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