Dead Rabbi On A Stick Day

It's Good Friday, and what's good about it is that I slept for nine and a half hours last night. Went to bed with a classic stress headache, woke up with the end of one, but felt good about being on strike.

Yes, I'm on strike. At the end of yesterday's Rise and Shine we walked out in sympathy with our ASLEF brothers and sisters. I think it was the realisation of a militant tendency in myself which I have been encouraging over the past few months, knowing that it is the path to my own particular brand of enlightenment.

I'm sure that once the management meet our demands we'll be back to finish off the final week of the show - it's been a blast. But it is nice to have a three day weekend in praise of the dead rabbi, Jesus, and his unfortunate death by torture 2,000 years ago.

Now listen to the song we wrote yesterday, co-written and sung by the indomitable Danny "Peruvian Socialist Chocolate Hat" Brittain and his left wing army of reds.

Rise and Shine: Breakfast with Perspiration

After fourteen days, over three weeks and forty two hours of early morning songwriting, producing the Rise and Shine breakfast show, my fingertips are guitar-hardened and my daily routine is established. At this point I feel the need to distill my thoughts like a fine London gin.

How To Rise and Shine


1. Begin the day before. I have to get to bed before midnight, 11pm better, 10:30pm even better. Some days, starting the show, there has been just me and my audio-visual shadow, but most days, there is an expectant waiting audience of real people, and it doesn't matter whether there is one person, ten, fifteen or fifty. These kind, interested people have turned up for the show, and they matter A LOT. In fact, I like them, which helps - it feels very much like having friends over every morning. I'm making their breakfast - I don't want to burn the toast. If I'm sleep deprived and carry too much tiredness into the day, I will struggle, make mistakes, and underperform - and when people are witnessing my blunders first thing, I care far more about them, and determined not to be making them. I have not found a more effective pressure to lie down and sleep at a reasonable hour in many years.


2. Awake at least one and a half hours before starting the broadcast. That way, all the computers will be set up, I will have had breakfast, I will be well dressed, and I will have meditated. A couple of times I have found myself meditating at 6:45 which does not work quite so well for the meditation, but actually does very well for the show as I feel very centred and grounded at the outset.


3. Collaborating is crucial, as I suspected it would be and intended it to be, both for reasons of writing and show production. Songs really spring from the imagination and flights of fancy which spark from the news and it's often easier doing this with other people around. Finishing up is another matter - sometimes the brutality of the edit feels harsh! But we are grown ups, and we can handle it by now... Our viewers and listeners have written some of the best lines, and provided audio, speech and music, as well as suggesting great news items.


4. Be decisive early on. Only having three hours means that on bad news days, or days where several stories vie for subject-spot, I really need to know what subject is going to frame the song by 7:20am if the song is going to be finished to any good standard.


5. Give myself a break after the show. If I don't do this, I make less of a good show the next day, and it means my other work decisions are coloured by a background level of mental tiredness - which so far, thankfully, I have not experienced.


6. Use whatever energy is there on the day. Thankfully the rules of Rise and Shine mean that the writer(s) have the final say in story selection, style, and treatment. I would not have been able to write anything March 7th otherwise, a day I was on my own with the audience, feverish and emotional, and yet, this turned out as one of my personal favourites, something I am proud of having written because it is so unusual and poignant.


7. Keep the project in the semi-public eye. This stage of the project is quite deliberately restricted listening and viewing. I like that my friends in various social networks are enjoying what I am doing, and that the great general, unwashed and entertainment-hungry public are not. It means I can iron out kinks, play with the form, try things which might bomb (nothing has yet) and maintain the discipline necessary to keep the show on the road technically and organisationally without compromising the future of the show. It also means I can push people to donate to the good cause, Busk Aid, either by direct donation or else by taking part in our sponsorship auction.


8. Maintain realistic expectations, set achievable goals - without these, nothing can happen. So if in the early part of the song, the dreaming up of the scenario, the summoning of the muses present a hugely attractive but completely time-draining project outside the boundaries of the three alloted hours (see #4), it gets rapidly dumped. Note to self: I could and should apply this philosophy more to my life in general.


9. Food. Eating ahead of the show, during the show and after the show is crucial - it's demanding work! I have to plan ahead and get stuff in. Thankfully, Danny my regular co-writer often provides milky coffee and croissants to make up for his persistent lateness...


10. Broadcast by every means possible. I've been using a veritable breakfast table of technologies to make this work. Amazingly, so far, it has completely worked - in fact, it has improved. I now record the final parts of the show on video, using both Mogulus which although takes some getting used to is pretty reliable and has professional tools built in and a handy (though censored) chat room; for live video I also use Qik which is (over WiFi) amazingly good quality - all the more so considering that this is emanating from a Nokia N95. I use Skype (riseandshinetv), Twitter (deekdeekster), email, FTP. I'm using a Mac Mini and Brian Greene's server (thanks Brian!) to deliver a rock-steady Shoutcast audio stream which in some ways brings the listener closer to the musical heart of the show, especially in the second stage when we are arranging the song and trying out verses and choruses. It's also convenient for people who want to hear the outcome at work... there is still a lot to be said for providing audio-only access.


11. Support is a good thing, and we need more of it! Having only three hours (see #4) on the writing task focuses the mind admirably, but this show also requires a technical structure that needs managing - just like tv and radio - which distracts. The more support I have, the show will be generally of a much higher standard, since I am not continually bearing sole responsibility for everything, including presenting, songwriting, blogging, moving microphones, cameras and computers around, and generally interacting with the audience. It also means, I can answer the call of nature. I would like to achieve more of this before the project ends, just to see how high I can push the standards within the limits.

Ten more writing days to go...

On The Marriage of Johann and Anitale

This is the face of a man whose bachelor days are over. Johann and Anitale are getting married RIGHT NOW, as I type. It's possibly the final image of his unmarried status. Girls - you missed out. Anitale is also cute and groovy. Boys - you missed out. By the time you read this, they will be married.

I met these lovely people via Seesmic since Johann is lead developer for the site. When I went to Paris a month ago I got to hang out with them, and really enjoyed their company.

Meanwhile, some explanation of my temporary absence in these parts. I've written or co-written nine songs in the past two weeks by dint of waking at 5.30am and writing for three hours every morning, exposed to public gaze. The first week's tunes are all on sale, and the free podcast is doing just fine.

My favourite two songs of the project so far are Three Feet Off Gabriola and The Other Side, both of which rather selfishly I wrote on my own - except that I got plenty of input from the "audience" during the sessions. I'm going to have to find a replacement for that word, which combines the concept of audience with collaborator. Hmmmm....

I am currently feverish, though sadly not with anticipation - I just have a cold virus. Now I am going to attempt breakfast.

Water on the Moon

Songwriting is having a dramatic effect on my psychology but that's probably because of the lack of sleep. Today I woke at 5.30am, half an hour before the alarm.

Check out the song and the article which inspired it.

When I've had some sleep, I might even come back and explain why I'm attempting this madness - aside from the reasons aforegiven.

My BuskAid Birthday

Kicked off our breakfast show, Rise and Shine, and I'm on a slightly exhausted high but I'm pleased with our first effort which is here.

"Doctor, doctor, gimme little pill
Need a fix for me to chill
Medicine for my mental ill
Get depressed about the bill..."

It was really a lot of fun writing with Dan Brittain aka Tiventi Benson. Check back later for the produced version.

Rise and Shine

Do you remember this? I'm kicking off something new next week which is the combination of blogging and songwriting: writing music in response to news.

I wanted to extend the writing discipline back into music, whilst venturing into new personal territory - live radio. I've done stacks of audio production and also event production, but traditional form radio I've only for a short period way back when I was the early morning DJ in a pirate station in the west country.

That delightful station called itself NBS (No Bull Shit) and the FM transmitter traveled each weekend around various covert houses on the tops of Bristol hills. Every few weekends we'd take care of the station and the crew from Friday night to Monday morning. The rave DJs would leave around 5am and I'd be up at 8am, turn on the transmitter and fill in the gaping hole in their schedule with cheap vinyl I purchased from the second hand and charity shops on the Gloucester Road. I entertained people all the way to Bath.

So I do have radio form - albeit achingly-hip form, not standard-industry-sweat-your-way-up-the-greasy-pole form - and of course, I have quite a bit of podcast form by now, so we'll certainly be putting out a podcast alongside the livestream. Nonetheless, being live for three hours every morning, and showing the warts-and-all process of making a song should be an interesting and scary enough challenge to break through the tupperware barrier of people's breakfast cereal containers.

This show comes with a few caveats, the main one being I'm not promising to write songs that you're going to like! Although I may do. We'll see. Expect glitches. I'm going out on a limb. But I am enlisting the help of other writers, and I'm intending to collaborate wherever possible. In fact, I'm going to need as much help as I can get.

But the best thing about the next month is going to be that we're raising money for BuskAid, a South Africa-based charity that teaches township kids to play music. I was inspired by the remarkable Rosemary Nalden - one of those TV documentaries which had me inexplicably in tears at the beauty of what was being achieved. So I hope you'll turn up and take part.

The breakfast show will be live from 7am to 10am GMT, Monday to Friday.