You still have a 4track?
I'm off to dig out my wax cylinder recorder.

I'm really tall and they're definitely below average height. I employ them for that. The drummer is tall and has a full head of hair but it doesn't matter as he is sitting down at the back hidden by a drumkit



Cheers. Always nice to be told. You mean the music rather than the relative heights of the band members, don't you?

I was in a band in Portland, Oregon, in the nineties. At the angsty, angry height of the grunge explosion, we were trying to sound like The Monochrome Set, The Jazz Butcher, and the poppier songs of The Velvet Underground. I sang, and wrote lyrics about monsters, the boredom of office work, and drinking. I have an mp3 somewhere of the only song we ever recorded. I'll try to see if I can upload it if anybody's interested.

If I had a band or made music now, though, I'd want to sound like a cold, new wave-y version of Booker T. & The M.G.'s: soul on ice. Probably with songs about monsters, the boredom of office work, and drinking.

Lots of our songs appear to be about the boredom of office work. This is odd as I have been a student/househusband/layabout for 8 years, the drummer is a gardener and, while one of the guitarists does work in an office, it's his own office. Even the one that tends to write those sort of lyrics is a freelancer

Toby Gymshorts wrote:


Fourteen piece Washington Go-go outfit?

That's uncanny.

Bored of Education wrote:


It scars you for life.

In all honesty, as much as I'd like to believe that I'd be involved in some ultra-cool urban house band that effortlessly flows from classic ska to The Meters-influenced-funk to some reworked-but-hard-core Robert Johnson tracks to some note-perfect Fela Kuti covers, in truth I'd probably end up closer to the sound of The Divine Comedy or Pale Young Gentlemen or Amanda Palmer.

You know: Songs with overthought lyrics and American pop and folk leanings backed with an over-reliance on classical instrumentation.

I'm very white.

I fancy myself as a bit of a crooner to be honest, I've a great voice. Bryan Ferry, Robert Palmer eat your heart out.

Cooler than the other side of the pillow.

Back when i was doing a year of graduate work[sic] in composition it was mostly angry shouty tortured-metal-on-metal sort of Diamanda Galas fronting Bocksholm stuff. Eventually i came to the realizations that 1) while it was a valuable exercise to do, in what i suppose must have been a fairly therapeutic way, i really, really hated having to let other people listen to it, and 2) it is quite possible to love music, and literature for that matter, without having anything to say yourself. That last, seemingly fairly simple lesson took me an embarrassingly long time to learn.

If i were to go back to composition i'd be the new Heinrich Schütz, or perhaps William Byrd, but i'm not going to because 1) it would take an enormous amount of work, and 2) would sell even less than your nephew's thrashabilly band with the washboards and gut bucket.

I would make a synthesized Bacharach&Davidish female fronted sparse danceable 21st century meld of Booker T & The MGs/The Go Betweens/The Cure (first two albums).

Nice question, one I've thought about a lot over the years.

As I long ago lost any interest in making music for any sort of fame or fortune (fuck me, I used to be in some desperate bands), I only play something I'm interested to hear...and I want to hear something with the beauty and don't-know-what's-coming-next of some Genesis, the about-to-fall-apartness of Guided by Voices, the dynamism and 'we don't care whether you like us' of some punk, and some obtuse lyrics/poetry.

Fortunately - you knew it was coming - I found it with a couple of friends, and we've been playing to absolutely no critical acclaim, and complete public indifference for 13 years now, and I love it. We've just done something that hits my buttons above, Disconnected From My Bed, so I'm in the position of wanting to listen to 'myself' every day, and it sating me. Which is a bit surprising, and may be the start of an outrageous narcissistic disorder...

Vaguely speaking - US Maple meets mid-80s Prince meets Avalon-era Roxy Music. Even mid-80s Bryan Ferry.

I was thinking last night and, of the multitude of musical ideas I have that will never ever come into fruition, the most heartbreaking thing to realise is that I will never in my life be in a band that sounds like Labradford.

I used to make indie-ish synthpop. I now make minimal ambient drone-ish synthpop.

I just want to be Doug McCarthy in a Nitzer Ebb tribute band.

Notzer Ebb?

Nitz-ish Ebb?