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:

http://www.youtube.com/thehomeguardinfo

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.

Thanks for making such a tremendous effort, Mike!

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:

http://groups.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=groups.groupprofile&groupID=108185895

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:

http://music.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=music.artistalbums&artistid=45232988&albumid=16722557

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.

I’ll admit that, as headlines go, that one’s particularly poor. Thankfully, this story speaks for itself. First up, there’s this tweet:

http://twitter.com/TheMonobandits/status/27549416019

Then there’s this thread (page two is where the action is):

http://forum.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=messageboard.viewThread&entryID=75915537&groupID=108185895

And last but not least is this new blog:

http://varialus.wordpress.com/

(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.

Many thanks once more to all concerned!

I’ve just found a pile of stuff that was meant to be posted ages ago but somehow slipped through the net. First up, Champagne Socialist was featured on the much-respected Route for the Underdog podcast, and we’ve got the clip to prove it:

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

People like Dick Underdog actually do far more for independent artists than possibly even they realise, and we’d like to take this opportunity to thank all those podcasters, bloggers, video-makers and indeed anyone who’s ever mentioned The Home Guard to a friend or two. With no mass-media backing, it’s you who keep the listeners coming our way.

In the case of Route for the Underdog, you can keep up with the latest episodes on MySpace:

http://www.myspace.com/routefortheunderdog

I’ve just realised that I completely forgot to post the link to part two of The Home Guard’s interview with our good friend Linda Adams:

http://lindaofficial.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/the-home-guard-official-interview-part-ii/

Part one is here, if you missed it. The best thing, though, is that the very next post details Linda’s meeting with legendary Queen guitarist Brian May. We’re flattered to find ourselves in such company!

I’ve sung the praises of Last.fm on a number of occasions, and we’re delighted to have passed the 30,000 plays mark on there over there this week. Last.fm certainly used to be the best online network for independent artists around the world.

Used to be.

Then they were taken over by CBS, and the baffling business decisions started. First of all, on-demand plays – the bedrock of the site – were denied to everyone not from the UK, US or Germany (which, though it didn’t affect us, affected the majority of our listeners). Presumably wondering why they were haemorrhaging users, Last.fm subsequently took another quantum leap towards commercial oblivion by removing full plays of tracks from the site all together, thus rendering pointless its own very existence.

To cut a long story short, Last.fm have partially redeemed themselves and on-demand plays have been reinstated for independent artists. In fact, that happened months ago, but due to some glitch related to CD Baby we’ve had to wait even longer:

http://www.last.fm/music/The+Home+Guard

What you have to do now is choose a track, click on it to visit its page, and then select the “Play direct from The Home Guard” option. Songs from A Head of Steam also offer a link to Spotify, but not yet for Forlorn Hope and Glory (that’s a rant for another day). For No One can’t be offered on-demand as it’s a cover version, but if you add it to your library it will occasionally come up randomly as you listen to your personal “Radio”.

All that said, the links within the previous paragraph all work – our entire back catalogue will forever (we hope!) be available for full free high-quality on-demand streaming in your default media player from here – so it’s hardly worth getting all worked up about. But now you know.

All of the demos we’ve uploaded so far from the third album have been fairly short snippets of longer progressive pieces, but this one bucks the trend somewhat (in that it actually sounds like a song in its own right!):

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Somewhere_Out_There_(Demo)_25-09-10.mp3

We’re calling it Somewhere Out There at the moment because, at the time of recording, the lyrics for the song consist entirely of only those three words, to be repeated in each line of the chorus.

Dan actually started writing this one before Forlorn Hope and Glory was finished, but we’re confident it will fit in well with our newer, more collaborative material. What you hear here is only the main body of the song, and we’re going to add a piano solo straight after. Then, it will crash back in with that triumphant-sounding heavy chorus – in fact, it sounds so climactic to us that we may well end the album with it.

Somewhere Out There is still a long way from completion (as is the album as a whole, for that matter), but we hope you are starting to get an idea of what our next release is going to sound like. Comments, criticisms and enthusiastic hyperbole all welcome.

Roughly one year on from its release, Forlorn Hope and Glory has finally found its way onto Spotify:

http://open.spotify.com/album/5FZrUneRqpE5TanQpvSGi2

This means that free, full-length, high-quality streaming of both our albums (the first is here) is available to all users of the service – and of course you can also share them with your friends and all that other social networky-type stuff. Enjoy!

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!