In 2011, Peter Falconer - musician, songwriter and lazy bastard - will be writing and recording a song a week for the whole year to raise money for Parkinson's UK!
4 hours, this one took - writing, recording and mixing. Either I'm getting faster or I'm caring less and less about performance quality.
The chorus was something I had in my head upon waking back in July (the original recording of me mumbling it into my phone at 7am is amusing), but it was only this evening I came across it again. The rest of it's loosely inspired by the story of Harold Camping, the American radio preacher who wrongly predicted the end of the world earlier this year.
As I'm sure you'll understand, I'm very short on time now - so as I've not been able to trawl the net for suitable video footage, I've knocked up a quick drawing of Mr Camping. Looking at it now, I seem to have drawn an elongated George W Bush. Hell, I'm a musician, not Bob Ross...
"Hey, why don't you give the friggin' Mayans shit for once?"
For those of you about to drill, here's a song about Bruce Willis in Outer Space;
Special thanks to Alex Creese for providing the solo.
You like it? You don't like it? Either way, thanks for listening - but please drop a couple of quid in the Parkinson's UK tin, either by clicking on the widget on the top right, or by visiting Justgiving.com/songaweek.
Local stoner rock band Earthtide are well worth a look. A trio of excellent musicians, playing music somewhere between Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, in amongst the set is a song about Jaws called Bigger Boat. Superb song, and it was suggested by some fool that they do a song about Armageddon next. Despite never having seen the damn film, I volunteered to write it for them. This meant watching it. Hell's teeth. I'm a fan of Bruce Willis, and Steve Buscemi's never played a bad role as far as I know... but this ye-har, gung-ho, slack-jawed, GO AMERICA! nonsense peddled by Jerry Bruckheimer gets right on my tit ends. I really am suffering for my art here, guys. Just hope nobody asks me to write a song about Gigli or Catwoman. Still, it passed a couple of hours.
In writing the song itself, I had to come up with a riff that sounded Earthtide-ish, but at the same time different enough to warrant a place in their set. If it sounded exactly like another one of their songs, why would they bother playing it? I think the verse and solo riffs sound pretty authentic, but the change comes in the chorus, which is much more American and Foo Fightersy than the rest of their set - which kind of fits in with the All American Action Movie premise, I guess. The words are made up almost entirely from lines in the film, though I couldn't quite get the line "I have repeatedly asked you to call me dad" in there. And the line "My daughter can't act" might have been my own...
Anyways, the band themselves seem to be pleased with it - let me know what youse think, and SPREAD THE WORD! The donations have stalled again, and we need to get this site passed around widely as possible if we're going to meet this target.
I'll be shouting it from the rooftops at the gig on Weds 9th March at The Water Rats, King's Cross (get there for 7.45!)
First of all, thank you for all your kind comments about songs 6 & 7! Here at Falconer Towers we're over the moon with the response generated by Jess's performance... but that's only part of what I'm doing this for. I'm killing myself here trying to get a song a week recorded, so please make sure it's not all in vain, and DONATE TO PARKINSON'S UK by clicking on the widget on the top right!
Just finished writing this week's song - it's kind of a commission for brilliant stoner rock band Earthtide*. Amongst their riff-based Deep Purple/Sabbath type music is a fantastic song about Jaws called "Bigger Boat"; the idea came up about doing a similar song about the Jerry Bruckheimer monstrosity Armageddon, and I volunteered to come up with a suitable ditty. I'll explain more about the writing of the song when I post it in the next couple of days.
Also, rehearsal on Thursday evening with the Peter Falconer Band was very exciting - looking forward to an electrifying set on 9th March at the Water Rats, King's Cross. We're on at 8pm - drop me a line if you want to get on the Early Bird discount list!
Finally, exciting new purchase - Korg X50 keyboard (the little one on the top)
It's basically all the sounds of my old Triton ProX, except where the former weighs about four ton and is the size of a sofa, this is a teeny little thing that weighs - get this - 4.5kg! Which means, of course, that while I'll still be using the Yamaha piano (big one on the bottom) for most gigs, the X50 will do just fine for any depping in bands that want a keyboard player rather than a piano player.
Anyway, that's me for now. Stay tuned - song 8 on the way soon!
* Featuring Andrew "Randy" Nicholls, star photographer, whose latest shoot with me will be online soon; and Steve "Steve" McGuigan, who drums with the Peter Falconer band an' all.
