Early in 2021 Them Creepy Crawlies had a bunch of unrecorded tracks. Our previous visit to the studio had produced a couple of low-fi, unmastered EPs, one of which, Insecticide, became the 11th most played record in 2020 on Adelaide’s indie radio station, Three D Radio. We wanted the new record to have creative input from the engineer and we were recommended Matt Hills who is twice ARIA nominated and has an eclectic portfolio of artists including Midnight Mares, The Systemaddicts and The Empty Treats.
The weekend booked, we thought we’d rock up, belt through 10 songs, fix stuff on Day 2 and complete on Day 3. Yeah, right! We did manage to put down 10 tracks but by the last day we had only completed three songs that we released at the end of August on an EP called ‘Go’.
We’ve never taken ourselves that seriously. We get together every week or so to have a beer, talk middle-age-men issues and crack out a few songs. We play in pubs around Adelaide - sometimes to two old men and their pints. We have a Facebook page (because you do, don’t you) followed by 250+ friends and local musos, and an Instagram page (because you do, don’t you) that we have no idea how to use.
Thanks to Amuse our songs are on all the usual on-line platforms, but they lack any love and attention apart from Spotify where, in September 2021, Fashion Queens was our most played track with 254 streams. We had 14 followers.
Get the picture?
I’m Neil. I’m the singer/songwriter for Them Creepy Crawlies and tend to be the one that organises the gigs, jams and virtual stuff. I love doing it. And I try to make sure my dictatorship is as benevolent as possible.
But here’s the thing. I really love our songs and recently started to wonder whether anyone else might? My wife, kids, band mates and one or two others seem to really like them so that’s at least 10 out of…let’s say 500 people. 6 billion people in the world…?
I mean, doesn’t the virtual village make it easy for indie bands to promote themselves? It’s not as if we have to tour, stand outside record labels with tapes and get reviews in NME.
So, due to some post mid-life-crisis crisis and the opportunity to release some latent vanity, I thought fuck it, let’s give it a go for a year and see what happens.
This blog, therefore, will follow the journey of a 58-year-old trying to bring the music of Them Creepy Crawlies to the world.