Introducing the new BSoD drummerererer...

Gizmo signed for a fee of £8.32 plus a Curly Wurly

Guillaume Redonnet-Brown (a.k.a. "Gizmo") is a demi-French percussion prodigy with a grade 8 in drumming and a grade 8.5 in being a badass. At only 18 years old (although, due to the linear nature of time, this will change), speculation remains as to whether BSoD guitarist Harry Shogun Gardner might in fact be be his biological Father (Harry is old).

Gizmo grew up on the mean streets of Sutton in Surrey, so he knows how to handle himself (and a switchblade). It was here that he earned the alias “Gizmo” (in an event which took place in a kebab shop just after midnight, but Gizmo does not like discussing it).

He is currently studying for a degree in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Southampton. It remains to be seen whether he is any good at making paper aeroplanes.

It is hoped that next year he may be coerced into taking part in the charity fundraiser known as “Movember” to allow the pun “Gizmovember”.

It is testement to his ability that we chose him out of the many excellent drummers we have met over the last few weeks.  We now intend to educate our young padawan in the ways of the Blue Screen, then in 2013 we will unleash him onto a stage near you (although this does largely depend on who you are and your geographic location).

After paying the extortionate transfer fee to acquire Gizmo's services, we are even more poor.  Help us out.  Buy a CD (or 12). Please. Thank you.

Beware the paradox

This is a blog about a blog...

BSoD frontman, and general silly sausage, Steve a.k.a. "Smeghead Steve" has written a blog about some bands which you may or may not have heard of, but are good-to-the-max.

You can have a read here:

http://www.designermagazine.org/FourBandsThatWillBreakYourBalls.htm

The search for a drummerer has begun...

Obviously, after Pete's departure, we are left without a full band. Suffice to say that, if I were a Panda right now, I would be a sad Panda.

But there is no point crying over spilled caramel (this is a vague attempt at "satire".  Ideally, I would have preferred there to have been a major oil slick in the last few days which I could have referenced at this point, but I had nonesuch luck), so we shall pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin trying to find someone that can sit behind us when we play music and make a lot of noise.

For some reason, the type of “people” that like to hit things with sticks, latin name Drummi drummerus are often a very rare breed. They fall into two main categories, each with their own strengths and “areas for improvement”.

Rain Man

These drummers will often posses a high level of intelligence pitched against a high level of social anxiety and awkwardness. For this reason they are often solitary creatures, preferring the company of innate concepts, such as “time” and “knowledge”, rather than human interaction. Meticulous and methodical in their approach, they are often perfectionists.  Practice will come naturally to them and they will thrive in this environment.

Sergeant Bash

In it for the party. Popular and cool, these guys will bring people to shows, post things on the facebook and give gnarly interviews, however, they are prone to oversleeping and under-practicing and may well “forget to turn up” to the odd thing, like a gig. They can often be spotted by their propensity to wear “sunglasses” or “hats” or other such fashion accessories*, and may well posses painted skin, which I believe the kidz call “tatoos”.

Of course, a history of inbreeding has led to hybrid drummers emerging, with a mixture of characteristics from both species. Depending on their dominant defining attributes they will either be known as “Sergant Man” or “Rain Bash”.

So, I guess the question is; do Blue Screen want a Rain man, a Sergeant Bash, or an inbetweenie? To be honest, at this precise second, if someone told me Idi Amin had risen from his grave, moved to Southampton, become a badass drummer and was looking to join a rock band with some subtle stoner rock influences, I would say “Deal Noel” without a second's hesitation. Not even stopping to ask myself the question “Why am I speaking to Noel Edmonds?”.**

*Although both Sunglassess and hats have functional purposes, in this instance they will generally be exhibited as fashion accessories due to the circumstances and manner in which they are utilised. For example, sunglasses at night time, or the occurrence of the same hat many times, regardless of the prevailing weather conditions.

**Of course, this is NOT true. I would never play in a band with the reanimated corpse of Idi Amin. Apart from the fact that he was a horrible man, I wouldn't play in a band with him because I'm a massive racist. Sieg Heil etc.***

***It irritates me that I am not bold enough to make that statement for comic effect without this qualifying rebuttal. Obviously, I am not a racist. In fact, I'm extremely liberal. I would go so far as to say fanatically liberal. I can and will break promises (specifically relating to tuition fees) willy nilly. There we are. I did it. I achieved "satire". Thank you, and good night.

And then there were three...

For those who don't know, Pete Davis*, BSoD lead guitarist is, as of last night, no longer the BSoD lead guitarist.

Being in a band is very much like being in a relationship. Except, in our case, without the sex. Therefore, being in a band is very much like being in a relationship, but without the good bits.

Breaking up a band is remarkably similar to the end of a relationship. Except without the sex. There are tears, anger, regret, paranoia etc. and maybe just a little bit of sex.

It's like being on a roller coaster of emotion. On this roller coaster you are sat on the middle seat. You think to yourself "they've clearly made an effort to make these roller coaster seats comfortable, but is the large, potentially testical-crushing bulge between my legs really necessary?". 

On one side of you sits the Drill Sergeant from“Full Metal Jacket” undermining and belittling you in increasingly imaginative ways.  On the other side is Wesley Snipes with his sharp hair cut who is glaring at you from behind his sunglasses and repeatedly growling the phrase “use it”.  Then, when the ride is finally over, you get off only to be confronted by Vinnie Jones, who says nothing, but kicks you in the testicles (which, ironically, you had carefully avoided crushing on the roller coaster seat) before running off. You think you can hear him giggling to himself as he goes, but then again, somebody running and laughing would sound almost exactly the same as somebody running and crying.

Today I feel numb. This may or may not be related to the fact that I am cold because I am wearing nothing but pants, but then the reason I am wearing nothing but pants is because I feel numb. It's a chicken and egg situation. A big 'orrible chicken, laying an egg so mutated that it looks remarkably like masterchef host, Greg Wallace.

In difficult times like these, I feel it is important that we look at the bigger picture, and take a minute to remind ourselves just how much of a twat Greg Wallace, masterchef host, really is. He's a big 'orrible chicken twat giving birth to a disgusting egg that is so mutated it looks remarkably like masterchef host, Greg Wallace.

I feel it maybe time for me to metaphorically and literally, but mainly literally, put some clothes on.

*I misread this as "Pete Davis" live at Twin Towers.  I feel I should point out that there are FIVE volumes of this toss, and each CD is priced at $28, NOT INCLUDING POSTAGE.  I can only presume that Pete is no longer in Blue Screen because he is buying himself a small island somewhere with profits from these albums, but I sincerely hope that he does not make any more.

Music from the 80's/90's.....it wasn't all bad!

Hi everyone, its Pete here. I thought it was about time I started sharing a bit more on here, so here goes.

Being born in the 80's and then growing up through the 90's was surely nowhere near as good musically as growing up in the 60's and 70's like my parents. I often find myself criticising music from the time of my growing up until i look through my album collection. It suddenly dawned on me how much stuff i love from that time.

As a kid learning to play guitar, I only listened to old stuff. When you start going to secondary school this is not cool. Especially when you are the wierdo stood in the corner at the freshers disco refusing to dance because you are terrified to get the latest moves from the chart wrong. Then maybe the more popular kids would crucify you on some of the gym apparatus and display you to the the rest of the school as an example of an inferior being. However this did place you in a predicament if nothing in the chart makes you enjoy music in anyway. So what do you do as weirdo with a guitar and no inspiration. You go round your friend John's house and have him play his older brother's cd collection to you. Amazing what a difference a day can make. One minute you are thinking about cutting off your hands because people don't like guitar music anymore, they like TL fucking C and Craig fucking David. Next thing you are going home singing 'Come as you are' and 'Spoonman'.

So tonight I'm sharing a song from that day. My good buddy John Fackrell made me a tape of 'cool shit' which I listened to endlessly. Sat in the corner of the common room at school, headphones in with the first Foo Fighters album smashing in to my ears. The stand out track for me was 'Good Grief'. The drums at the beginning, to me, sounded less like someone playing the drums and more like someone trying to destroy a drum kit! Its catchy lead line on the intro and its screaming rip roaring chorus stayed with me forever. The mix had so much fuzz in the background, it was dirty, filthy, rawcus rock and I loved it! Even to this day, if it comes on the cd player in my car, passengers have to be silenced and the volume pumped up to eleven during the fuzzed up bridge riff which is bursting with guitars layered over one another, each one more filthy than the next. Shame they don't seem to play it anymore...ENJOY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DN5H4UbP6Q&feature=related

Our guitarist is angry, you may or may not like him when he is angry!

Why are bands prostitutes for the promoter pimps?
An insight to the world of unsigned music.

The first blog post by Peter Davis – Lead guitarist in The Blue Screen Of Death

Having just got off the phone to a London promoter (for a venue that shall remain nameless), I am disgusted with the world of unsigned music. This is a rant about what has just been discussed.

Firstly, a little about me: I have been playing in bands since I was in secondary school. Various different line-ups of the band have come and gone, however my good friend Steve George and I have been making music together since our voices were squeaky and facial hair was but a dream. We have always dreamed of a life in music. Not necessarily rock and roll hall of fame heights, just the idea that we could play original music and maybe make a living from it. This dream, over the years, has been slowly chipped away at; crumbling away like poorly built foundations bringing down a house made of aspiration and ambition.

So many people come up to me saying “it must be great to be in a band” and “do you earn good money, I bet you earn good money don’t you?”. These people have no idea whatsoever of what it is like to be in a creative band.

Yes, if you play in a function band, playing other people's music like a glorified jukebox, there is money to be made. Function bands can earn up to £2000 pounds for a wedding, not to mention the hundred quid or so per night they might pick up playing residencies at local pubs. I admire the idealism of people who think we are getting paid the same rates for expressing our artistic vision, unfortunately this is very far removed from the reality of the situation.

Case in point: The promoter I spoke to wanted us to give him £180 up-front (30 tickets at £6 each) which we were then tasked with selling ourselves in order to reclaim our money. If we sold them all he would give us another 30 tickets from which we were free to keep the profits. In other words, we were expected to pay him a huge sum of money for the privilege of doing his job for him.

Obviously, he has to negotiate a fee with the venue to stage the night, but from chatting to the owners/managers of many venues this is usually no more than meeting their flat hiring fee and covering a sound engineer’s wages. Bar staff are almost always paid by the venue (typically from bar profits). The 'promoter' has therefore been paid handsomely for the simple act of hiring a venue and a soundman, and can now put his feet up and relax while the bands rush around desperately trying to sell enough tickets to break even. Anyone else see anything wrong with this picture?

Bear in mind most nights it will not be just one band playing. At least 3 bands will play at your average local live show, at a push up to five bands could be squeezed in depending on the venue's licence. What venue charges anywhere near £900 to put on a night? None. The promoter’s standard line of defence is “I need to make a living”. So the band who created the music, rehearsed for hundreds of hours and braved standing in front of an audience don’t deserve to make a living?

The promoter wants you to bring in the customers, serve the customers what they want and then take a cut of the profit. Sounds to me very similar to another profession. The world's oldest. Substitute the word 'band' for 'prostitute' and the word 'promoter' for 'pimp'. The prostitute walks the street bringing in the customers, does the deed, and then the pimp takes his share.

Before I get a hail of abuse from women’s right activists, I am not saying that being in a band is as hard as being a prostitute. For instance I do understand that if bands don’t bring people to the gig, a man called Vladimir will not come and break our legs. Neither are the bands at risk of being mentally/physically/sexually abused by the crowd (although that does depend on how good or bad you are). I’m simply using a shocking metaphor to convey the message to people who might be otherwise ignorant to how bands are treated, and how this disgraceful treatment can make us feel. If you are a pimp who feels you have been misrepresented in this article, I’m sorry, I have clearly seen the film ‘Taken’ (dir. Pierre Morel 2008) one too many times.

This kind of behaviour is not just limited to London. My band is based in Southampton where, if we wish to play a venue with pro lights and sound, we are bringing the people in ourselves. Most of our local promoters don’t ask for money up front but give us a batch of 30 tickets to sell. If we sell 20 or more (at a rate usually between £5-7 each), we get to keep a pound for every ticket we sell. If we sell fewer than 20, we get nothing. Apparently this is supposed to incentivise us to promote interest in the gig. If only there were someone for whom that was their sole job...

When you take into account what we spend on renting rehearsal space, fuel travelling to gigs, even general upkeep for our instruments, £1 pound per ticket shared by four band members doesn’t exactly travel far. All these costs accounted for and being a musician becomes just an expensive hobby and definitely not a career choice.

The other bug bear I have with being in an unsigned band is people who think that free music downloading is justified. At a party I sarcastically thanked a guy who had been boasting about never paying for music or films, for flushing the world of music down the toilet. I explained he was taking things that a band had spent time and money making – for free – which is morally no different from stealing goods from a shop, you just don’t have to look anyone in the eye. He tried to justify his stealing by saying “well if people get to hear your music easily then they will come to your gigs”. A point which may have had some minor validity were it not for the fact that WE DONT GET PAID FOR GIGS! Well the majority anyway.

One notable exception is a Southampton venue who still do things the old-fashioned way. I’m happy to mention it by name because it is such a great pub. The Hobbit on Bevois Valley Road actually pays bands a pre-disclosed fee, on the night, to play. The Hobbit charges £2 for entry after 10pm on a Friday and Saturday, and is free to enter at any other time, which doesn’t price lots of people out of going to gigs. This guarantees customers at the bar, which in turn brings in more than enough money to keep everyone paid and happy.

I will admit you can’t convince someone to spend more than £5 on seeing four bands who they haven’t heard of. If all the bands are unsigned then the entry fee should be cheap to encourage people in and to give the bands the exposure they deserve.

This just topped off by the fact that this month I read in the news that Apple, the owner of iTunes, have made record profits of $13.06 billion (£8.36 billion). How can a massive corporation with such huge profits justify charging unsigned bands £30 a year to put their tracks on iTunes? £30 a year is surely not much to them but it does add up as just another cost on top of all the other costs we are paying.

So where now for unsigned bands? To be honest I don’t know. I keep reading lots of interesting ideas on the internet of guerilla style gigs played in people’s living rooms with just acoustic instruments. A charitable donation for the performer is asked for on the door. But it’s not a format all bands can work in.

Do we go on X-factor? Believe it or not, when I mention to people that I am a musician; a few people actually suggest it. A brief lesson please to all these degenerates: Karaoke nights were invented for a reason, to satisfy a drunken fool's dream of being famous for a bit. Suddenly this is prime time Saturday night entertainment. Want to go see some bands trying to make a living playing original music? No! Why spend money when a glorified karaoke show with pantomime heroes and villains is played out to the comfort of your arm chair.

As you may have guessed, I hate X-factor, everyone involved in its making and anybody who watches it, so it’s easy for me to vent my anger on to them. Who remembers T4 Orange Act Unsigned? Thought not. What about the band Hijack Oscar? Thought not, again. This was a shameful attempt to make an X-factor for bands. Exactly how bands shouldn’t be dealt with. A band’s place is doing what it wants on the live stage. The audience’s place is to judge however they want. But that audience should be let in for a small fee which goes to people who put on the production (i.e. the band and crew). If the audience doesn’t like it, what have you lost?

If you do like it you can go and pay for a download or a CD if you are old fashioned like me (they do sound better, I don’t care what you say!). Paying for the download is only fair as bands spend on average £250 a day to record in a studio. It’s not much to ask is it really?

Next time a friend asks you to go and see his/her band, why not just say yes. After reading this I hope you will. If his/her band is rubbish then criticize them constructively. There is no such thing as bad music, it's only people’s opinions (this rule does not apply when referring to N-Dubz). I hope this has been an enlightening insight to the world of unsigned music. Now get out there and see some bands!

www.thebluescreenofdeath.co.uk