*Keepin' Up With Rob*
*The Newsletter of Songwriter and Musician, Rob Russell Davies*
NEWS
Writing music for television / radio and corporate functions has now become the ‘day job’ taking up most of my time and energy. I’m writing at the moment in lot’s of different styles having recently done some African / piano-based soundscape ideas, football songs for the World Cup and even some children’s tracks. At least I’ve now got an answer for those people who always love to come up to the stage at gigs to tell us how easy us musicians have it. They have this sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll perception that we lie about all day in messy hovels in drug / booze infested stupor's annoying the neighbours with occasional drum solos and Hendrix inspired guitar riffs.
‘Not any more!’ I tell them
(Just joking... I’ve always been a little angel!)
Whilst over in Ireland this year, I had a few chats with the Tipperary Peace committee about some ideas I’ve been thinking about for the song competition. To help exposure on the net, one of the plans we’ve agreed on is to get our own MySpace page dedicated specifically to the competition, which I’m going to run on behalf of the committee. It’s a way of telling everyone what the competition is all about, to share pictures and memories of past weekends, to hear some of the winners songs and hopefully to get songwriters and the public interested in taking part. It’s now all up and running so please check out our new page at:
(link opens in a new window)
Interest is already growing and we’re already nearing our first 1000 visitors. If you’re on MySpace we’d love to have you as a friend. It’s also a great way of hearing the winning songs from the last few years!
Craig and I have had a little flurry of gigs around Yorkshire and Lancashire as the ‘Duelling Pianos’ in the last few weeks. We got a great compliment last week when a local club we did asked us to do next year’s (2010) New Years eve for them! Now that’s forward planning! By the way, we think we’ve found the ‘source’ of swine flu as being Craig’s Meatloaf wig used for our version of ‘Bat Out Of Hell’. If not, there’s definitely something living in it which warrants further investigation.
The fact that the Internet is a very useful and powerful tool hit me again a few weeks ago. I was contacted by one of my best friends going back to school days. The last time we got together was in 1987 which means that we’d lost contact for over 22 years! He’d typed in my name and ‘music’ and came across the website. Great to be friends again Ian (the Bean) and hope you’re enjoying the newsletters!
SONGS THAT TAKE YOU BACK...
You might remember that in last month’s newsletter I mentioned that it might be interesting to do a bit about those songs that have a special meaning in our lives. The ones that bring back certain memories each time you hear them and ‘take you back’ to a place, person or event. Here’s a few of mine to get it going, but please feel welcome to write in and share any of yours with us.
AVALON / ROXY MUSIC
A very interesting 3 month contract at the Capital Towers Hotel in Pietermaritzburg in Natal, South Africa. I made sure that Wizard let me sing our version of the song. This came out at the same time as the famous ‘Men At Work’ album which brings back so many memories too! I can’t hear ‘Avalon’ or ‘Who Can it be Now?’ without going straight back to ‘Maritzburg’!
JUST THE WAY YOU ARE / BILLY JOEL
Durban / SA while at Port’s O’ Call. I simply remember lying in bed and hearing this song on the radio and thinking that it must be one of the best ballads ever written! At around about the same time, ‘Three Times a Lady’ came out, which I thought was just as good in it’s own right.
HAVE I TOLD YOU LATELY / VAN MORRISON
Leeds / UK. I’m a huge ‘Van’ fan and there’s so many of his songs to pick, all with different memories. What about ‘Moondance’, ‘In The Garden’ and that whole strange album... ‘Astral Weeks’.
You’ll notice that all the above are ballads. I suppose that people often pick them because of the strong melody lines, the words usually ‘mean something’, they're easy to remember, and ‘get to us’ on an emotional level. But just for the fun of it, I’ll pick a non-ballad as one I’ll always remember. How about...
SULTANS OF SWING / DIRE STRAITS
Wizard in Margate on the Natal South Coast. Now I ‘found’ this fantastic number for the band to do after someone had given me a tape of this ‘new’ and different UK band. So I started learning all the words and worked out the chords etc. so that Wizard could do the song with me singing it... and like a child with a new toy, presented it to the guys. A day later, Paul our guitarist slinks up to me pointing out that as the guitar is such an integral feature of the song, it would make more sense for him to sing it as well... it’s very much a guitarist / singer style song Well... he was right, so I let him sing it, but have never really forgiven him for stealing my song! (Only kidding Paul - and you sang it better than I would have done!)
If anyone’s got any ‘songs that take you back’ please write in letting me know why you love ‘em.
THE (REAL) TURNER PRIZE
Later this year the long suffering British public will be coming up for another instalment of ‘The Turner Prize’ which is organised by the Tate Gallery in London. Who knows what nonsense is in store for us this year, but if past years is anything to go by, it will be something designed to shock that will require as little actual talent as possible. To give you an idea of this ‘talent’... some past winners have included:
A film of the artist dressed as a bear wandering around an empty museum.
A piece called Lights Going On and Off, which turned out to be an empty room with (you guessed it!) the lights going on and off.
A video called 60 minutes of Silence, where a group of actors dressed in police uniforms and had to stand still for an hour. (However some occasional scratching was observed)
A double bed in a dishevelled state with stained sheets, surrounded by underwear, condoms, slippers and empty drink bottles.
A guy who puts dissected sharks, sheep and a cows in glass containers preserved in formaldehyde.
I’m not sure if artists with real talent want to laugh or cry when they see some bozo win £40,000 for mounting his Grandmother’s knickers on a wall! It’s not that I’m against ‘modern’, ‘new’ or ‘conceptual art’ but rather that what’s being showcased here doesn’t really take any talent to do. Now I have trouble drawing stick insects, but could certainly manage a room with the lights going on and off. And please don’t tell me that it’s the ‘idea’ or ‘concept’ that counts more than the talent. If the idea is just plain stupid to start with, then surely it’s not worth doing. (Although I suppose, if someone is prepared to give you 40 grand for putting your old knacked bed in a room, then maybe it is!) I could video myself at the piano for 3 minutes in my underpants with one of Craig’s wigs on playing the same note endlessly if I thought that was a good idea. (Which, incidentally I don’t - and before you ask... I ain’t doin’ it!). The shame of it all is that there are some fantastic artists out there doing wonderful and unusual stuff. Here’s a few that have been e-mailed to me in recent months... My ‘alternate’ Turner nominees!
No it’s not all done with computers! This is a MI-24 helicopter in Afghanistan which has actually been painted by some of the British soldiers serving there.
Meet Mr. Randall D. Boni from Parrottsville, Tennessee who does wood carvings using a chain saw(!)
Amazing!
I don’t know who the artists are here, but what about this ‘truck art’! It’s all been painted on.
Books on Wheels!
This ones called ‘Great Crevasse' and it’s by street artist Edgar Mueller, and his assistants. It was painted on the streets of Dun Laoghaire, Ireland, as part of the town's ‘Festival of World Cultures’
For this one, Edgar spent five days, working 12 hours a day, to create the 250 square metre image of the crevasse, which, viewed from the correct angle, appears to be 3D. He then persuaded passers-by to complete the illusion by pretending the gaping hole was real.
Edgar comments...
'I wanted to play with positives and negatives to encourage people to think twice about everything they see,' he said. 'It was a very scary scene, but when people saw it they had great fun playing on it and pretending to fall into the earth. 'I like to think that later, when they returned home, they might reflect more on what a frightening scenario it was and say, "Wow, that was actually pretty scary".
And here’s one that's more apt for the ‘real’ Turner prize... it could be painted on the roof of the Tate Gallery this year. Perhaps some of this years nominees would like to have a go?!
FINAL WORDS
Just got this Paddy joke from (WFH) Sharon:
Paddy's pregnant sister was in a car accident and went into a deep coma.. After being ‘out’ for nearly six months, she wakes up and sees that she is no longer pregnant. Frantically, she asks the doctor about her baby.
The doctor replies,
'Ma'am, you had twins; a boy and a girl! The babies are fine now, but they were poorly at birth and had to be Christened immediately... your brother came in and named them.'
The woman thinks to herself,
'Oh no, not mi' brother! He's a bloody clueless ignoramus!'
Expecting the worst, she asks the doctor,
'Well, what's my daughter's name?'
'Denise,' says the doctor.
The new mother is totally relieved.
'Wow, that's a beautiful name, I guess I was wrong about my brother.. I like Denise.'
Then she asks, 'What's the boy's name?'
(wait for it.......)
'Denephew'.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks again for reading, chat again next month.
Rob.
(Be a friend on mySpace)