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Saturday, May 17, 2003
I have been meaning to start writing a fanzine for ages but never seem to get the time to sort it out so I thought that this might be a nice easy way to do it. So here goes...................
It was a very long time ago when I sat down at my brand new electric typewriter and wrote my last fanzine , it was a mini zine called Fresh Air I only had a 100 printed, it was my best seller,they all sold out! Thatcher resigned the week that I wrote it, I was overjoyed. It seems strange that back then I never thought I would ever see a Labour Prime Minister, stranger still that I hate the one we've got easily as much as Thatcher. Fresh Air #1 was the only thing I ever wrote on that typewriter, now it's collecting dust in the loft with lots of other stuff that meant a lot to me back then. I just seemed to lose that urge to write about music , I partly blame making music for that, yes it is really enjoyable but in a way it has also spoilt my listening pleasure to a certain extent aswell. Any other music makers out there feel the same? Now that I've been in recording studios and I know how songs are pieced together ,I listen far to intently to a song. Listening for bass drum sounds and what kind of effect is on the guitars, instead of just listening to the song. Sometimes though a song is just too overwhelming and I hear the song and nothing else..... then I take it to bits later! Anyway hopefully this site will be about those songs that I hear as songs first and construction sites second.
So what have I been up to since that first issue so long ago I don't hear anyone ask but I'll tell you anyway.... I've aged quite a bit (nearly 36) gone a bit bald, been happy, been sad and been whatever you call it in between. Mostly though I've just been muddling along doing nothing of any great importance, does anyone feel any better than this when they are 35 ? Never quite achieving what they wanted to when they were younger?
"I wish I was young again when I knew everything" (© kevin pearce )
I once thought that I did know everything but as I've got older I've realized I didn't have a clue and people must have thought of me as a right tit , having said that I'm not much better now. Back then I thought I was doing something important when I joined CND or went on an anti poll tax march ,wow , not exactly changing the world kind of stuff , but I thought it might help. Now though I seem to be increasingly becoming the sort of person I used to hate, rushing to work so I'm never late. Not doing stuff I know I really should like going on anti-war marches. Apart from going to work, (I'm a painter and decorator, I'm not knocking it, I just didn't think when I was 16 I would still be doing it 19 years later.) I don't really do anything just sit and either listen to music or sit in my spare room trying to make it. I'm not having a great deal of success at it though , well I'm running out of addresses of labels to send it to. I really should take the hint, I sometimes do , I think what's the point of taking bloody ages over a song that no-one is ever going to hear let alone get the chance to like. I decide enough is enough and leave it all alone for at least half a day, but then something lures me back to it, I try and convince myself that I'm not making music for anyone else it's just for me and if anyone else like it well thats a bonus. What a load of bollocks, I want other people to hear it and like it maybe I need to know that... yes I am good at something... and it's something I like doing. Maybe I'm just not very good at it. If you'd like to make your own mind up about that you can have a listen to some of my music here...at the northern_electrix web site.
"I thought I would have been famous by now"
I did , I really really did, it's not just me that is a little pissed off about it though, my younger sister isn't too happy , when she was about 12 I said to her that she'd be alright , she wouldn't need to get a job she could run my fan club instead, needless to say we haven't had a need to set one up! I suppose there is still plenty of time though, I guess what it comes down to is that all I really want is to get out of painting but I want it to be so easy and pain less. I did think that when I bought my first computer back in 1995 , that this was going to be my big break away , I'd teach myself how to use it and get a job in computing , didn't matter what it was, data entry work would be a million times better than painting council properties out in the middle of winter when your so cold that you can't even clench your fingers round the paint brush properly. (If anyone has read "the ragged trousered philanthropists" byrobert tressell? Let me just say the working conditions haven't changed too drastically from that!) Sorry back to my future in computers ... well so far I have tried my hand at web site design, it wasn't a success! I tried my hand at a little computer art , designing splash screens for software, I even got some accepted and used. My favourite and the most time consuming one alas didn't get used , but I was given a free copy of the software which almost made up for it. My last mad idea came about when I tore my cartilage at work and was laid up for a few weeks, to while away the hours I decided to have a go at creating my own sample CD for the Yamaha A series samplers. Anyway I have sampled my synths and created what I think are some amazing sounds and loops , the CD is finished and called "Synthetic Treasures" it got a mention in Future Music so far I have sold zero copies! Another roaring success!
"fahn, fahn, fahn"
A few years ago a friend asked me if I liked kraftwerk and without really thinking about it I said "yes , I like them a lot" when infact I hadn't really heard a great deal by them, I'd bought "the model/computer love" on 7" when it was number 1 in about 1980 and somewhat strangely I liked the way they seemed more like robots that humans, but I'd never really paid the attention attention they deserved at the time. Then Amazon came along and I found out how easy it was to buy up their back catalogue , so that's what I did, well almost , a couple of the early ones are out of print at the moment, so my kraftwerk collection starts with "Autobahn". The title track just goes on on and on but I still don't want it to ever stop, it shifts all over the place, a vocoder has never sounded so sweet , apart from all those toffee apple and candy floss melodies , played on all sorts of instruments not only synths, the flute is my favourite, is that guitar on there too? At the risk of seeming like I'm bypassing everything else in between I have to say that I thought that "Expo 2000" is as good as anything from the past it's kraftwerk, nothing more nothing less.
Another band with a kraftwerk connection is yamo, it is the band/project started by ex-kraftwerk person Wolfgang Flur. I first heard about about them when Future Music ran a re-mix competition with their song "Mosquito" ( I did a re-mix myself but never sent it in). I've got what I think is the bands first CD "Time Pie" which sounds at times like kraftwerk but with a lot more added to the canvas, the songs aren't cluttered but they seem to have a lot more going on in them, favourites are the title track, "mosquito" which is easily as good as the northern_electrix re-mix! . "Stereomatic" which drifts through the air like angel dust. Best for me though is "Guiding Ray" an electro marychain/velvets kind of song. Wolfgang had never wrote any songs while in Kraftwerk but as soon as he left it would seem that they have just started flowing out of him quite naturally.
It was a very long time ago when I sat down at my brand new electric typewriter and wrote my last fanzine , it was a mini zine called Fresh Air I only had a 100 printed, it was my best seller,they all sold out! Thatcher resigned the week that I wrote it, I was overjoyed. It seems strange that back then I never thought I would ever see a Labour Prime Minister, stranger still that I hate the one we've got easily as much as Thatcher. Fresh Air #1 was the only thing I ever wrote on that typewriter, now it's collecting dust in the loft with lots of other stuff that meant a lot to me back then. I just seemed to lose that urge to write about music , I partly blame making music for that, yes it is really enjoyable but in a way it has also spoilt my listening pleasure to a certain extent aswell. Any other music makers out there feel the same? Now that I've been in recording studios and I know how songs are pieced together ,I listen far to intently to a song. Listening for bass drum sounds and what kind of effect is on the guitars, instead of just listening to the song. Sometimes though a song is just too overwhelming and I hear the song and nothing else..... then I take it to bits later! Anyway hopefully this site will be about those songs that I hear as songs first and construction sites second.
So what have I been up to since that first issue so long ago I don't hear anyone ask but I'll tell you anyway.... I've aged quite a bit (nearly 36) gone a bit bald, been happy, been sad and been whatever you call it in between. Mostly though I've just been muddling along doing nothing of any great importance, does anyone feel any better than this when they are 35 ? Never quite achieving what they wanted to when they were younger?
"I wish I was young again when I knew everything" (© kevin pearce )
I once thought that I did know everything but as I've got older I've realized I didn't have a clue and people must have thought of me as a right tit , having said that I'm not much better now. Back then I thought I was doing something important when I joined CND or went on an anti poll tax march ,wow , not exactly changing the world kind of stuff , but I thought it might help. Now though I seem to be increasingly becoming the sort of person I used to hate, rushing to work so I'm never late. Not doing stuff I know I really should like going on anti-war marches. Apart from going to work, (I'm a painter and decorator, I'm not knocking it, I just didn't think when I was 16 I would still be doing it 19 years later.) I don't really do anything just sit and either listen to music or sit in my spare room trying to make it. I'm not having a great deal of success at it though , well I'm running out of addresses of labels to send it to. I really should take the hint, I sometimes do , I think what's the point of taking bloody ages over a song that no-one is ever going to hear let alone get the chance to like. I decide enough is enough and leave it all alone for at least half a day, but then something lures me back to it, I try and convince myself that I'm not making music for anyone else it's just for me and if anyone else like it well thats a bonus. What a load of bollocks, I want other people to hear it and like it maybe I need to know that... yes I am good at something... and it's something I like doing. Maybe I'm just not very good at it. If you'd like to make your own mind up about that you can have a listen to some of my music here...at the northern_electrix web site.
"I thought I would have been famous by now"
I did , I really really did, it's not just me that is a little pissed off about it though, my younger sister isn't too happy , when she was about 12 I said to her that she'd be alright , she wouldn't need to get a job she could run my fan club instead, needless to say we haven't had a need to set one up! I suppose there is still plenty of time though, I guess what it comes down to is that all I really want is to get out of painting but I want it to be so easy and pain less. I did think that when I bought my first computer back in 1995 , that this was going to be my big break away , I'd teach myself how to use it and get a job in computing , didn't matter what it was, data entry work would be a million times better than painting council properties out in the middle of winter when your so cold that you can't even clench your fingers round the paint brush properly. (If anyone has read "the ragged trousered philanthropists" byrobert tressell? Let me just say the working conditions haven't changed too drastically from that!) Sorry back to my future in computers ... well so far I have tried my hand at web site design, it wasn't a success! I tried my hand at a little computer art , designing splash screens for software, I even got some accepted and used. My favourite and the most time consuming one alas didn't get used , but I was given a free copy of the software which almost made up for it. My last mad idea came about when I tore my cartilage at work and was laid up for a few weeks, to while away the hours I decided to have a go at creating my own sample CD for the Yamaha A series samplers. Anyway I have sampled my synths and created what I think are some amazing sounds and loops , the CD is finished and called "Synthetic Treasures" it got a mention in Future Music so far I have sold zero copies! Another roaring success!
"fahn, fahn, fahn"
A few years ago a friend asked me if I liked kraftwerk and without really thinking about it I said "yes , I like them a lot" when infact I hadn't really heard a great deal by them, I'd bought "the model/computer love" on 7" when it was number 1 in about 1980 and somewhat strangely I liked the way they seemed more like robots that humans, but I'd never really paid the attention attention they deserved at the time. Then Amazon came along and I found out how easy it was to buy up their back catalogue , so that's what I did, well almost , a couple of the early ones are out of print at the moment, so my kraftwerk collection starts with "Autobahn". The title track just goes on on and on but I still don't want it to ever stop, it shifts all over the place, a vocoder has never sounded so sweet , apart from all those toffee apple and candy floss melodies , played on all sorts of instruments not only synths, the flute is my favourite, is that guitar on there too? At the risk of seeming like I'm bypassing everything else in between I have to say that I thought that "Expo 2000" is as good as anything from the past it's kraftwerk, nothing more nothing less.
Another band with a kraftwerk connection is yamo, it is the band/project started by ex-kraftwerk person Wolfgang Flur. I first heard about about them when Future Music ran a re-mix competition with their song "Mosquito" ( I did a re-mix myself but never sent it in). I've got what I think is the bands first CD "Time Pie" which sounds at times like kraftwerk but with a lot more added to the canvas, the songs aren't cluttered but they seem to have a lot more going on in them, favourites are the title track, "mosquito" which is easily as good as the northern_electrix re-mix! . "Stereomatic" which drifts through the air like angel dust. Best for me though is "Guiding Ray" an electro marychain/velvets kind of song. Wolfgang had never wrote any songs while in Kraftwerk but as soon as he left it would seem that they have just started flowing out of him quite naturally.
I've also just finished reading Wolfgang Flur's brilliant book "I was a robot" , which is a must read for any music fan . The book is written with such honesty, you will never think of Krafwerk the same way again. There are quite a few laughs in the book, especially the time Wolfgang explains what he was doing when he first heard "My Generation" by the Who, but it also has sad undertones which may leave you feeling dissapointed with the remaining members of krafwerk.
