I thought I’d write a small blog about inspiration and creativity, as I’m intrigued to know how all the great writers on this site come up with stuff. I’ve been writing songs for many years; the first one I can remember was written when I was 12 on a Casio keyboard. I entered a songwriting competition on a kid's programme and I won (of course I didn’t win, my song was a terrible Frankenstein monstrosity of Phil Collins meets The Carpenters).

Now I’m a professional writer (whatever that means) I’m more disciplined about trying to write something every day but I basically reckon I don’t have much of a method. As Dianne Warren said ‘I turn up’ because to quote Woody Allen ‘90% of success is showing up’.


So I may start with a title (I have a notebook of titles) or start by strumming the acoustic guitar or playing the piano or plugging in an electric or bass or by getting a drum loop going or by singing an a cappella melody into my phone on the tube or I blatantly steal the groove or chord change from a song I love. I don’t wait to be inspired, but it helps if I am. All I know is I can play stuff I like, stuff that is good, but it won’t excite me enough. As Bacharach said ‘my greatest enemy is my hands. They want to go to the familiar’. The world doesn’t need another O.K song. I like to surprise myself.

I like to write first thing in the morning, I think the wall between the unconscious and the conscious is at it’s most permeable then. When I have a lyrical theme or title based idea for a song I often let it percolate, let it turn around in my mind for days or weeks. I try and organise the idea into the best lyrical framework; who is singing this story? Why are they singing it? Who are they singing it to? I love writing lyrics on the tube, it’s like having my own crossword puzzle to do, I perversely try and rhyme hard words because they sound fresher (filing, polystyrene, Irene, have a lie in) and I’m a masochist. I love writing on my own, but it’s a harder job. There’s no one to pass the baton to in the song relay race.

Often in a co writing situation we would start by trying to capture the feeling of a song that we all love (a great writer Paul Scott drily remarked that ‘plagiarism pays’). The challenge is to create a song that inspires an emotional reaction from the listener. ‘The aim of a good song is, within the context of three minutes, to provide a couple of lines that just go ‘bang’ in the back of the cranium so that people go ‘Yes, I know that feeling (Neil Finn).

Sometimes with an artist, your job is that of amateur Psychologist- Often I’ll be told pretty personal stuff by someone I don’t know. I then try and help them turn it into a song they want to sing. It’s weird but I know so many people who don’t dare to say anything too raw in a song because they’re worried the person they’re writing it about might spot it’s about them. I think it’s good if you’re worried, that’s because you’re being honest. Some days I write an average song, some days a bad song, occasionally a good one. I have a lot of half finished ideas that aren’t worth finishing. Songs are like children, I gave birth to them all and I love them all, even the stunted little freak children that don’t work. When I write on my own I rewrite the lyrics lots of times, sometimes I’ll go back to the drawing board when the music and production is done and think ‘how does this music make me feel? Does it suit the lyrical subject matter I’ve written'?

So when is a song finished? Paul Simon said; Say what you have to say in your own way, as simply and as quickly as you can then get the hell out of there!


I’ll finish with a quote from the great Don Schlitz. ‘If you write every day and finish everything then when a great piece of inspiration comes along you’ll be ready for it'.

I hope all the writers out there write a great song today! By the way, a lot of these quotes are from a book called ‘And Then I Wrote’.

Well, I think it’s about time I blogged as my terribly depressing tale about the suicidal man needs something chirpy and upbeat to counter it.
Well, chirpy and upbeat it is then!

Everything is AMAZING at the moment, the sun is out, the smell of barbecue is in the air and we’re making a new album. Yippee! It’s a daunting prospect in some ways. This is our fourth record so it’s hard to find new angles, arrangements and grooves we’ve never visited before. We tried to play a song in alternate bars of 5/4 and 6/8 last week and it sounded absolutely awful. If you tried to dance to it you would possibly injure yourself. Some time signatures go together like chocolate and ham.

As I spend a lot of my time writing with other writers and with artists it’s a strange mindset to get back into writing for myself again. What do I want to say? What subjects need exploring? When it comes to the crunch I’ll probably just mine that rich seam of lingering adolescent angst and remember all the rejection and gothic suffering of my pimply teenage years, and- voila!- a song.

I then nervously play a bunch of ideas (songettes?) to the rest of the band. I always feel like I’m on American Idol facing the judges at this point. After listening to them they say things like ‘is that the chorus?’ or ‘it’s a bit meandering,’ but occasionally they’ll all agree on a tune they like and we then go and play it, rewrite it a bit and record it. We’re doing occasional video blogs (do the nerds call those vlogs?) from the studio so check out the Farrah myspace for news.

Judging by Ben and Nate’s blogs we’re not the only ones heading into the studio and trying to find a three minute masterpiece- a pocket symphony. I’d better get back to work. No one understands me, I’m 15, I’m going to my room to listen to The Cure. I didn’t ask to be born.

So there I was on the top deck of the bus on a beautiful London morning. I was on my way to write a song. I had a cool musical idea. I was in a good mood as the bus crossed Battersea bridge. I’m on my phone having a chat with my publisher and then I see something on the bridge. A silver haired man in a wheelchair purposefully staring at the river. The next second he’s pulling himself up with his arms and drags himself over the parapet and then he’s gone over the edge. So quick. The wheelchair stands there. The bus is moving fast and that’s all I see. I say my publisher in a hesitant voice that doesn’t sound like my own “sorry, have to go…… I think someone’s just thrown themselves off the bridge”

I immediately call the police, I’m shaking a bit. They say they will send the river police to the area. I miss my bus stop. This is where the story ends for me. I don’t know if this grey haired man killed himself or whether he was (by some miracle) rescued. After my writing appointment (that was a weird thing to have to do) I walk home over the bridge, stop where I last saw him, and look down at the swirling brown water. There are no flowers, the wheelchair is gone, there’s nothing in the evening paper. It’s like it never happened, it’s like I imagined it.

Irrational thoughts cross my mind. It was a beautiful sunny day full of the promise of summer. Surely you wouldn’t end your life on a day like this? A rainy day would make more sense perhaps. Perhaps there was a TV crew there I couldn’t see and it was a TV show. He was an actor.

Stupid thoughts.

That man’s expression stays with me all night and it’s the first thing I think of when I wake up. I want to call the police and find out whether they recovered a body. I want to know more; the who-was-he, the why-did-he but I know full well the police wouldn’t tell me. In their eyes I have no connection with this man. I am not a relative, so I have no right to pry. I doubt I could find out what happened from other sources. It’s not as if a London suicide will make the papers. It’s an everyday occurrence in this city. I feel strangely ghoulish even wanting to know.

So I’m sorry to leave it like this. I like to have a beginning, middle and end to a story (I am a songwriter after all) I want to know about this man’s life and I want to know about this man’s death. I want to know who will be at the funeral and how he will be remembered. Then part of me doesn’t want to know. Can’t I just imagine that a boat plucked him out of the water? Why do I want to know? Why do I feel in a strange way that I owe him something?

Hey all, long time no blog.

I’m typing this on a train on the way up to Glasgow. I’m on tour with Kim Richey at the moment. It’s been a blast so far.

At the first show I played a solo so spectacularly badly that Kim broke the cardinal rule of show business (the show must go on!) and stopped the song because she was crying with laughter. Many audience members said this was the highlight of the evening. It’s strange how only a semitone separates beauty from comedy.

To pass the time on the long car and train journeys we have made up many unsuccessful games such as ‘I’m a colour- what am I’, ‘what superpower would you have and why’ and also argued about what kind of food (if you were only allowed one type) you would be marooned on a desert island with. Kim-Japanese, me- torn between Indian and British (homesickness might necessitate a Yorkshire pudding).

I managed to hook up with the legendary and talented Nate Campany last week at a writers night. We were both a touch worse for wear after singing along with Desmond Child performing ‘Living On A Prayer (inspiring) and Graham Gouldman performing 10cc’s ‘I’m Not In Love (humbling). Me and Nate were hoping to write yesterday but I was too knackered after being on late night BBC radio 2 the night before (sorry Nate, don’t hate me). The link is below if you fancy listening to me, Kim and Giles Martin performing a few of Kim’s tunes and being interviewed. After listening back today I’ve realized that me and Kim are both ‘high talkers’, it sounds like he’s interviewing the munchkins.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/bobharris/biography.shtml

You need to fast-forward about an hour into the show.


I read a nice quote today. ‘He had a mind like knitting that the cat had played with ’

Jez x

Hello all, I’ve been skim reading my blogs and have realized how little I’ve written about my day job so I thought as there are a lot of songwriters part of this brilliant online community, I should share my thoughts on this mysterious business.

My job is to write about love, life and loss and make it a damn hit!

This is the life of the song writer. I could write a song about penguins, Curling, or why I don’t like the feel of cotton wool (and I’d record them with my band and they would be cool) but these songs would be less likely to be recorded by an artist than songs about ‘the big three’.

But it’s hard to come up with new angles on love. Someone told me there are 6 stages of love you can write about- Looking for love. Falling in love, staying in love, falling out of love, getting over love and looking for love again. There’s also the question angle- what is love? Is this love? Was that love? These big subjects hit a chord with more people than songs about curling. Although I am tempted to write a big fat penguin based hit.

Who has songs written for them anyway?

Well, the vast majority of artists write or co write their own songs but manufactured pop bands, some R and B artists, overseas acts and a lot of country artists record songs by ‘outside’ writers.

These are the type of artists I write songs for. This is not to be confused with the huge amount of talented artists I co write with. They are more than capable of writing great songs. In this case I’m just there to add some input and concentrate on trying to co-write something ‘radio’ (catchy, fresh, exciting, often uptempo and usually chorus heavy in structure). As an artist myself I often resist writing these kinds of ‘Obvious’ songs in favour of more ‘arty’ songs. I like co writing with artists because it takes the pressure off. It’s fun and challenging to write something immediate.

So writing a song for specific pop artist is a bizarre job.

First of all I get sent a brief by my publisher who has spoken to the label. A typical brief might be- Artist ‘A’ s label are looking for a hit single in the vein of Daniel Powter’s ‘Bad Day mixed’ with Train’s ‘Drops Of Jupiter’ (oh, no problem, I have 7 of these on my song shelf)

The next thing I have to do is find out about the artist’s style, age, vocal range and any lyrical themes they have explored. On a really basic level, this avoids simple mistakes like writing a song called ‘together’ to find that the artist has already cut a song called this, or writing a song called ‘I’ve been in love too many times’ for a 13 year old girl.

At this point I picture all the other amazing songwriters out there being sent the same brief and in London, Stockholm, L.A and New York and furiously ‘Frankensteining’ a new song that sounds like ‘Bad Days Of Jupiter’. At this point I fleetingly lose the will to live.

What is it about these two songs on the brief that makes them hits? Is it  the feel, the lyric, the vocal performance, the marketing? If the two biggest songs of 2007 were called ‘Penguins are cute’ or ‘cotton wool allergy’ would A and R departments be asking for songs similar to this?

This is why I tend to ignore briefs and try to write the best song I can instead. If the song I write means something to me, has a great melody and groove then I hope it could connect with someone else. Also, I imagine an A and R person listening through 100 ‘Drops Of Bad Day’ songs and I hope that the song I’ve written might at least stand out from the pile.

Once I’ve written the song, demoed the song (usually with a session singer) to album standard it gets sent to my publisher who passes it on to the label. Then I wait, and wait, and then as hope dwindles, forget about the song. Sometimes, 4 years later the song gets recorded by an Albanian Shepherd who won Albanian Idol, more often than not, the song never gets recorded and gathers dust- if an mp3 can gather dust.
If I’m really lucky, the song gets recorded.

So how do you earn money as a songwriter?

Songwriters don’t get paid for writing songs. A publisher loans me money and hopes that the songs I write while under contract get recorded and earn money. The songwriter (and the publisher) earns money each time a CD is manufactured or legally downloaded.

Songwriters also earn money every time a song they have written is played on the radio, film or TV, downloaded as a ringtone or performed at a live show. Collection agencies and societies from all over the world try and collate all this information and work out who to pay. This can take a few years. When the money eventually wends its way back to the writer it firstly goes towards paying back the loan from the publisher. When you’ve paid the publisher back you start earning money. Woo hoo!

All songwriters start writing songs for no money and end up writing songs for no money. No one in his right mind would become a songwriter to make a quick buck. We all do it because it’s alchemy-
Turning a feeling into a melody, a mood into a groove, rhyming your emotions. The reward is in the moment (although I never tell my bank manager this). It’s a really weird job and I love it to bits. Now I’d better write that penguin song…….

Homecoming

It’s strange how different your home looks when you’ve been away. I just stepped through the door and witnessed the clutter and the faint smell of old coffee and it’s like stepping back into my life again. It was raining and cold when I set off to Japan a couple of weeks ago but now Britain is in bloom- the drug dealers below my window are wearing their summer plumage, the tang of newly cut grass is in the air and everybody’s car stereo is turned up to sunny volume.

Japan was a fantastic experience. The two Japanese lessons I had before leaving got me frustratingly close to constructing a sentence without the aid of mime. I suppose I speak caveman Japanese- ‘where live?’ ‘What name’? ‘me ugg, me fly here in big silver bird’.

The shows were great, especially Okayama where we played one of our songs so fast the whole band was in danger of collapsing from giggles and the audience danced like they were being electrocuted. We also played a few acoustic HMV and Tower Records instores which were good fun if not slightly surreal. It was a pretty busy tour- travel, instore, soundcheck, check into hotel, gig, eat, drink, collapse, repeat.

This was my 5th visit to Japan. These are a few of the myriad of  things that interest me about this amazing country

The trains don’t run to the minute, they run to the second.

Whoever designed the Japanese schoolgirl uniform was not a woman

Talking on the metro in the morning rush hour is frowned upon. Me and Dana ( Farrah’s drummer) were told off on the train (for arguing about prog rock) by a ‘salaryman’ in halting but angry English. “Not Japanese system” he seethed. We spent the rest of the journey in scolded schoolboy silence. Probably not a big Emerson Lake and Palmer fan.

People in Tokyo cycle on the pavement and no one ever seems to get entangled.

Japanese people are on the whole, very, very polite.

The Japanese (like the British!) like to drink and seem to lose their reserve when they do.

The Japanese culture celebrates working as a team. After gigs it is not unusual for all the bands on the bill to go out and eat together with the staff from the club and toast everybody’s hard work. This is a good thing.

The Japanese language has three written forms and takes years to master. This is a bad thing.



So now I’ve blogged,  I’ll spend some time in the decompression chamber of washing dirty laundry, discovering mouldy bread, buying milk, and catching up with the mail. I’ll probably be polite and bow imperceptibly for the next few days, occasionally thank someone in Japanese, be surprised the tube is late and slowly but surely slip back from surreality to reality-as surely as a suntan fades.

Hey everyone, hope all is good. Sorry I haven’t posted for a while, I’m recovering from a severe bout of man flu. It has brought to my attention that women are more stoical than men when it comes to illness. I’m sure to the average woman a bout of flu feels like a ‘heavy cold’, well, to a man it feels like life-threatening meningitis and consumption mixed together. I have been shivering, shaking, sweating and generally being pathetic for a whole week. We even had to cancel a Farrah show on Friday because I hadn’t recovered in time.

Health is one of those things we take for granted until it goes wrong. When I was subjected to the horrors of daytime TV for a whole week all I wanted to do was go outside. It was the London Marathon on Sunday and it reminded me there are at least 32000 people in the capital healthier than I am. I wish I could say that I spent the week writing songs but all I did was drink “EmergenC” moan gently and pray for a swift death. My friend Lisa came over and performed Reiki on me and strangely enough the next day I was 100 percent better. By this stage I would have happily tried leeches. Perhaps the Reiki worked or perhaps the virus decided to go and attack someone else. I don’t know.

Now I’m fully recovered, the band have been rehearsing non-stop for our tour of Japan (we leave on Monday). We’re really excited to be heading back over to the land where noodles are king and superheroes are fashioned out of plastic turnips. It’s a crazy country.

The two Japanese lessons I’ve had enable me to ask someone where they’re from and have no idea what their answer means. I can also buy something in a shop without resorting to pointing and waving yen. It’s not much but it’s a start.

I’ll hopefully put up a blog from Japan next week

Sayanora!

Jez

Rucksacks aren’t cool.

I bought one yesterday and marvelously practical as they are, they are definitely not a fashion statement. Have you ever seen a Hollywood star wearing a rucksack? I rest my case. They know it’s the death knell of fashionability. George Clooney in a rucksack? Oscar night? Come on. Phil Collins in a rucksack? Possibly. The reason they are worn on your back is so you don’t have to see how bad you look.

I wore it for the first time yesterday. It felt strange. People were looking at me like I was on day release. Firstly, even in the geek pantheon of rucksacks, mine is a particularly sad model. It’s not one of those sun-weathered-slightly-frayed-canvas-camping rucksacks that scream “ I’ve been to India 3 times on this guy’s back, the stories I could tell….. wild times my friend…..”.It’s not one of those rucksacks at all. It’s black and it’s very new. It’s the ‘businessman getting down with the kids’ model, this rucksack says- “the person I am attached to is afraid of developing a back problem”. This rucksack will never visit Kathmandu. It’s more likely to be seen at a weekend sales conference in Basildon.

I went to a gig wearing it last night (I know….) and one of my friends (?) immediately chimed in with “Did you come straight from school”? (even though I was only wearing it on one shoulder to try and look cooler). I was crushed. He was the rucksack bully and I was 12 years old again. The most tragic thing was that I’d come straight from my Japanese lesson to the gig so he was, in fact, correct. Twat. I hate my rucksack.

The other thing that bothers me is this rucksack has way too many pockets. It was designed by a pocket fetishist.
It’s day two and I’m still discovering pockets. Strange shaped pockets. Pockets within pockets. My Rucksack is begging me to compartmentalize.
“Come on Jez put your pens in the special pen pocket not in the main compartment, you know you want to!”. Fill my pockets, ALL OF THEM.
STUFF MEEEEEE!. A flaccid rucksack is too sad to contemplate.

My back feels much better though, and when no one is looking I pretend it’s a parachute.

Geronimo!

Shoot, get treasure, shoot

This is what developers came up with when their boss at a video game company asked them to distill the essence of all video games. It also makes an interesting maxim for life itself. I heard this on BBC Radio 4 which I have on in the background all day and is the only Station which has news, comment and occasional programmes about the mating habits of sea slugs.

Thanks for all the comments on the previous blog, this is a short one as I’m snowed under with half finished songs and Japanese homework. I just wanted to let you know that the band’s new video I wrote about a couple of blogs ago is now finished and you can watch it below. Hope you like.

The song was recorded, engineered, produced, mixed and mastered by Farrah. The video was shot, and edited by the band.

If the big record companies are the dinosaurs- large, stupid, powerful and cold blooded. Farrah is a mammal- small, warm blooded and with a lovely shiny pelt.

Farrah - Can't Kick The Habit from Lojinx on Vimeo.

Spring is coming, look busy!

I have a few friends who suffer from depression (not only due to being friends with me). Obviously, being a songwriter, I listen to their problems with an understanding ear and then try and rhyme their pain (again and again). Actually, joking aside, it’s a terribly impotent feeling to be friends with someone who isn’t happy and there’s nothing you can do to improve things except not say things like ‘cheer up’ or ‘it’s not so bad’.

What is happiness anyway? All I know is being content is not the same as being happy to me. Is happiness the absence of pain? Why do I ask so many questions in my blog? Why oh why? Sorry. I got carried away. By the way, you may be wondering how come I seem to have so much time to blog at the moment. It’s actually because I’m in the studio all weekend baby sitting a particularly depressing band and am rarely called upon except to say things like ‘that was perfect, let’s do another for safety’ (top ten things producer’s say in the studio volume one).

The notion of happiness intrigues and baffles me. When and where were you happiest? What did it smell like? How old were you? Do you ever think you’ll be that happy again? The idea of finding happiness as if it’s a place you arrive at is odd. For me, happiness is the unexpected moment of peace or beauty. I can’t plan it. Although perhaps we should all schedule some happiness time in our day: Happy hour, when we’re half as hard on ourselves and twice as nice to everyone else.

Generally I’d say I’m a happy person. People seem to think I am. I wonder if it’s because I was lucky enough to be born happy or because I nearly died of having collapsed lungs when I was 16 and that whole hospitalization thing made me insanely grateful to be alive? My friend Hayley called me the ‘peaceful fucking warrior’ once because I don’t sweat the small stuff much. I was saying to an old friend who is staying for a few days that I was pretty happy and he said ‘be careful who you say that to’. I understand what he means. To say you’re happy has a smug, almost sinister moonie-esque overtones. ‘He can’t live in this world and be happy, he must have been lobotomised’, hold on, that explains the scar.

I read that to be happy you need to do the following things; Exercise, eat healthily, smile at yourself in the mirror, eat eggs for breakfast and oily fish for dinner, believe in a God, have a pet, sleep, meditate, do something you enjoy, do something philanthropic, live in the moment and drink Guinness (o.k, I added the last one).

It’s as simple as that according to the experts. So go forth and pursue happiness and by the way, if this blog cheered you up then I’m claiming it as my philanthropic gesture for the day. Happy Easter.

Sometimes when I listen to the greatest songs ever I am both inspired and depressed.

What is it like to be a Salieri in the time of Mozart? Or a good painter in the time of Picasso, a great footballer in the days of Pele, a good songwriter in the time of the Beatles and Beach Boys? This is the world I’m in.

It’s such a crazy thing to want to be the best at something. If you want to be the fastest One hundred meter runner ever then there’s a reasonably simple test- break the world record.
 
How do you judge the best songwriter? The most record sales? The most recorded cover versions of a song they’ve written? The most number ones? The writer who broke the mould? Came up with the best lyrics, the most whistle-able melodies? Music is subjective. Conquering a mountain or running really fast isn’t. You either reach the summit, break the world record or not.

The world I’m in means that I write some songs in the hope that they will get on people’s albums. The problem is that every time I write a song with this aim in mind I know that all over the world there are incredibly successful talented writers also trying to get on the same record. There are shadowy figures writing to the same brief I am. Hell, I don’t even know what Dianne Warren looks like but I know she’s one of the most successful writers ever.  That’s who I’m up against-a super crack team of the greatest pop writers of the century. It’s a bit like learning to play football and finding out that every game is the World Cup final. Why do I bother?

I suppose one reason is in the foolish and misguided hope that inside me there’s a ‘Yesterday’ or a ‘God Only Knows’. To be honest though I’d be happy with a ‘Rhythm Of The Night’ (DeBarge), and by that I mean a fun song with a catchy melody that lasts. I wonder what would make me happier, a number one hit single or a song that topped the critic’s list of ‘best songs’? As I haven’t got either its all conjecture but I guess that whichever one I had would make me crave the other even more. There’s nothing for it, I would have to have both.

The other reason I write is that writing a song is the happiest I ever am.
I think psychologists have said that to find happiness we need to do something that absorbs us so completely that we ‘lose time’. I have found songwriting and the only pursuit that really fulfils this for me. What is it for you? My friends have cited; cooking, reading, running and listening to music.

It’s funny to me to know that all over the world there are people who are ‘the best’ at something. Even if it’s someone who’s the best at ‘making an espresso’ or ‘reminding people about that thing they had to do’ we all have a skill. I find comfort in the fact that if I don’t end up being ‘the best’ at songwriting, I make damn good cheese on toast.

My head hurts. I drank too much.

I’ve tried my usual hangover cure of wallowing in recriminations and self-pity, drinking a gallon of water and rustling up some cheese on toast but to no avail. My head hurts.

A headache is a curious thing. It’s not really a headache, your skull isn’t hurting, it’s your brain itself in agony and that is actually you- your soul crying out “why oh why did I do it to myself?” Brains aren’t that clever. Surely my brain has made the connection between ‘drinking too much’ and ‘hangover’ yet it still instructs my hand to raise the glass. Repeatedly. The brain is grey. It's a pretty dull colour for such a big deal of an organ.

There’s something quintessentially comforting to me about the Sunday hangover; The slowly ticking clock, the shops closing early, the rain trickling down the pane. The newspaper. Endless cups of tea. Church bells.

So now my Sunday is a write-off. This takes the pressure off. I will now be phenomenally proud of myself for achieving relatively simple tasks. “Hey, I got dressed, nice work fella”. “I’ve been to a shop and bought some milk- rock ON!” Even completing this stunted blog will feel like I’ve just completed writing the entire works of Shakespeare. I will be inordinately proud of myself. I might even whistle as I press ‘submit’. I will have achieved something. Won’t I?

Hi out there. I’ve been up since 6.30am and I’ve just been running (actually more jogging) to Canary Wharf. The highlight of the route is the big flight of steps at the end of the run and I challenge anyone to run up them without whistling the music from ‘Rocky’. What I love about running is that feeling when you eventually stop. Exercise is like making a deposit in the bank of smug.

I had a friend request on Facebook when I got home. It was from someone I sat next to at school when I was ten. Back then, we had a lot in common; Lego, being children, pretending we were aliens. But now I don’t know if he can be classified a ‘friend’. Then again, we never formally ended our friendship by having a fight or arguing about who got to be E.T. Does he still think we’re friends? How long do you not have to be in contact with someone for until the term ‘friend’ can be downgraded to ‘someone I knew’? Is it 5 years, 10 years, forever? Facebook is forcing me to take one of three choices. What should I do?

(a) Accept the friend offer and hope we never have to meet up in real life? My blood chills at the possibility of that awkward conversation

“ Wow, great to see you! remember when we used to pretend to be aliens? This is my partner Shirley, do you still like Lego? Me neither, I’m a regional sales manager…more nibbles?” .

(b) Reject the request,

I may as well send an email saying ‘I hate you now and possibly never even considered you a friend even as a child’. So I’m left with

(c) ‘Facebook-limbo’; the purgatory of the social networking generation. How many requests are out there drifting in the limbo of never being approved or denied? Although (c) seems the obvious answer, it’s the coward’s way out. How long will his friend request stay there haunting my home page like the ghost of friendship past? To be honest, any fool must know that a lack of any response after a reasonable passage of time amounts to the same as (b). This person will assume I’m a bit of a twat, which, on reflection, I probably am.

It’s been a busy week. We shot a Farrah video at the weekend which was hilariously low budget. Instead of a dolly we had our ‘cameraman’ (otherwise known as Andy our guitarist) sat in the bottom of a wheeled flightcase. This was then pushed down a corridor by our manager as I attempted to mime to the song. It was difficult striking rock and roll poses when this ‘Bobsleigh on wheels’ occasionally veered into a wall. The sense of absurdity was heightened by the fact all the miming had to be done with the track playing double speed to make the camera moves more ‘fluid’

The video location was a deserted record company building that we managed to blag by bribing the security guard with a bottle of whisky. The place was eerie. Even though the offices had been deserted for a few months all the paperwork was still on desks, employee’s photos and rolodexes still in place. It was a corporate Mary Celeste. The guard told us that the employees all got laid-off one morning and all decided to go to the pub, get hammered and not come back.

I wonder if there’s anything more ironic than a band on a low budget independent label shooting a video in the ghostly offices of a moribund major record label? Let me know Alanis.

Andy and myself storyboarded the video. I play a hungover office worker who overdoes the booze at the office party. I had to play both ‘drunk’ and ‘hungover’ which is lucky as these are my usual two states of mind. It was method.

The band performance element of a pop video is possibly the stupidest a human being can feel. Playing to the camera is beyond ridiculous. You pretend to sing, try to mean it, attempt and look cool and try to ignore the lighting guy eating a croissant in the background. The song finishes and you sit around for ages and then you do it again and again.

I can’t complain though. This clip was a breeze compared to the last video we made for the song ‘Fear Of Flying’. For this clip we decided (due to artistic reasons and budgetary restrictions) to take 9000 still photos of the band. This took three months to complete and only cost 18 pounds and our collective sanity. Twenty Five Photos for each second of video.. If you’re bored feel free to check this out on Youtube by searching Farrah and Fear Of Flying.

I’m a bad blogger, I’m sorry. For those who read my last blog and presumed that once February started I was on a Hunter S Thompson meets Oliver Reed sized bender, you can breathe a sigh of relief. I’m alive. I have started drinking again and the world has become an alcohol fuelled rollercoaster again after the level emotional playing field of abstinent January.

So this is now my second blog. What should I tell you about? Well, my last blog didn’t really tell you anything other than the fact that I’m British and I drink. There’s more to me than that I hope. I’m the singer in a band called Farrah and the reason I’m blogging at all is because I wrote with the uber-talented Ben Romans and also with sublime genius Nate Campany. Ben mentioned this site and said (probably mistakenly) that people out there may be interested to listen to my inane murmurings.

 I am one of those dreaded songwriters (otherwise known as people who didn’t grow up). I am Peter Pan, or more accurately Peter Tin-Pan alley. I also teach songwriting at a university and I sometimes play guitar for people. If you want to check out my licks listen to Kim Richey’s latest record called Chinese Boxes, produced by Giles (son of George!) Martin. I played a few songs on that. I also write music for TV programmes and in my spare time teach otters to waterski.

So. Life. The big question, why are we here, what is it for? I know the answer; I just don’t want to spoil the surprise. Actually, I wake up mystified most days. How did I end up with this job of songwriter? I suppose I’m ideally suited to this job as firstly, I cleverly avoided being good at anything else and secondly,I suffer from wildly-optimistic-syndrome which affects some other members of my family. Our family motto is: “who cares if it’s full or empty, is that glass really mine?” We’d be the people on the Titanic saying as it went down “Well, it was a great trip on the whole”

I’m reading a book called ‘Your Brain On Music’ which posits some interesting theories about how we perceive and create music. The book also challenges some evolutionary psychologist’s dismissal of music as a by-product of some other evolutionary step (a spandrel they call it!), that is, music itself doesn’t actually have any value to the species. Bollocks. I was intrigued to find out that in a lot of cultures the word for music is also the word for dance. The two are impossible to separate.  The other revelation although it should have been obvious to me was that music has now become the bastion of ‘experts’ and has been this way for about 500 years. The public pay to see the ‘professionals’ perform and any mistakes in pitch and timing are to be frowned upon. A language and terminology has developed between musicians that serve to alienate the listener. Amateur musicians and singers are shy about performing in the same way that an amateur painter would be if a friend asked to look at their canvas. The same goes for amateur poets. However, when Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’ comes on at a wedding dance, all ages are happy to strut their stuff in front of each other with varying skill. Dancing when drunk is the last true universal art form.

I think I read a lot about music is because i'm looking for a deeper meaning to what seems a frivolous profession. My friend who is an intensive care nurse doesn’t think so. She believes we supply the soundtrack to people’s lives and provide much needed distraction from the struggle of existence. When I’m getting frustrated because I can’t modulate my way out of a bridge or I can’t find a good rhyme, I tend to disagree. I feel a bit silly.

However much I wish it wasn’t true, music is becoming sidelined to the periphery to many people’s existence. It’s not a religion, it’s a pastime. It’s probably not as important as TV. I suppose as a writer I want to write songs that people not only want to hear but need to hear. This is a lofty goal and one I consistently fall short of. Music is still my passion but to others it’s just fashion. Ooh, that rhymes…. Where’s my guitar.