Roughly one year on from its release, Forlorn Hope and Glory has finally found its way onto Spotify:
http://open.spotify.com/album/5FZrUneRqpE5TanQpvSGi2
This means that free, full-length, high-quality streaming of both our albums (the first is here) is available to all users of the service – and of course you can also share them with your friends and all that other social networky-type stuff. Enjoy!
Our good friend Linda Adams asked if she could interview us for her blog, and you can read part one of it here:
http://lindaofficial.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/the-home-guard-official-interview-part-i/
Reading it back, one half of The Home Guard (i.e. me) seems to be all po-faced and earnest, whilst the other one (Dan) is hardly taking it seriously at all! Still, hopefully you’ll find it vaguely interesting (even though it’s about us), and as an added bonus there’s some exclusive news regarding our next album here and there. Stay tuned for part two.
Linda is “an author, editor, and singer-songwriter with interests in yoga, thread crochet, knitting, reading, music of all varieties, literature, theater, and film”, it says here. Many thanks to her!
If there’s one thing we like to do, it’s take stuff that’s been done a million times before and put our own unique spin on it. But how do you do something different with the blues, which by definition are made up of a fixed chord sequence?
Ladies and gentlemen, The Home Guard play the 12-bar blues in 5/4:
Despite the headline, we don’t actually believe for a second that we’re the first people ever to play the blues in a funny time signature (five beats in the bar in this case), but it’s not particularly common. Anyone reading this care to enlighten us of any famous examples?
Anyway, this minute-long demo is the latest snippet of an idea from our third album. We doubt it will form a whole song in its own right; more likely, it will make for a nice middle eight or solo interlude in a longer piece. Here are the other work-in-progress demos previously uploaded:
Not much to go on so far, but we have begun mixing and matching our various riffs, beats and snippets into more complete songs. Stay tuned for more, but it’s still early days for this album.
You remember those crazy guys who produced The Nerve Cast, the most unhinged blend of unsigned music, chat and mayhem ever broadcast? Well, their plans for world domination are gathering pace, and rather than being “just another podcast”, they have grown and are now broadcasting live shows three times a week! They say they like to do their shows ‘their own way’, and it’s certainly proving successful.
Anyway, more than that, the people behind The Nerve Cast have set up what is fast becoming a movement for independent artists, and it goes by the name of The Reputation Label. On the face of it, it’s a social network, but really we could be looking at the beginnings of something huge. The community is growing by the day, and we’re delighted to now be a full part of it. If you’re a member of the site, we’d love for you to show your support for us and join our group here:
http://www.reputationlabel.com/groups/profile/737
Meanwhile, my personal profile is here:
http://www.reputationlabel.com/members/profile/732/Home%20Guard%20Chris
You can’t see either of these pages unless you’re logged in, which is a little frustrating, but we urge you to sign up if you haven’t done so already – musicians and listeners alike are welcome. Discover new music! Promote your own tunes! Join the independent revolution!
To top things off, we even got ourselves a little airplay on last night’s show! Unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough to capture any evidence of this, but here are three clips of previous appearances, including the world premiere of Dead on My Feet (Again) a couple of weeks before the release of Forlorn Hope and Glory last year:
http://www.thehomeguard.info/archive/The_Home_Guard_on_Nerve_Cast.mp3
http://www.thehomeguard.info/archive/The_Home_Guard_on_Nerve_Cast_2.mp3
http://www.thehomeguard.info/archive/The_Home_Guard_on_Nerve_Cast_3.mp3
Just letting you know that our music has appeared on a relatively new service called ShockHound:
http://www.shockhound.com/artists/451903-the-home-guard-mp3
I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the site, but our albums are there for you if you’re a member. Five-star ratings/reviews extremely welcome, as always!
As Dan and I were recording the other day, the discussion turned to which genres we haven’t covered yet. One of the most prominent which hasn’t yet been ticked off is reggae, and we set about trying to recreate the feel and style of such music while still sounding like The Home Guard. We thought you’d like a snippet of what we came up with:
http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/reggae_beat_demo.mp3
There’s no off-beat chord, but by placing the kick drum in a funny place and making sure the bass guitar misses it almost every time, we think that this suggests reggae quite well. There’s a long way to go, but we’d still love to hear what you think.
Incidentally, the lead instrument that Dan’s playing is a (slightly wonky-sounding) mandolin, which if it makes the final cut will herald the debut of yet another new element on the next album.
According to Sussilo’s month-long survey, your favourite Home Guard songs from their respective albums are The City That Never Wakes and Sweating Blood.
As far as A Head of Steam goes, The City That Never Wakes took 43% of the votes, with Walking Against the Wind finishing clear in second place on 21%. Regarding Forlorn Hope and Glory, Sweating Blood‘s victory came thanks to 48% choosing it; Nothing Can Stop You Being Mine put in a good show to take second place with 20%.
We have to admit to being fascinated but also rather surprised by the outcome of this survey. They do say that you rarely see yourself how others see you! We’ve never pushed The City That Never Wakes as a potential “single” (despite numerous entreaties from one fan in particular), while Nothing Can Stop You Being Mine failed to make the cut for our MySpace page. But therein lies the lesson: our best songs aren’t necessarily our most commercial ones, and this fact comes to the fore when our real fans vote. (Champagne Socialist – by a million miles the most “pop” we’ve ever been – only picking up two nods is testimony to this.)
We’d like to thank Susanne once more for setting up this nice surprise for us, and also all of you who voted. You’ve certainly opened our eyes!
Full results of the survey can be seen here:
http://sigpoll.com/Which-sond-do-you-like-most-on-A-Head-Of-Steam-p21172-v6.html
http://sigpoll.com/Which-song-do-you-like-most-on-Forlorn-Hope-and-Glory-p21203.html
If anyone wants to know the best way to help out independent musicians, this sort of thing from Sean Wright means the world to us:
http://twitter.com/Sean_T_Wright/status/14484602096
You’ll be surprised how many people respond to a short, to-the-point, no-frills recommendation from someone they already know or trust. Anyway, Sean Wright holds the distinction of having released a free album per month since April 2007 – currently batting at 37 not out. We love the rock guitars with synths combination that pervades, and at times the sound goes very new wave (also a very good thing in our book). We thoroughly recommend checking out his material for yourself:
http://www.reverbnation.com/seanwright
Funnily enough, despite now living in Kings Lynn, Sean was actually born in Peterborough (home of The Home Guard). It really is a small world after all!
Our song Dead on My Feet (Again) was due to be broadcast on Recharged Radio last week, and we promised you more details. Well, our appearance came on episode four of the I Land Music Show, and you can now find that under “Listen Again” here:
Many thanks to Rodrigo De Sá for playing us! Incidentally, while most of his other shows are in his native Portuguese, in this one he speaks English. (Seriously – doesn’t this put us English-speakers to shame? I can’t imagine attempting a broadcast in a second language!) Here’s a direct link to the programme:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RechargedRadioPodcasts/~5/LjeXky6VVyU/12.05.10Island.mp3
Meanwhile, you can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes here:
This is very short notice indeed, but Rodrigo De Sá’s continued rise as the Azores Islands’ champion of independent music (see previous post) will see us played on another of his shows tonight at 8pm (UK time). ‘Plano Alternativo’ goes out on Radio Marcante here:
By the time Facebook and Last.fm import this post (these news stories are automatically pulled from www.thehomeguard.info/news.html, in case you were wondering), the live show will be long gone. The good news is that it will be repeated on Thursday at 9pm (UK time).