31 - Manchester (briefly)

"These shoes should travel to exciting places
Get ready
Get steady

Now we go..."

SJ848978

30 - Lausanne

"On those dark days in July
Your eyes were on the sky
Waiting for storms
Hating the norm..."

29 - Paris

"Thinking of the sea
Tides turning internally
Imagining beauty
Unreality..."

26-28 (No Photos)

"As you were approaching
A new idea was encroaching
A twisted and terrible thing
Suddenly a song to sing..."

TQ246791

"I'll find a pit
In which to sit
Some gloomy nook
To read my books..."

TQ253794

"What a privileged pair of eyes
Have I
In thrall to tall buildings and sky..."

TQ252793

25

"Imagined lives
That make sense
That are safe
On the screen
We watch..."

TQ345837

24

"He
Up a tree
Holding out a hand
Help for a sister..."

TQ346842

23

"Hands so handsome
Fingers meet thumb
Wood encircling lead
Draw out the thread
The path I tread..."

TQ316838

22

"Thanks for the stories
The former glories
What's life for
If not memories..."

TQ316836

21

"Trying to find the key
The combination by which you would master me..."

TQ305814

20

"Thanks for the stories
The former glories
What's life for
If not memories..."

TQ295815

19

"The candle in your heart wasn't strong enough
Your torch bulb blew - the weather was rough
But the lighthouse did it, lit your destiny
And only showed you where you didn't want to be..."

TQ345837

18

"I smell coffee when I wake
Love the smell, hate the taste
It's disappointment in a drink
So bitter I spit it in the sink..."

TQ351849

17

"You're trying to find the key
The combination by which you would master me.."

TQ317847

16

"The candle in your heart wasn't strong enough
Your torch bulb blew - the weather was rough
But the lighthouse did it, lit your destiny
And only showed you where you didn't want to be..."

TQ314833

15

"As you were approaching
A new idea was encroaching
A twisted and terrible thing
Suddenly a song to sing..."

TQ316842

14

"The Scrabble tiles I spilled this morning
Spelled out your name
The streets in my A to Z did the same..."

TQ316839

13

"Hands so handsome
Fingers meet thumb
Wood encircling lead
Draw out the thread
The path I tread..."

TQ314818

12

"Thanks for the stories
The former glories
What's life for
If not memories..."

TQ314818

11 - No Cameras Allowed at Location

"What a privileged pair of eyes
Have I
In thrall to tall buildings and sky..."

TQ302795

10

"A collection of cosy crimes
A cultural artefact
Resolutely of our time
A shared memory, a common fact
Murder, She Wrote..."

TQ298811

9

"He
Up a tree
Holding out a hand
Help for a sister..."

TQ346842

8

"I'll find a pit
In which to sit
Some gloomy nook
To read my books..."

TQ347843

7

"The Scrabble tiles I spilled this morning
Spelled out your name
The streets in my A to Z did the same..."

TQ346835

6

"I smell coffee when I wake
Love the smell, hate the taste
It's disappointment in a drink
So bitter I spit it in the sink..."

TQ346835

5

"I'll find a pit
In which to sit
Some gloomy nook
To read my books..."

TQ335848

4

"Imagined lives
That make sense
That are safe
On the screen
We watch..."

TQ334838

3

"Our heads are like planets

Red hot under skulls

Speaking like volcanoes

Makes life wonderful..."

TQ329801

2

"These shoes should travel to exciting places
Get ready
Get steady
Now we go..."

TQ291812

1

"A collection of cosy crimes
A cultural artefact
Resolutely of our time
A shared memory, a common fact
Murder, She Wrote"

TQ300809

The First Copy

This is the first copy of 20 Two Minutes 4 Weeks. The plan for hiding them around the city has evolved a bit - I'm now going to hide copies of the entire album, not just selected tracks. This blog will be used to give clues as to the location of each hidden CD: a photograph, a quotation from one of the songs, and a code.

To begin with the CDs will be hidden in London only, however I'm looking for people to help with distributing them in other cities around the world. If you want to get involved just email me!

The end, part one

Part one of this project is now done, if not quite dusted. I've written and recorded the basics of over twenty new songs, and the next step after mixing will be to release them, which I don't think is going to happen in any conventional sense - these songs are not going online, at least not at the moment. If anyone wants to hear them now they are welcome to email me (click here for the address) and I'll send them a CD with as many songs as are ready at that time in whatever state they are in. I'll do this until I run out of blank CDs.

Beyond that my plan is to print 224 CDs, which will be left around London (and hopefully in other cities around the world) to be discovered by whoever discovers them. Each CD will have a quote from one of the songs printed on the front, and this will link in some way to the location it gets left/hidden in.

I'm doing it this way for a few reasons, one of which is that I think music is getting too easy. It's great in some ways that most of us can now download any song at any time to listen to whenever we feel like it, but in other ways I think this just makes us think of music as disposable and a little meaningless. Why pay any deep attention to one particular piece of music when there are millions more that you can listen to? It might sound precious, but I want these songs to be something more than that to the people who hear them, because they're more than that to me.

I also want to have fun with it, I want to do something that makes people curious, and the hiding CDs plan ties in with the theme of unreality that runs through a lot of the songs. I've also been influenced by the Paul Auster book I was reading, the idea of the film-maker who destroys his own work before anyone can see it. I'm not willing to go that far (yet), but I do like the idea of scarcity in an age where we expect everything to be available to us whenever we want it.

One CD (with the 11 songs that I've mixed so far) has already been hidden away outside London thanks to my friend Seb. Kudos to anyone who finds it, all I'll say is that it's in some woods...

Anyway, for now, it's over and out.

Day 29: Running over

So this is apparently day 29, which means I'm officially over the threshold of my four weeks - shock horror. However, I don't go back to work until Wednesday, so that's my official limit. Today I finished writing Fail, and recorded it. I also re-recorded the vocals for City Song, and finished the lyrics for Sing a Song. I now have to finish writing Pedestriana and Untitled, the latter is a particularly awkward customer. So I have written 19 songs, and, if I include the wordless improv, 20. I've succeeded. In the writing stakes at least.

At the moment I'm reading The Book of Illusions, which is the second novel by Paul Auster that I've read. The first was New York Trilogy, a book which inspired a line in the song You Amaze Me, a line which describes seeing the streets in an A to Z spelling out a name. One of the stories in New York Trilogy (which by the way is a work of total head-bending brilliance) describes a character following directions through New York streets which he eventually realises are spelling out letters. It's all tied in with the story of the tower of Babel, but I forget exactly how. Anyway, that idea came back to me subconsciously when I was writing the bridge to You Amaze Me.

This is actually the second time NYT has been referenced in a song I've written, as in Any Captain Worth His Due I mentioned Babel, which I'd only started to learn about after reading the book (and, coincidentally, seeing a painting of the tower of Babel in a gallery). Of course then the film Babel came out and it was everywhere. I'm going totally tangential here, but I was once party to the viewing of a downloaded version of Babel, a film in which about sixty different languages are spoken. It took a good hour of pretending we knew what was going on before we realised that our download had arrived without the intended English subtitles. Work that irony into a song, Alanis.

Anyway, Paul Auster is slightly inspiring me again in terms of the follow-up part of this project i.e. what I do with it when it's finished. Watch, as they say, this space...

Day 28: Dora and Rudy

In the car on the way back from my step-niece and nephew's naming ceremony I came up with a short little verse for them, which I've set to one of the piano improvisations from Thursday. I've just recorded it, and I hope they like it when they hear it (they're only a few months old so probably won't have strong opinions either way).

Things are now as follows:

Written and recorded:
Brooklyn Bridge
City Song
Codebreaker
Doodlebug
Everyone Likes Coffee Except me
Former Glories
Impulse Control
On Those Dark Days in July
Murder, She Wrote
Realityicide
A Reverie
Dora and Rudy
Shoelaces
The Mismatch Man
The Race
Volcanoes
What's Lost to You

Written but not yet recorded:
Fail

Almost finished:
Sing a song
Pedestriana
Untitled

I may also put the other piano improvisation on there as an instrumental, I think it's nice to have something without words to break things up, don't you?

Day 27: It's only words

I was on good piano playing form yesterday, and whilst going over what I recorded I realised I had a couple of really sweet improvisations of about two minutes each, which I'm going to try to put words to over the weekend. I played some really crazy frenetic rhythmic stuff too but none of that is really usable as a song - sometimes I get carried away and start to play the piano more like I used to play the drums, thinking of paradiddles and fills more than chords and melodies. It's fun but I don't think the piano likes it too much, and the Yamaha I'm using has a really heavy action so I was exhausted afterwards. I've been editing the takes together today and will set about recording vocals as soon as my house is empty. I'm still a bit stuck on some of the lyrics though, sometimes they come and sometimes I feel like I have nothing I want to write about... I'm going out shortly though, and then to my niece and nephew's naming day tomorrow (very cute names for very cute babies: Dora and Rudy, I might have to write a song for them), so I should get some ideas from one or both of these things. If not expect a lot of humming in some of the songs.

p.s. Speaking of lyrics, I've just realised how grammatically incorrect the song Words (which I've quoted in the title of this entry) is - it's only words? They're only words, surely?

Day 26: Wires and hammers pt 3

Today I went back to do the final piano recording session. I did the parts for Fail and Doodlebug, and re-did Untitled and Sing a Song. Fail is a song about how afraid most us are of failure, and how that fear actually prevents us from learning the things that might allow us to be more successful.

I was thinking about this again today, and about how often people are referred to in terms that basically ascribe who they are to what they do, even on the level of "she's a plumber" etc. I suppose in a world of six billion people the human mind ends up falling back on this pigeon-holing as a short-hand to make sense of things, but I think on some level it's also indicative of our approach to other people and to ourselves. How often when a person does something wrong do they scold themselves by saying "I'm an idiot" or somesuch, rather than "I just did something idiotic"? It's as if by doing something wrong they completely invalidate every other aspect of themselves and become just that one thing. This kind of thinking is what makes success so important to us, and failure terrifying to the point that we will avoid it at all costs.

The best thing about the song Fail is that it is in itself a failure, as I went way over the two minute rule I set for this project, coming in at nearer three. Actually, quite a few are longer and a couple are shorter. But hey, who cares, it's a good song.

Day 25: Chipping away

I recorded vocals for City Song, re-did them for July and You Amaze Me, and re-wrote some of the chords for Fail. Played around with my ukulele, started to get some interesting things happening but no actual song as yet. Tomorrow I'm going to do the final piano recording session so otherwise have been getting stuff ready for that. I've also been listening to the Hidden Cameras today, having helped out at a gig of theirs on Saturday for a friend. I hadn't heard their music before but they were really quite special, particularly as the gig was held in Shoreditch Church. I spoke to the vicar afterwards, which felt all kinds of wrong as I had a beer in my hand and had just watched a gay band singing about watersports. He didn't seem to mind.

Day 24: Getting down to busy-ness

Productivity drive: vocals for Everyone Likes Coffee Except Me, July, Reverie; a first draft of Doodlebug; first verse and chorus lyrics for Fail; and electric guitar for Impulse Control. I'm hoping to get all my left over piano stuff recorded on Thursday so need to have all that prepared by the end of tomorrow. It's exciting...

A friend and I had a bright little thought the other day about what I might do with these songs when they're finished. My original idea was to be obstinately retro by releasing the thing strictly on cassette only, in part for the sheer perversity of it but also because I like the idea that whoever wants to hear these songs will have gone to some effort to do so. However, my friend Catherine and I have now had a better idea, one that involves concealing CDs all around the city, which is going to be a fun project in itself, and will probably be reported on this blog. I might still put it out on cassette though. I'd love to do a proper vinyl release of course but that's just too expensive.

I also managed to go swimming today, which left me feeling elated but exhausted and slightly sick as I haven't exercised my upper body since about 1998.

Day 23 pt 2: Late night reprieve

The mind is a mysterious thing. Having written earlier that I was feeling under-inspired, I just sat down and wrote a song, and then wrote half another song. The first is called Doodlebug. On Sunday I visited Shoreditch Festival, which was themed around the year 1948 and was a very well put together event. Anyway, some people there were dancing the jitterbug (see above) all dressed up in forties clothes and stuff. I started to think about the word jitterbug, and the word doodlebug, which was a nickname for the V-1 flying bomb, and about how it would be cool to somehow use those and other bug-ended words in a song. Well, I started to play around just now and came up with a really catchy thing in which I thought I might be able to use those words. Long story short, I wrote the lyrics and sadly they don't include the words jitterbug, litterbug, bedbug or humbug - but the chorus is doodlebug over and over... It actually makes sense lyrically too, which is good as I can't live with writing total nonsense. The other song is called Fail, and doesn't have words yet, but feels like it will be a good one to sing as it's sort of soul-ish.

Day 23: Perspiration/inspiration

More of the former than the latter today. I'm getting some of the written but not recorded stuff into shape and have been playing around with chord progressions for some of the unfinished songs. I think I may have to abandon the Pigeon song, which is a shame as I like some of the lines in it, it's supposed to be about a pigeon singing from the afterlife:

I was a pigeon
By a prior breath
And I met my death
In this
Metropolis

Oh, I was a fine bird
A Bonaparte
Of both park and heart
I sparred
As well as I sparked

But train stations are dangerous places for pigeons

I fell foul
Fell down
Onto the tracks
And in the black
Of the soot
I lost my foot
As the train came in
Then it crushed my wing
Precious thing!
And somebody said
"How disgusting, it's dead!"
And at last I lost my head...

Despite having done quite a lot of stuff that usually triggers ideas over the weekend I'm not feeling particularly inspired, but that's okay as there's plenty to get on with that doesn't require a particularly fertile mind.

Day 22: Mind the gap

So far I've been punctilious in updating this blog every day, however the weekend just past was alternately too busy and too hungover to maintain the habit. I am now back in the swing so normal service is resumed. I've just totaled my work so far, which is as follows (lots of these are working titles):

Finished:
Brooklyn bridge
Codebreaker
Former glories
Murder, she wrote
Realityicide
Shoelaces
The mismatch man
The race
Volcanoes
Nothing can replace what's lost to you
You amaze me

Written and partially recorded:
Coffee
Impulse control
July
The mind
City song
Reverie

Partially written:
Pedestriana
Sing, sing a song
Friday, 8th August
Maslow, actually
The pigeon song
Awake, love
Art loving people
Untitled

So, another three to finish... I should make it, my only worry is not getting the last piano recording sessions done in time.