A Fucking Fiver!

I wonder how many of you wonderful people follow independent artists? The ones who possibly suffer from the tag "unsigned". If you don't I understand, I mean there's so much great music out there in mainstream land.

There's, probably, a sexy girl band, some solo rapper types, the odd make up daubed fey (?) guitar band, an Irish boy band all singing the same note, a competition winner as well as the plethora of assorted female American lunatics. Spoilt for choice eh?

You may be forgiven for thinking that these un-signed acts must be shit, otherwise they'd be signed right? Well, if you carry on that line of logic then the statement "signed bands are all great, otherwise they wouldn't be signed, right?" would also apply and we know that's certainly not true.
There are many dreadful acts that reside under the tag "Independent" or "un-signed" I'll give you that.

HOWEVER

There are many more that are bloody wonderful but how do you find the good ones?
How do you find a band who are at the level when you can still go and see them for less than a tenner, where you can get an email from them (not some industry lackey) letting you know when they are playing and what they are up to and where you can start collecting their early works before they got signed and it all when it bad!

I give you this The Showcase Sett Limited edition 16 track compilation cd
It's been compiled by Xan Phillips and Jules from Angry Badger Records and iconic -culture and I went to the launch of this last night and heard the whole thing, twice. It's bloody marvelous, no really.
I defy you, DEFY, to find a duff track on it. There may be a track or two that may not be too your taste but that's to be expected. It's got one of my favourite bands in the world on it, the mad and beautiful Wise Children. Their track I featured in podcast number 11 is just pure Joy!.
Last Night Andrew Foster played his track "The Alchemist" live and was quietly and poetically profound. He later joined up with the amazing Loz Bridge from Loz Bridge & The Box Social and totally blew everyone away. Loz is a legend. Think Gomez (remember them?) hugging Keene.
There are plenty of great tracks on this album, yes yes yes one of mine is on there but you can forget that, you can still download it for free by clicking that little widget thing but as I've already been paid for it I don't give a bugger either way.
I guarantee you will find at least 3 bands that you will want to hear more from and if I'm wrong, then you have no soul, no soul at all.

All for a fiver, a fucking fiver!

Now that's a plan!

After a weekend of beach, gardening and chopping wood, it's a new day and I'm working in my pj's.

Plan "C", recording all my songs see previous post, has now escalated into the most exciting idea I've ever had! That is, to record a live solo album and release it on vinyl. I've been in conversation with Angry Badger who have some very interesting ideas, so interesting that I won't mention them until certain "things" are in place.

As you can see above, the first of the regular Pure Acoustica events at The Dolphin is all loaded and ready to go. It's a dodgy time of the year to start something like this as so many people are on holiday but I know it will be a great night and the people playing are fantastic so it will be a great night. I made a Facebook event for this if you want a peek.

The windows sponsored free download thing has gone a bit crazy, read about it here. I only needed to get 100 downloads to get paid and so far 1330 people have downloaded How Can it Be Wrong, which is nice.

Heading down to the Soul Cellar tonight for the launch of Angry Badger's compilation cd that "How Can It Be Wrong" appears on. It's got some legs on it that song eh?

Looking at totally revamping my website www.nicktann.co.uk I would really appreciate your opinions good and bad on how it is now.

Charles Olsen, artist, musician and all round good guy, has just pimped my myspace page.

I think it looks very classy despite crashing Safari when I looked at it first thing, although I did have many many windows open.

I also get a mention in the local paper! Whatever next?

So today will be spent recording new tracks for Plan "C", publicizing the Pure Acoustica event, picking up Mrs Nick's dry cleaning, taking another door to be stripped and other sundries.

Catch Up..

I'm mindful that I've neglected my blog of late and have made the decision to do my best to use it more.
There are people that follow it as I follow other people's blogs.
I am actually interested in what people are doing whether it's trying to sell their book or stumbling their drunker lezzbot way around the capital.
So, what am I up to?
At the moment I am enjoying the fruits of my new contract and am half way through my six week summer break from my day job.
I have begun plan C which is recording all my songs in the simplest way possible i.e one mic straight in to Logic, press record. No effects, no click track not even any reverb. I love the results!
I've been attending a few open mic and acoustic nights around Hampshire to see what works as regards songs and regarding the set up and success or otherwise of these events.
I have the subject of a new pod-cast developng on this subject so I've also been using these nights for research.
Today (Friday) I shall be carrying on with Plan C. I've recorded 5 songs already so that means only 25 to go. I'm playing at Borders in Southampton tomorrow afternoon so I'm burning some cds to give away there. I MAY record a new podcast as I have enough stuff in my head to talk about.
I will also clean the kitchen floor, do the laundry, wash up, play a little on-line poker and hopefully go to a jam night tonight at The Arts House in Southampton.
We shall see.