Return Of the Fat Ankle

  I would like you to imagine that I am typing this in the most obscene opulence.  I am in a palatial gazebo, reclining upon a chaise longue, while being wafted by giant feather, er, wafters in this oppressive heat (honestly, it's like Duncan Goodhew here - airless).  Whatever you do, don't picture the reality - which is me sitting in a hot lounge, having just eaten a Chinese takeaway, and listening to the radio on the internet. 

  Life is full of mysteries, folks.  Why do electricians finally turn up just at the exact moment you sat on the toilet?  How can mobile phone signal just disappear when you haven't moved, leaving you waving the damned thing in the air like a tricorder?  How on Earth is it possible to only have a bit of chocolate & leave the rest of the slab in the fridge?  There is one prevalent mystery in my life, Blogwatchers, and now it is the most perfect of timings to introduce you to my Fat Ankle.

  It was Summer, 2006.  One week in July, I got a small pain in my ankle, which felt like a bruise.  Within a couple of days, my ankle-bone was rather hard to discern among the swelling.  What was worse was being unable to put any weight on it.  On my way to work one Sunday (which at that point involved a train journey), my foot gave way and I fell over.  This, coupled with my already-slow pace, meant that I missed my train, and when I finally did get to work, I spent most of the day sweating profusely in an un-air-conditioned shop, lying down with my foot atop a box.

  Naturally (and this is another of life's mysteries), the pain had subsided by the time I went to see a doctor with it, the following day.  She was baffled, and said the only thing my ankle put her in mind of (apart from a grapefruit) was gout.  Seeing as I don't drink much alcohol, and do drink a pretty good amount of water, and I don't eat a massive amount of rich food, it was hard to know what could be causing it.  Blood tests didn't show much to help either.  (As an aside, I informed a manager about the falling-over-with-swollen-ankle that caused me to be late, and when I then told her that my doctor reckoned it might be gout, she said "You can't get gout from falling over!", which is true, but reversing that logic for a moment, you can fall over from gout.)

  Now it's 2012, and it has reoccurred about twice, missing out a year or two, which makes me forget that it happened, until now.  You can now picture me sitting at my computer if you wish, but now imagine me putting my foot up on a drumstool.  The pain bit has started, and I'm hoping it doesn't go to drastic swelling, otherwise I will be hauling myself to my gigs this week with a walking stick (a rather nice deep blue wooden stick, if you're curious).

  So, Blogwatchers, this is where I am.  Elevated and listening to the radio.  If any of you have a feathery wafting thing, make your way here post-haste!

Ta-ta,

John xx

Presenting...Yesterday I Was

Hello Blogwatchers.


I've managed to keep my blogsplurging to minimum, but now that work has started on my next EP of songs, I am rather proud of my results this weekend, as some of you may have noticed by way of my throwing it at almost every internet portal I can think of - this blog is no exception.  Of course, it would be rather sad if I just bunged it on this blog and left it at that, so I thought I would share with you one or two observations based on my experience of recording this particular song.

• It only takes my setting up of recording equipment, and the opening of some windows (as it is currently very hot & I would rather not suffocate while unravelling cables - more on that shortly), for my neighbourhood to spring into life.  I started work at about 3pm, and within seconds of my 8-track being laid out, a couple four gardens away decided to have a blazing row, and next door started, well, doing what they apparently do best.  At least I wasn't doing vocals at that point (forever my biggest worry about recording at home).
• I still hate wires & leads.  The best way to get me into a sullen & grumpy silence is to put me in a room filled with the darned things.
• I have indestructible fingers.  The lead break you hear in the below track was an accidental piece of marvellousness, and I am not terribly confident in the electric guitar department.  If we were in a studio and you asked me to "riff a bit" or something that involved improvised guitar-soloing, I would be tremendously stuck and play you one note in a rhythmic manner.  I have to work these things out, find something that fits, and that hopefully doesn't sound like a six year old wiping his nose on the strings.  (That said, it's possible that there are six year olds that can play better lead guitar than me.  Please don't find any on Youtube & show me, I'll cry.)  In any case, I happened upon the idea for this lead break, practised for an hour, and then took at least ten attempts to record it.  Twice I thought I'd done it right, but deleted them and had another go an hour later.
• I also now understand why drummers often go without shirts.  Dave Grohl and Joey Castillo must be superhuman, and how they can do an entire gig's worth of drumming is utterly beyond me.

So there it is.  I present to you, my newborn friend, 'Yesterday I Was'.  I hope you enjoy it.

 Yesterday I Was by mrjohnmacleod

Love,
John xxx

"A funny thing happened on the way here tonight..."

"So much pleasure," said Vic and Bob, during their brief stint advertising yoghurt, "but where's the pain?"


  For some reason, this question has lingered in my mind ever since those adverts were on the telly.  I am not, strictly speaking, an astrologically minded fellow, but every so often I wonder whether my Libran roots are at the centre of my tendency to sit on the fence, see both sides of an argument, and not be too hasty to pass judgement. I have heard it said that we live in a dualistic universe and I rather believe it, and so during moments of supreme happiness & contentment, I am often waiting for the other shoe to drop.


  So it was with the weather today.  OHMYSWEETLORDTHERE'SSUNANDWARMTHANDEVERYTHING! is pretty much what my brain has been doing this week.  Especially after the weekend, where I went to Manchester to see Gemma Hayes play at St. Ann's Church.  For the time I wandered the streets of Manchester, carrying an umbrella just in case it chucked it down (much as it had been doing the entire previous week), a sharp wind and general chill dogged my every waking movement, and it felt more akin to March than May.  It's as if someone has been blindly slapping their hand across the wall and finally found the light switch.


  With all this loveliness abound in the atmosphere, there has to be a downside somewhere, right?


  Right.


  Admittedly, it was brief, but the effect on my retina will be some time in healing.  I was walking home from the day-job today, laden with two carrier-bags of shopping & my rucksack, earphones in & playing some Gemma Hayes, and I was enjoying the warmth and the sunshine, the way you do when you've got music on and are unencumbered by coats, gloves & scarves.  (Those moments can be more life-affirming than being kissed, sometimes, can't they?  I think because you aren't huddling & praying not to be rendered too cold, nor are you battling fierce, numbing winds, or hiding from the rain, it's a very freeing experience, walking in a bright, warm sun.  Even if your arms are dropping off with shopping bags.)  "What," I thought, "could possibly spoil this perfect afternoon?" 


  Then I rounded a corner to walk the footpath under a bridge, and was treated to the spectacle of a giggling, tipsy woman, um, relieving herself against the bridge wall, while her equally tipsy boyfriend looked on, supping from a can of beer and also laughing.  I walked past, looking fixedly at the opposite wall, when the bloke said to me (I made this out through my earphones) "Nothin' you've not seen before, eh?"  I was determined to keep walking, so uncomfortably exhaled in the style of a "laugh", and then really motored on as soon as I was past them.  (For those of you who like  appropriate songs, the Gemma Hayes track that was playing in my ears during this was 'Easy On The Eye'.)


  So there is our prime example of cosmic balance - I enjoy the sun and warmth, life presents me with a grim tableau of public urination and voyeurism.  So much pleasure, and there's the pain.


  It was a similar state of affairs just before this weekend when I went to see Miss Hayes, (albeit the other way around with pain followed by pleasure) when I had a slump in self-belief and lost my ability to find a way forwards.  (If you haven't read, I had a big confidence lapse on Friday and wrote a blog about how I was feeling, whereupon lots of lovely readers, tweeters and friends got in touch and bucked my spirits up.)  What your responses and support made me think was that all I needed to do was keep going.  That sounds terribly simple, and in some ways maybe it is, but the main thing I wasn't doing was playing.  I have a stock six songs that I know awfully well, and anything else I have to run through a few times before a gig, so as soon as I got back from Manchester, I went to my list of songs and drafted out four short(ish) setlists, and I have spent every night so far this week practising each one in turn.  It is going nicely so far, only fumbling a couple of chords or dropping one or two lyrics here and there, but it's turning out that I know these songs better than I thought I did.  And once I've gone through these sets a few times each, I will know them intimately, and feel confident & happy enough in the material to pick a setlist and run with it.  I reckon that will improve my musical state of mind no end, don't you?  Never underestimate self-discipline.


  Also, if you see me slacking, just remind me of what happened on the way home this afternoon.  That should scare me into any form of distracting activity.


  Speak soon folks,
John xxx

Ode to a long, hot shower (and THANK YOU)

Hello again!


  I know, I'm barely giving you chance to keep up with my head (nor am I, if it comes to it), but I just wanted to spout forth some praise about a nice hot shower.  They are amazing and beautiful things, aren't they?  On the slowest of slow mornings, as soon as I clamber, blank-eyed into the shower, I start to wake up.  (You would think, after thirty-two years on this blessed planet, I would learn to crawl out of bed on a weekend morning, early, and have a shower, and, y'know, wake up.  Sadly, this is not always the case, and so many a weekend has seen me ludicrously recumbent.  Last week, when staying with my sister & her family, I had more early nights & mornings than I generally have when I'm not on holiday.)


  The other odd thing about showers is that they get my imagination going (not like that).  I could point to songs on my list and tell you how many of them have been finished there.  I tend to zone out a bit once the jets kick in, and while my practical brain de-focuses and starts thinking about "Ooh, this is warm," my creative brain starts to mull over that missing line in the third verse, or it will hum a bass-line at me, and then whisper an opening lyric.  (So far, thankfully, I have not reached the point where I get so stuck on a song that I have to dash into the bathroom at 11:30pm and dunk my head under the shower to finish off a pesky middle-eight.)  While I often enjoy the way that this seems to work, I can't help but feel it slightly unfair that of all the ways of loosening my brain up enough to write things down on paper, or play them on guitar, I seem to have chosen one that involves hot running water.


  Anyway.  The real reason I am writing this is to say THANK YOU.  Those of you who responded to my previous blog entry via Twitter (plus a text message and an attempt to leave a comment on the entry itself but couldn't, thanks to a pesky internet blip), you are lovely, lovely people (I do use the word 'lovely' a lot, but no other word does it, really) and you all cheered me up and popped a bit of fight back into me.  It's a funny old game, wanting to be a musician and songwriter, and to be able to reach people with your songs, there are peaks and troughs where your confidence can just let in a few doubts and worries.  Before you know it, you're wandering the house at midnight, trying to think of a "game-plan" that seems feasible without having to be a millionaire.  (I don't have to be a millionaire of course, I just need my guitar and my hands and some time, but then the thoughts you have at midnight aren't always the most lucid, are they?)  But it's so good to know that you are out there, being supportive and telling me to keep going.  It makes me happy and it means everything.  And of course, I shall obey.


So, thank you.


I am off for the weekend now, to watch Gemma Hayes, so I bid you adieu and have a jolly weekend.


Lots of love,
J xxxx

A Bedtime Story

  Somewhere, not now, but then, there is a little boy that wants to be a comedian.  If you asked him why he wanted to be a comedian, he might not be able to tell you.  He would probably shrug and mention that he likes Morecambe and Wise because they seem so terribly happy (he would probably be at a loss to understand you if you tried to tell him that Morecambe & Wise were probably  an exception to the rule with comedians in those days, and if you further boggled his little mind about the crippling depression that wracked the other humourists that he is enjoying as he grows up, he would politely nod in a vacant nonchalance he has since perfected - this is a child who, when told the facts of life, naively misunderstood, and for several years believed that you had to do put, erm, that, erm, there in the hospital, immediately before or during the birth, which seemed a little too intimate for his liking in front of all those doctors) and that he likes making people laugh (he has yet to grow out of this simple pleasure).


  It is very easy to have dreams.  It is astonishingly easy.  You just need to think them.  When they are depicted on the telly, the protagonist looks into the middle-distance and we see them with a fancy hairdo, spraytan, whitened teeth, and dressed in brightly-coloured, tight clothing, waving at a screaming audience in a glimmering television studio.  Those are the sorts of daydreams I used to have at school.


  Time plods on, and somewhere, the little boy becomes a boy and then a teenager and then discovers music.  He takes it to his heart and learns to express himself in scribbled lyrics.  If you asked him why he buried himself in music all of a sudden, he might not be able to tell you why.  He would probably shrug and mention that he likes Crowded House because they seem so terribly happy (although if you tell him that the reality behind their outward hilarity was sometimes strained, and that tension and depression weren't always far away from the Crowded House camp, he would probably listen, interested) and songs seem to be a way of channelling feelings that he hadn't realised was possible.


  When you connect with something that really reaches you, something that gets into your head and tickles your brain, your dreams start to become more grounded.  Instead of that strange, vapid idea of "fame", you start to think more in terms of what it would mean to do something.  Of what it would mean to you to do something.


  Not much later, the teenager goes to see his favourite musician in concert.  It's a bit of a jaunt, and along the way he gets his wallet stolen as a result of his own naivete, then avoids getting skinned & beaten in what was one of the roughest neighbourhoods in the city, whilst looking for the people who nicked it.  He enjoys the concert and is inspired by it, and emerges with a fresh wave of ambition.  If you asked him why he wanted to play guitar and sing all of a sudden, he would look you in the eye and say "Because I want to do it, because I believe I could do it."  Within a few weeks, he learns a variety of chords from the back catalogue of his favourite band, and is not only playing their songs, but using chord structures to make his own.


  You can see where this is going, no doubt, for as a reader, you are renowned for your skill with spotting a narrative.  Chords were learned, songs were (very slowly) written, and eventually concerts were played.  As he does these things, the "Because I want to do it, because I believe I could do it," is transformed, and he finds himself through his songwriting - he brings meaning to the songs in the same way that they bring meaning to him.  He expresses himself.  There were even a couple of bands and some appearances on local BBC radio.    Then he rests.  He is tired and has lost the spark for a time.  After a period of stopping almost completely, he comes back, realises how much he misses writing and playing, and finds avenues now open to him to broadcast to more people than before.


  The strange thing about the journey from there to here is that now, the need to be able to live has the ability to kick the music to one side where it sees fit.  At a point where the man in this story has finally grown in maturity and experience, and has what he feels are some of the best ideas that he has ever had, and potentially has a bigger audience than he has ever had, every day brings with it a necessary distraction of duties to keep him from turning his thoughts and ideas into some sort of tangible thing.  And he doesn't just want to do it for the people who are willing to listen, he wants to do it for himself, to prove he can do it, and because he will find it tremendously satisfying.


  He doesn't know where to start, which is confusing, but there is also a fear now that wasn't there before.  There is a cold, hard stone in his gut that makes him worry that he will always be an idiot, in a house, with the only company being that of his dreams, dreams no longer of brightly lit television studios and whitened teeth, but dreams of recording studios, musicians, new songs, playing with sound, quiet attentive music venues, and the love of it all.  


  He hopes against hope, and, drinking the last of his tea, goes to bed.

We Need Songs...

Hello again, Blogwatchers,


  Songs are funny, aren't they?  We need them.  We don't all need them in the same way, of course, we each react to them differently, or need different things from them.  Some need their music to not have too much depth, be pleasantly upbeat and to accompany their day inoffensively, while those sensitive souls among us need their music to do everything short of bathing them and cooking them a dinner, providing emotional support, optimism and nostalgia, healing wounds, reopening old ones, while others just want their melody to be repetitive, thumpy and able to convince them that it's okay to put their hands down a stranger's pants in a nightclub.


  I am more likely to land in the middle category than anything else (there's no chance of me attempting to cram my hands into a lady's undercarriage at the merest hint of bangin' trance, that's for sure).  There are so many songs that plonk me back to a time when hearing it meant everything.  Play 'Second Chance' by Liam Finn and I am stalking the living room of my last house, resting my head on a doorframe and closing my eyes to the disappointing world that was around me at the time.  Play 'The Big Picture' by Bright Eyes and I am sitting in the stock room of a shop in Crewe, surrounded by deliveries and praying for a chance to leave.  Play 'Come Over' by Cathy Davey and I am dancing like an idiot behind the counter of the best shop I ever worked in, as my best friend Mike is glad that a musician he reckoned I'd like becomes one I love.  Play the entirety of the 'Era Vulgaris' record by Queens Of The Stone Age, and I am curled up with my girlfriend on the settee in my old flat, on a baking hot summer day in 2008.  These images drop gracelessly into my head once the sound-trigger starts, like the opposite of a family's attempt to use a stereo to rouse a loved one from a coma, the music puts me into a thought-coma.


  And so it is with the songs we write.  I was talking about this with friends at the second Nerina Pallot concert last Friday night, and we were saying how strange it is to play a song that is borne of a very specific thought or event.  It was suggested that it must be cathartic to get the songs out of your system at a gig, and I half-agree.  If the playing of a particularly emotive song goes well, it is rewarding and there is a sense of making something good out of a difficult subject.  At the same time, however, in performance I am hurled back into the state of mind I was in at the time.  I am not acting the emotion of the song, I am feeling it.


  I have been at Keele Folk Club this evening, unveiling a new song and re-deploying two songs that I had accidentally let fade a little.  Among these is a song with which I hope you will all become familiar before too long (I have plans for it, you see), called 'It Was You'.  There is a sad story behind the song, as it depicts an evening of sadness and poignancy.  It is not a constantly present thing in my head, but when I stand up and play those chords, I am in my living room, looking at boxes, and anxiously waiting for that knock on the door.  And you can't  always shift it of your head straight away, so you hope the audience carries you through and helps snap you out of it.


  Of course, you can switch from this to the idiot whimsy of 'I've Still Got Your Blood On My Curtains', and shatter the mood completely, and it doesn't matter because you're putting on a show! but it is fascinating.  To write a song and perhaps years down the line, look at it and think about where you were compared to where you are, to see what has changed, perhaps gain new insights into what you were thinking when you wrote it.  If you write (not necessarily songs, either), I urge you to look at something you've written, maybe a long time ago, and give it a good read.  What does it tell you?


  So there it is, second blog this week.  I  have been particularly reflective (and not in the sense that I become luminous in the beam of car headlights), and it's lead to thoughts I would hope I've expressed in words.  I am going to Manchester on Saturday to see more giggery, and from then on it's practice, practice, practice in readiness for all my gigs.  Head to http://www.wix.com/mrjohnmacleod/music and go to the Live Dates page if you want to come and see me play!


Be good, be happy and speak soon,
G'night,
J xxx

Tea, Laundry, And The Need To Be Heard

Good evening, folk.  Mugs of tea and inflatable piles-cushions at the ready?  Excellent.


  You know when you are pottering around the house, ticking little things off your jobs-list, unable to bend down and pick up a pair of soon-to-be-laundered pair of underpants without it issuing a sigh from your body that you initially think is a sign that you're tired but, when you think about it, it's one of those emotionally-charged sighs that tell you you're feeling a bit drained in some aspects of your life?  No?  Just me?  Well, in any case, I am in that ball-park. (Wait though, that's a bit of an Americanism that has drifted Englandwards, isn't it?  Should I say something more Britishy?  Currently, the only thing I can think of is car-park, but that lends an entirely unwelcome aesthetic to what I'm saying.  I think I shall stick with ball-park.)  I suddenly needed a chat, an ear, and a shoulder upon which to rest, and so here I am chatting at with you.


  I have exercised a little discipline this evening, and done things like laundry and washing-up, and I have also written a list of the songs I wish to play on a regular basis, seeing as there are a few concerts coming up in the next few weeks, and if my sets were exactly the same for every one of them (and bear in mind that one gig will see me playing two half-hour-or-so sets), then it would get a bit boring.  So, I thinks to myself, I will practice all the songs I don't play very often, so that I am au fait with them again.  I have done that tonight, and will continue so to do until I don't need the lyric book in front of me, then I will plan out a rotation of setlists, so that they all get an airing at some point or another.


  I just went downstairs to make a cup of tea (well, I went downstairs to make up my mind whether or not I fancied a cup of tea or a glass of Baileys, and decided on the tea), then I came back upstairs, drank the tea, read some old blogs (not mine, I hasten to add), and thought of nothing else to write on here.


  My mind's a little bit away with the fairies if I'm honest (and I just know I've got to trudge back downstairs in a minute to empty the washing machine), because I am in that post-gig nostalgia you get after attending two nights of concerts from one of your favourite musicians.  In case you don't follow my tweets, haunt my Facebook page or stare, unrelentingly, hour after hour, at my Instagram page in the hope it updates, I went to London last week to spend some quality time with my sister and her family (my, how my nephew is growing - he is a cheeky little sir and has taken to walking hither and yon with his hands held behind his back like a little statesman, it's adorable, and were it not an ill-advised sort of message to give to a youngster, I'd almost want to buy him a bubble-pipe).  At the end of that week, I went to see Nerina Pallot play her entire oeuvre over two nights at St. James' Church.


  I loved those two evenings.  I saw my friend Jenny whom I've not seen since October, I made two new friends, one of which is a chap called Michael, and the other is a writer also called Michael. Michael Linford, for those of you crazy about details (you may find out more about him at www.michaellinford.co.uk, and for Heaven's sake send him a list of the 20 songs you'd like to hear as the world ends - you can find out more about that on his website - and go to his facebook pages, 'like' them, and get to know the man, he's a proper gent).  I also saw Nerina & her husband Andy, and was able to say hello and thank you for two lovely evenings without (and here I keep my fingers so tightly crossed that I might have just heard something snap) making an out-and-out arse of myself.  Somewhere in the annals of my internet scribblings, there is a blog about the time I met Neil Finn and decided that would be a great moment to mention me getting my wallet stolen.


  (I still have not emptied the washing machine.)


  I can tell you this, my head still has idiocy swimming around it.  The kind of self-doubt you can only get at nearly half-midnight after a cup of tea and a sing-song.  Those little nagging thoughts that ask "What do you want from life?" or "Aren't you just howling into the void by now?" and "That shirt's going to smell funny if you don't hang it out soon."  I know.  My brain is a fun place to be, some nights.


  More than anything, I want to be heard.  I want to sing my songs to as many people as will listen.  Playing those songs through earlier on (some for the first time in months) has brought home how much work I have to do, and how much I wanted to have it done in 2012, and we're in May already.  Assuming there's going to be an apocalypse, I am going to be seriously shafted if I want to finish this piece of work I've got floating in my brain.  And how does one balance an EP & LP's worth of material with gigs and a personal life (an occasionally lonely personal life) and a full time job without going crackers?


  I suppose (no, I hope) I am going to find out.


J xx


P.S:  Speaking of finding my music everywhere, you couldn't be a swell & become a fan of my page on http://mrjohnmacleod.amazingtunes.com could you?  I'd be awfully grateful.  Thank you.  Be good, and, more importantly, be nice. [trudges downstairs to retrieve an armful of wet underwear and shirts]


P.P.S:  It is now 7:15am the following morning, and I am finally able to post this blog, after the signal went on both my internet AND mobile phone, in what I can only guess to be some sort of transmitter failure on behalf of my mobile network.  I'd like to say I was calm and sanguine about not being able to tweet, text or call anyone concerning my being incommunicado, but I was terrified.  It seemed like the beginnings of a film, and that any second, men in balaclavas (an inappropriate form of headgear for May, or even any month, and only acceptable for nefarious doings) would burst through my door, cudgel me into unconsciousnessness, and leave me to wake up strapped to a chair in a spider-filled dungeon.  I actually had that thought process, and am now really rather glad to have woken up without a trace of gaffer tape applied to my person.