Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
Google ‘The Great Unwanted’ and you only have to get to the second page before you can download all 13 tracks of our debut album for free. (Don’t all rush at once!) My gut reaction, on first seeing our beloved little self-released record on these file-sharing sites was one of shock and disgust. How dare they? Don’t they know how God-damned hard we worked? It’s a reasonable reaction from a struggling musician, for which I don’t apologise. Then, I was working part-time in a book shop desperately trying to make ends meet. But the issue of illegal file-sharing goes much deeper than right and wrong, it reaches far wider than artist and consumer, and it represents an entire generation of kids who have been brought up on it. To them, music has always been free, so why should they start paying for it now? It seems the horse has already bolted and the industry only has itself to blame.
Much of last week’s controversy surrounding Lily Allen and The Featured Artists Coalition has focused on the notion of greed. Of course, we’re all Ferrari-owning multi-millionaire pop stars on a mission to squeeze the last few pennies out of the impoverished music fan. It strikes me that we have a PR problem here. As I took the good old Northern Line home from Air Studios on Thursday night, I felt obliged to write about this on my own blog because, whilst in the context of a meeting of fellow musicians my opinion is just as valid as Lily’s, it’s not as newsworthy. Believe me, we need these big names, but if the press only focus on them, the FAC is misrepresented. Nobody wants to hear a member of Pink Floyd moaning about his wages, in much the same way as nobody trusts a fat politician, and I can fully appreciate why some are peeved.
The thing is, Ed from Radiohead wasn’t sat on his private beach counting his gold, he was at that meeting talking to the likes of Andrew and I because it’s not about the money; it’s not about record sales or relative success from one musician to another; it’s about the principle of the thing. In our case, we need all the money we can get in order to keep going. Each record we make pays for the next, and so we cling on to whatever income stream there is available. Why wouldn’t we? But there are some who believe musicians should simply give up their incomes from record sales as a matter of course. We already earn money from publishing, touring and selling T-shirts, so why be so greedy? Let’s make it all free. After all, it’s the record labels that will ultimately suffer because they take the greater cut (and who cares about hurting them anyway?) But in our case, we are the label, and just as not all recording artists drive Ferraris, not all record labels are evil, money-grabbing multi-national organisations. Labels struggle too.
The last thing we want to do is alienate the very people who enjoy our music. We rely so much on word of mouth because we don’t have major-label marketing budgets, and so we find ourselves in an incredibly difficult position. But others are profiting from illegal file-sharing – just look at the advertising revenue available on these sites. I don’t know how many illegal downloads we’ve had compared to official record sales. I guess I’ll never know, but being part of the FAC at least means we are opening up the debate further and bringing our ideas to parliament and to the major labels, who are the ones really pulling the strings. And guess what? They’re listening. For this, I’m grateful to Lily Allen because without her, we probably wouldn’t be having this debate at all. And for an emotional Lily to turn up at our meeting having given us such a public battering was one of the bravest things I think I’ve ever witnessed. She threw herself to the lions, proving that whichever side of the fence you’re on – not that it’s ever that black and white – this debate is raging because it’s something we all care so passionately about, and that can only be a good thing.
Ali x
Thursday, September 17th, 2009
Just so you know I wasn’t lying. I went. And a song started in me ‘ead.
Andrew x
Monday, September 7th, 2009
Before I start. A big, big congratulations to Mr and Mrs Atkins on the birth of a mini Atkins as little Elia Sophia arrived last week. Eating, sleeping, making a racket, throwing up and learning to speak English are just some of the things we’ve grown to love about Mr Atkins in these past couple of years. We’re sure he’ll take to fatherhood like a duck to water.
And so…
Yesterday I emerged blinking into the outside world and discovered that it was autumn. It was very much winter when I went in the studio, so it came as some surprise to me that I had entirely missed two seasons.
Autumn is my favourite time of year. I’m a country boy after all and when I first started writing I used to have a special thinking spot on hill just outside my home town where I’d sit with my faithful dog, with nothing but the sound of birds and the steam train, watching the leaves turn and think up snatches of lyrics, wondering what it would be like to be in a band. Ah, nostalgia. I’m going home next weekend to visit. I love London but it seems so long that I saw the sky or walked somewhere without meeting anyone. I’m gonna make sure I go back to that spot and have a think about things. Somewhere near 9 minutes in on the vid below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zx5CYIxyzg
Only this time it’s with the satisfying knowledge that our second album is very nearly finished. It’s handclap day on Thursday (always good fun and really the only part that gets better with beer) and that will be all the recording done and in the bag. That’s just the last little bit though because last week we completed the second phase of mixing with
Dutch/ Australian, New Yorker: Victor Van Vugt.
Triple V is an all round nice guy despite his instance on being 6 hours behind us, which means when we’re toing and froing with stuff I have to stay up till all hours. He’s a real pro though and has a great pedigree (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Beth Orton, Sons And Daughters, Voxtrot, Kirsty MacColl, Kylie. Kylie!) and the tracks we’ve been getting back from him sound fantastic. Just the right mix of pop and grit.
So we’ve reached the end of this level where we’ve got good mixes of everything and now we’ve got a month to sit on them, digest them and decide what’s gonna make it on to the album before doing the final tweaks. It’s going to be really difficult. We’ve got fifteen to choose from and have to whittle it down to eleven or twelve. I’d like to go for ten really but we’ve been so concise with the arrangements that some of the more perfectly formed pop songs are way less than 3 mins so I think only 10 would leave a very short album and I don’t want to short change anybody.
It’s hard though because I would happily include every one of those tracks, there’s no fillers here. Pet Sounds is 36 mins long as is Revolver, so I’m going to take that as a good length and see what fits. I want it to be perfect.
The Great Unwanted was a bit of a horn frenzy but this time, there’s only 3 tracks with horns on them. Didn’t want to over do it, not with Ronson saturating everyone with ‘em. But ours are totally necessary. In a classic back-to-schoolesque moment I stayed up all night the night before the recording session trying to finish writing them. I’d got Love Love Love and Could Be I Don’t Belong Anywhere nailed but still hadn’t got Ain’t Nothing Like A Shame sorted (I’d had about five months). So I pretended the dog ate my homework and promptly wrote it on the spot. Phew, luckily the Killer Horns were really very talented and I could just sing the parts to them.
Some session musicians are like robots but the best one’s are flexible and believe me these guys could play.
Ain’t nothing like extreme pressure to get your brain working though. After we finished (late) I had to run across London with Misty (my pretty Gretsch) and a case full of pedals to get to Technicolour (the club night we’ve started with The Pipettes) and jump about on stage. I was pooped but it was great fun again see here http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/lucky-soul-the-lexington-londonbramazing-baby-proud-galleries-london-1779119.html
Ain’t Nothing… is turning out to be a beauty and is definitely up in contention for a single. It’s just a lot of fun sounds a bit like Booker T, a bit like The Specials, a bit like Paul Simon. It’s a cheeky song and the lyrics are right dark, which is always my favourite combination.
I’ll write some more later in the week and tell you about the other songs but tonight I’m going to the Raveonettes which is very exciting. It’s nice to be out of the woods, so to speak.
Take care of yourselves
Andrew
P.S. Why not be ever so modern and follow us on twitter here http://twitter.com/luckysoul
