SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS

Every day tales of a winging-it creative

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about

I’ve written bits and pieces on BBC Radio 2, 4 and 5 comedy shows, worked in the script team for two series of Channel 4’s comedy-drama ‘Shameless’ and am currently working with The Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool as part of their script development programme. I am also a songwriter with songs on all major platforms.

  • WHO NEEDS CREDIBILITY AND COOL WHEN YOU HAVE PASSION?

    I have just finished reading the enlightening and entertaining autobiography ‘Lightening Seeds, Football and Cosmic Post-Punk’ by Ian Broadie, the songwriter, lead singer, producer and beating heart behind Liverpool based band The Lightening Seeds.

    The Lightening Seeds had several excellent and memorable hits, mainly in the 1990’s, such as ‘Life of Riley’ and ‘Pure’. Broadies path to success has been far from linear, and being short of stature or having any desire to be out front he is far from the average rock poseur.

    Ian Broadie

    Much of his progress has been hampered by side steps, some backward, but from his early days as a teenage guitarist in the 1970’s he was always in the thick of things. Seemingly dead-end pursuits with cash strapped mad-cap characters also searching for direction forged relationships with people who went on to achieve success out of anonymity, such as Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Echo and The Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes and Oasis.    

    Reading Broadies autobiography made me realise I’ve never belonged to a gang who hung out with their obsessions. I’ve not been in a band, toured and slept in the back of vans and felt part of a movement. I’m not a muso, debating for hours the benefits of one amp over another, or coming to verbal blows over different chord progressions.

    I wasn’t a punk, a new-wave romantic or even a heavy-metal air guitarist (well not beyond the confines of my own bedroom mirror, but that’s between you and me, right?). In my twenties I looked towards the west coast of America to Jackson Browne, The Eagles and Linda Ronstadt, and this didn’t register as cool in my particular part of north-west England.

    In doing so I feel a bit of a musical imposter, despite writing and releasing my own songs. Like I’ve not earned ‘my chops’ as they say in the US. I don’t have kudos or credibility because I don’t have an array of battle-hardened guitars lined up against a rehearsal room wall.

    THE ALTER-EGO I’M STILL SEARCHING TO INHABIT

    But then I thought about it more, and realised that is being somewhat disrespectful to my younger self, then a lyricist in a song-writing partnership. If I didn’t have the musicians badge of honour, I certainly had something equally valuable: a unrelenting passion for what I wanted to do.

    From my late teens to mid-twenties, despite being the rather introverted and introspective type with limited social scope, I would regularly take trips to London and quite literally knock on publishers doors. Some big publishers in the bargain, with very big doors!

    I spent my Saturday nights happily at home watching TV but I was also someone who had established contacts at Polygram Music and EMI, had meetings in plush rooms while next door a songwriter such as Gerard Kenny, who had recently written the hugely successful ‘Made It Through The Rain’ for Barry Manilow, practised on a white grand piano.

    Labi Siffre, an artist with great respect who received an Ivor Novello Award for his anti-apartheid song ‘(Something Inside) So Strong’ and had a number two hit record just months before with ‘It Must Be Love’ (covered by Madness) was once told off for interrupting a meeting I was having at Polydor. And Siffre apologised!

    I stood for hours on trains when all the seats were taken. I walked across London for hours because I didn’t feel confident on the tube. And the only force that drove me to do these things was passion. We’ve all had times when passion compelled us to do things that sat in stark contrast to the way we live the other parts of our lives.

    Passion is still driving me now in my solo song-writing but also in my script work. Long hours sat in front of a laptop, scripts dissected in workshops, a rejection here and a thumbs up there, the agonising whether a line will take off or sink when played in front of a live, paying audience.

    I have memories of being invited to meetings in the West End of London but also of a script being pulled apart by a BBC executive in the pouring rain of Manchester. That one nearly finished me, but here I still am, driven by the one vital ingredient above all others – passion.

    I envy someone like Ian Broadie for the skills he possesses that go beyond my abilities. But sometimes it’s good to look at our own apparent shortcomings and not make too harsh a judgement.

        

    Films I’ve seen lately: Lee, It Ends With Us, The Critic

    TV shows I’m watching: A Gentleman in Moscow (Paramount Plus), We Are Lady Parts (Series 2, Channel 4)

  • BEYOND VAN GOGH THAT WAS BEYOND IMAGINATION

    Never having been an art lover I surprised myself recently by signing up, quite excitedly I have to say, for an exhibition of the work of Vincent Van Gogh entitled Beyond Van Gogh.

    Despite never having previously taken any interest in his work I nonetheless got up early and got myself down to the Exhibition Centre in the Albert Dock area of Liverpool for what was described as an ‘immersive’ experience of the great masters extensive portfolio.

    It turned out to be one of the most fascinating experiences I’ve had in years. This wasn’t a simple display where people shuffle up to paintings, silently muse then move on to the next one along.

    These were the creations of Van Gogh projected onto the huge walls of the exhibition room lined with canvas, and plinths also canvas covered. The projections would arrive by degrees and remain for several minutes, each phase covering portraits, self-portraits, street scenes or the idyllic rural scenes the artist loved most of all.

    The street and rural scenes would emerge as sketches that would gradually build into a full piece of art that would cover an entire wall and would emerge in part or whole across the ceiling and floor of the exhibition room, often making the attendees look like part of the process itself.

    Music that would compliment the works would accompany what was being viewed. The self portraits would occasionally have the eyes blink in such a way that you wondered whether you’d imagined it, and find yourself staring at Van Gogh in a kind of game of nerves set up to amuse the creator.

    It was almost an hour of hypnotic immersion before the process would begin to repeat itself.

    The experience spiked my interest in art generally and I found myself in a period of reflection inspired by what I’d just witnessed, something creative art of whatever type should inspire to do.

    Beyond Van Gog is currently about to revisit various cities in the United States.

  • THE SONGWRITING SHARKS WAITING TO EAT ME ALIVE

    Down in the overcrowded shallow water of songwriting, which is where I exist, no-one really takes any notice. On any given day, between 60,000 and 100,000 songs get uploaded onto Spotify alone. That’s a lot of songs, and your own, no matter how much you believe in it, can easily be swamped and forgotten almost as soon as it’s out.

    It can be very disheartening, as you plug it as much as possible on social media as you tread the fine line between promotion and simply annoying people. You may well have created something original and unique to yourself, but you’re still expecting people – many your own friends – to invest four minutes out of their day to your work when it can be much easier to click a ‘like’ on someone holding up a glass of lager and move on.

    However, that doesn’t mean help isn’t out there for little tadpoles like me. On the contrary, as I see from my constant pop-ups on social media there are people and organisations who can ‘guarantee’ any number of Spotify plays via their tried and tested formula.

    And here you have to be careful because you are emotionally invested in your song and therefore are more likely to make an emotional decision. And as we all know, decisions based on emotion usually turn out to be the wrong choices, and often expensive ones.

    But what if these ‘opportunities’ come from a respectable source? Someone with a clear, respected reputation, someone who has legitimately written songs for big artists and maybe mentors songwriters like myself? Someone with genuine high-profile contacts, forged from a career of hard work and strong professional etiquette?

    Surely they are worth our trust, right?

    Well, maybe. This is however, when seemingly clearer water can hide the sharks waiting for easy feed like me. (Okay, that’s enough of the oceanic metaphors for one blog, I promise).

    I’ve seen a pattern from a few individuals who fit the venerable criteria mentioned earlier, that kind of goes like this. A free webinar is announced to give advice on people looking to raise their profile, and generally get better at promotion. These webinars are usually co-hosted by one or two others of good reputation, who over the course of an hour or two give good, solid advice.

    But then, subtly, the sell begins. What if, they say, what if there was someone with the contacts, and the experience, to raise your ‘career’ to levels you aren’t even close to now? And what is those someone’s, were us?

    Then the harder sell is under way. So you think, I’ll just wait and see. These guys are legit, so there’s no risk in just listening. An hour later (maybe less but it feels like an hour) and with the help of packed promotion cards listing all they can do for you, they get to the price. And on the last one I saw, that price was anything from £1600 for a basic package to £5500 for the full.

    Then we’re told the people are already signing up and there are only so many places available and…well, you can guess the rest. By now that respected songwriter has turned into a second hand car salesman. Now I’m not suggesting they steal your money and don’t help you get known more widely, but for that money I’d want a sustained career plan, not just a one-song promo package.

    But by then the subtle message has seeped in – you can do what you’re doing and good luck with that, or you can let us help you. Suddenly, if you’re not careful, that voice in my head is saying no-one is ever going to listen to me because I don’t have £5500 to make it happen. And the basic prices don’t really offer much you couldn’t do yourself.

    Not all schemes cost this much. Many participants would say they got a lot from the process. But none that I’ve seen have been easily affordable (though easy payments are available!), ranging from just under £1000 to £2000, this to help launch your next song to helping sync it, which is getting your song into a film or TV series, which, if successful, can earn the writer serious money. But that is never a given, all the scheme does is get your material through some doors in what is a highly competitive arena.

    And at no point in this process – and I think this is crucial – does it ever state that they will only take your money dependant on the quality of your songs.

    What is also infuriating and helps increase suspicion, is that in most cases the price isn’t up-front, you often have to scroll way, way down to find it past all the often garish and irritating selling material. Then the prices leave you with a feeling of wasted time and another that because you can’t afford these prices, you’re always going to flounder to get attention. 

    But this is from established professionals so if I can’t trust them, who can I trust? It’s a hard choice that feels a long way from the point where I picked up a guitar and started trying to create something meaningful.

    There is a lot of very, very fine music being made by people who will never hit the wider public consciousness. Not all want fame, just enough ‘fortune’ to help them keep putting out the songs they write and feel proud of.

    Songwriting, once you’ve recorded the song and put together a decent video, feels like admin. It’s the constant, often low level, plugging away often with little response. Anything that can help lift you away from that is tempting, but often can leave you with an empty pocket, and it’s a constant judgement call.

    So for now it looks like I’m going to have to settle for the drudgery of DIY promotion, and peace of mind. And crucially, just maybe, enough encouragement to persuade me to record more songs and start the whole maddening, process again!  

  • COME NEAR MY MUM AND IT’S THE LAST THING YOU DO #WordlessWednesday #Photography

  • When You Turn The House Upside Down and Still Can’t Find Your Car Keys #WordlessWednesday #Photography

  • THE MAGIC OF THE MOVIES STILL LIVES ON DESPITE MISGIVINGS

    A couple of years ago I signed up for a cinema pass which for the cost of £16.99 a month allows me to go to a certain cinema chain and watch as many films as I like for as many times that I choose. Given that it costs at least £9.99 to watch a film I only need to go twice a month and -as the advertising blurb points out – it pays for itself.

    Given that I love films but had been put off by the cost, this card was a ticket to cinematic heaven, and I embraced it with relish.

    I chose not to read reviews and instead make my own mind up on a films merits or otherwise, and apart from the much vaunted and ridiculous views on Barbie which I found hard to avoid, this has worked really well (I thoroughly enjoyed the Barbie film by the way) and I have seen many gems that I’m sure the nick-picking reviewers would have succeeded in putting me off watching.

    Just 15 minutes from leaving my house I am in a world of; for the most part, wonderful imagining and escape. My local cinema is probably in need of some updating and general refurbishment but the chairs are comfortable and I can choose my seat online before I leave the house, so I simply show the ticket from my phone and I’m in.

    I’ve now become a dab-hand at knowing exactly when to leave the house so I avoid the adverts but am able to see the trailers, helping me to choose future viewings. I don’t buy the popcorn and the drinks, no matter how many discounts I’m offered, otherwise I’d be about two stone heavier and a lot less healthy.

    And apart from one large feral family which ruined for everyone the Spielberg film The Fabelmans  even before they were escorted out of the building, I’ve not had any negative experiences with any fellow cinema participant. Indeed I find it quite nice that a collection of strangers enjoy (hopefully) a cinematic experience together.

    But there are two things I notice now from my regular cinema visits and I’m worried both of them may been down to getting old/older. One is how loud every film is. And I mean really loud. I don’t watch many action blockbusters because whilst I appreciate their technical mastery, they kind of leave me emotionally detached, but also it’s because of their brain searing noise level. It’s not just the action films however, every film seems to have increased volume as a pre-requisite.

    In the last year or so my hearing has deteriorated slightly and while some may say that’s an age thing, I have chosen to ignore that in favour of the less ego-destroying explanation that I go to the movies more often!

    Another thing are the violence levels. It’s no longer enough that someone is murdered, it has to be gratuitously. Organs have to tumble out, knives have to sever deeply into someone’s throat, daggers have to pierce a victims eyes. And that’s just the queue for the toilets…

    How the films ratings are decided I have no idea, but young people must be a lot more accustomed to seeing hard-core violence than I was when in my teens. Texas Chainsaw Massacre would probably now be listed as family holiday viewing.

    Overall seeing a film still has a magic quality that is enjoyed best on a big screen in a comfy dark room that exists separately from the rest of the world. I just wish they’d turn the volume down just a little…please? Some of us aren’t deaf just yet. Are we?

    Roll credits..

    (Images from Unsplash)

  • ILLUSTRATING THE JOYS OF SURROUNDING MYSELF WITH TALENTED PEOPLE

    Just before Pink was due to perform at the 2019 Brit Awards after winning the Outstanding Contribution To Music Award, she turned to the camera and said “One of the reasons why I am successful is because I surround myself with people that are better than me.”

    Given the depth of her own talent it at first struck me as slightly disingenuous, but nonetheless a nice stroke of modesty and recognition from someone with her level of success that she didn’t need to make. You couldn’t for example, imagine Madonna making such a statement.

    But in my own case, as I tiptoe along as a songwriter, surrounding myself with talented people who can do things I simply can’t do is a source of great delight.

    For example, I work with a seasoned producer and musician called John Kettle of folk-rock band Merry Hell. Looking more like a middle-manager than a rock guru, John has worked with countless artists and bands over the last thirty years, coaxing them into musically getting the best out of themselves. He has recently co-produced and co-written two UK number one albums with a local band called The Lathums who are indebted to his invaluable contributions to their still fledgling careers.

    Emily Fairchild

    But in the last couple of months I’ve been working with someone completely out of the direct musical field, to bring something new to a lyric video I was looking to do for my new track ‘How Can Anybody Take The Place of You?’

    Emily Fairchild is someone’s who’s abilities I’d become aware of as she worked with the exquisitely talented singer-songwriter Jenny Colquitt on Jenny’s last few videos and the artwork for her new album ‘Staring At The Moon’. Emily creates a lyric video utilising the imagery created in a songs lyric, whilst bringing her own take on the narrative.

    Emily graduated from Liverpool Hope University in 2021 with a BA Hons in Graphic Design, and since has been self-employed, working under the name Aether Illustrations. “The start of the process involves taking any ideas the client has, listening to the song multiples times”, explained Emily, “and considering any ideas I may come up with during this. I then come up with a series of rough sketches to the music to visually get the narrative of the video across.”

    Here below are the rough sketches of the two main protagonists of the song, and below the final images.

    Emily the starts to lay out each background, figure and object against the song track, using her initial animatic as a reference.

    “Once I have a scene laid out, I can go in and start to animate the moving pieces and add movement to the scene. I usually do this by animating the position, zoom and rotation of the artwork with keyframes of frame by frame animation if this better suits the scene.”

    In one scene, the couple, being increasingly estranged, are shown spinning slowly on a record, something entirely envisaged by Emily. “In Paul’s lyric video I ‘ve used simple block colours in combination with the artwork to add some interest as the record spins.”

    Over a period of a few weeks a world that I had put together in song, was now becoming an illustrative reality. City landscapes, oceanic views, characters insecurities, frustrations and jealousies, mixed together with an artists additional imageries and scenarios.

    It was a wonderful and for me completely new experience, one I’m already planning to repeat. Different art forms and creative skills can complement one another and it’s such a thrill to collaborate with someone else talents to enhance your own creative instincts – just ask Pink!

    If you wish to see the completed video, its on the link below.

  • THE DAYS I TURN PIMP TO SELL THE FAMILY HOME

    Today I feel dirty.

    With my house about to go onto the market today is the day the photographer comes around to take the shots that will go on the estate agents website for all to see. And they will see, for as soon as the For Sale board goes up the neighbours and strangers alike will be on, perusing through every room and judging. Judging the house and in turn, judging me.

    So I have cleaned and vacuumed and tidied to the max. It hasn’t looked this ridiculously good for years.

    New ornaments have been placed strategically to titillate and entice. Cushions have been pumped up and sit there preening, inviting at a come hither angle. Rooms have been newly decorated, the faint lingering of paint still hangs in the air.

    Kitchen utensils have been hidden away, the garage is crammed with everyday items I’m continually taking in and out. Family photo albums and my books – so many books – have been crammed into storage boxes and I can’t find…anything!

    In the garden I scowl at every weed that comes up, and wonder if I can still cut the lawn so it looks its best despite it still being wet from a recent shower.

    But as I’m sure you all know, this is what we go through when we sell our house. Every minutiae is obsessed over, every angle considered.

    And despite the constant cleaning, as I said, I feel dirty.

    I feel like I’m pimping my place. The place where I have lived since I was eight years old, the place my mother and father chose when they were young and looking to the future. The home from where they went to work each day to pay a mortgage, the place my father clung onto by his financial fingertips after my mother suddenly passed away so young and an income went down by an almost crippling degree.

    Christmas Days and birthdays, family and friends come and gone, laughter and tears and celebrations. My grandmothers second wedding had it’s reception here, my sisters excitements on their wedding days reverberated into every brick, all panic and joy, bridesmaids and the same proud father-of-the-brides.

    And now I’m putting the four walls that bore witness to all that up to the highest bidder. But, it needs to be said, at my fathers wishes, to be split between myself and my two sisters. And in truth it’s too big for me. Two of the rooms I don’t even use, which is a waste.

    And the memories feel like sadness now, the quiet feels like ghosts of what once was.

    New memories need to be made within these walls, the daily laughter – and arguments – need to return. Music needs to be played too loud, the new aroma of different meals have to fill the kitchen, people need to go out of the front door to work and play and return; parties held, friends to visit.

    And I need to fill a new home with the same, to create independent good memories for myself.

    So for now I’ll play the pimp. I’ll preen and try to find new homes for objects and throw out or recycle what needs to be, and hide away the rest. For a few days until it goes on the market the house can breathe out a little until, like a middle-aged man he pulls in his stomach again, waiting for someone to make him lean and eager and vital again.  

  • ELTON AND THE FIRST CONCERT COVERING FIRST LOSS

    Today I saw that Elton John has just turned 77.

    Wow.

    Elton was the first live act I ever saw, at the Liverpool Empire theatre on the 4th May 1976 on the ‘Louder Than Concorde But Not Quite As Pretty’ tour that was essentially the tour to support the Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy album from 1975. He had not long turned 29!

    Elton John performs, 1976. Getty Images

    To obtain a ticket I queued for seven hours around the Liverpool Empire a couple of months before. I remember telling my mother that I was going to try and get a ticket. At the time she was ill in bed, with a bad cough and an ache in her lower back. She was just unwell.

    Only she wasn’t just unwell, but we didn’t know that at the time. In between queuing for the ticket and the concert coming around my mother has passed away from lung cancer.

    Now this seems searingly poignant. And of course, it is.

    But on the night of the concert all I can recall is excitement. The sheer thrill of my first concert seeing my rock superstar hero. And on that same night my football team were playing away at Wolverhampton Wanderers, knowing a win would make them English Champions. I recall Elton standing on his piano in the middle of a song holding up a board with the score. Liverpool had won 3-1. I cheered even louder than I was already cheering during the show.

    I even remember the jacket I was wearing, a waist length black zipped, lightly corduroyed jacket with a short collar.

    But I don’t remember how I felt that night about losing my mother just three week’s before, a seismic event in my life that has had reverberations every day since. How odd that is.

    I remember the pain of it, the tears, telling my grief-shattered father during the funeral that she was no longer in pain.

    Yet here I was less than a month later ecstatic.

    She had known about this concert, she was part of the build-up, yet now she was gone completely from it. But I was 17. Part of what had happened I had not enough life experience or maturity to absorb and process.

    Yet isn’t that how she would have wanted it? She gave me life, she help keep me safe for the first seventeen years of it and now here I was so soon afterwards living that life, embracing it, celebrating it.

    I hope so.

    Happy Birthday Elton, and thank-you. Thank-you so very much.     

  • DON’T ALWAYS JUDGE A BOOK BY IT’S SHAVEN HEAD

    Anyone who has ever regularly attended a gym knows they are often populated by the shaven headed, tattoo-filled muscle bound types who strut around with ego’s as heavy as the weights they pound away with.

    And the men are even worse.

    Sorry, obvious joke. But we all know the type. I comfort myself with the belief that their muscles are also their identity, their self-esteem and self-perception intrinsically bound together by the size of their biceps.

    Me during a tostesterone phase. (Okay, some random guy I don’t know) Photo by Norbert Buduczki. Unsplash Images

    I used to think they did all this to impress women, but I was wrong. In the main they do it to impress other men. They tend to congregate together, like bucks, preening and mentally comparing their muscle size and definition.

    All of which gives the likes of me, wondering if I can push from 6 minutes to 8 on the cross-trainer, a detached sense of superiority. I vainly comfort myself that I don’t need this kind of protein obsessed, machismo-fuelled validation. I am just here for the stretching and the cardio-vascular kick.

    Outside of the gym I have my books and my writing and good conversation to maintain my sense of self. All they have is their protein shakes and their constant need to wear tight fitting t-shirts in the depth of winter and their unreachable dreams of being best friends with Jason Statham.

    Of course, I don’t think like this. At least, not so directly. But sub-consciously I do judge. I look at their tattooed bulging necks, chests and forearms and I make an instant assessment. I know the type of people they hang out with, what films they watch and, based on some overheard conversations, quite possibly their political and racial prejudices.

    All of this was brought into sharp and unflattering focus when I saw such a type in the queue of a local supermarket a few weeks before Christmas. I saw this large man with all the attributes to fit the prototype macho driven gym type and thought I knew all that he was about.

    And then he turned and spoke to the couple behind him in the queue and struck up a conversation in a friendly, open and noticeably easy manner. He was warm and his laughter was genuine, breaking up the normal eyes-straight-ahead Saturday morning shopping experience.

    I remembered the moment. I recalled gently chiding myself for making the judgement. I remembered it enough to recognise him in the gym just a few days later. Once again he conversed with another gym member in the same friendly manner. Quite soft-spoken with no underlying agenda to his tone; no preening, and no comparing.

    So I told myself not to make the same assumptions any more. And I also know from the experiences of others that many weight training exercises can cause injuries, especially as they get older, that are hard to fix.  A friend of mine who used weights incorrectly for years now has spinal problems and takes prescribed pain-killers first thing each day. And when that happens the identity that comes with the muscles has to be re-adjusted, which for some, isn’t easy.

    Not that I won’t make the odd instant judgement about the tattooed pit-bull type and be proved correct, but I’ll certainly try and remember that beneath all the sinews and brawn occasionally something less predictable and obvious may be going on.