Whilst I think it's just about possible that more people read Wikipedia than this blog, I did want to add my voice to the screaming about SOPA - not as an internet user, although I am naturally very concerned about what SOPA could do to everyone's web if passed, but as an indie musician who makes all of the small amount of money I make from my work via the internet.

There's lots out there to read and understand, but I'd like to make two quick points. The first is that despite Google's decision to protest this only on its American site, this is a law which, if passed, will have deep consequences for artists living and working outside the US too. SOPA is a big, clear reminder that the internet is American, so this isn't just about homogenizing (!) something whose heterodoxy is its strongest attribute, it's also about bringing an international space further under the legislative grasp of one particular country. As you can tell from my cod-American singing voice (and the list of those who inspire it), America already wields a disproportionate influence over my music - it's worth remembering that this influence extends to the paraphernalia as well, and that it can get worse.

I reckon more or less anything which un-diversifies the internet is bad for it, and, by the way, I think that should give us pause on wikipedia, google, and some of the other big sites protesting SOPA as well as SOPA itself. But as a musician, the other thing I wanted to say was that this is not just a digital issue. To my mind, it also speaks to the latest developments in copyright law, which has always had a rather fraught relationship with art. Copyright was started with the aim of protecting artists (international copyright law is only around a century old), but too often has turned out to serve the interests of companies which make their money by exploiting artists and audiences equally. I recommend David Shields's excellent book Reality Hunger, which profoundly emphasises the fact that art has always been about copying other artists. The more I read about copyright, the more it strikes me, in its current form, as part of the problem rather than part of the solution - antithetical not only to internet plurality but to artistic agency. The internet gives us a chance to devise and adopt a system which is fairer to everyone; SOPA is an attempt to impose the 80s model of the record industry onto it. For more on this, I recommend MC Lars's manifesto on the subject.

I find all this fascinating - in my capacity as co-convenor of a popular fiction seminar at King's College London, I'm running a seminar on it next month, with a real copyright lawyer as guest speaker. I'm also constantly running up against the issue in all other aspects of my life, whether as a scholar, musician, or wikipedia user.

There have been so many 'world events' this year that it feels almost indulgent to spend any time on personal reminiscence. But this blog is nothing if not self-indulgent, and it's not like anybody except me reads it, so let's have a go: 2011 was my first year without moving house in a while, although I did put the tent up a few times. I made a tea monster, saw a chinese lantern on a beach, flew over the tennyson monument, spent several days talking in a cod scottish accent, had an encounter with a seagull some miles from the coast, got (mildly) into crosswords, avoided imaginary serial killers whilst doing nocturnal drinks runs in a reconditioned victorian lunatic asylum, had a nap in the front row of a gig, wrote my name with a sparkler, strolled a strange quayside, lay on a huge tyre swing, cried in the theatre, stood outside waterloo station covered in fake snow, and slept in an apparently-abandoned university campus in the middle of nowhere. I cleaned decaying meat out of a thawed freezer, wrote an encyclopedia entry, took the bus to the jubilee line, played a bugle on the roof of a sea fort, sunbathed in a prom queue, drove the faithful Peug around deserted, magical 4am London, shouted into a microphone outside the Birmingham House of Sport, sat through a poker game, stargazed on garlic-infused grass, covered the walls of a lecture theatre with terrible graffiti, reluctantly gatecrashed a 1930s cocktail party, stood within about ten feet of Damon Albarn, saw a creeper-covered watermill ruin loom out of the woods ahead of me, drank a weird energy drink which turned me into a roman soldier, had acat for a week, and met a badminton champion. I had my first first-class train ride (which I didn't pay for), and my last young person's rail discount (which I did). The Peug lost both headlights and two tyres, and came bouncing right back. I swam in Port Meadow, in the English Channel, and off the coast of Kent. I dressed as a caterpillar, watched Elvis from a sofabed, and I got the Triumph back.

Modest, but not entirely insignificant. Everyone else just got engaged or married or had kids or something, so I figure I'm way ahead! I have a number of lifestyle goals for the new year, but in terms of material ambitions, let's see how we do with these:
1) Finish my thesis
2) Release at least one more record, probably Vibe, Drill, and "It"
3) Be able to write a longer post than this one in a year's time.

A very sincere Happy New Year to all readers. I really hope I can offer you some decent FaceOmeter goodies in the coming twelvemonth, and that you'll be here with me to enjoy.

December 27th is our annual day of totally irredeemable, tackle to the wind movie madness. As some of you know, every other year it's the complete extended Lord of the Rings. In the off years, we strive to come up with other challenges... AND WHAT COULD BE MORE CHALLENGING THAN SITTING THROUGH HOURS OF LATE NINETIES ACTION FILMS STARRING NICOLAS CAGE okay, I admit that there are more challenging things out there, but it's a day off.

Film 1: Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000)
Actually, it takes a full 118min for this film to go, but on the way we get lots of cars (I've never really understood that), some women who like men who like cars (that one is also hazy), and a bit with a car jumping over lots of other cars in slow motion (which I totally get). As a bonus, there's the pleasurable experience of a British character who isn't posh or a cockney! But he is the baddie, so it's still only half points. This film was a caprice, an aside, a handful of haribo, a mere limbering-up for the more serious Cage action which was to follow.
Best line: "They call him The Carpenter"

Film 2: The Rock (1996)
Ed Harris (+1), assisted by lots of disgruntled marines (+1), takes over Alcatraz island (+2). The only person who can disarm his rockets, which are now pointing at San Fransisco, is chemical weapons expert Nick Cage (+4). But how to get on to the island? ONLY WITH THE HELP OF FORMER PRISON INMATE SEAN CONNERY (+400bn). Directed by Michael Bay, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and with a score by Hans Zimmer, this is truly a monster.
Best Exchange: "Hey man, you just fucked up your Ferrari" "It's not mine"

Film 3: Face/Off (1997)
Maybe it's the third-movie slump, maybe it's the rising nausea cause by the acres of snacks we'd been conveyor-belting inside ourselves, or maybe it's the fact that John Woo is the worst mainstream director ever to have lived, but this film just didn't stand up with the others. We were promised arch-nemeses John Travolta (goodie) and Nick Cage (baddie) swapping bodies for no good reason in order that they could have speedboat chases, threaten each other's families, and run through loads ofdoves in slow motion while shit blew up. What actually happened, though, was that arch-nemeses John Travolta (goodie) and Nick Cage (baddie) swapped bodies for no good reason in order that they could have speedboat chases, threaten each other's families, and run through loads ofdoves in slow motion while shit blew up. A disappointment.
Best Line: "I'd like to take his face.............. off". This was such an easy choice I'm adding a new award category for this film, THUS:
Least interrogated psychological problem: Why does Travolta's character keep doing that thing where he runs his hands slowly over the faces of people he likes? That's really, really, really weird. Especially when his daughter does it at the end to the new brother which the family unquestioningly adopts with no warning or consultation EVERYONE IN THIS FILM NEEDS REALLY EXTREME THERAPY

Film 4: Con Air (1997)
The atmosphere was turgid after the final speedboat chase of Face/Off, but fortunately some respite was in store. Con Air is a film in which John Malkovitch and Nick Cage play two people who dislike each other. BUT ON A PLANE, where disliking is always so much more intense! To accompany them, we have: (a) Steve Buschemi as a creepy serial killer who escapes at the end and that's portrayed as a good thing even though he killed like thirty people apparently, (b) John Cusack, who isn't actually on the plane but he and Cage get on adjacent motorbikes in sync so that's fine, (c) Colm "Chief Fucking O'Brien" Meaney as your traditional 'character who doesn't understand that you need to just let Nick Cage and John Cusack do everything if you're in a film with them', and most importantly, (d) Nick Cage's SOUTHERN ACCENT - certain to sway ladies of any nationality. AM I RIGHT LADIES?

While the deafening silence following that last question reverberates around the room a bit, let me sign off by saying that although I cleaned my teeth for several hours to get all the bits of chocolate and popcorn out afterwards, no cleaning process will prove adequate for detarnishing my soul, which will be stained forever with memories of this dreadful day. It was fantastic. See you all next year!!!

Oh, I almost forgot:
Best Line: "Make a move and the bunny gets it"

More of Nick Cage's classic moments!

I've decided to share this poem I wrote! Occasionally I get an idea that doesn't work as a song, and these are slowly accumulating into a collection of angsty poetry. I did this one at the recent Christmas Catweazle, and nobody firebombed me afterwards, so I have to assume that it's alright!

It's called 'The Gladstone Link', and you can read it here [PDF].

I'm sitting on a whole bunch of these which I'll maybe refine into a collection of some kind in about a decade. Exciting, isn't it?

FaceOmeter notice: in the interests of pretentiousness balance, the next blog post on this site will be a digest of Nick Cage movies.

As I'll be offline over new year, I'm having to ramp up my normal schedule of backward-looking Year in Review bullshit. I'll write the big cryptic disclosure and leave it up here for automatic release on the 31st - exciting! - in this post I wanted to do something very slightly different, which is tick off definite accomplishments of 2011. It was a beast of a year for all sorts of reasons, and I entered it, as you may remember if you clicked that link, with three objectives: write two chapters, release a CD, and make my open mic night popular. Two and a half out of three isn't bad - Bright Idea is doing better than it was a year ago, but it's hardly a runaway success story. I don't mind this so much because even with a low turnout we somehow always manage to have a great time! I did all the rest.

I also wrote 8 songs ("...Klaus Diemler...", "Time at the Old Evening Cabbage", "The Gallop of the Monkey Horse", "Thomas A. Edison's Bright Idea", "One for the Windowbox", "Swing for the Summer", "Child of Monkey Horse!", "An Evening at the Pub with Bosun Peters"), and have serious steps towards 3 more ("Radcliffe, Triumphant", "About Time", "Muscle Memory"). A few more musical ideas are currently 'in the air' and may yet become something! As well as releasing The Spooky EP with Sam Taplin and Max Jones, I also curated Catweazle's first Compilation CD. I guest-hosted seven catweazles too, and 46 Bright Idea nights in East London. There have been 8 new FaceOmeter videos this year, including the legendary Greenwich Shrove episode of fOwl, the video which Taplin and I now refer to simply as 'the coup', and the laboriously produced Spooky documentary. I ran (or co-ran) three different series of seminars at college, altogether totalling twenty sessions. I organised my first full-blown academic conference (only a one-dayer, but still) and gave papers at four others. I even wrote some poetry, and I have a pretty good idea for a children's book - but don't hold your breath for either of those.

I bunched all this in one place because it's sometimes easy to forget that one does occasionally produce tangible things, and that accomplishments, however they might look next to somebody else's, do exist. It's also helpful to have a list like this so you can see what to aim at next year - more on that in the forthcoming post. Meanwhile - I encourage you to make a similar list of your own. You've done more than you think, and it's the time of year to remember that! Feel awesome about yourself! Woo!

I'd like to thank Mozilla Firefox for making me type the following out twice.

Whilst trying to write the lyrics for the two "big-ish" tunes I'm currently working on - they're called 'About Time' and 'Muscle Memory' - I accidentally cooked up this little caprice. Some songs emerge all the more effectively for not being cared about, and the stupidity of this tune is a nice counterbalance to the strain and self-torture involved in 'About Time' (one of the most serious songs I've ever tried to write).

A caprice it may be, but 'An Evening in the Pub with Bosun Peters' (that's what I'm calling it) nevertheless represents a style of playing which I've never tried before, and is thus virgin territory for FaceOmeter. Who knows what avenues it'll open up! Even if it opens up nothing, though, it's an amusing experiment for me. My favourite thing about it is that the narrator awakes from unconsciousness in each of the song's four verses. He's always passing out, is Bosun Peters! What a loon. And he wakes in the same line of each verse, too, which is the lyric-writing equivalent of a wide-legged electric guitar solo played atop a large mountain. But enough of that. Here are the words. Perhaps there'll be a record one day!

Rinsed in the drink,
Tossing and scheming
And ironing crinkles
In plots past believing,
I woke to a wreck –
The barque tossed to pieces,
Ceaseless heaving foam.

Hope took her leave;
I started sinking.
I had my reprieve
When I was past thinking.
I woke on a deck
Surrounded by sailors.
They said, “Now you’ll never see home..
The white-water seas we roam.

“La-la-la-la.”

Fear struck my chest.
Their curse was apparent:
They were old-school in dress
And semitransparent.
I woke, I rechecked
(A momentary swoon),
But alas, this was no mere trance,
And the crew they all viewed me askance,
Then they broke into welcoming dance…

Sickened and awed,
Faculties failing,
I lurched past the horde
And vaulted the railing.
I woke in Quebec
And no-one believes me,
But I know they’re waiting out there…
On this ghostly sou’wester I swear…

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for - all of you, that is, who have been on the edge of your seats following my teasing facebook announcements throughout today! (are you following FaceOmeter on facebook yet? you should be - they both start with "face")

This short film is intended to give you some insight into how we made the Spooky EP, as well as to give us a chance to reflect on the whys and the wherefores. It's a carefully edited trough of footage including interviews with all three artistes (filmed especially in launch week), bits of our live performances in October, and clips of the time we spent in studio in September (we did the whole record in one day).

It's intended to sell the CD to those who don't have it, and to act as bonus material to those who do! Listen and/or purchase here.


My main regret about the film is that it doesn't have any footage of Dean McCarthy in it. This is because he cunningly avoided cameras at all times! I do have some good shots of him from the first two Vibe, Drill, and "It" sessions though, so his reprieve from international stardom is temporary. In the meantime I shall have to use text to add to the video that there were moments when Dean was the fourth member of the group, even though he came in just at the end. If you like the songs, then we're to blame, but if you like the record - every second of which he engineered with a proficiency and meticulousness that puts us three to shame - then Dean is your man. Here he is.

We hope you like the video!

This isn't a fOld - there's nothing local about this aberration - but it is a food-related video starring myself and his Swindlesomness! Recorded secretly at Taplin's house while he was at work, around the time of the Spooky EP launch, here it is:

It's been over a year since the last fOld, but this is the occassional short-video series that just keeps refusing to quite die! This time, it's a fish broth The Dapper Swindler and I made in Alderney:


The Swindler caught a whole bunch of fish out there, including a bass which fed ten people! He was pretty happy about that one.


So all hail the Swindler, anyway. And all hail fOld - we have a couple of others on the chalkboard so expect more low-octane food-related bollocks in the near-distant future!

Together with an old friend, I trotted down to the Coronet theatre last Thursday to see what turned out to be the absolute opposite of a reunion gig. When big bands get back together after a protracted separation, it's always difficult to banish the (cynical) suspicion that there’s some cynicism involved. But The Good, the Bad and the Queen – a supergroup containing members of The Verve, The Clash and Blur as well as one of the fathers of afrobeat on the drums – aren’t a ‘big band’, although they do have all the positive qualities of one. They jam-packed the venue, it’s true, but the name remains, so far as I can tell, far less famous on the whole than those of its individual members. For me, this is a crucial point.

They only have one album, which you should buy immediately if you don’t already have it. It came out in 2007, and since then the band hadn’t played together until a special occasion – Greenpeace’s 40^th birthday – brought them out of the woodwork. What followed was perhaps surprisingly modest. Onstage they trouped, to huge applause; they played the whole album, in order, and off they went again. There was no new material, and Damon Albarn responded to a few heckles requesting another album with an ambiguous roll of the eyes.

Given the price of the tickets (at my top end, although cheap compared to what I imagine it would cost to see Blur) and the 1hr15 DJ set which everyone was confusingly required to stand through in patient silence before the band came onstage (the music was too loud for conversation, and this was not a dancing crowd), was it worth it? Absolutely. Not only was the sound surprisingly good for a venue of the Coronet’s status, and (thinking about it from the other direction) not only was it a very real treat to see any of these four superstar musicians in a venue so small – it was also a good moral lesson in what playing popular music needs to be about. Which is why I’m writing about it on here.

It was magical from the start, but to explain why I want to focus on a moment later in the set – the start of the song ‘A Soldier’s Tale’. Do you know it? It’s this understated little thing, on the album really more of a transition to the last three tracks than a song you particularly remember in itself. Picking up a guitar to play the opening riff, Albarn seated himself on a foldable chair and, adjusting the mic, said apologetically, “I learned too late that I’m slightly less bad at the guitar sitting down”. Totally on his side, the crowd chuckled away dutifully. He then proceeded to muck up the first few notes, opening the song in the wrong key. This mishap psyched him out, and he started laughing halfway through his second attempt at the introduction. The whole band were grinning at each other by now. “This is embarrassing”, said Albarn. He started again, and, of course, played the whole thing beautifully.

The cheers at the end testified to the fact that it was the human factor of the performance which everybody really appreciated – phenomenal though the bowed saw player who came on to join them for ‘A Soldier’s Tale’ was, and I don’t think I’ve heard better, you felt that the main reason he was there was because he was buddies with someone in the band. “Forty years of Greenpeace, a full moon, and I’m here with my mates”, said Albarn, at another point, smiling to himself. You believed him. He’s genuinely happy on stage – not as a superstar, although he undoubtedly is one, but as someone who is still far from cynical about live performances and reunions even after eighteen years at the top of the British music scene. He’s not just good at his job, he also loves it. What I got from the show was that in music, even more so perhaps than in other occupations, those two things are very far from disconnected.