It’s a personal regret of mine that, even in these super-switched-on visual times of widescreen, HD, 3D etc. etc., we don’t make our own videos. We’re forever grateful to those fans who’ve taken it upon themselves to put pictures to our music (we owe our YouTube presence to them), but it’s still a bit of a shame that we don’t generally do this ourselves.

We did, however, break with this tradition late last year by putting together a glorified slideshow of John Lennon photos for our Imagine cover version, and a few people actually liked it. In fact, due to popular demand (i.e. one person suggested this may be a good idea), here it is to download, optimised for iPhone (it says here):

http://www.thehomeguard.info/free/The_Home_Guard_-_Imagine.mp4

Of course, the mp3 has been here for download all along:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/free/The_Home_Guard_-_Imagine.mp3

Feel free to share far and wide.

Yet again, we were left pinching ourselves last night as we heard Dead on My Feet (Again) played on national BBC radio. Our song. Little old us. Selected by that respected champion of new music, Tom Robinson, for national airplay. Let it never be said that we don’t appreciate these things!

As promised, you can listen to the show through the BBC iPlayer for free here (available for seven days from broadcast):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b0162wgt

Sadly, I believe this only works if your IP address says you’re in the UK. We come on around 1:41:20, but don’t just skip to that point – as always, the whole episode is worth a listen. After all, the chances are you’ll never come across these songs any other way.

The best thing about the Fresh On The Net show in many ways is its philosophy. Tom himself insists that nobody – whether they be unsigned artists or high-flying PR companies – can jump the queue in any way. The only prerequisite is that the song must be freely steamable online. If it’s recommended to them, they guarantee to listen to it. If they like it, they play it. Simple as that.

This is our third different song to make it onto the Fresh On The Net programme. Thanks, Tom!

Happy news at short notice: we’ll be making our return to the national airwaves tomorrow night when one of our songs will be played by the legend that is Tom Robinson on his BBC Introducing show.

Listeners in the UK will be able to tune into digital station BBC 6 Music from 1am Monday (i.e. an hour after midnight at the end of Sunday) to hear Tom do us the honour of giving Dead on My Feet (Again) a spin – and we’ll post an iPlayer link here after the event for anyone who would (somewhat inexplicably) rather get an early night.

Those of you taking notes will be aware that this is our fourth appearance on the Fresh On The Net programme, and we’ve got the previous clips to prove it:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/archive/The_Home_Guard_on_Tom_Robinson_Introducing.mp3

http://www.thehomeguard.info/archive/The_Home_Guard_on_Tom_Robinson_Introducing_Again.mp3

http://www.thehomeguard.info/archive/The_Home_Guard_on_Tom_Robinson_Introducing_3.mp3

In a move that now strikes everyone as being years overdue (though I for one never really thought of it), CD Baby has finally come up with a way to stream and sell music through them via Facebook. We’ve added our MusicStore app, as you can see here:

http://www.facebook.com/thehomeguard?sk=app_155326481208883

Not that exciting, but it all helps spread our sounds far and wide. Fellow CD Baby artists, add your tab (are they still called tabs now that they’re a menu on the left rather than, well, tabs?) by going here and clicking through the various options:

http://members.cdbaby.com/sell-music-on-facebook.aspx

Is it just us or are all the colour schemes on offer a little hard on the eyes?

I happen to be a big fan of animation, so it would be my dream to create cartoon videos for all of our songs, each in a different style (e.g. one resembling The Simpsons, another looking like anime, a South Park-esque one, Disney, Looney Tunes, UPA, Cosgrove Hall etc.). Unfortunately, I’m not a great artist – and much less an animator – but I did manage to knock up this proof-of-concept to show Dan:

Blink and you miss it, eh? The sad fact is that this less-than-two-second clip took hours and hours and hours and hours to create, so it’s unlikely a full-length music video will ever see the light of day. It was a fun experiment, though, and at least (a) you get to see my drawings of Dan, and (b) it makes for a moderately interesting curio on our web site.

Thoughts and opinions are welcome, as long as they don’t contain the phrases “a-ha” or “Take On Me”.

Time for our first new demo in a while:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Life_Goes_On_(Demo)_22-8-11.mp3

We have posted before about trying to come up with a song using various elements of reggae, and now you can hear how it’s taking shape (still in instrumental form). We’re calling this one Life Goes On, and the mandolin solo featured in this previous demo will appear later in the piece.

This being a sort of pseudo-prog album, we couldn’t possibly record a straightforward out-and-out reggae song. That would be way too simple – and we can’t have that, can we? We’ve decided to incorporate a classical motif which will crop up sporadically, and there’s also going to be a very dark section in the middle. In fact, this older demo will pick up where this one drops out. We like the contrast of having bright-and-breezy verses, choruses and mandolin solos bookending a bass-heavy highly tense section.

My Mike Barson-influenced piano part (shame on you if you don’t know who that is!) as you hear it may be a little too close to the vocal melody in places, so expect a few changes there. Ultimately, though, the new album is slowly taking shape, but we still can’t put any estimate on when it will be released. Hopefully it will prove to be worth the wait.

They started out as a small occasional podcast called the Nervecast, then they became the Reputation Label, then they launched their own social network… To be honest, all these changes of identity were a bit confusing. In fact, I may have some of that in the wrong order.

Thankfully, they’ve recently simplified their operation, and have relaunched with a slick new website (now under the name of Reputation Media):

http://www.reputationmedia.net

So what do they do? In a nutshell, they’re the most tireless promoters of unsigned artists we’ve ever come across! The social network has gone, and the team now throw all of their energies into their five-nights-a-week live radio shows, which regularly pull in over 20 million listeners. Going out at 9pm (UK time) on Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, the roughly two-hour broadcasts showcase “the very best new and independent music”, and you can listen either here or through this widget:

<Link no longer available>

But that’s not all! The good people at Reputation Media also have buzzing Facebook, Twitter and YouTube  presences, and while live on air, the insanity spills over into the site’s chat room (look out for all-too-infrequent appearances by yours truly, aka Home Guard Chris).

And just to prove we’re not making up all of this, here are some clips of a few random appearances our music has made on the radio show:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/archive/The_Home_Guard_on_Reputation_Radio_1.mp3

http://www.thehomeguard.info/archive/The_Home_Guard_on_Reputation_Radio_2.mp3

http://www.thehomeguard.info/archive/The_Home_Guard_on_Reputation_Radio_3.mp3

http://www.thehomeguard.info/archive/The_Home_Guard_on_Reputation_Radio_4.mp3

Whether you’re in a band hoping for promotion or simply a music fan looking for the next biggest thing, go and get involved now!

Within the last 24 hours we’ve received notification from CD Baby that they have finally climbed aboard the widget bandwagon, allowing independent musicians to sell their material directly from any site that allows HTML. Here’s what ours looks like:

We got this code by logging into our dashboard and clicking on “Create a store widget” on the right. You can pick one of ten (mostly garish) colour schemes, and the code is generated automatically, ready to be pasted wherever you see fit.

I don’t see a way that allows fans to embed your music on their own site (short of contacting the artist directly and asking for the code), so it’s not quite blog-friendly yet, but perhaps at some point this feature will be added. Either way, we welcome this improvement.

Last night we passed the 1000 fans mark on ReverbNation:

http://www.reverbnation.com/thehomeguard

(You can add yourself to that number by clicking “Become a Fan” if you have an account with ReverbNation, by signing up for the mailing list if you don’t, or by making good use of the Facebook “Like” button.)

We’re genuinely thrilled to have passed this milestone and would like to thank every single one of you for your support. Here’s to the next thousand!

Every so often I post a piece of Home Guard news here that has come out of nowhere and even taken us by surprise, and this is one of those occasions:

Beatles fan Danny McEvoy (not to be confused with Dan, our own singer) contacted us and asked if he could cover Other People for his YouTube channel. Naturally, we were honoured by this request, and are delighted with the outcome.

Danny became a bit of a cult figure online when he attempted to cover (and post on YouTube) every single song ever recorded by The Beatles, all within 2010. He succeeded, and on his journey performed in front of landmarks such as Strawberry Field, the Cavern, and even as far afield as the White House and Statue of Liberty. Not only that, in December he made the local news with his efforts!

As for his version of Other People, I like the way Danny has put his own spin on the rhythm and melody. Even though our original has a prominent piano part, he’s come up with an excellent arrangement that really suits just a single acoustic guitar. I know for a fact that he’s worried about the chords not being exactly the same as the ones we use, but it works when stripped down like this. If anything, it’s made me hear the song in an entirely new light, which is quite an achievement.

The only downside is that Danny performs solo, as we would have delighted in using the headline “Other People by other people”. The rest of the world can breathe a sigh of relief that such dreadful wordplay is relegated to the final paragraph.