Ballard

Just found this great live-in-the-studio film of Jason Falkner, a musician who’s influenced me massively. I’ve still not managed to match his talents (I doubt I ever will) but I’m bloody trying! For more videos go here – Falkner-tastic!

I’ve filmed a video! At 8.30am this morning I climbed into a car with my good friend Ian Brown and set off for Winter Hill, on the moors above Bolton. He then proceeded to film me as I ran up and down the road that leads to the Winter Hill transmitter, dressed in vintage running gear with a panda mask on.

Why? I don’t really know, it was just something that popped into my head months ago. Since then I’ve been putting it off because I didn’t fancy the exercise. First of all I said a panda costume would be too expensive but he found a cheap cockroach costume. Then I decided that was too expensive. Then I said I was too busy. Finally, he called my bluff by buying the panda mask on eBay. I had no choice after that so I went for it.

And you know what? It was pretty easy to be honest! I ran up and down the hill four times (eight trips in all) and often I wanted to speed up but Ian was making me slow down as he went ahead of me in the car. Jo, his wife, drove whilst Ian filmed me from the boot of his car. It was fairly quiet but people started appearing on the last few takes; early morning runners, cyclists, walkers. Lots of bemused expressions, particularly when I wished them a good morning as I jogged past them in a panda mask.

There will be two versions of this video – the one you about to see and a 3D version which should be ready in a week, maybe two. You can also download the song for free from my music page. Just click the link at the top of the site and select the 2010 Singles page. But for now, enjoy the 2D version of Life Is What You Make It, Fool (and look out for Ian’s son, James, falling down a hill..)

I was listening to a podcast at work yesterday. I listen to lots of podcasts at work as it’s so boring I need something to get me through. This particular podcast is from Inside Home Recording and it was the first one I’d listened to. It wasn’t bad, if a bit dry at times, but I suppose that’s the nature of such a geeky podcast as one that deals with recording nose flutes and discussing power conditioners. I’ll certainly keep listening to it.

Anyway, they discussed an interview with Imogen Heap in Sound on Sound magazine.

Imogen Heap

Now, I’d already read this interview but didn’t take in a key comment from her. Fortunately the guys on the podcast mentioned it. Here’s what she said;

“Every time I do a song I’ll release it the next day on the Internet, so it’s already out there doing its thing. When I finish a song I just want it out, and not have to wait for all the promo and manufacturing; that just feels so against what it’s all about today.”

That really struck a chord with me yesterday. I have loads of songs that are lying around, either finished or nearly finished, and they don’t seem to fit together. If I had to put these songs on an album it would sound strange as I bounce around stylistically. They’re not dramatically different but they’re different enough. So I tend to tell myself that songs A, F, and G can wait till they have 5 more songs to go with them, whilst songs B, C and E can wait for 2 more and make up an E.P. Meanwhile, songs D, H and I can languish on my hard-drive.

Imogen’s way gets round this. Songs don’t have to work together and they don’t have to sit around waiting for other songs to be finished. Imogen’s way says, “Song A, you are ready. Go out into the world and let people enjoy you.”

It sounds like a great way of doing things. It sounds fun, instant, creative and exciting. And that’s pretty much how I like my music (if spending hours in the studio sounds exciting). So that’s what I’m going to do this year. When a song is ready I’ll put it up here on BallardPop and offer it to the public. Some will be chargeable, some will be free (down to my capricious nature) but they’ll all be up here as soon as they’re done.

And so here’s the first one. It’s a free one too! It’s called This Could Last Forever and is a song all about holding on to what’s good in your life. In a sympathetic gesture very unlike me (I’m a gruff Northern git) I’ve dedicated the song to my parents. I’ve got to really, the last verse is all about them. I do hope you like it and please say if you do so. You could also tell your friends… click on following link to get it – This Could Last Forever.

I was reading an SOS article about the recording of You Really Got Me and it got me thinking. It still sounds great, no matter what I listen to it on. A lot of old songs do.

They also, however, sound quite different compared to the latest Lily Allen single or Athlete’s latest effort to be the cool Coldplay. They don’t sound very ‘now’. They’re a lot quieter for a start. And they don’t have the latest vintage synth sound (there’s an oxymoron) or the latest vocal compression effect. Mostly, they’re just a band recorded and mixed simply. Occasionally there’ll be a bizarre reverb or phase effect but apart from that they’re pretty simple.

It got me thinking. If I want a successful career as a ‘now’ artist, I have to compete. I have to have the latest sounds on the singles; I have to have it mixed by Chris Lord Alge or some such legend; I probably have to have the life squeezed out of it in the never-ending quest for more volume.

I can’t write alone either. I will be forced to team up with another pop wannabe. If I’m lucky I’ll get to write with the head of Epic, Amada Ghost (she actually wrote You’re Beautiful by James Blunt). If I’m not so lucky I’ll be working on some beats with Calvin Harris.

And then there’s the endless round of photo-shoots, interviews etc. Not much time to do anything else. I’ll probably be at a party with Rio Ferdinand and Cheryl Cole rather than writing music.

I don’t, however, want a successful career as a ‘now’ artist. I want to do what I’m doing now. I’d maybe like a more rewarding job but not much else. And I think that helps my music.

The Mexican band...

I don’t have to worry too much about my sounds. It doesn’t matter if my guitar sound is a bit shitty or the kick doesn’t have much click. I can record stuff that I like and not worry about anyone else. I can write what I like, in any style I like (I can even go Mexican if I want to, but that would never work…) without having to pander to the press.

I don’t have to compete in a volume war either. It’s not as if it’s going to get played on the radio. If anyone hears my music they probably want to hear it, they’ve probably already paid for it and that means they’re not bothered if it’s the same volume as the preceding track, they’ll just turn it up (and it will probably be more sonically dynamic than the preceding track anyway.)

I don’t even have to be an awesome singer, just as long as I sing with passion, with character and as long as the song is decent. By being a small, independent artist in the true sense of the term I only have to appeal to myself and if anyone else likes my material they genuinely will like it.

In the independent music world – or at least, in my independent music world – the song is king and nothing else matters.

I actually liked this album

No, not the game – God, that got boring quickly. At first it was fun, throwing the papers in the mail boxes, dodging other cyclists and construction men and the odd drunk but after a while it just got dull, doing the same thing on every level (by the way, I only lasted about a week as a real paperboy; saved enough money to by Roger Taylor’s Strange Frontier album and then quit).

Anyway, I digress. No, I don’t mean the game, I mean I was in the paper last week. The paper in question was the Bolton News and the article was about my single release – which as you should know by now is called I Can See Everything. The article was good and it was fun to read it but there was one unfortunate ommission – the address of this site.

That wasn’t too bad as it told readers that my single was on sale at iTunes but I realised that the single isn’t that easy to find on iTunes. If you type Ballard into the store search engine you get countless other artists who are much more successful than me, mainly due to them having the talent to have lived longer than me so far. So, the best way to get the single on iTunes is to do a search for the title. Hope that makes things easier for you. Anyway, here’s the article;

Fame!

If you click on it you can read it in full. Might have to do a bit of scrolling, it’s quite large so apologies for my huge face. It’s normally of average size.

Meanwhile in the wide world of Ballard, I’ve spent the weekend recording tracks for my E.P. I spent Saturday recording a new song called So Cruel and today recording a new, more polished version of Time With You. Both are sounding not a million miles away from Fountains Of Wayne, which is never a bad thing. My aim is to get about 9 songs recorded (I’ve got a shortlist of 14 to choose from), put 7 on an E.P. and maybe use the other two as singles or freebies. I’ll keep you all posted about my progress but if you want to be sure you don’t miss the news then join my mailing list. It’s over there <—- on the left!

Sandie Shaw

I’m sitting in the living room listening to Sandie Shaw on my laptop. No real reason to be honest, except that my girlfriend said she had Long Live Love stuck in her head so I fired iTunes up and played it for her. I don’t know how cool that is but I’ve always found Sandie Shaw to be one of the cooler Sixties girl singers (and certainly one of the best looking) so it’s good enough for me.

Tinted Windows

Not very Ballard either really; a lot of pop but not much power. I suppose I should be listening to someone like Tinted Windows but unfortunately the last time I looked I couldn’t buy their album on the UK version of iTunes. Really annoyed about that as I’ve been looking forward to the release for a couple of months now – any band containing members of Cheap Trick, Fountains of Wayne, Smashing Pumpkins and.. ahem… Hanson has got to be worth spending a few quid on.

Oh well, I suppose you could always buy the Ballard single instead. Oh yeah, I never said; it’s now on iTunes! They’ve managed to file me under Jazz but there you go, I’ll get annoyed about that later. Anyway, because of that the best way to find it is to search for ‘I Can See Everything’ in the iTunes store. It’s also available on this site as high quality MP3’s but it’s cheaper on iTunes and you probably won’t notice the difference in quality. For you streamers out there it’s also on Last FM, Napster, Rhapsody and soon on Spotify. I’ve been linked with a hair metal band on Last FM by the way. I’ve definitely got more in common with Sandie Shaw than Talon…

I won a raffle a few weeks ago; two prizes with three tickets. A crate of Stella (which I don’t really like) and some sort of duck-shaped sponge were my prizes. It cost me £1, which I’m sure you’ll agree is quite a result. But I can do better than that.

How about some free music? No conditions whatsoever, completely free. You don’t even have to join my mailing list, although I’d love it if you did. Joining that list tells me you like what I do and want to be told as soon as I’ve got more material available.

So what am I giving away? Well, for starters there’s an album I recorded some time between 2001 and 2002, called Two Years Without Oxygen and was the first album I actually cared about enough to have some proper artwork and a printed CD. It’s not perfect but it serves as a good indication of where I was musically at the time.

Pagan Wanderer Lu

Also free is a song called Good Christian Bad Christian. It’s a cover version and was originally written and performed by an artist called Pagan Wanderer Lu. He used to play a lot in my home town and I always liked how he stood apart from every other band. I watched him perform this song one night on his own, just a drum machine, a sequencer and him, and realised how great it would be if it were recorded with more of a band setting. Good songs normally sound good whatever the setting and I think this one is no exception.

Both freebies are available in the music section. Please do let me know if you enjoy them.

Darren

At some point in the future I’ll be filming a video for a forthcoming EP. I’ve enlisted my good friend Ian Brown to do all the hard work for me – filming, directing, editing etc – while I do the easy bit and just appear in it. He kindly agreed to do it for nothing as long as I did something for him and the above video is my end of the bargain.

Pubs are shutting like wildfire at the moment – my local was threatened with closure a couple of years ago and it’s future is still by no means certain – and Ian, being a somewhat enthusiastic visitor of pubs, decided to film a little piece about it. Asking me to record a version of the Cheers theme seemed like a logical thing to do, given the melancholy nature of the lyrics and I was more than happy to oblige.

I hope you like it as I certainly enjoyed recording it. I asked him if he wanted it like Johnny Cash and he said yes. I asked how sad it should be and he replied, “Like the day June Carter died.”

I’ve recently been holding a competition on my Facebook group to find the artwork for my debut single release (I know it’s a bit cheeky and probably lazy of me but hey, it saves me doing a job). I asked all members of the group to submit artwork (photos, drawings, whatever…) and I’d select the winner.

Well, here it is;

Bruce Forsyth flying?

Quite magnificent I’m sure you’ll agree. It was taken by Danny Archer (henceforth known as Archie) and his prize is an acoustic performance from me in his own living room (I’m so not looking forward to that!). More news about the single in the next few weeks…

Darren

I’ve got another song up for download in the music section. To be honest I don’t know what to do with it so I thought I might as well let someone else enjoy it besides me.

It’s called What You Want (go on, click on the arrow and have a listen) and is best described as a cross between Bara No Hana by Quruli and countless early Eighties New-Wave songs.

Enjoy.