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.

One of Dan’s more bizarre ideas for our next album is to compose some chamber music in strict counterpoint for a string quartet – but then record it using only Mellotron instruments. After fiddling around for a bit, we came up with this little snippet:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Mellotron_String_Quartet_demo_(22-3-11).mp3

Not what we set out to achieve, but what do you think? For the record, this is the first time we’ve used an electronic-sounding drum kit rather than “real” drums. We’ve also thrown in a little polyrhythm for good measure (the percussion stays in strict 4/4 throughout, while the strings don’t).

The plan now is to put some vocals on top and slip it into a piece we’re calling Life Goes On. Ultimately, it’s not chamber music at all, but nevertheless it’s a fairly radical departure for us.

It’s always nice to hit the occasional milestone, and in the last few days we’re glad to have passed the 2000 listeners mark on Last.fm:

http://www.last.fm/music/The+Home+Guard

Those 2015 people have scrobbled our songs no fewer than 32,713 times, as it stands. Humbling figures, and hopefully our music will continue to travel far and wide.

Our debut album, A Head of Steam, has at last found its way onto MySpace Music:

http://www.myspace.com/thehomeguardinfo/music/albums/a-head-of-steam-17109771

MySpace Music is actually independent of our MySpace profile (hence the woefully incorrect release date for Forlorn Hope and Glory), but the upshot of this is that all our album tracks can be added to user playlists across the length and breadth of the site, rather than being limited to only the songs we choose to upload.

All of which is virtually meaningless, though, as MySpace is a sinking ship that no amount of bailing out and relaunching can save. The community seems to be populated solely by bands spamming other bands (something we refuse to be a part of); the new interface is so sluggish that, if it were a car, it would be overtaken by a dead hedgehog; and MySpace Groups – by far the most effective way of finding potential fans – have bitten the electronic dust.

So why are The Home Guard still on there? To put it simply, even though fewer and fewer members are logging in these days, MySpace is still the first place non-members go to check out a new band they’ve just heard of. For all its failings, the guarantee of being able to stream full songs with one easy click near the top of the page is attractive to casual listeners, and therefore ensures our continued presence.

For now.

A piece of Home Guard news that somehow managed to slip through the net was our appearance on Recharged Radio last month, but Year Zero was indeed aired, and we’ve got the clip to prove it:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/archive/The_Home_Guard_on_Recharged_Radio_2.mp3

This is actually our second appearance on the station’s I Land Music show, and you can hear Dead on My Feet (Again) being played here:

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

If you recognise the voice of the DJ, that’s because it’s our good friend Rodrigo De Sá popping up in yet another guise. The bilingual podcaster from the Azores also gave our tunes a spin (can one spin an mp3?) while wearing both his Radio Marcante and his Cowboy Cantor hats last year:

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

http://www.thehomeguard.info/archive/The_Home_Guard_on_Cowboy_Cantor_2.mp3

Thank you, Rodrigo, for your continued support!