We’re delighted to tell you that we received a nice e-mail earlier this week from Mr Tom Robinson, saying that he’d like to play Champagne Socialist again on his show.

This episode of ‘BBC Introducing… Fresh on the Net’ will be broadcast on BBC 6 Music on Saturday night/Sunday morning, between 0000 and 0200, so DABs at the ready (or Sky channel 0120). You can visit the official site for the programme here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/tom_robinsons_introducing

Many, many thanks to Tom for taking the time to get in touch, and for all the efforts he makes in general for little unknown bands like us (his blog goes into some of the details and is an excellent read).

If you want to spruce up your MySpace profile a bit, why not embed one of our songs? All you have to do is log in, go to our MySpace, and click the + sign next to the song of your choice. As an added bonus, these days you can have more than one song on your page, so you don’t have to ditch that very latest hit from your favourite chart act and look uncool (though this could be a US-only feature).

Anyway, this is exactly what our good friend Aaron has done, as you can see here:

http://www.myspace.com/aaronemoftx

Or maybe you can’t see, as he’s under 16 and therefore has his profile set to private. But, you have The Home Guard in common, so why not send him a friend request, mentioning us? Many, many thanks to him for embedding Champagne Socialist into his page – we thoroughly appreciate it when anyone does this.

Back in April we showcased the first song on our new album, a prog rock style epic about the rise and fall of a Roman emperor. Well, it’s time to revisit Year Zero:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Year_Zero_(Demo)_29-10-08.mp3

Piano and vocals in particular are still unfinished (and the less said about the mix, the better), but hopefully this updated demo shows that we’ve made some progress. For the morbidly curious, here’s how it sounded back then, before we’d got round to recording the flute solo and middle section:

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

Oh, and don’t forget to strap this intro onto the beginning:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Year_Zero_Intro_23-10-08.mp3

Shaping up nicely? Comments, criticisms and general feedback welcome, as always. Here are our other demos for your dubious listening pleasure:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Dead_on_My_Feet_(Again)_(Demo)_14-10-08.mp3

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Soldier_On_Demo_15-9-08.mp3

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

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/03_Pseudonym_Demo_27-3-08.mp3

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

For those of you not familiar with the Last.fm website, their version of the humble blog is to write a ‘Journal’. An enterprising group of users utilise this feature to create a ‘Hypelist’; that is, a rundown of songs that the author thinks are worth more people listening to. A bit like this:

http://www.last.fm/user/bisa/journal/2008/10/27/28t9id_the_hypelist_%5B_27_oct._-_2_nov.%5D

Which brings me to the point of this post: many, many thanks to our good friend bisa for putting our song Friend or Foe? on her Hypelist.  You can see her Last.fm page here and her MySpace profile here. (Perhaps this means we’re big in the Netherlands now…)

A fan has set up a MySpace group in honour of us, and all are invited to join:

http://groups.myspace.com/TheHomeGuardFanclub

Feel free to come on over and have a laugh, a chat, a discussion, a debate… Whatever takes your fancy! As I write this, we’re up to 47 members after only three days. Send your friends an invitation – the more the merrier!

Many, many thanks to our good friend Ian for setting this up. You can check out his own music here:

http://www.myspace.com/varialus

One thing we’ve decided to do on our forthcoming second album is to put an intro on the beginning. It’s meant to be atmospheric, setting the scene for what’s to come. Rather than being a distinct song, it bolts seamlessly (we hope) onto the start of our opening track Year Zero. Here’s a work-in-progress snippet:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Year_Zero_Intro_23-10-08.mp3

Anyway, here’s how Metallica’s new album commences:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Metallica.mp3

Drat.

In similar fashion to the self-contained MySpace system, you can embed our music wherever you like using our ReverbNation page:

http://www.reverbnation.com/thehomeguard

Click on the ‘Widgets’ tab and take your pick.

Many thanks go to MySpace user the Unsigned Artists Collective who saw fit to add Champagne Socialist to their player, and for the excellent project they’ve got going. Feel free to join their group, here:

http://groups.myspace.com/rnm10

Those of you with personal MySpace accounts will know that you can simply click “Add” next to a song on your favourite artist’s page, and it will embed that piece of audio into your profile. Right? Well, did you spot the recent revamp of the MySpace Music system? Many people think it only affected bands, but it turns out that personal users can now make a playlist of numerous tunes, just as our good friend Chris Grose has:

http://www.myspace.com/chrisgrose

You may also notice that he has embedded Champagne Socialist, for which we thank him hugely. The point is: now that you can add as many songs as you like, you have no excuse not to place one of our songs in your profile. Yes?

Well, it’s up to you, but if you do, let us know and we’ll thank you publicly and add you to our list of Very Special People.

The time has come (the walrus said) to debut another new song from our upcoming album:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Dead_on_My_Feet_(Again)_(Demo)_14-10-08.mp3 

This one is called Dead on My Feet (Again). We haven’t uploaded a full-on rocker recently, but I think this one fits the bill. When we started work on it, Dan brought two Glam Rock CDs to the session to demonstrate the drumbeat he was after; the songs we’ve combined are Ballroom Blitz (Sweet) and Tiger Feet (Mud), so there’s a definite 70s feel to proceedings.

This work-in-progress demo is currently missing any vocals, its saxophone, and a piano line which we’re hoping will remind people of Sparks. The Quirk-o-Meter is in the red on this song.

If you’ve missed any of our previous demos, you can catch up here:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Soldier_On_Demo_15-9-08.mp3

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

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

Don’t forget to tell us what you think!

If you’re signed up with Last.fm (and if not, why not?), you’re cordially invited to join our unofficially official fan club:

http://www.last.fm/group/The+Home+Guard+FANCLUB%21%21

And, before you ask, we didn’t set this up ourselves; rather, Ian of Varialus fame did. Many, many thanks to him – make sure you check out his music and profile, too.

If you haven’t managed to find us on there yet, here is our music page, while you can feel free to get in touch through my personal profile.