(Soundtrack: Ruts “The Crack”)
Last week Brian and I finished mixing the tracks for the forthcoming Spearmint EP. Brian ends sessions by standing on a chair and taking photos of the mixing desk. It always looks to me like some kind of Home Guard observation manoeuvre when he is up there. He then puts the photos onto his computer, so that he can zoom in at a later date to recreate all the settings quickly, should he need to revisit the mix.
I left the session on a real high as I thought the tracks sounded amazing. Brian posted me a CD of the mixes, which I got a couple of days later, and I made the usual mistake of sticking them straight on and being disappointed by how they sounded. I don’t know why I always fall for this; it is an expectations game, constantly expecting things to sound great and being disappointed, or expecting things to be disappointing and them sounding great. “Good soundcheck / bad gig … bad soundcheck / good gig” over and over again. But lots of things in life are like this aren’t they – so much of our reaction depends on preconceptions.
I then listened to the tracks again the next day and they sounded great. I envisaged the project as a kind of 10” vinyl expansion of an EP we did a few years ago called “The Last Bus Home”, which I really liked. Pleasingly that is exactly how it has come out. Thematically it has a link to “A Week Away”, which suits the timing, musically it is quite “Goldmine” / “Leopard”, but a bit different to anything we have done before. Jim is now back from holiday, so we will meet this week to start talking about the artwork.
I have always wanted us to do a ten inch, as am very fond of the ones by The Fall, The Clash, The Rudolph Rocker, etc – ten inch records are such gorgeous things! I figure that if our releases are going to become more and more geared to downloads, then we might as well make sure that the “physical version” is on a lovely format. Andy suggested doing a double-seven inch EP and I would love to do that at some point!
On these new tracks you may notice that I annunciate my t’s slightly clearer than usual. I have been making an effort to reclaim my t’s recently. After so many years living in London, I find that my t’s have been eroded, and I hear myself increasingly saying things like “wanned” rather than “wanted”. Halting this slide is not that easy and I find myself over-pronouncing t’s to compensate. I don’t want my words to be eroded by others. It is like when you hear Brits singing without g’s like “goin” instead of “going”. I know this comes from hearing so many Americans singing that way, but that is no reason for us to do it. Let me keep my t’s and g’s! If they go I won’t have that much left to work with.
Yesterday Bridie and I went to see a really excellent Swedish vampire film called “Let The Right One In”. Quite arthouse in approach and nice and sparing in use of special effects so that it was genuinely creepy and involving. Good soundtrack too. Hollywood horrors have a habit of starting well then losing all the tension once they start revealing things and showering us with special effects and unsubtle music, which I find dull, and never scary. there are a few horror films out now, I think so that the DVD then comes out around Halloween.
Each morning during the week I go to the Starbucks before work. There is a big American guy who works there. As I approach the counter he shouts “What can I DO you for, BUD?” To be fair, he shouts this at everyone. The other chaps in the queue are all wearing suits and carrying laptops. One of these guys will respond by grabbing his collar, pretending to be choking with thirst after a long trek across the desert, and cry “Cawffee!” Or “I don’t care what it is as long as it’s brown and wet!”. I tend to order a filter coffee, which they call “Drip” and this week has been an Ethiopian blend. I go for the small size, which they call “Tall”. So I ask him for this, and he shouts “A TALL ETHIOPIAN” I always expect to see a tall Ethiopian come walking out of the back room at this point. I ask for a blueberry muffin, and he shouts “the muffin BLUE”. He rings up the till, and the digital display says “TALL DRIP”, which I always feel I should take offense at. I pay and he says “Thank you BIG MAN”.
Last year, Bridie and I nipped into a Starbucks at Piccadilly for a quick coffee before we got the tube to Battersea to see a show (the wonderful Will Adamsdale in fact). I paid with a twenty pound note, but the girl gave me change for a ten. I hesitated about whether to say anything, but when I went through my pockets and thought back to getting cash out and what had been spent, I felt sure I had been short-changed. So I went and queried it, but the girl was adamant that I had given her ten. Having worked in record shops I know what the crack is – there is no need to get angry, no point in getting angry about it – it is the customer’s right to ask them to check the tills there and then and see if there is a discrepancy. So I asked for the manager and made them cash up. It took them fifteen minutes, but it was worth it as the till was ten pounds out – result: I was ten pounds better off than if I had just let it go.
Unfortunately, due to the delay caused by the cashing-up, we were then too late to catch the tube to Battersea, so we got a cab – cost: eleven pounds.

Some rare regional gigs have now been finalised, here are the full details:

Saturday 16 May
What’s Cookin, upstairs @ The Sheep Walk
692 High Road
Leytonstone, London, E11
Admission: free (a hat goes round!) Doors: 8.30pm www.whatscookin.co.uk

Thursday 21 May
Milo
10-12 Call Lane 
Leeds LS1 6DN
Admission: £5 Doors: 8pm
Hopefully Paul from The Scaramanga Six will also do an acoustic set, plus indiepop disco with DJs from With Whom to Dance

Friday 22 May
Liverpool: The International Pop Overthrow Festival
The Cavern Pub at 5.30 pm & The Cavern Club Front Stage at 10:15pm
Admission: free
www.internationalpopoverthrow.com
www.myspace.com/internationalpopoverthrow

Saturday 30 May
The Priory
Ashby Road
Scunthorpe
Admission £5 advance or £7 on the door
Tickets Venue 01724 270077 or Daz 07828440478
Doors 7 pm www.myspace.com/tachelesspromotions

Possibility of a second single from the album to tie in with the gigs… watch this space, Neil

(Soundtrack: Parliament “Osmium”)
It is fine to be working again, and the job is good, but it is amazing how day jobs wolf up your waking hours. Suddenly whole weeks flash past, time accelerates, and you have to really fight to get your own stuff done. But the money is useful, so I am not complaining.
In Spearmint we joke about how we would actually make money if we were a Pulp tribute band. This would be funny, if it were not clearly true. I think we would even make more money as a Spearmint tribute band. We have pegged Nearmint as our name. I like that, as it means something, as well as sounding like our name. In the same way that Aswas would be good for Aswad… or Travisty for Travis… these probably really exist now, as tribute bands are such a thriving business.
Last night I went over to Brian’s to mix some songs for the Spearmint EP for the autumn. Mixing involves me sitting at the back of the room, eating chips and drinking coffee, working on lyrics if I am feeling lively, thumbing through old copies of Artrocker if not. Brian tinkers about with the tracks and I comment when something sounds wrong, or right. It is not exactly hard work, but the trick is maintaining focus and being objective when you hear something over and over again. For these songs it is very much about them sounding as full of energy as possible. It was good – we work well together; as Si remarked during recording, Brian tends to come up with the same views as we do. Time may prove me wrong, but the tracks sounded great to me. I am going back to finish them off next week.
Brian also played me some of the new songs he has done with The Clientele and they sound fabulous – am looking forward to getting the album, and seeing them live. Bridie and I went to a gig the other night and perhaps as we are still not drinking, I really noticed how much people were talking during the show. It seems to me this is a phenomenon which began in the early 90s – going to a gig and talking through it. Seems very odd. Maybe it is worse on London than elsewhere in Britain. In London less people pay for their tickets, and more seem go to gigs to check a band out, rather than going along to listen and enjoy. This is true of all capital cities, but seems worse here. The other thing that gets my goat at gigs is when people show their appreciation by sticking their fingers in their mouths and doing that really loud whistle – that is more damaging to your ears than the bands themselves. Why would you make that noise with people stood just in front of you?
Which may explain the headache I have had for three days now. I went into the chemist on the way home to get Aspirin. I paid for it and after the lady gave me my receipt and change, she said “Thank you, you may go now.” I like that. Maybe they sometimes get people in who don’t leave, just stay at the counter?
A couple of weeks ago I recorded vocals for “36 Reasons Why”, the song co-written with Andy Lewis for his next solo album. We played it live as a band at the first Shirley Lee gig. Meanwhile Andy recorded his version for the album at Weller’s place – it is different and also sounds really good. Andy put down a rough version of the lead vocal, singing from my lyrics. Once confronted with the words he decided that he wasn’t comfortable with them and sent me an email suggesting a re-write. Imagine my reaction at receiving an email telling me my lyrics were not good enough! Andy even suggested new lyrics, which didn’t hit the spot for me. But of course, it is his record, so he needs to be happy with it. I decided that I would try and come up with new words which he would like, but which I still loved and remained true to the song. So I came up with a new version, which we then tweaked as we recorded… And I do think it is an improvement on the original, so it all worked for the best.
The following week we went to see Andy play stripped down versions of a few songs live with his chums Pete and Jess. It sounded really good. They played about eight songs, then finished, but the DJ encouraged them to do an encore. Andy explained that they didn’t have any more songs, but that he would like to welcome to the stage to sing “36 Reasons Why” a Mr Shirley Lee… This completely took me by surprise… I got up and made my way to the stage, hoping that Andy had a copy of the lyrics… but it turned out he didn’t. I couldn’t remember the original lyrics, let alone the re-write, as the song is chockfull of words. So once I got to the stage, I had to turn round and go and sit down again! I felt really useless. I felt like most singers wouldn’t have needed written lyrics. Another time perhaps…
Andy is aiming to get his album out by Christmas, and Jim is trying to get his album out this year too, hopefully in July in fact. Jim’s “solo” band is called Telley – it is mainly Jim and his chum James on drums. Rhodri has produced it and it sounds great, really fresh. Jim likes the idea that three of us are doing solo albums this year. Roll on Ronan’s album of baritone versions of Sonny & Cher hits!
By the way, the photo is of a street stencil from when we were in Rome last year. I like the image – maybe it is well known? It made me think of it as great artwork for a seven inch single, or a flyer for a club night.
I really must ask Rhodri to show me how to put spaces between paragraphs in these diary entries; no matter what I do it removes them when I post it, so you have to plough through a slab of text…
Anyway, am off to make some stir fry and we are going to watch “The Quiet Man”, which neither Bridie nor I has ever seen. This Parliament track “The Silent Boatman” has passed me by until recently but it really is a corker!