I'm a big fan of computers generally.  I like the way they think- or maybe they like the way I think, at any rate, we understand each other pretty well and together we can  get some pretty good stuff done.

However in the last month and a half I've trashed 3 of them.  The first one was my long-standing HP laptop, which has taken a fair beating over the two and a half years I've owned it, but always come up smiling.  This time, it got dropped about 6 feet off a mixing desk.  It was a genuine accident and I don't feel like it let me down - more like I let it down.

Which led me to buy a new Toshiba - we were in the middle of recording/mixing new tracks and I didn't want to have to wait for the old one to be fixed, and I had found it a little slow when dealing with a full mix, so I thought an upgrade was in order.

Less than one month in, it died on me with no warning -  I had backed up all the recordings, but I lost 3 days of painstaking editing and mixing.  It may not sound like much, but it was very fine detail work, and if I had to go back and do it all again, I think it would probably take all the joy out of the music - not cool.

Also, despite being newer, and shinier, and allegedly having far superior specs, it didn't seem particularly able to deal with audio mixing any better than my HP.  And the customer service is much less easy to deal with.  I don't recommend Toshiba at all so far...

Anyway, in trying to recover the data, I bought a SATA/USB adaptor from Maplins, and just plugged the hard drive straight into Kathryn's old Gateway laptop she bought in California about 6 years ago.  It's not the fastest, but it's a quality machine all the way. I managed to get the disk analysed and run some systems tools - however sadly the laptop died three quarters of the way through the disc repair, I think mainly just of old age.

So it's starting to look like I'm a little cursed!  I've also been getting electric shocks off everything again recently - shopping trolleys being particularly keen to zap me.  Does this happen to anyone else? Or is it just my magnetic personality?

But thanks to the heroic sacrifice of the Gateway, the disc was repaired enough that I could plug it into Kathryn's excellent Mac and copy the files over, so all was rescued.

All I need now is one of my laptops to come back to me in working order and I can finish the mix of Everybody Sleeps, which we meant to release into the wild easily 3 weeks ago now.

Ah well, better late than never - assuming I don't destroy any remaining computers and hard drives!  And the lessons I have learned?

1. Don't buy a Toshiba - or at least don't trust the specs on it, or their customer support
2. Backup as much as possible, because you can't rely on anything.

 - Daniel out

I have no idea where the month of March just went, but thought I should put my stamp on it before it ran away from me completely.

Daniel’s been away for about three weeks now. He works as a sound engineer for a touring band so he has spent most of March on his laptop, dropping his laptop, replacing his laptop and finally, getting back to mixing the new recordings. This leaves Ben and I to run amok in London - wreaking havoc on the rich, helping the poor and in some cases, inadvertently distressing local wildlife. Never a dull moment. All in all though, this month left me a fair amount to space to storyboard the next video and - more urgently - finish the songs that have been tapping on the inside of my head since January.

Everyone writer I’ve ever talked to has their own way of getting from vague idea to finished product. I can think about a song for weeks, but it’s only really when I put my hands to a computer keyboard that I can get anywhere really interesting. It would probably make a nicer image to say it’s when I pick up pen and paper - that’s where I always start, with a notebook on a train or sitting in a cafe - but for some reason my brain’s not wired to finish songs on paper. Brains are tricky like that.

Writing this way means that for every song I finish, I have dozens of phrases or ideas that don’t make the final cut. It’s like I have a blooper reel for every song I ever wrote - though I like to think they get shorter and less embarrassing as the years go on. Sometimes when I’m moving them from paper to my computer, there’s just a line that my fingers don’t like the feel of. Sometimes it’s a whole verse that gets dropped. But sometimes even I’m surprised at how vast a gap there is. Right now, I’m looking at the chorus for one of my new four and wondering how on earth I got from that first idea to where I am now.

It’s a song about elevators…

I have mixed feelings about elevators. If you asked me to think about them in the abstract, I’d say that I’ve seen too many horror films to be completely comfortable with them. But as soon as I step into one, it’s a whole other story. I love elevators. I’m six years old again and going shopping for birthday presents with my mum. I’m nine and I’m in the first hotel I ever stayed in. I’m twenty five and the falling sensation in my stomach after I’ve hit the ‘down’ button still gives me an urge to laugh. You’d think that this is something to write about.

But none of that seems to have come out in the text I’ve left sitting in another window. I made myself comfortable, put my fingers to the keyboard and all I could think is -

‘I’ll always think of you in elevators, how the ups and the downs made me feel good me inside. But seven floors of pushing all the right buttons, I get off and you were just taking me for a ride.’

Huh.

It’s not like it’s not true. I just haven’t thought about that summer in a while.

I know it makes it sound like I have an evil hand, but as often it works the other way. A song for people I was missing, but I ended up reliving times that made me happiest. Work that irritated and frustrated every day - and I typed about how good I have things come 6pm. It’s a curious thing. I wouldn’t change it for the world, but I still can’t figure out the process.

As a last example, take this post - when I sat down, I was sure I was going to write about making videos. More on that next time, I guess…

2009 has been good to us so far. Long Goodbyes placed second in the Ourstage competition for rock music videos, we’ve had invitations to play as far afield as Indonesia and Guam, and we’ve written some new songs we like. Hopefully it’s the start of something great.

Personally, the start of 2009 felt like something of a disaster. It began with two bouts of intense stomach flu and peaked with me having to quit my job when the company ran out of money. All in all, brilliant news for the band. I write best when I’m stressed or annoyed.

That said, I find it quite difficult to be stressed or annoyed when I’m on tour. Granted, I’m not doing the bulk of the driving (I really should work on getting my full license so I can drive on motorways) but the trip back to Ireland last week was easily as much fun as the one to Scotland. We ate a lot of good food, slept a surprisingly reasonable amount and got a lot of fresh air visiting local zoos. Then again, maybe most bands don’t use tours as a chance to review local zoos and wildlife. It’s hard to tell.

All in all, it’s a funny feeling, playing gigs in places you used to hang out in as a kid. We spent our time in Belfast staying around the corner from the house Daniel grew up in. ‘And that’s the low roof where David McNeil got stuck and my mum had to help him down’. Then Dublin hanging around in the same bars we did when we were in college. ‘Oh God. Do you remember the night we drank all that Aftershock here?’ ‘Em, no. But, if there was a lot of it…’ Then Galway in the places I used to go to on weekend outings with my family. There’s this constant air of expectation, wondering will places measure up, will the people be as happy to see you.

The surprising part was… well, they did. It was great to see old haunts, lovely to see old friends and even better to meet the people who’ve been saying good things about us in their blogs. Not to mention all the things we learned about orangutans. I’m already looking forward to trip two in April.

Not that this much contentment will necessarily make for good songwriting. Maybe the car will get a flat tyre on the way back. That should be enough to kick start something interesting.