News @ 28 December 2008, “1 Comment”

Around a month ago, The Home Guard proudly made their third appearance on national radio, and we’ve got the clip to prove it:

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

This is from when Tom Robinson played The City That Never Wakes on his “BBC Introducing…” show. We are indebted to him for all the airplay he has given us, and to Ian Fleming (no “allegedly” about it) for submitting our song for consideration.

The official page for the programme (which is always well worth a listen, incidentally) can be found here:

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

While we always enjoy reading Tom’s very own blog here (mainly for musicians):

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=271554741

News @ 22 December 2008, “3 Comments”

We’re over the moon that our MySpace player ticked over the 10000 plays mark today.

Since launching in November 2007, we’ve reached more listeners and built up a far larger fanbase than we ever imagined we would. The vast majority of plays came this year since we uploaded Champagne Socialist in January. In fact, this song accounts for 54% of all our plays!

That said, Walking Against the Wind, The Orator and Rendezvous have all notched up 1000+ plays for themselves.

We really can’t thank you enough, and never forget that none of this would be possible without YOU.

If anyone reading this hasn’t added us on MySpace yet, you can visit our page here:

http://www.myspace.com/thehomeguardinfo

Incidentally, while we’re on the subject, Dan will be taking over the running of our profile for the next couple of weeks while I concentrate on working on the new album. So this is your chance to ask the writer, singer, guitarist. saxophonist and flautist of The Home Guard anything you like!

News @ 18 December 2008, “2 Comments”

Our good friend launic from YouTube has previously uploaded all of our songs there with the artwork for visuals – but this time she’s gone above and beyond and edited together a full video to accompany our song Poor Man’s England:

Many thanks to her for doing this! (If you look carefully, you can see some of the city of Peterborough in there.) You can download the video from here:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/free/Poor_Man’s_England.wmv

I think I’ve said it before, but it’s worth reaffirming: if anyone wants to put together a video or slideshow to go with any of our songs, we’re certainly not going to stop you! We’re not really in any sort of position to make videos for our own tracks, so we’re grateful to anyone who compiles this sort of thing. Just let us know about it, we’ll always either embed it or link to it.

So get those creative juices flowing and help us come up with the new OK Go!

News @ 16 December 2008, “No Comments”

You may remember Beatles fan and YouTube user Allabest making a video for our cover of For No One… Well, he’s done it again, this time for our most popular song, Champagne Socialist.

It can be viewed in high quality here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQJWWhx23dE&fmt=18

While if you like you can download the video here:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/free/Champagne_Socialist.mov

Many, many thanks to Allabest for taking the time and putting in the effort to make this for us. Please be sure to check out his other videos!

News @ 12 December 2008, “2 Comments”

At some point over the last few days, our MySpace page passed 15000 views, while Champagne Socialist clocked up 5000 plays. Not bad for one year’s exposure. (And, as I think is self-evident, we don’t use bots, scripts or hacks to falsify either of those figures.)

In slightly more bizarre news, a look behind the scenes has revealed that our demo of Nothing Can Stop You Being Mine – uploaded in June – has been downloaded approximately 1000 times since the beginning of November. If I’m reading the bar graphs and pie charts correctly, the vast majority have gone the way of the Far East, with the main finger pointing at http://202.108.23.172/index.html. (Something called Baidu MP3, it would seem.)

Quite why that particular demo has been so popular is beyond us – not that we’re complaining, of course. If anyone can shed any light on this statistical anomaly, we’d love to hear from you!

News @ 10 December 2008, “1 Comment”

You may remember Ian from Texas, who recommended The City That Never Wakes to Tom Robinson for his BBC radio show. Well, Ian has just become the first person to embed that song into his personal MySpace profile:

http://www.myspace.com/the_silverwings

Please also check out Ian’s musician page, and don’t miss the free download in his blog:

http://www.myspace.com/varialus

Many thanks all round!

Demo, News @ 08 December 2008, “1 Comment”

Here’s the most recent work-in-progress version of Turn Me Up, a song from our forthcoming album (click to play, right-click and “Save Target As…” to download):

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Turn_Me_Up_(Demo)_8-12-08.mp3

We’ve got high hopes for this one as it’s very different from anything we’ve done before: it’s darker, moodier, and occasionally discordant. This demo boasts a relatively full arrangement (complete with guitar solo and guide vocals), though of course absolutely no effort has gone into the production at this stage.

If you want to check our progress, here’s how Turn Me up sounded the last time we uploaded an mp3:

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

We really hope you like it as we’re considering it for the lead “single” from the new album, though we’ll make that decision nearer the time. For now, all comments, criticisms and advice will be gratefully received.

Here are some previous demo mp3s in case you missed them:

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

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

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

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

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/One_for_the_Road_(Demo)_18-11-08.mp3

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

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Pseudonym_(Demo)_10-11-08.mp3

News @ 02 December 2008, “No Comments”

Our heartfelt thanks go to MySpace user Pauly T, who has embedded our song Champagne Socialist into his profile. See for yourself here:

http://www.myspace.com/431226848

A quick peek at his gallery only goes to show us Brits that the joke was on us when Australia was being colonised. Look at that sunset!

(EDIT: 6/12/08. Paul has since changed his song to Friend or Foe?, and of course we are no less grateful!)

News @ 02 December 2008, “No Comments”

We’re delighted to announce that an avid Beatles fan going by the name Allabest has put together this video of our cover of For No One:

The picture and sound quality both suffer thanks to YouTube’s way of converting files, and as these are some of the cleverest photos ever seen the video really deserves to be seen in hi-res (and stereo):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a3PSFO2MyY&fmt=18

Or if you’d like to download the original video, you can do so here (54MB):

http://www.thehomeguard.info/free/For_No_One.mov

Meanwhile, don’t forget to download the actual song, and share it with anyone you think will appreciate it:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/free/The_Home_Guard_For_No_One.mp3

Many thanks to Allabest for taking the time to put this together for us. Personally, I’m really into optical illusions and similar things, so the choice of these photos was really right up my street. What a great surprise! Be sure to check out more of his work on his YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/allabest

News @ 01 December 2008, “1 Comment”

As promised, our song The City That Never Wakes was aired on BBC 6 Music last night. You can listen to our appearance here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/6music_aod.shtml?6music/6m_introducing_mon

The low bitrate doesn’t do our audio quality any favours, but anyway… We’re the penultimate song, so fast forward to around the 1:50 mark (I’m afraid I can’t give you an exact time as the iPlayer kept crashing – sorry!). This link is valid until Monday, whereupon it will be replaced by next week’s show.

Huge heaps of gratitude in the direction of Ian Fleming from Texas (“allegedly” – actually, it’s true) for recommending this song to Tom Robinson. We were wondering why the notification was different from last time! Anyway, Ian is better known by his MySpace musician’s name Varialus, and he’s offering a free download of his latest work here:

http://www.last.fm/music/Varialus/cover+songs/Carol+of+the+Bells

Thoroughly recommended – check it out!