & it lacks that je ne sais quoi. The kernel of the song was inspired by my friend Chrissy, who collects sea glass (as I may have mentioned before), and the concept of it just resonated with the notion of life in general, how we're all drifting through life & constantly getting refined over & over & over again, and hopefully being collected by someone who loves us for what we've become. Followed by four minutes of fuzz bass & E-bow. [variety club drum-fill]

What else happened this week? I saw Matt, Sam & Ed Moseley (three quarters of Dead Radio Society - Google them!) play a set at an event called Piccadilly Circus (which takes place in Hanley, Stoke-on -Trent). They were immediately after a band daft enough to turn up without cymbal stands, so the whole event got set back forty minutes while the drummer drove back home to get them, necessitating in the following bands getting their sets cut. Still, Dead Radio Society did a lovely set, despite the efforts of local drunks dancing in front of them & attempting to engage them in conversation. During songs.
 

I went to a fancy dress party straight afterwards, dressed as the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker, in case any of you were about about jump on Google), which was a bit cheeky seeing as the theme for my friend Sophie's birthday party was computer games, but I did some tenuous research & discovered that a game had been released on the Amiga in 1992 in which the Fourth Doctor was a playable character, so I was ok. I wonder how they animated the scarf? Actually, a better question would be: I wonder if they animated the scarf? Ed made a much better effort than me, making a costume for Mortal Kombat's thunder god, Raiden that was really quite excellent. It was a jolly fun night, although I am surprised that I drank my entire bottle of wine over the course of it. I don't usually drink wine, and when on beer I keep it to a couple of pints if possible, so this morning's headache was an interesting cranial vice experience. Two bacon sarnies, paracetamol & a cup of tea while listening to Dave Gorman was enough to ease it right off though, at which point I had to start to think about cutting the damned hedge.

See, the thing I dislike about this hedge (I know - what kind of digressive skills have I employed to get us back to where we started?!), is its sneakiness. Last time I cut it was sometime around late Summer/early Autumn, and it didn't grow until Spring, but it didn't just grow, it was as if someone underground pulled a lever & it went from "sparse" to "WOAHH!" in under a week, timing so perfectly that whenever I had a window of opportunity to cut it back down, it rained solidly for entire weekends or, even worse, so sporadically that I kept getting caught in it when stepping outside with the shears, thinking it to be safe.

I would love a nice-looking rear area (stop it) that didn't require me to pull weeds out of it (no really, stop) & strategically rearrange pebbles so that fragments of tarpaulin are well-covered, but so far that is not going to happen. For now I will just have to keep an eye on it & force myself to trim regularly.

Well, I have barked madly at you for long enough. My cup of tea is finished & bedtime fast approaches. There are many interesting things afoot that I dearly want to tell you all about, but for now I must keep it to small talk & chatter. In the meantime, I am supporting the band NEMO this Wednesday at The Grapes in Stafford at about 8pm, so get in early to catch me doing some acoustickery & banter, and keep checking on my site & Facebook for any demoes that I post. I do want to do another couple this week in perparation for my gig in Bromsgrove's Artrix Theatre at the end of the month, which I hope you can all come to, on Sunday 31st July. I will be mentioning this gig alot, just so you know. [smiley-face]

In the meantime, goodnight, sleep well, and listen to lots of good music as I have been doing. (Liam Finn's new record FOMO, Cathy Davey's excellent The Nameless, Emmy the Great's sublime Virtue, Nerina Pallot's exceptional Year Of The Wolf and Lykke Li's Wounded Rhymes have all soundtracked my week).
Goodnight all.
John.x