Cue The Montage Music…We’re in Training
By Craig | August 4, 2008
We’re in training for the next record.
Like any true heavyweight champion we carefully selected a remote rural location to begin the initial hard work. The rural location we chose was The Secret Garden Festival in Cambridgeshire and here you can see Anna throwing some mean shapes in preparation for our Autumn recording in Fancy London, more news on which soon.
…and here are some other photos of Friends of the Stars at the festival
The Rhythm Section, Rachel & Phil (plus mascot)
Rachel & Anna moonlighting as the Sugarfoot Stomp
Craig & Phil and non hairy others
More news soon…
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Just when I was getting worried about being a joyless bassa…
By Campbell | July 17, 2008
Topics: Music | 2 Comments »
The Bored Girlfriend Chair
By Craig | June 27, 2008
I saw this today and it took me back…
..it’s from a post about signs written by record shop staff on the PassiveAggressiveNotes website
It’s a little known fact about Friends of the Stars that before we became internationally insolvent Country/Folk musicians, both Cam and I used to work in record shops. Whilst I can’t speak for Cam, I can say that I never used to write signs directed at customers like the ones in the featured link. In fact, my sole contribution to the general ambiance of MVE Berwick Street in London’s fashionable Soho district was instead a ‘nice’ thing that benefited customer and store alike. It was the Bored Girlfriend Chair.
I came up with it in 1994 or 1995. I used to see couples coming in all the time and it always went the same way. The boy would start flipping through the racks of records and for a while his girlfriend would stand at his side, feigning interest in that original German pressing of Can’s Tago Mago.
After around 5 minutes of this the girl would generally abandon the boyfriend to his digging and lazily browse the rest of the shop, displaying body language that left you in no doubt that she wasn’t the slightest bit interested in any of the products on offer, even the ‘high end’ products in the glass cabinets…. The Prisoner video boxsets, a Smiths 12″ or two, an orginal Mono copy of Please, Please Me by The Beatles and so on and so BORING.
Normally at this point the girl would hassle the boy about it being time to leave. The boy, having only just reached M-R in the meticulously alphabetised Chicago House section, and just getting warmed up, would usually lie and say he’d only be “..5 more minutes”.
She’d give him maybe 3 and a half of those minutes, 4 at the absolute outside, and then they’d have a row, right there in the middle of the shop. This probably wasn’t good for their relationship in the long run and it probably wasn’t good for business in the shop but, frankly, for £27 a day I didn’t really give a shit about how well or badly the shop did.
What it definitely wasn’t good for was me sitting on my backside, reading the paper and listening to tunes in peace, which was the main reason I turned up each day instead of getting a proper job.
So…I put a chair by the window which offered girlfriends both fresh air and a view of the significantly more interesting market outside. It proved an instant hit and, at weekends especially, was occupied from the moment we opened the shop at 10am and until we booted out the last vinyl junkie at 8pm. The rows became more and more infrequent and the shop sold more records (and I still took home £27 a day).
Looking back, I should have patented the idea because it has been ripped off by just about every retail chain you can think of, and there’s even a male equivalent in smart and expensive ladies clothes stores that offers leather sofas, coffee, literature for the small minded and Sky Sports.
So, next time you’re in a shop and someone offers you a cup of coffee and a nice sit down whilst you wait for whatever it is you’re waiting for, just remember that it all started with me putting an old chair in a doorway in Soho.
Next week: How Cam solved The Cuban Missile Crisis.
Topics: That London, Apropos of Nowt | 2 Comments »
Cam on the 2nd album progress
By Craig | June 8, 2008
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We’re working on it, honest…
By Craig | May 29, 2008
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Glasgow….
By Craig | May 23, 2008
Off to Glasgow today armed with more tunes and new ideas for the new record.
Have a nice weekend, y’all
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Internet Music Fun
By Craig | May 8, 2008
Just a quick one…
What happens when you add You Tube and Last.FM together? The answer is your own personal Music Channel.
This is the Friends of the Stars channel
and this is my personal channel featuring country rock, metal, old skool hip hop and..erm..Girls Aloud. Essentially, it’s my musical taste laid bare and available online for all to see AND hear.
*Gulp*
Get your own here by entering either your Last.fm username or your favourite artist.
Enjoy..
Topics: Collaboration | No Comments »
Festivals, Websites, Blah..
By Craig | May 2, 2008
Some news items for y’all
- We’ve been booked to play the 2008 Moseley Folk Festival, which is nice. The festival takes place in Moseley private park and runs from 29th-31st August. More information can be found on the Moseley Folk festival website. We’re on bright and early Sunday morning.
- Our record label Commercially Inviable finally has a website. News, sounds, reviews and the like on Friends of the Stars and also on our labelmates James Summerfield and Sleepy Eyes Nelson.
- We’re apparently recording the drums for the new album at the end of May. This should speed things up somewhat. Or maybe it won’t. You never can tell, really.
- We’re still pulling together the retrospective LP “Community Punishment Workshop - Selected Recordings 2000-2005“. It will see the light of day eventually…it’s a case of so much to do, too little time at the minute. You’re probably the same yourself.
- There have been some nice reviews of the “Lighting & Electrical” LP on the interweb. Net Rhythms described it as “Rather Splendid” and A Starve In Heaven eulogised the shit out of it. All of which is good.
- Oh, and finally, me and the missus have a new pet rabbit. Her name is Sarah Connor and she is fleet of foot.
That’s all the news that’s fit to print.
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During Which I Bore The Entire Interweb About Writing A Middle 8..
By Craig | April 18, 2008
Anna and I spent a couple of hours bending another song into shape for the new record last night. Pre-production continues apace…
“Pour A Little Water” is something we’ve had hanging around for about a year and after demoing it several months ago we all acknowledged that what was the middle section should instead have been the chorus. So, we sat down last night intending to write a new middle section and then arrange the whole song from start to end.
Writing stuff with Anna is a challenge and a pleasure. She thinks very fast in terms of vocal melodies so it’s sometimes hard to keep up with her and find the chords she’s singing for, and she also changes her mind a lot and quickly because she’s looking for the right thing. Often, by the time I’ve found the original chord she’s started looking for a different one. It’s a very quick fire process and would look like lunacy to an outsider, but it comes from writing and working together over several years and seems to work. The song goes in several different directions, and often at the same time, before we eventually get what we want.
One thing we both agree on when writing together is being very careful to avoid the obvious. When writing songs, and particularly the kind of songs that we play, it’s very easy to take the path of least resistance. Often the song itself drags you with it because certain chords naturally lead you towards others - and there is nothing inherently wrong with that providing you can keep the song as a whole interesting by introducing something slightly out of the ordinary, something unexpected, to keep the ears fresh.
Yesterday, after much tweaking and bashing, we ended up with a pretty complex middle section that has a really sweet couple of key changes, a nice change of pace and somehow finds it’s way in and out of the arrangement very neatly and…
…and I realise I’m dancing about architecture here so I won’t go into any further detail. Suffice to say we are happy with it. Afterwards I made a quick, 10-bob demo so I could remember the chords and arrangement and I’m looking forward to working on a demo-proper over the coming days.
That’s 8 tunes in the bag.
Things are going well…
….a little too well.
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Organised Pre-Production…whatever next?
By Craig | April 15, 2008
Cam and I spent a productive couple of days in Glasgow last week, knocking songs into shape for the new record. I suppose you’d call it pre-production. The plan, intention and hope for the next record is that it all happens reasonably quickly and without mental anguish, which would be the exact opposite of what happened last time around. I suppose you’d call it hassle-and-anguish prevention.
I had to get up at the crack of dawn to catch my 5.30am train and arrived at Birmingham New Street fully laden with the things I’d need - my guitar, our expensive studio microphone in it’s very obviously expensive-looking flight case, my portable hard-drive and my laptop. I was half-asleep and carrying over £2k worth of gear - an opportunist mugger’s dream ticket - but I managed to survive the journey unscathed by staying awake with strong coffee and 4 back-to-back episodes of Prison Break. I also got to see the Lake District in the very early morning, which was a treat.
Arriving in Glasgow just after 10am I made my way to Cam’s house and we began to work on songs. A little while later, and as we were setting up to record, I realised I’d left the XLR lead used by the studio microphone back in Birmingham so we made a quick trip back into Glasgow city centre to visit Sound Control and in the process found ourselves in a branch of Fopp, via a swift and unnaturally disciplined visit to a bar, before heading back to work.
As a quick aside, I’m equally sad and glad that Birmingham doesn’t have a Fopp. Sad because it’s a great record store and you can never have too many of those in your city but nevertheless Glad because I’d be considerably poorer if there was one here. Cam spent £46 in under 10 minutes, the flash get.
Some songs for the new record are fully formed and ready to be recorded but others need a little work - a middle 8 here, an intro there and so on. The idea is to arrange around 20 songs before we get down to recording the basic stuff like drums and guide tracks that will enable us to start the recording proper. I guess we’ll eventually whittle the whole lot down to 10 or 12 for the final album, but that’s a decision for later on. I came away from Glasgow with arrangements for 4 songs, taking the ‘ready’ pile to 7 in total…so far, so good.
The songs Glasgow gave us were “Stagger Home Safe“, “Railtown People“, “Bubble of Hate” and “Beneath The Tree“.
“Stagger..” is one of Cam’s and is about a homeless drunk worried about international terrorism (!) whilst “Railtown People” is a really simple song, again by Cam, that is based around a de-tuned D chord and has a sweet, repetitive refrain that we plan to build into some kind of harmony vocal round. “Bubble of Hate” and “Beneath The Tree” are songs of mine that I’ve been carrying around for a while, searching for a structure or vocal hook to hang them upon, and they came back from Glasgow in pleasingly different forms than how they arrived. Both were initially faster, poppier numbers but after some playing around we settled on a sparse and bittersweet country feel for “Bubble..” and a slower, more punchy arrangement for “Beneath The Tree“.
All-too-quickly I found myself on the train back home again, but in my mind’s eye (ear?) I can already hear the way the record is shaping up, and it’s shaping up nicely.
Photos:
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