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!
That's right, folks - simply enter your email address in that box on the right, and blog updates will be sent straight to your inbox!
If you haven't already seen, all the songs are posted just by themselves on the "Just The Songs" page, so you don't have to wade through all the blog posts to listen to them. Thinking about doing a one-off fundraising gig at the beginning of 2012, playing the most popular 20 (or thereabouts) tracks from the SAW2011 project, so I'm keeping tabs on which ones are going down well, and your feedback on the tracks is much needed.
Remember - all of this is in aid of Parkinson's UK, and if we're going to hit that target, I need you to help me spread the word about this site!
To help you, here's a bit of html for you - just copy and paste the following into an email or a blog post, and send it to as many people as you can!
<a href="songaweek2011.blogspot.com">Writing A Song A Week in 2011 for Parkinson's UK!</a>
Thanks for your help, folks! And if any of you are around tonight (Thursday 31st March), some of the band and I are playing an impromptu set at the Slug & Lettuce, Guildford.
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!)
Just been interviewed by Rob Romans for Radio Jackie(Surrey & SW London) - they'll be broadcasting the interview on their news bulletins, and I'm really pleased about the exposure songaweek2011 is starting to get. How pleased? Well, pleased enough to get pretty cocky - I've upped the donation target to £1,000! I have every confidence we can hit this target and beyond - please help me to spread the word about the project so we can really make a difference.
I notice from the "what week is it" site that I'm a couple behind on the songs, but I'm hoping to have another two songs up by the beginning of next week. Keep checking back!
