I’ve been a bit discombobulated recently. On the one hand I’ve started a fabulous new job, we’re off to Europe as a family in July and I recently learned the words for Heatwaves by Glass Animals. But on the other hand, I’ve been a bit down in the dumps musically. Our record is finally finished which should be an occasion for celebration, but, frankly, I’m just relieved that 10 months of trying to get 4 grumpy middle-aged men with all their personal responsibilities and commitments into the same room at the same time is over.
The 10 tracks were recorded and produced by Matt Hills who went way beyond the call of the $$ duty, spending hours cutting, copying, pasting, editing, adding, reducing, enhancing, tuning, doubling and generally waving his magic music wand. The record is a genre-bending mix of punk, rock, shoe gaze, britpop and late 70s new wave and I’m bloody proud of it.
Discombobulated is the name of the album but wasn't to all band member’s taste so I had to exercise some benevolent dictatorship that they’ll thank me for in the long run. It’s a title for our recent times. It also reflects my confused emotions of approaching 60, wondering about the future and its shadow of mortality like in the song Shout: ‘…Lord, don’t slow me until the fun dies…’, reflecting on the past and youthful petulance as in Double Decker: ‘I wanna get laid, you were too afraid’, while dealing with the reality of the present as in He Said She Said: ‘It’s all so predictable’.
I’m unbalanced about whether I should be talking about my songs or our songs. As the main songwriter, they’ve been fertilised in my spare room, a messy space dominated by my daughter’s clothing overflow, that may, if all goes well, be plaqued as a place of great creativity and the subject of a Rick Rubin documentary.
Seriously though, I feel an incredibly strong emotional tie to the songs. There’s the initial excitement of a song’s seeding and some hopeful anticipation of distant maturity. It may be a noodle or a chord progression or a beat but like a newborn baby, you just can’t leave it alone as it slowly takes shape.
They take shape out as I steal chord changes from other bands; they take shape at work and I have to tap out new words and phrases; they take shape in bed as I rearrange verses and choruses and middle 4/8/16s in my head. By the time a song reaches the band room I’ll have, more often than not, spent hours on melody, structure, rhythm. We’ll play around with it, trying to find a comfortable uncomfort that I’ll take back to bed/work/out.
I spend so much time thinking about a song that I fall helplessly and sometimes blindly in love with it. Others may shape and mould and dress it but like your own children, no one else is able feel what you feel for it.
But, if by some extraordinary piece of luck, we sell heaps of records where does the money go? Well, it goes to me. Not because of the hours of emotion I’ve swaddled it with, but because I’m the only band member registered with APRA AMCOS so, by default, royalties fall into my bank account. And it's my bank account registered with our distributor, so any streaming goes that way as well.
(Any family members reading this might like to know that our total global earnings so far is $223.56)
So, it’ll be my (unwanted) responsibility to ensure that everyone gets their piece of the cash action when we become rich and famous. Which would be easy if we had an agreement. We tried to discuss this once, but the beer got the better of us and the only thing I can remember from the meeting was someone saying, ‘you’ll do the right thing’. And if I don’t, the bastard will take me to court.
Discombobulated is available from our website for whatever someone wants to pay for it and I’ll spend some money on a Facebook advertising campaign. Only trouble is, we’ll need a half decent 30sec video, which will mean trying to get the same grumpy middle-aged men with all their personal responsibilities, commitments and fashions into the same room at the same time again.
We've produced some CDs from a repro house in Queensland. $20 + postage. Rather than the usual jewel case we're using recycled cardboard which is good. Part of the deal is they plant a tree for us to counter the C02 I’m responsible for by having it flown back so that’s good as well…
We’ll also have it on Bandcamp and Soundcloud but it’s not going to be on streaming platforms. Rather, I’ll release each of the seven song as singles on Spotify, 4 or 5 weeks apart, meaning seven chances to wake up the algo and playlist curators.
Seven chances to wake up the world to Them Creepy Crawlies.
- Listen to Discombobulated and check out our other music on Spotify.
- Help us make our Instagram and Facebook pages less exclusive.
- If you haven't already, read Episode 1, 2 and 3