The Big Heist

It might be helpful to think of bands as families. Sometimes it definitely isn’t, but sometimes it is. For the purpose of the next few paragraphs it might be. With some families it’s pretty clear who’s in the family and who isn’t. You’re linked through blood or marriage. In these families maybe there’s a Gary who has been in a relationship with your Aunt Linda for 25 years but they never married so your mom would say he’s not really IN your family. Maybe you have an Aunt Abby who isn’t biologically related to you, has never been in a relationship with anyone but shows up for holidays and is the first person anyone calls when they need a dresser moved or have an extra ticket to see the Bee Gees tribute act. But is she IN the family? After decades OUT Pierre finally got IN, when laws changed and he could marry great uncle Bertrand.

 

Most bands that have been around for a length of time have accumulated a multitude of former drummers, van lenders, tour bookers, t-shirt designers, sofas to sleep on, providers… and I think that they are all in the family in a very real sense even if they are not technically in the band.

I’m not IN the band, except for when I am. It’s a fine distinction, and maybe in many ways a meaningless one. It's the deputy here by the way, in case you're confused and thinking the singer is getting all mysterious! When the bass player couldn’t do a European Tour a few years back I filled in for him. When the accordion player couldn’t do some dates last year I filled in for him. Now the piano player is in Portugal and I’ve been filling in for him this summer. 

 

Last night I was watching the film Paddington with my partner and my daughter. My daughter is young and is going through a stage of being frightened by films. Not specific films or specific things that might happen in films, maybe it started that way but now it’s graduated to being the idea of films in general. TV programmes are totally fine. Before some of you get too carried away with coming up with theories as to why this may be the case and solutions mined from your years of parenting - don’t worry, it’s all under control, though I do appreciate your concern.  

 

Anyways, we’re watching the film and it’s all going very well and I get a text message. 'Emergency. The band is in trouble. There’s a blog entry that needs to be written.' (It’s actually this blog entry that you’re reading at this moment, though I didn’t know it at the time for obvious reasons). It needed to be done by the end of the weekend. This weekend. Which gave me about 24 hours. The singer was at a festival and unable to write it because he was being festive. I don’t know what the other band members were up to in case you were wondering.

 

The Paddington back-story is included for the purpose of removing any veneer of glamour from the proceedings. We don’t operate from undisclosed rock star locations. I know you know that already, but it seems of some importance. After all you would think of things differently if the paragraph read:

 

I’m in the studio coaxing atmospheric sounds from 1970s synthesizers and I get a text message. Emergency. The band is in trouble. There’s a blog entry that needs to be written.

 

or

 

I was riding my Harley Davidson down the coastline, I stopped for a moment to admire the sunset and I get a text message. Emergency. The band is in trouble. There’s a blog entry that needs to be written.

 

A band can be like being in a family, but also a business, a sports team, a monogamous relationship, an extra-marital relationship, an abusive relationship, a biker gang, a church group, an addicts recovery group, a pottery class, a book club and plenty of other things. Sometimes when you’re really lucky it feels a bit like being part of a rag tag group of petty thieves planning a big heist. The Big Heist. The one that will set you up for life sipping umbrella drinks living on a tropical island. The one where no one gets hurt, where everyone gets to wear goofy disguises and the gutsy detective with domestic difficulties will never find that tiny clue and put the pieces together.

The Odd Folk are working a big heist and I’m in on it!

And what’s the heist? Well it’s not actually stealing something in this case. It’s making something, something potentially immortal; an Album. But at the very real risk of extending this metaphor too far and compromising it’s structural integrity - maybe it really is about stealing something, creating a perfect moment in time and capturing it before it gets away.

Bands have two separate identities; the real time one and the recorded one. When we perform live that’s happening in real time, the audience is experiencing and directly influencing and being a part of something that will only happen once and then when it’s over it lives on in individual memories that change over time and become unique to each person. Well, that’s probably a bit of wishful thinking, most of us probably don’t remember much of anything about most of the gigs we’ve been to.

The recorded identity can be revisited countless times by countless people and exists outside of the passage of time. We might change our opinion of the music, get sick of it and grow to like parts of it we didn’t before. Maybe the guitar effects sound really out of date now, but the recording itself doesn’t change.

 

Some bands are considered great live bands that never managed to quite capture the magic on studio recordings and some bands have meticulously (or through sheer luck) managed to capture something timeless on a recording that can never be replicated or equalled in performance. Some bands try to make every detail of a live shows sound as much like the album as possible, others want to capture as much of the raw energy and spontaneity of a live show as they can on the recording. Some bands just need something to sell at gigs so the can cover fuel costs. 

 

Every band has a part of them hoping that they might be able to make the rarest of the rare; the Great Album. Lots of bands have a few great songs, most bands have had magic nights where the crowd was amazing and everything fell into place, but the great album? Now that’s the big prize. The one where you start it from the beginning and you don’t want to skip any of the songs. The one that seems to be alive and timeless at the same time and connects the whole big family surrounding every band.

 

Yeah, it’s not like the old days. A good portion of people don’t have CD players anymore, stream all of their music online, and would never consider listening to an album from beginning to end. Vinyl records have made a comeback for a certain population, but the idea of recorded music being something you can hold in your hands is for many an old fashioned idea. Does that really matter though?

The planning is under way, meetings are being held in secret rock star locations and texts are being sent during family film nights. There are demo recordings being mixed and evaluated, recipes are being tweaked, microphone positioning is being discussed, melodies stumbled upon during late nights in Belgium are finding their way in, memories of times gone by and things yet to come, familiar sounds and some surprising ones.

Watch this space for more updates.

 

The heist is in the works, and you’re all invited.