Sat 9th Aug Going on a bit of an Eng'ape nostalgia trip since that last post, here's one of the best things we recorded.. almost ten years ago..

Fri 8th Aug Gonna carry on writing here for now. People ridiculed my band name England & The April when we first formed, with our original artwork of the queen descending into the London underground. Then, when we broke up, these bands from the same parts of London came out called The Good, The Bad & The Queen and Erland & The Carnival. I remember one quote from Sean, owner of Organ Records, who said "What was that pretentious band name of yours again?" but something I've learned from reading the histories of the great composers (:p) is that they just kept working, always writing, rarely getting any recognition but waking up every day & getting stuff down. Actually mentioned that guy in a song off the second album, which was written about TheBed days, here it is: These are the lyrics for the middle section. Desman was a band that Organ decided to sign instead of us: While some went from wank rags to riches (You know you did you know you did you know you did) Chris might put something special on Matt the Hands would make cheese sandwiches And I would put the kettle on Turning off from the main road I found a stricter highway code And while we're on the subject Sean, who have you found? Since you raised the matter Sean, who have you found? Fucking Desman? Always amuses me to hear Jae's ad-libbed You know nothing Sean.. on the final harmony there. I've been forcing myself into vacuumed routine, asleep by 11pm & up at 7, and it's working a treat for now. I kindof feel that artists in their 20s are well advised (not that they need guidance) to follow the flow of their lives, and take small account of the calendar, but as I move into my mid 30s I can feel that I am being spoiled by too much choice; too many paths lay wide, wide open, and so self-control is becoming an absolute necessity. It's true, you do learn to say no. The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving. I thought life was going to be a brilliant comedy, and that you were to be one of the graceful figures in it. I found it to be a revolting and repellent tragedy, and that the sinister occasion of the great catastrophe, sinister in its concentration of aim and intensity of narrowed will power, was yourself stripped of the mask of joy and pleasure by which you, no less than I, had been deceived and led astray. Thanks for that, Oscar.

Wed 6th Aug Here's the video from yesterday I was talking about.. just whacked some lyrics on the screen at the end to make up for lost video bits:

Wed 6th Aug Rachel April was here again last night, adding more madness to the And. track amongst other things - it now has a Happy Garden-esque outro, much like the nonsense at the end of Helen Heaven, if you remember that old recording from 2005. Can hear the changes on the updated Soundcloud embed down the page someplace. Recorded a live video of Hopeless Chords but the camera ran out of battery towards the end so gonna find some footage to fill in there.. also put a new harmony down on Tim, so the album is getting there slowly. Logic X is great for fixing timing issues with drums, but still sounds weird on piano, so dunno what I'm gonna do with my rushed performance of The Likes of Daniel Brown, wait for Logic XI perhaps? :p

Tue 5th Aug Said I was gonna share work in progress material from 7 Love Rivals, and I'm not sure at all if anybody wants to hear such a thing, but this is the current state of You Can't Out-Michael-Jackson Tim sans vocals:

Sun 3rd Aug These kinda things are so much easier to share..

Sat 2nd Aug Yeah so I am gonna share work in progress versions of these forthcoming tunes, why the hell not. I've shared this before, in an earlier state, but it's gone a bit dub since then:

Fri 1st Aug Love these folk. Song from forthcoming album:

Fri 1st Aug Feeling a lot better this week. Y'know, I only moan about things because I feel that there's nothing for ME out there in London, and surely there are others in the same boat. If you love the bands and the scene, good for you, but there's no place I wanna call home in this town. I wanna draw the outsiders out of hiding. Trying to get Bigott over for the October Tea Tone Party, now that would be special. I use Logic to record with, and recently upgraded to Logic X.. and damn I could've done with that a year ago. Deep into the recording of 7 Love Rivals and the quality of the production is sky high. Rachel from England & The April has been involved and it won't be long now. Does anybody wanna hear work in progress material? Nope? May post some anyway. Tracklisting is: 1. Richard Pierre Wakes Up With No Opinions 2. You Can't Out-Michael-Jackon Tim 3. I Remember Luutzen 4. Oh, Narcis 5. Stefano Vincenzo Ferrara 6. And. (Rockin' In De Car) 7. The Likes of Daniel Brown

Fri 25th July In fact you know what we're gonna do? There ARE some fucking great promoters out there, so I'm gonna dedicate a page of this site to the people worth booking shows with, based on their policies & testimonials from bands. Will get on that first thing tomorrow.

Fri 25th July I posted a little rant on my Facebook page earlier, and would like to say a little more on the matter if you don't mind so terribly. I was bitching about bands not supporting other bands & worthy promoters, but I'm certainly not saying there are no other genuine promoters out there, I said it was rare! Zachary Stevenson take a bow, Andrew Rayner prepare to be knighted. And I have no problem with big ole institutionalised bookers like Bugbear either, but they chose to put on 4 unknown bands per night at a venue like the Dublin Castle, charge over a fiver to get in and hassle bands to bring their own audience - pretty typical, and great for a band's first couple shows in town, but it's completely unsustainable to play regular shows like that when there's no exposure to a new audience. It becomes a chore to invite friends and their support will always wear thin when circumstances repeat with no sense of growth. There's also this double door twin room situation in most venues, which separates one band's audience from another's. The live venue will be in one space, and the bar/socialising area in another. What happens 99% of the time is that a group of people who came to see the 2nd band, for example, will sit in the bar area while the 1st band is playing, and audiences will swap over when the bands change. This, combined with the fact that most promoters fill a line-up indiscriminately of style, ethos or genre, further alienates the combined audiences from each other. This is so unhealthy I think, and so our venue has been specifically chosen so that everything happens in one room. There are seated areas towards the back of the venue where people can meet, catch up & talk without being impolite to the bands, but at the same time they don't miss any of the music or action on stage, and all the bands on the bill have the same amount of exposure to fans & randoms alike. A final factor here is that commitment to a cause, building a scene & being patient while word spreads about a good thing requires a certain amount of acceptance that a financial loss will be made in the early stages. This has been the main curse of the mp3 generation. Uncertainty about product has dominated the past ten years of music, and record companies have not been able to guarantee any kind of long term return on investment from pumping money into promising artists. Likewise, promoters haven't been investing in their reputations, which take longer to establish than it takes to research new, young bands whose friends are still eager to show support for their artsy pals, and good luck to 'em. We're trying something a little bit different, giving artists and music lovers a home, we really miss & wanna create a proper hangout! And so far it's been a joy, and response from bands has been very positive indeed. A'thank you!

Fri 25th July JEEPS playing a show at Roadtrip at The Workshop tonight, HERE'S AN EVENT that we're not mentioned in but I guarantee we're playing at 9pm!

Thu 24th July We're all go for a regular Tea Tone Party at Undersolo, with full live bands, on the last Wed of every month, so everything will be structured around that from now on. The Tea Tone month will start on the first Tuesday, with a new page and podcast previewing the acts booked for the party four weeks later. This will give us plenty of time to stick to a format, and the promotional work that goes into the events will all be backed up by online content relating to that show. For bookings, contact me via teatone@gmx.com - we are currently able to pay two headline bands costs & any other acts booked will get some free drinks & benefit from a lot of exposure in Camden & beyond, relating to the extensive promotion. We'll be using the hashtag #teatoneparty on Instagram & Twitter, please upload photos where possible, the place looks amazing! Let's try a hashtag widget thing..

Wed 23rd July Hiya, the first Tea Tone Party at Undersolo was fantastic, gonna go talk with the owners tomorrow to establish some kind of regularity to the event. Looks like we may be moved to Wednesdays & bi-weekly, will let you know of course. Photos from Monday's event on the Tea Tone Facebook page.

Mon 21st July Finally got a new podcast uploaded, that's it up there - The Elephant on Primrose Hill, Tea Tone club night tonight, this'll be interesting!!

Sat 19th July Decent new song from So Cow:

Fri 18th July We got a new regular venue for parties MAAAN, and it's a great club called Undersolo just over there <-- on Inverness St, opposite Camden Town tube. Mondays from now until further notice, ohh yeah:

Thu 17th July This whole anonymity thing has got me thinking. Why has the internet become so generic? The only posts on Facebook that remotely interest me these days are the ones relating to science, and that's no surprise because such subjects remove the need for opinions & subjectivity. Those posts certainly don't require much artistry of expression, and so they escape undiminished, but who can possibly share an opinion to an audience of everyone they ever met, through all the disparate circumstances of life? Merely being aware of the audience is enough to dispel any originality of thought, and what with the likes & shares, snubs & shuns of Facebook, purity of expression is compromised by a complex, overdeveloped & artistically unnatural pre-knowledge of the audience. I, for example, felt I had to take the word 'damn' out of a post the other day out of respect for a very religious friend who, I suddenly remembered, considers that to be a very offensive word. Internet statistics have ushered in a golden age for manipulation & a dark age for art. At Tea Tone we currently have 323 followers on Facebook, and surely far less here, and so here is where I chose to write most openly. I'm happy to have no stats or knowledge of who reads these posts. I write as much for myself as for anyone else, and the loss of almost 3 years of writing in my bag that was stolen in Munich hasn't hit me as I thought it would. Words come and go; have been slave to many, and many have been slaves to the word. So forgive me if I hide away in some corner of the internet to write, dust will to dust one way or another, as light will to light.

Tue 15th July You know the one ingredient that made the internet so fascinating when it first became ubiquitous, which is missing today with the dominance of Facebook, is ANONYMITY! So I've re-opened the old TheBed message boards with a Tea Tone section, just out of curiosity.. Click Here to have a look around.

Tue 15th July Here's the live video we shot with Richey Ostrowski on our balcony walkway thing about a month ago:

Mon 14th July At last thebed.co.uk is back online. What else. The world has grown honest. Honey, lemon & ginger tea with a suggestion of whisky in it might very well just be the finest potion of them all. We're involved in a modern production of The Tempest, starting on Thursday, with none other than Anukita Kann at the helm. And you know what, if anyone can, Anukita Kann.

Fri 11th July Since the closing of our previous party home the Torriano, we're looking for a venue in North London for a regular Tea Tone event, anyone who knows of a fitting place please get in touch. We aim to keep all events free entry & to pay bands where possible, Sunday nights is ideal currently.

Tue 8th July Maybe it's time for a little personal update here. Eddie & I recently got back from a little tour that was pretty fantastic until I lost my bag/wallet/passport in Munich, which set the whole thing flying off the rails & we had to cancel our show in Holland, amongst other things. We also lost half the footage from a video we'd shot in Venice, but managed to complete an edit regardless, which can be viewed down the page somewhere. Losing that bank card & cancelling it has set off a whole chain reaction of financial bullshit that includes the unavailability of thebed.co.uk for the moment, will try get that back online very soon. We're only drinking to excess on very special occasions now, and are generally very focussed on getting some quality work done this summer. The next single will be Richard Pierre Wakes Up With No Opinions from 7 Love Rivals, and there's a lovely video in the pipeline for that also. My botanical chess set experiment has proved to be quite a messy & expensive project (my hands are spattered with paint as I type this) but it's great to have something to work on besides music & tutoring. I'm still teaching piano, guitar & music theory, but also English Literature now & am in the process of setting up a company called MELT (Music & English Literature Tuition). Please pass on my details to anyone you know who might be interested in this. We also have some cutlery now, having lived in our Camden flat for almost 6 months with only one fork in the drawer. Here's the second part of Choking Dolphin's fantastic Annithology, featuring a remix of Hundred Hand Slap by my first band TheBed:

Tue 8th July Jae from England & The April has a brilliant electronic project called Choking Dolphin, and has just released Annithology Volume 1 and 2, here's the first:

Sun 6th July Here's a video we made in Venice for my solo recording The Metal Starts To Climb:

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