Giles Field

E is for Ego

Dear fellow songwriters,

I have the feeling you may have the wrong end of the stick.  I really do like your music, even though I would honestly say that I wouldn’t swap any of my current set-list with yours.  But then again I have the feeling you would not agree to such an unholy trade either.

Blame my Ego.  I do.

My friend Ego approaches Kanye and Ricky Gervais sized proportions, with only my nearest and dearest fully knowing the limits of the love I feel for my own work.  Without the beautiful blessing and terrific curse of Ego I would never have the confidence to step on stage and sing at all.  Me, with my anxiety and socialphobia, would never have been able to pick myself up from being ignored by media, radio or even you, my songwriting friends, who seem to go silent when casting for support slots.  I would never have trudged onwards and upwards when direct criticism rained steadily, although thankfully never torrentially, from sometimes unexpected corners.

I can’t remember when my friend Ego and I became close.  Perhaps it was when I started playing to a small but attentive audience of old school friends in my mum’s loungeroom.  The applause and amazement that only non-musicians can give may have awakened the monster.  The songs weren’t strong in those days but I played on, with quiet confidence in my own talent.  But perhaps the Ego was already there well before that, a side effect of having a ridiculously supportive family, once again non-musicians, who were impressed by my faltering chords and immature lyricism.

Without my friend Ego, I may never have had the guts to send my work to my songwriting heroes, which resulted in being able to record my first album, find some radio-play and bring my work to a (slightly) wider audience.  On the flipside though, without this wretched friend I may never have had to endure the not-so-playful teasing of co-workers after stupidly revealing exactly where I thought I came in an imaginary list of Australia’s best songwriters.  I would also, perhaps, not feel the right to, as some kind of self-ordained Song Expert, pull apart the work of other writers, including my closest friends.  I still do this, hating myself for cringing at every clumsy line, every mawkish turn of phrase and every missed opportunity.

Maybe without him too, I wouldn’t feel so heavy. Ego weighs me down; he holds secrets, secrets that in turn mean I have to be secretive lest someone catches me out.  “You’re up yourself!” is what they would likely cry if they knew what I really thought about my work, especially in comparison to my contemporaries.

Maybe it’s true; maybe I am ‘up myself’.  Maybe my friend Ego is just an excuse.  But are you up yourself if your assessment of your own work is correct? What did Kanye think of himself before he won his legion of fans and was recognised as one of the real talents of his generation?  I suspect he still, quite rightly, admired his own work.

And I think we should admire our own work as artists.  If you don’t think your songs are some of the best going around, then why not change them until they are?  You may not be able to change them until everyone likes them but you must have faith in your own taste.

The more we trust our Ego the more likely we are to result in something that we should have an Ego about.  At about the time you feel confident enough to jump onstage at an awards ceremony in front of Taylor Swift you know you’re about to release a REALLY good record.

In other news, I am about to release a REALLY good record.

D is for Democracy

“The absolute magic and democracy of rock & roll,’ writes senior Rolling Stone contributor David Fricke, “is that anyone with a good hook and a fighting heart can change the world overnight.”

It’s an interesting idea, and a great topic to discuss with other musicians at dinner parties.   When quizzed however, it’s remarkable how few really believe in the level playing field of a democratic music scene.  “I know so many great musos that get no recognition!” they complain.  “History is full of the talentless succeeding!” I’m told. But how true is this? Are record label executives really dictating popular taste at the expense of your guitar-toting boyfriend?

Political democracy is more obvious than the musical kind, and measured with votes every four years or so. It’s a less-than-ideal system in reality, but it seems to be the best one we’ve got.   Although the electoral process has no direct equivalent in music, record sales reflect a similar, and similarly imperfect, way of judging worth. 

This worth may be subjective to a point, but leaving aside personal taste, I would argue that you simply can’t sell millions of records by being shit.  Some critics may not rate Mariah Carey’s mega-selling ‘Music Box’ album as highly as the latest bedroom noodling from some bearded wunderkind (see Pitchfork for examples) but who can deny that Mariah has belted out some corker singles in her time?

While in danger of falling into some serious circular reasoning, if talent as an aptitude for things, then it seems a person’s aptitude for something as universal as success is a particularly useful measure of talent.  By extension this means that Atomic Kitten, Eiffel 65 and Lee Harding, were all by at least some degree, talented.  Hit records are born of skill; skill of writing or finding a catchy song, having the right image, and being the right (although not necessarily the best) singer.  This doesn’t happen by accident.  Number one hits are never accidental because someone, somewhere, has done exactly what they wanted to and done it very well.  That’s talent, pure and simple.

On the surface, measuring talent with chart success may seem counter-intuitive.  Right Said Fred are, by most reckoning, a dreadful pop group whose albums would make a passable substitute for torture.  So how do you account for their worldwide hit, ‘I’m Too Sexy’?  It may be tempting to dismiss the work as a lucky break but this would be doing the song a disservice.  The group attempted to make a track that people would like, and came up with a piece of pop genius that is both catchy and hilarious, at least the first seventeen times you hear it.  Just because they couldn’t replicate the feat doesn’t make them untalented, just less talented than the Beatles.

Then there are the rest of us, who struggle away without a hit at all.  We may be talented too, but perhaps not as talented as we would like to think.  If your boyfriend had the goods, his band would write a ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’-esque anthem and you wouldn’t be able to help playing the demo to everyone and their mum.  The meme would then continue to spread and David Geffen would soon start peppering your beloved’s mobile phone with lucrative offers.  But your boyfriend ISN’T Kurt Cobain and you probably don’t listen to him for pleasure. Sure, he maybe as cute as a button and a good guitarist, but in all likelihood he just doesn’t have the songs to back it up. 

Don’t worry too much though, you needn’t tell him to quit music and go get an office job. The other part of the equation is the ‘fighting heart’, and this is just as important as the good hook.  The only thing is when you’ve only got one of the two ingredients, success is unlikely to happen overnight.  It might take a couple of weeks instead.

C is for Computers

Like it or not popular music will never be the same.  The ever-increasing standard of living means that you’d have to be the most starving of starving artists not to have Garageband on your MacBook.  This technology, which makes the ol’ fashioned demo tape look downright antediluvian, makes it frustratingly easy to create radio-standard works of art. If you need convincing of this, just have a look at a site like Triple J Unearthed.  Sure, you’re always gonna find the odd ‘please-don’t-spare-the-shotgun-on-this-ailing-dog’ kind of a hack job amongst the 30,000 or so tracks uploaded, but by and large the recording quality is surprisingly good.  The songwriting quality is obviously a completely different matter.

As musicians, we can’t ignore the last 30 years in personal computer technology.  Even a figure like Jack White, who famously prefers recording directly to tape, is influenced by computers.  In fact, he probably more than the rest of us as his aesthetic is a direct response to the perfection of click tracks and digital multi-tracking, a self-conscious movement away from technology.  An equally self-conscious use of computers is from arguably the greatest band of our time, Radiohead, who, in contrast, have pushed boundaries with technology, particularly since 1997’s ‘OK Computer’. We all need to make some sort of decision about computers, and Radiohead and Jack White are two of the more striking examples of ‘getting it right’.

There’s no correct way to deal with the issue of course, for every Dirtbombs and Black Keys there is a Kanye or a Lady Gaga.  This is not to say that you should sound like you were either recorded under a cheap pillow or, if you have the cash, by Timbaland’s more experimental brother.  Know that technology goes beyond budget, or even genre, it really is about having some sort of opinion on something so fundamental to the recording process.

First you must learn that Autotune is not the devil’s tool, digital metronomes are not evil and using 128 tracks to have a choir of Luke Steele singing is not necessarily a bad thing.  By the same token, tape hiss, pitchy singing or recording on Dictaphone is not necessarily going to ruin a good song.  Not to get too biblical, but the problem will come when you are luke-warm about technology.  And by luke-warm I mean some sort of unthinking private school hippie who has no opinion on computers finding themselves with a soulless EP of polished protest songs recorded at exactly 120bpm that even your Grandma would struggle to find shocking.

If you want to perfect your recording, go right ahead and Pro Tools the heck out of your songs.  But if you use the technology to eliminate the flaws without using it to make your songs actually sound interesting then you’ve got a problem.  If you’re a rock band, odds are one of the reasons I might listen is because you’re not a computer and might surprise me with tiny grungy imperfections.  If you actually are a computer, odds are one of the reasons I might listen is because you’re on the cutting edge of technology and you might surprise me with new and fantastical sounds.

So be revolutionary. Choose between a computer or a band.  Hell, surprise me and be both!  Or neither.  But if you haven’t bothered to think about computers at all, then why not stay in your bedroom until you do?  You can come out when your Grandma is shocked.

B is for the Beatles

What is there left to write about the Beatles?  Life stories have been dissected, lyrics analysed and art theories thrust upon anything and everything that either John, Paul, George or Ringo ever touched.  Commentators and academics have left no stone unturned, from the band’s individual drug histories to the length of Brian Epstein’s hair.  As it should be.  They are the most important recording artists ever to have existed and will probably remain so for some time.  But you already knew that. The only thing I can hope to add is my personal account of the Beatles.

I think I always knew the Beatles were THE BEST. Mum told me so, so it must’ve been true. Being fascinated by fame from a young age I suppose it wasn’t unusual that I dreamed that I lived in Liverpool in the early 60s.  Why, I could be the 5^th member of that famous group!  Naturally we would be even more amazing.  The Fab 5.

Which is kinda strange because I heard more about the Beatles than from the Beatles when I was growing up. I’m ashamed to say I haven’t even heard their entire catalogue.  We didn’t have a huge record collection growing up so as an adult I’m making my way through them one at a time.  ‘With the Beatles’, I’m all over.  ‘Revolver’, ditto.  But when a friend tells me how much they like ‘The White Album’, I just smile and nod.  I’m not up to it yet.  Of course I know the famous songs but those fantastic album tracks I’m still yet to discover.

But that’s OK, I already know my least favourite Beatles track.  It’s on their 1964 album ‘Hard Day’s Night’ and it’s called ‘I’ll Cry Instead’.  It’s poor.  And not in a provocative way like ‘Revolution 9’.  It really is plain old rubbish songwriting.

 ‘I’ll Cry Instead’ is an almost-country-and-western jaunt, the type they might get Ringo to sing, but in this case John takes lead vocals.  It’s jangly.  It has no gravitas.  Which is OK for a pop song but the problem is that it’s not catchy either.  And the lyrics are the worst kind of rhyming couplets about hiding girls because John will ‘break their hearts all round the world.’  Go and YouTube it. 

Oh there excuses; albums weren’t really albums back then, full of filler and written and recorded in a rush, especially in the Beatles’ case as they were still squeezing in world tours.  But I still get a burst of schadenfreude that there is such a thing as mediocre Beatles.  I feel great that I could have written a better song and got it included on such a classic album.  I am 100% certain that I have written at least 50 songs that are superior melodically and lyrically to this laughably bad Lennon effort.

But that’s not the point, I suppose.  Thank goodness we’re not judged on our worst performances.  Footballers aren’t judged on the goals they miss.  I’m not judged on the girls that turn me down. Not usually, anyway.

With the Beatles though, you don’t have to delve too hard into their work to hit a rich vein of genius.  But then what’s the fun of that?  I’d rather fantasise about being in the Fab 5 thanks.

A is for Anti-folk

“You don’t like folk music or you don’t like people?” she said as she read my T-Shirt emblazoned with the words ‘Anti-folk’.  A good question.  Perhaps if I liked people more I wouldn’t deliberately try to confuse them by pledging allegiance to an obscure genre of music.  I have my answer ready. “Oh, it’s more like a sub-genre of folk .” People are usually happy with that. 

If not I can tell them that the genre emerged in the 1980s, in answer to the folk clubs of New York.  Folk clubs which were at the time still brimming with singer-songwriters pretending that Bob Dylan’s Band hadn’t yet picked up electric guitars, let alone the Sex Pistols.  I can then tell them that the Anti-folk style is self reflective in its lyrics, punk influenced in its attitude and self deprecating in its wit, but still mostly acoustic.  I can tell them further, that this new generation of songwriters dubbed their music ‘Anti-folk’.  (“If this is folk, then I’m Anti-folk!”  is a quote attributed to the godfather of the movement, New Yorker, Lach.)

Anti-folk’s modern heroes are probably Jeffrey Lewis and Kimya Dawson, also both from New York.  Kimya’s band the Moldy Peaches featured in the film ‘Juno’ the only real example of Anti-folk intersecting with the mainstream.  Juno, brilliantly played by Ellen Page, was pretty much the coolest girl ever, so who could blame her listening tastes padding out the motion picture soundtrack with Anti-folk ‘hits’.

Personally, I wear the ‘Anti-folk’ T-shirt because I feel it best describes my music of any genre I’ve come across so far.   This is perhaps because it is so poorly defined.  And it is for this reason that it’s become a bit of a catchall genre; often catching things that I feel are too pretty and precise to be anti-anything.  But after reading that Darren Hanlon and some of his erstwhile Candle Records label mates were sometimes cited as Australian examples of Anti-folk I fell in love with the term all over again.

Of course just because it can be described as Anti-folk doesn’t mean that it is any good.  For every Kate Nash there is a thousand ‘quirky’ songwriters who are just plain terrible.  People describing themselves as ‘quirky’ is usually a bad sign.  The term tends to make me despair that the artists have actually listened to anything specific at all, usually not my Anti-folk heroes, or indeed anything that isn’t ‘The Sound of White’ on repeat.   People whose parents have told them that their rhyming of ‘Tony Danza’ with ‘Agapanthus’ is HILARIOUS.  People who sound like every female-voiced home wares jingle sung in the last three years.  People that will probably actually sell a lot more records than I could ever manage.

“So you don’t like folk music or you don’t like people?”

Truthfully?  Both.