My campaign song Keep Ulverston special,
Had an email on Friday, from Kay whose part of the group "Keep Ulverston Special" set up to oppose the plans for a supermarket on the Old brewery site. It said, we can use Colins song to go with the video she was planning, a sort of flash mob type of thing. I'm not too sure what that means, but I had to reply to say, excuse me but which song is this. You see although at the meeting last week I had suggested we could write a song for the campaign I had forgotten I had piped up with that suggestion.
So now I had set a challenge for myself, too late to back out. Late Friday afternoon I sat down at the keyboard in the studio at Ford Park and messed about for a couple of hours, with little success. I sort of had a germ of an idea, sort of reggae style thing, and about four lines but I was stuck at that. I took it home and fiddled around some more that evening and managed a couple more lines and the semblance of a middle eight.
Saturday morning and I combed through various leaflets we had, checked stuff on the Robinsons site, the evening mail and the wezzy gezzy looking for inspiration.
By about eleven o'clock I'ld almost got it nailed, just needed that last couple of lines for the last verse. When I borrowed the line from big yellow taxi, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone" that wrapped it up.
I fired up the ipod, plugged in the mic and googled the chords to Mrs Robinson, by Simon and Garfunkal, and dashed off a quick demo with the de de de deh bit from that tune on the intro and outro. Bingo the campaign song was born.
Next up, download to my pc. Then how to get it onto facebook? I've seen people using soundcloud but hadn't tried it myself, so googled soundcloud, joined up, confirmed my email address and easy as pie uploaded the song to their site. Clicked a button that said share with facebook and at 12.05 there it was posted on my profile. About five minutes later a notification on facebook from Kay saying Great song and the word, STAR. By the afternoon it had been posted out to radio cumbria and hospital radio and Ceri, who was collecting signitures for a petition in Market street had it playing on a continuous loop at her stall.
Now that is the truly amazing thing about the net and how we use it nowadays. I remember way back when in the good old days when we used to make records this instant response of the artist was impossible. If you wanted to write a song in response to a news event it could take weeks, maybe months before you could get it on the streets, even if you were Dylan,or The Beatles. I think Bruce did it with Philidelphia, was that about AIDS, not sure. Anyway isn't it amazing that we artists, songwriters can now contribute to the news as fast as the newspapers and TV. We should use it more, maybe we already do, maybe I'm not as switched on as the kids, perhaps it's already happening, I'm sure it is. A song can grab people just as much as any headline, sometimes maybe more, so here's to the power on the songwriter to get in there, and today we can make a big contribution to the debate, whatever it is.
Listen to Keep Ulverston Special here
Had an email on Friday, from Kay whose part of the group "Keep Ulverston Special" set up to oppose the plans for a supermarket on the Old brewery site. It said, we can use Colins song to go with the video she was planning, a sort of flash mob type of thing. I'm not too sure what that means, but I had to reply to say, excuse me but which song is this. You see although at the meeting last week I had suggested we could write a song for the campaign I had forgotten I had piped up with that suggestion.
So now I had set a challenge for myself, too late to back out. Late Friday afternoon I sat down at the keyboard in the studio at Ford Park and messed about for a couple of hours, with little success. I sort of had a germ of an idea, sort of reggae style thing, and about four lines but I was stuck at that. I took it home and fiddled around some more that evening and managed a couple more lines and the semblance of a middle eight.
Saturday morning and I combed through various leaflets we had, checked stuff on the Robinsons site, the evening mail and the wezzy gezzy looking for inspiration.
By about eleven o'clock I'ld almost got it nailed, just needed that last couple of lines for the last verse. When I borrowed the line from big yellow taxi, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone" that wrapped it up.
I fired up the ipod, plugged in the mic and googled the chords to Mrs Robinson, by Simon and Garfunkal, and dashed off a quick demo with the de de de deh bit from that tune on the intro and outro. Bingo the campaign song was born.
Next up, download to my pc. Then how to get it onto facebook? I've seen people using soundcloud but hadn't tried it myself, so googled soundcloud, joined up, confirmed my email address and easy as pie uploaded the song to their site. Clicked a button that said share with facebook and at 12.05 there it was posted on my profile. About five minutes later a notification on facebook from Kay saying Great song and the word, STAR. By the afternoon it had been posted out to radio cumbria and hospital radio and Ceri, who was collecting signitures for a petition in Market street had it playing on a continuous loop at her stall.
Now that is the truly amazing thing about the net and how we use it nowadays. I remember way back when in the good old days when we used to make records this instant response of the artist was impossible. If you wanted to write a song in response to a news event it could take weeks, maybe months before you could get it on the streets, even if you were Dylan,or The Beatles. I think Bruce did it with Philidelphia, was that about AIDS, not sure. Anyway isn't it amazing that we artists, songwriters can now contribute to the news as fast as the newspapers and TV. We should use it more, maybe we already do, maybe I'm not as switched on as the kids, perhaps it's already happening, I'm sure it is. A song can grab people just as much as any headline, sometimes maybe more, so here's to the power on the songwriter to get in there, and today we can make a big contribution to the debate, whatever it is.
Listen to Keep Ulverston Special here
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