There’s always someone worse off…

admin — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:05:02 +0000

Rather late I’ve come across another personal hero from history – Francisco de Goya. I’ve just finished reading Robert Hughes’ wonderful biography ‘Goya’. Goya suffered a serious illness in 1793, when he was 46, the main result of which was almost complete deafness. Exceptionally Hughes has taken some trouble to understand what this meant for the artist and particularly the contribution it made to the very dark side that frequently came to the fore of his work. It always astonishes me that a great many writers on Beethoven, for example, barely mention his deafness and certainly have very limited understanding about what losing this most sociable sense does to your life (every part of it).

But here’s not the place to lecture you on Goya or anyone else – really I wanted to mention one of Goya’s major projects – the Caprichos – a series of etchings intended to be popular and commercially successful. Goya printed about three hundred sets – something like 24,000 impressions! It was a huge body of fantastic work but he was unable to find regular bookshops that would sell them.

Only 27 sets were sold in the following 4 years and some of these sales were to friends and supporters.

I stumbled across this astounding piece of information at exactly the right moment – when you’re wondering why nobody shows much interest in what you’re doing it’s good to know that one of the greatest artists in European history had similar problems – in fact, worse!

When someone actually listens to one of my previews (Previews page anyone?) I’ll post a special celebratory message!

Some sort of sorry part 2

admin — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 16:54:45 +0000

Back to this again …. last week I was having a drink with Alastair and talking about the state of my project.
We got on to this singing while deaf topic and I was just reiterating what I posted before – that it’s really what this is all about, not the music.
Alastair thought for a moment and said…”I know what you mean but most people are just not going to see that. If it doesn’t sound right they will just go somewhere else’.
I’m thinking now that maybe he has a point….
Obviously many of the big ‘artists’ and performers now use Autotune and other ‘aids’ both live and in the studio (that is – all the time).
And there is a bit of an irony in my not wanting to do it because I’m one of the only people in the world who might actually be able to justify it on the basis of not being able to hear.

It’s going to feel pretty weird faking the vocals though.

New music

admin — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 15:40:31 +0000

As promised but slightly late – that is, just the same as always – I have finished the 2nd mix down of the new batch which I’m calling My Funny Little Life. It’s another sort of EP. Next week I’m meeting up with Paul to get a couple of my rather plodding keyboard parts improved with his glorious talent. Shouldn’t take long to mix those in so the actual launch date will be next weekend 3rd / 4th July.

There’ll be a page of previews, first 45 seconds of everything, and to start with I’ll be giving out a download link to those who registered an interest when I mentioned it on here before.

After that? I’m planning to revisit the vocals on the Narrow Road recordings and put that out again. And then there will be another release, say 4 more songs, by the end of the summer I hope.

I keep wondering who will be the first person to comment on one of these entries. I get some stats, and can see that people drop by but not who or where from. And no-one ever says a word…are you all a bit shy?

PS I found an old audiogram from 2008, in fact the last time my hearing was tested, so I scanned it in and you can find it on the Deafness page. Take a look when you’re feeling a bit down…

Some sort of sorry

admin — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 15:27:36 +0000

I had an interesting conversation last week about the fact that because I can’t always hear myself singing (live that is) I have intellectualised pitch rather than just ‘knowing’ it or feeling it instinctively. Not surprisingly this does sometimes lead to some unexpected results…

Now obviously I expect to be judged alongside everyone else pushing themselves forward as singers, songwriters, performers of all kinds whatever their circumstances but sometimes I’m not sure that anyone is actually getting the point. Forgive me if you are.

Here’s the thing…how would it be if I got up and gave really good performances every time? Just like a hearing person? I’m a ‘disabled’ guy with half my hearing gone AWOL. I can’t change that.

If I could do this faultlessly you’d all say “look at that guy, there’s no problem with deafness – you can just get a couple of hearing aids and you’ll be just like everyone else”. Believe me, this is nowhere near right.

If I get up and give a good, tuneful performance it’s due to a huge effort on my part plus a very large amount of luck. If I don’t, then that’s just one of those things, I’ve done my best.

I’m sorry if that means that some don’t want to hear it.
There’s nothing I can do about it and I’m not going to stay at home just in case I mess it up.

But I am sorry.

The sun is shining…

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:17:01 +0000

..and it’s time for me to eradicate all the grumpy and bad tempered posts from here and make everything lovely again.

Never mind about the things that go wrong…now I’m working on a new release, 6 songs (although 2 are new versions of songs from ‘Cowboys’). There are just 7 tasks left now between me and a decent mix of all the new stuff – out of a list of something like 100. Hoping to get those done over this coming weekend. Another post soon about how I’m going to give these out but right now I’m going to bed because I’m so, so tired…

New release coming…

My Funny Little Life, I’ll believe, Late Train, Real Life, Chains, Suitcase.

Protected: Let’s try this then…

admin — Mon, 10 May 2010 22:14:50 +0000

Luckless or Reckless?

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:06:25 +0000

That post a couple of days ago was rather (ahem) bad tempered so let’s change the subject.

I was chatting to someone I don’t know very well and inevitably the deafness came up as a topic. When I said I had played in bands when I was younger he assumed that was the cause of my deafness. Quite reasonable. People do.

But as you know that’s not the whole story for me. One early summer night in 1970 a few of us went to a pub called the Royal Standard at Westcombe Park near Greenwich. It was a music place, lots of kids like us but with the added novelty of phones on the tables. If you saw someone you liked, you could just pick up the phone and call their table number – great idea even now. I was with a particular girl – that’s how I know the date (first girlfriend! blush). But anyway the phone was going the whole time. And I was baffled because I tried to answer it but over the music and racket in the background I couldn’t hear anything – nothing at all. I remember thinking it wasn’t working but seeing my friends using it left me puzzled to say the least. In fact, obviously, I have never forgotten it. That was before I had really started playing in bands on a regular basis, so the writing was already on the wall if only I could have read it.

It was still a great night though (drifts off into nostalgic daze….)

I knew this wouldn’t be easy but ?

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:51:47 +0000

Well I knew when I started this that it wasn’t going to be easy but I’m a bit stuck now to be honest. While I work out what to do about the live project I’ve decided I’m going to put out some more music soon – but probably I’m just going to give it away to people I like. Use the new contact form on the right to let me know you want to be included – the ‘contact me’ email address is spammed to death – nothing reaches me from there anymore.

I confess it’s been a rough couple of months – and not much fun, but there you are – it was my choice to step up for this. A big lesson though – got to be a bit more careful about what I spend my time on in future.

Must try harder…

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:38:15 +0000

Overdue for an update so here’s where I’m at.

I had a good year overall with a lot of progress – a handful of small gigs and some new material.

But towards the end of November I started to realise that I wasn’t going to be able to make much more headway, mostly because there really is something I can’t do, no matter what. And that’s the face to face networking you need to be good at to get the live work.

That’s a bit of a problem for me because in those noisy places where this stuff goes on I can’t hear a word. This has stopped me for a month or so but with the New Year I am starting to think about ways round it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from doing this it’s that there always is a solution no matter what other people may tell you.

And also you have to keep on going, because your own perception of where you are is not usually accurate.

And that it’s a privilege to make music, particularly with your friends.

Oops, that’s 3 things.

Happy New Year

where did all that time go?

admin — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:15:00 +0000

It’s Sunday and I’m supposed to have done about a million things today, some of them quite important.
Instead, and not for the first time, I did something rather different :

Sorry about all the missed notes on this – this is just version #1. Next Sunday I am supposed to be doing about a million things, some of them quite important.
That may mean that version 2 is not far away.
Let me know if you enjoy this…