Yesterday we had a vocals rehearsal at my place. We were using the day to finalise everyone's harmonies as we approach the last stages of tracking for the new record,and I thought it would be a good idea to make seven kilos of gelatinous risotto for pre-rehearsal lunch. We may as well have each had a trowelfull of rohypnolled cement before sitting down in comfy chairs and blow-darting ourselves in the necks.
Draped across a sun bathed lounge room we battled sunday-arvo unconsciousness, and we began (stupidly) with our most narcotic song All I Need's A Holiday. Holiday was apt actually, cos the room reminded me of this scene in National Lampoon's Vacation. Not so much the sexual abuse at the start of the clip, just from about the 1.50 mark.
Anyway, out of the haze came some good progress and i'll give you a snippet of us at our least risottoed. Below is a bit from a song called Bonny...
Briscoe is the brainchild of Bart Denaro’s (my) promiscuous encephalon (thank you thesaurus.com). After years behind a drumkit in Kid Confucius, I have decided to ditch the instrument I am pretty good at, and pick up the guitar - an instrument I am pretty shit at, and sing (getting better all the time but let’s face it, I ain’t no Ian Dury). Luckily I have a band full of musicians who are at least as good as Ian Dury, maybe even better.
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Usually when someone says something like “I was born to swim the 200m butterfly” you expect them to break a Commonwealth record as a minimum, so I do realise the arrogance and expectational peril inherent in a statement like that, but as much as anyone was born to do anything I feel like music is my thing. It’s not like I think I’m a prodigious talent or anything (obviously), but I turn into a horrible jellied mess when I go musicless for any stretch. I have become an addict in the best and worst senses of the word.
And I do stray- I get so easily demolished by self-doubt/hate; stymied by the ongoing internal court battle of the people vs the relevance of music as a life’s mission (Your honour I ask you, what the fuck good is this doing for anyone?!); demoralised by the dilapidated state of the music industry; prodded by the social pressures that come with imminent thirtydom, real-jobism, houses, $$$ etc etc.
I experience all of these to varying degrees all the time, and in spite of the sense of running out of time, the dealing with self-sabotage, the knowingly working towards an end that probably doesn’t exist, I still feel like a god when Thunder Road blasts through my buzzing car speakers, you can't escape that shit.
I think there's a raging dissonance in most people I know. The tension between what we are doing and what we feel like we should be doing is both what drives us and impedes us in pushing boundaries, acting, reacting, creating, searching – I use music to help resolve this dissonance. Ironically, my made-in-mexico fender jaguar can’t stay in tune for more than half a song, but you’ll hear that yourself soon enough. We're currently working on album #1 and the cockeyed jag is all over it. Recording it ourselves at Dayjob Studios aka my Mum's spare room - profesh.
Anyhoo, I’ll leave you here with one of my favourite lyrics of all time- it is all of the above in perfect distilled form, again from Bruce Springsteen who I recently found out is half Italian. Paesan!
“There’s something happening somewhere, baby I just know that there is.”
