A quick glimpse at the following page shows that, at the time of writing, we have had precisely 100 listeners and 600 plays of our music on Last.fm:

http://www.last.fm/music/The+Home+Guard/A+Head+of+Steam

We’re delighted to have reached so many ears around the world, so thank you if you’re part of those statistics.

And, if you haven’t tried out Last.fm yet, we encourage you to sign up and have a play around. Genuine music lovers will definitely find something new that they like. What are you waiting for?

At some point last night, The Home Guard’s MySpace page passed the 10000 views milestone.

For a humble Peterborough band that doesn’t perform live (and so started from absolute zero), we consider this to be something of a triumph. We’re also smug in the knowledge that we’ve never resorted to spamming, automated bots, or any of the other so-called “whoring” devices that leave so many bands with a million plays but only a few thousand page views. And roughly 12 comments.

In case you’re late to the party, here’s our page:

http://www.myspace.com/thehomeguardinfo

Feel free to send us a friend request!

I think it’s been pretty much established by now on this page that our song, Champagne Socialist, was included on the coverdisc of issue 128 of Computer Music.

Now that this particular edition has left the news shelves, here are a couple of scans of the page featuring our review (click the thumbnails for a larger view):

Please note that Computer Music is music making mag, and as such, you only submit your music if you want it to be criticised by an expert. So bear that in mind if you get the impression that the reviewer doesn’t like our song; in actual fact, only the best tracks they receive earn such a review, and we were delighted to get such helpful feedback. (How’s that for covering our backs?!)

Firstly, thank you very much to all of those who downloaded Champagne Socialist during our “promotional” period. Our behind-the-scenes stats seem to contradict each other for some reason, but it looks like in excess of 250 people snagged the mp3 while they could. For little old us, that’s rather humbling.

Anyway, looking forward to our second album, here’s a new work-in-progress song called Turn Me Up (right-click and “Save Target As…” to download:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Turn_Me_Up_1-8-08.mp3

This song is a little darker than a lot of our other material, and occasionally slightly discordant. Fittingly, this mp3 is a little on the quiet side, so you may actually need to turn up your speakers to hear the quiet organ introduction. As always, we’d love to hear what you think.

Meanwhile, don’t forget to catch up on our other demos from the past few months:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Other_People_31-5-08.mp3

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Nothing_Can_Stop_You_Being_Mine_15-6-08.mp3

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Year_Zero_Demo_16-4-08.mp3

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/03_Pseudonym_Demo_27-3-08.mp3

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/06_One_for_the_Road_Demo_27-3-08.mp3