Our good friend Linda Adams asked if she could interview us for her blog, and you can read part one of it here:

http://lindaofficial.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/the-home-guard-official-interview-part-i/

Reading it back, one half of The Home Guard (i.e. me) seems to be all po-faced and earnest, whilst the other one (Dan) is hardly taking it seriously at all! Still, hopefully you’ll find it vaguely interesting (even though it’s about us), and as an added bonus there’s some exclusive news regarding our next album here and there. Stay tuned for part two.

Linda is “an author, editor, and singer-songwriter with interests in yoga, thread crochet, knitting, reading, music of all varieties, literature, theater, and film”, it says here. Many thanks to her!

If there’s one thing we like to do, it’s take stuff that’s been done a million times before and put our own unique spin on it. But how do you do something different with the blues, which by definition are made up of a fixed chord sequence?

Ladies and gentlemen, The Home Guard play the 12-bar blues in 5/4:

12-bar blues in 5-4 (demo)

Despite the headline, we don’t actually believe for a second that we’re the first people ever to play the blues in a funny time signature (five beats in the bar in this case), but it’s not particularly common. Anyone reading this care to enlighten us of any famous examples?

Anyway, this minute-long demo is the latest snippet of an idea from our third album. We doubt it will form a whole song in its own right; more likely, it will make for a nice middle eight or solo interlude in a longer piece. Here are the other work-in-progress demos previously uploaded:

Jethro Tull-style intro

Reggae beat demo

Eastern-sounding snippet

Not much to go on so far, but we have begun mixing and matching our various riffs, beats and snippets into more complete songs. Stay tuned for more, but it’s still early days for this album.

You remember those crazy guys who produced The Nerve Cast, the most unhinged blend of unsigned music, chat and mayhem ever broadcast? Well, their plans for world domination are gathering pace, and rather than being “just another podcast”, they have grown and are now broadcasting live shows three times a week! They say they like to do their shows ‘their own way’, and it’s certainly proving successful.

Anyway, more than that, the people behind The Nerve Cast have set up what is fast becoming a movement for independent artists, and it goes by the name of The Reputation Label. On the face of it, it’s a social network, but really we could be looking at the beginnings of something huge. The community is growing by the day, and we’re delighted to now be a full part of it. If you’re a member of the site, we’d love for you to show your support for us and join our group here:

http://www.reputationlabel.com/groups/profile/737

Meanwhile, my personal profile is here:

http://www.reputationlabel.com/members/profile/732/Home%20Guard%20Chris

You can’t see either of these pages unless you’re logged in, which is a little frustrating, but we urge you to sign up if you haven’t done so already – musicians and listeners alike are welcome. Discover new music! Promote your own tunes! Join the independent revolution!

To top things off, we even got ourselves a little airplay on last night’s show! Unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough to capture any evidence of this, but here are three clips of previous appearances, including the world premiere of Dead on My Feet (Again) a couple of weeks before the release of Forlorn Hope and Glory last year:

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

http://www.thehomeguard.info/archive/The_Home_Guard_on_Nerve_Cast_2.mp3

http://www.thehomeguard.info/archive/The_Home_Guard_on_Nerve_Cast_3.mp3

Just letting you know that our music has appeared on a relatively new service called ShockHound:

http://www.shockhound.com/artists/451903-the-home-guard-mp3

I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the site, but our albums are there for you if you’re a member. Five-star ratings/reviews extremely welcome, as always!