Tag: inspiration

Boy George quote: “there’s music everywhere now”

There’s music everywhere now. There’s saturation now. It’s become a career opportunity. A job. People go on The X Factor and say, “I just want a better life”. I wanted to change the world. When I started making music, I felt, naïvely or not, that I had something to tell the world. I had a mission statement. It’s great to buy your mum a house. It’s a lovely idea. But it shouldn’t be why you make music. When I hear that I think “you’re getting it all wrong”. My favourite type of music makes me want to burn down a building or makes me cry.

– Boy George. attitude magazine, december 2010.

I agree with everything in this quote. It’s one of the best statements about the music industry and why some people just have to make music, and others just want to be famous. The whole article, an interview with Mark Ronson and Boy George together, is definitely worth reading. Boy George is a very interesting man, and I’ve a lot of respect for him after reading that interview. I never really read much about him, other than random news headlines, and I only really know his Culture Club singles.

There’s a wonderful moment at the end of the article, where Mark Ronson jokingly refers to Boy George as a “national treasure”, and the Boy responds:

Being a national treasure doesn’t pay the rent though. An 80s icon is nothing to be.

I used to watch a music show back in the late 90’s on TnaG (TG4 as it is now), and they’d have 20minute segments dedicated to an artist or a year or whatever, and I remember one time it was Culture Club. I knew the songs, but didn’t know the man, and even then it was an exhilarating experience to see someone so definitely “other” singing on my tv. The same show introduced me to Kate Bush, and developed my popular music history. Of course, I’m a sucker for choirs, so the Culture Club song that made the biggest impact is one that is probably not as well known (note the top hat. Even more awesome) :

Of course the reason for the interview with the two together is because of the Mark Ronson single “Somebody To Love Me” which has Boy George on vocals, along with Andrew Wyatt of Miike Snow.

Mark Ronson ft. Boy George ‘Somebody To Love Me’ – Director: Saam Farahmand from Tom Lindsay on Vimeo.

Helen (don’t make a sound) demo

I wrote this way back when I was sharing a house with Anna and playing piano with her a lot in gigs and the like. At the time I was focusing more on other people’s music than on my own, but the house was a very music filled house, which was inspiring. I was working on music arrangements for a musical at the time too, which had me working on 4, 5 and 6 part vocal harmonies. We were also practising regularly, as well as just messing about with musical experiments. We were a tv-less house too, and evenings that weren’t musical evenings, were often spent reading, listening to music, drinking tea and or off out in one of the local pubs having a pint or three.

It was during this period that I really started back writing my own songs again after a few sporadic bursts of songwriting. There’s a cliché that heartbreak is what inspires songwriting, but for me, it was being in a relationship that gave me the inspiration to start writing again.

At one point, I got hooked on waltzes, and kept showing people how everything can be turned into a waltz, and it’s instantly cheese-tastic. We turned a regular cover that we used to perform, into a waltz half way through the song, just to play around with it. In the midst of this, I ended up writing two songs that were waltzes. Musically, this song draws inspiration from two specific songs that I reference musically in a quite vague sort of way. It doesn’t really matter what those two songs are, as the musical allusions are something that I’ll get but not many other people would even notice. Even if I pointed out the songs, you’d more than likely go “huh?” than anything else, as it’s filtered through my own musical language. I know what I’m referring to, but it might not make sense to you.

Anyways, lyrically, it was inspired by a book I read that was recommended to me by a friend online. I was a bit wary initially, but I got completely hooked on it, and it’s probably one of my favourite reading experiences of the last few years, as I got completely wrapped up in this book and somehow related so much to one of the characters that I ended up writing this song and borrowing that character for my own story inspired by that novel.

Musically, the two different sections came quite naturally from each other, but are quite unrelated. I liked the chromatic bass movement in the verses, and that was something I deliberately set out to achieve. The other section has a chord progression that is sorta similar to something else, but I wanted the chromatic bass movement to be the musical link between the two sections. I also decided that although the sections were in different keys, that I wouldn’t try and modulate neatly between them, but rather have an abrupt change to reflect the different states of mind and change in the song lyrically.

When I perform this song live in intimate venues, I try to get the audience to do the backing vocal lines in the “chorus” as whispers while I sing and play over it. I’m a fan of audience participation, and it’s something that makes me very happy when it works. Generally, it has worked better than expected, and audiences seem quite willing to humour a silly piano playing songwriter in his silly little whims. But it keeps me entertained, and that’s a good thing.

The demo is just that – a demo. I tried a few times to demo this song, and just kept fucking it up, to be honest. And while I certainly don’t ace the song in this recording either, it’s at least close enough to be a half decent reflection of what the song is supposed to be like. Just without the strings that I’ve written in my head, or the female vocal parts that I’ve used in live performances a few times, or really, anything other than just the piano line and my own vocals.
Helen (don’t make a sound) [demo] by misterebby

(photos are hosted on my flickr page)

Dancing to the Dublin Gospel Choir at Electric Picnic

This was the highlight of my summer. The Sunday morning of Electric Picnic, myself and three of the guys I was performing with as part of Werk at thisispopbaby headed off to get coffee and food. The Dublin Gospel Choir were on stage in the main arena, singing wonderful music. We sat and finished our food and coffee and enjoyed the music. Then they started a Stevie Wonder medley, which got us up to dance. During the course of the medley, myself and Tom started doing bits of one of the routines we were doing later that night, and the other two guys joined in.

Some girls came over to us after those songs and asked if they could dance along with us, as we “looked like a lot of craic”, and we’re never ones to refuse to dance. So we all started dancing together calling out simples moves to each other. Over the course of the next few songs, more and more people behind and beside us started to follow along too, and people came up from the crowd ahead of us to dance behind us too. People took photos, smiled, and watched. Some people we dragged up to join us too and at some point we looked around to see a crowd of people all following our moves behind us.

When the set finished, we held Tom (who was doing most of the leading dance-wise) up on our shoulders as the dancers behind us applauded us and the Gospel choir both. So many people came over to say thank you, and saying it was the best moment of the festival for them, but we were just happy to dance along to the fantastic music and thrilled when other people saw fit to follow what we were doing and dance along with us.

It was a beautiful afternoon. I’ve only discovered two youtube videos of it so far, but you’d never know, more might surface.

Firstly, a short one, where you can see myself, Chris and Tom in front, and Stephen in the red vest behind us.

Secondly, a video shot from the side, showing more of the people who were dancing along behind us.

edit: here’s a 3rd video, this time from the front, and you can clearly see myself and the other three guys who started it all:

edit again: here’s a 4th video, also from the front and a bit short too.

The Dublin Gospel Choir mentioned it on their facebook page:

Thanks to everyone who came out and supported us at Electric Picnic yesterday. Great day and LOVED the flash mob! If you have any pix or videos send them on, we’d love to see them!!!

Flash Mob…. it’s not often that you get to watch a show from the stage but this made our day!! Think poor Kerry-Anne nearly forgot the words when she saw them!! It’s what the Picnic is all about!!! Thanks guys!

The whole weekend was fantastic, and the rain on Sunday/Monday didn’t marr it at all, just made things a little more challenging. I had another random beautiful moment where I was having some chips between catching UNKLE and Fever Ray, and sat down at one of the upright pianos in the wood sculpture areas near the electric arena. Of course it was delightfully out of tune and honky tonk, so I started playing some Ray Charles and Tom Waits covers on it, and ended up playing in the rain to a few people who were crossing the area to catch The National or Foals. But it was wet, and when my chips were gone, I headed off to catch Fever Ray instead, but it was rather lovely too. I’m sure those pianos suffered through a lot of “Chopsticks” and the like, so a bit of jazzier stuff was a nice respite I imagine.

Inspiration: Nina Simone

Nina Simone was studying to be a classical pianist, but got sidetracked by her evening job playing jazz to help support her studies in classical piano at Juilliard School of Music. I can relate, on a much smaller, less talented kinda scale. While studying for a degree in music I became as much interested in jazz and other forms of music, as I was in my primary area of study – classical music, and classical piano more specifically.

I remember spazzing out over her version of Love Me or Leave Me with a fellow piano student, and drawing comparisons with Bach’s Inventions. She was one of the first artists I was introduced to musically, who seemed to cover a lot of the same musical interests as myself.

It was one of my best friends in Secondary school who first introduced me to Nina Simone. We would listen to her albums while getting ready in her room to go out to town or somewhere. I have a strong memory of her dancing around her room to I Put A Spell On You.

Over the years, my love of Nina’s music has grown, and one of her own songs that speaks to me a lot lately is Mississippi Goddam (live!). She was passionate, political, intelligent, and very talented.

“Keep on sayin’ ‘go slow’…
to do things gradually would bring more tragedy.
Why don’t you see it? Why don’t you feel it?
I don’t know, I don’t know.
You don’t have to live next to me, just give me my equality!”

Inspiration: Michael Nyman – “The Piano”

The Piano

I started playing piano quite young, and went through the RIAM classical piano grades. I started to lose interest somewhat at about the age of 15, when I was coming to the end of my grades, and wasn’t really interested in doing a Diploma. But something that reignited my love for playing was the movie “The Piano”, and particularly the beautiful score by Michael Nyman. I saw it on VHS when I was about 13, if I recall correctly, and I remember my parents making a special exception to allow me to watch a movie that was rated 15.

But I was really taken by the soundtrack, and I love the fact that Holly Hunter played the piano parts seen in the movie. Initially, it was the piece “Big My Secret” that I loved and played a lot, but I was won over to all the pieces over time, and they became some of my favourite pieces of music for piano. I spent the rest of my teenage years without going to piano lessons, and discovering pieces of music that I wanted to play, as opposed to just having to learn them for an exam. It’s something that I think was very important in continuing my love for the instrument. That, and discovering artists like Tori Amos and Kate Bush, who used piano in their music in ways that I hadn’t heard before.

The main theme from the piano, “The Heart Asks Pleasure First”, also called “The Sacrifice”, has become one of those standard pieces that piano students all love and learn:

It is a beautiful piece of music, but my favourite is still “Big My Secret”. Some people feel that it’s played too fast in the movie, as the recording by Nyman is much gentler and slower, but I like the flexibility of the piece, and it’s appropriate in the scene, I think:

Holly Hunter in the movie:

(Nyman’s version and some other bits after the cut)
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