Next Week

Next week I'm going away on a solo song writing retreat. I have so many ideas but it's impossible to even start them properly at home because there are so many distractions. 

I did this in 2023: I went away in January that year, and only really wrote one complete song- but somehow the cogs in my mind adjusted themselves and when I got back I just sat down and wrote a whole lot of 'em.

The funny thing is that as soon as I decided what I was going to do, even more ideas popped up. This means that I will have to edit which songs I finish and which I don't. This always feels alarming at the time, but is actually a really good thing to do. I remember when Beyoncé brought out her Lemonade album, it got so many excellent reviews that I really wanted to listen to it. I was fascinated by the song-house idea, too: the problem was that I didn't  know where to start, so I didn't start at all!

Simon Frith, the academic and rock critic, once said that Garageband was the worst thing that had happened to music, because there was a complete flood of DIY music with no mediators. Taking into account that he himself is a mediator and perhaps has a vested interest in protecting opinion-formers, I started to see his point, until I realised that I am one of the guilty parties (though in my case, it's Logic Audio). 

Right from the start, I've filled the cutting room floor with rejected songs, middle eights, lyrics and harmonies. I once overstuffed a song so much that I couldn't decide what to lose and dumped the whole thing. When I did the Showtunes from the Shadows album, I shelved two songs completely. I also chopped out verses and backing vocals, and in one of the songs completely re-wrote the lyrics because they were potentially contentious, and some people didn't want to be associated with it.

Sorry to burble on. Both Offsprogs came here and cleared stuff from the loft yesterday- impressively, they managed to empty about five boxes, but I've now got a very large number of bags to take to charity shops this week, and writing this post is part of an elaborate plan to put that off. I must make a start: I can't go off on a song writing retreat with Toy Story DVDs and redundant costume jewellery piled up in the room to come back to. Such things are energy vampires. Begone!