Looking at our behind-the-scenes stats, our cover of Imagine seems to be travelling very fast indeed – thanks to the efforts and resourcefulness of our fans. On the by no means exhaustive list, we must thank Eira for Tweeting:
Plus Susanne, Ditta, Mike and Ian for helping it spread on Last.fm – and those are only the ones we know about! We’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: the little things really do go a long way for bands like us. Anything you can do to help spread our music is greatly appreciated!
We fully appreciate that we’re hardly qualified to even think about improving one of the most famous songs ever written, so instead we’ve focused on recording our own take on it, changing as much as we could in the process. We’ve added a finger-picked guitar, a flute, a Mellotron, some percussion and backing vocals, while gone are the piano and drums (but for the kick).
Something else we appreciate is that it’s become almost fashionable to criticise the song’s lyrics – singing about “no countries”, “no religion”, “no possessions”, “a brotherhood of man”, etc. Some of the allegations we’ve read of racism, sexism, heresy, and even of advocating Communism are frankly laughable – of course, we’re in no position to speak for John, but what we find baffling is that a song about “sharing all the world”, “living life in peace”, and there being “nothing to kill or die for” could be focused on for so many negative reasons!
(Personally, I’m of the opinion that when he sang of “no countries” and “no religion”, John was saying, “Imagine that these traditionally divisive matters are no longer an issue and perhaps the world will be a better place”. Being the great songwriter that he was, he’d have realised pretty early on that that wouldn’t scan particularly well.)
Anyway, we hope you enjoy this cover version and the video/slideshow we created to go with it. It started out as little more than an exercise in finger-picking and grew very quickly into what you hear above. If you like it, please feel free to share it on your favourite social network, or wherever else you see fit.
If you’ve been holding off buying our albums for a while, or (given the time of year) you’re looking for some stocking-fillers that won’t break the bank, we have the perfect solution for you. For the rest of the year, you can get 30% off all CD purchases made through our Bandcamp page. Simply go here:
Choose the album you wish to purchase, click on “Buy Now”, and enter dec2010 in the discount code field.
The code can be used as often as you like (so you can get 30% off both our CDs, or more than one copy of either) before 1 January 2011, and by as many people as who so wish, so go ahead and share it far and wide – Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, whatever! Free worldwide postage is included in the price, and as a special bonus you also get to download the album immediately after completing the checkout process.
Just one more note: we’ve heard from people outside the UK who are wary of buying in a foreign currency, never having done so before. Rest assured that the conversion to pounds and pence is taken care of automatically by the checkout system, so no need to panic.
As work continues on our third release, we’re beginning to face the fact that what we’re actually making is no less than a prog rock album. That is to say, many of the elements that go into a prog record are present in our newer material. Of course, we’re well aware that “Prog” is a four-letter word, so we’re going all-out to prove that an album can be both progressive and accessible. We may end up proving that an album can’t be both progressive and accessible, but that won’t stop us trying.
Which brings us to our latest (as-yet untitled) demo. It starts off very quiet, so turn your speakers up a bit:
As mentioned here previously, we’re composing this album in a very different way from our norm. The thinking for what you hear above was a sort of challenge to see if we could build something around a static bassline – the same note repeats precisely the same rhythm all the way through. What we ended up with was a dark and tense snippet that we think will make a great interlude in the middle of a more upbeat song.
We’ve left room for a vocal part from around 1:09, but we may end up filling that with another instrument. This clip also marks the debut of a church organ on a Home Guard song.
Earlier this year we were featured on episode 214 of the official podcast of The Association of Music Podcasting – AMPed – and we’ve got the clip to prove it:
What made these appearances especially stand out for us was that we knew nothing about them until our songs were actually aired! This is because our good friend Rodrigo De Sá (of Cowboy Cantor fame) submitted them on our behalf, meaning that our gratitude has to be expressed simultaneously in the direction of the USA, the city of Liverpool and the Azores Islands. Thank you one and all!
Oh dear. I’ve been experimenting with finger-picking on the acoustic guitar recently. We haven’t had any on our albums so far, and I was seeing if I could get a decent recording. I was also showing Dan my way of playing well-known songs using this technique.
“Do you recognise this?” I asked.
He didn’t, but really liked it. I played some more.
“It’s one of the most famous songs of all time,” said I, giving a fundamentally useless clue. Still no recognition, so I told him what it was.
“But it doesn’t sound anything like the original,” mused Dan. “If we covered it, that’s how we should do it.”
The next thing we knew, I’d put down a take good enough for vocals, and Dan had sung to it. He also came up with a flute part, while I padded out the sound with some Mellotron chords. The minimal feel really suited the song.
The upshot of all this is that, if we don’t lose our nerve over the possible backlash of slaughtering a sacred cow, The Home Guard will be releasing a cover version in the next few weeks to coincide with an appropriate anniversary. On the other hand, we may see sense, in which case I imagine this will be the last you’ll ever hear on the matter.
Our good friend Mike Walls likes making videos. In fact, he likes making videos so much that he’s recently finished matching visuals to every single one of our songs! We’ve uploaded them all here:
I’m sure you’ll agree that’s quite a feat. We owe the vast majority of our YouTube presence to Mike (admirably assisted by his son, Matt). We really wish we were in a position to be able to make our own videos, but thanks to these ones (plus those made by Eira and Robert), it’s not as pressing an issue as it could have been.
The Monthly Song Contest group on MySpace is all about music-lovers offering feedback and voting for their favourite tracks in a given calendar month, and we’re very proud to announce that Champagne Socialist scooped the overall award for October!
We won our weekly heat with a total of 20 points (second place finished on 11), and in the final we triumphed by 5 clear points, ending as we did on 19. We are, of course, extremely grateful to all who took the time to listen, leave a brief review, and vote – especially if it was for us!
If you’re an artist on MySpace, why not enter November’s competition? On the other hand, every vote counts whether you’re a musician or not, so either way head here:
On a related note, a big shout out must go to contest organiser David G, who has embedded our Reverbnation widget into his MySpace artist profile under the heading “My Artist of the Month” – many thanks to him.
There have been quite a few overhauls over at MySpace recently as they struggle in their battle against Facebook. Frankly, we’ve always seen the site as something of a necessary evil, but the revamp of their music section means they now host full albums. Here’s Forlorn Hope and Glory:
This service is completely independent of our account/profile, and for some reason A Head of Steam hasn’t found it’s way there from CD Baby yet. You can feel free to add any of the songs to your playlists or share them with friends, but we’re fast coming to the conclusion that MySpace has had its day. I don’t think we’re alone in that.
(More specifically, here, here and here.) As always, we struggle to express the level of our gratitude for this sort of thing. For the record, the Varialus blog does everything a band could ask for: fair and honest review which is just the right length and to the point, decent-sized image, prominent link to where the listener can hear/download the album in question… Perfect! The only thing we can offer in return is a recommendation of the blogger’s own album.
Meanwhile, the “Band of the Month” tweet shows that short and sweet can go a long way indeed. Again, I’ve been listening to the author’s music on ReverbNation, and I can recommend it without hesitation.