Sunday 25 April 2010

Tech-No-Notice

HAVING an absolute nightmare uploading the promised rehearsal video to YouTube. Like 2.5 million people in the UK at the moment, it doesn't work.

But in other news, I have just recorded a video demo of, "What's Your Poison?", which I am quite happy with. I wrote the music today. Nice song. Nice? Is that a word we use in rock n roll? Not a fucking clue. Its semantics.

Still a bit rough around the edges, but once I've got it together, I'll record a proper version and post it up here.

Spent yesterday having a BBQ here at home with my housemates. Lovely day. Lovely? Is that a word we use in rock n roll? Not a fucking clue. Its being pedantic.

Beautiful rain today, at 9am. Which I saw, smelt and revelled in because I stayed at home last night. I am finding spending time at home at the moment really quite enjoyable. Enjoyable? Is that a word we use in rock n roll? Not a fucking clue. Aren't I supposed to be suffering for my art? A tortured soul?

I don't care. I like it.

Your friend,

The BoHo Scarecrow

Wednesday 21 April 2010

Trapped In The Head - Video Rehearsal

SHORTLY before my last show in Camden, I filmed a few songs that I was rehearsing. Today, The BoHo Scarecrow presents to you a song originally written in mid-2008.

I had written the words as part of the original burst of activity some time before, I think in late 2006, when I was in the middle of moving house from Camden to Shoreditch, whilst deciding that I had to follow up my mini-opera, Attack Of The Chevron Action Flasher, with a full blown meisterwerk that was called The Light Gate, and would be the biggest and brightest thing ever to emerge from rock n roll.

Such ambition. Such desperation.


Direct Link To Trapped In The Head Rehearsal From BoHo Broadcasting House



The music though came from a very different place. When I picked up a guitar and came up with the tune, I was feeling very inspired. In the midst of the first couple of months of a new transatlantic relationship with another musician who had made me come alive again as a writer. But despite being dizzyingly in love, I was becoming increasingly isolated. I had some quite terrifying physiological symptons manifesting, bits of the body going numb and all sorts of other maladies such as frequent, intense panic attacks.

My life was spent revolving around work, music and daily phone calls. It felt really quite wonderful, and I would have recitals of this warm, beautiful american acoustic folky music by my then girlfriend and her troupe most nights of the week down the telephone whilst she rehearsed. This was a salient, dream like period of time but I was very unwell in many respects, drinking heavily and on the verge of an inevitable breakdown that finally blew up and consumed me a few months later.

For some reason, the good period though flicked a switch in me and wrote the music for this song. It has changed since, I beefed it up a bit when recording it at the splendid studios at TVU in Ealing to break it up a little and give it more punch.

What became very interesting in terms of how The Light Gate project developed was that it was only during the breakdown, that I finally was given a label for what I had suspected was wrong, which was post traumatic stress disorder.

So, who is trapped in the head? The writer? Our fictional hero, Edward Sun? A dear friend of mine, another ex in fact, pointed to the writer the other day. I can understand what she was driving at, it could be true. It isn't really for me to clarify for you. You can guess! That's what rock demands of its audience. Use your own instinct and intellect to decide, if you can ofcourse be bothered.

But in the case of The Light Gate, it is about how we internalise our pain, our fear, our terror, frustration and confusion. We let all these things go on and on, until it becomes like a prison cell with a big red flashing warning light. You are going to die! You are in danger! You better scream, scream, scream and hope that someone out there will help.

It takes a lot of courage to scream.

All sounds rather heavy, doesn't it?! Well, that's just my take. I'll leave you to make up your minds on it. Writing takes us musicians to strange places. We write things of which we are not conscious of at the time. We find things in our own music and writing, that we didn't know were there. Putting this up for you today, with above description, with this highly personalised and auto-biographical context, feels similar to one of those dreams when you are inexplicably naked in front of your peers. This is easy for me. It is second nature. I'm cool with it. Seriously.


The whole of The Light Gate, is for me, some kind of therapy. A kind of emergence. It is liberating. I have played this and other songs of a similar context many, many times in public but I love, and I mean this sincerely, love the fact that it always seems to give me some kind of connection with a bit of me that would fester otherwise. It is the most tremendous blessing.

Looking forward to posting more content here for you very soon. God bless. Take care. Keep in touch to all those who keep in touch.

Your friend,

The BoHo Scarecrow

Trapped In The Head

I heard you praying,
That you were dead,

You were complaining
You’d been easily led,
begged hungry,
As their lies were fed.
Bleeding, bleed until,
Your bile is bled.

How did you get trapped in the head?
Its like a prison cell,
And the lights turned red.
Now you’re trapped,
Trapped in the head.


You walked,
Walked the line,

Pretending that
All was fine,

But wasn’t it easy,
To swallow their wine,

Whilst getting crushed
By the goosestep of time.

How did you get trapped in the head?
Its like a prison cell,
And the lights turned red.
Now you’re trapped,
Trapped in the head.

Sunday 18 April 2010

Apres Moi, Les Deluge (After Me, The Storm)

YOU will find embedded in this post two videos of a new song, written recently, with words from lyrics written in late 2008.

In the Light Gate opera, this song is about one man splitting into two halves. It is the moment when, Edward Sun divides and his alter ego, Edison is born. For me as a writer, it is about someone who I loved, love, beyond comprehension. Its beautiful. Tragic. Reassuring and terrifying simultaneously.

And when I wrote the words, I was in deep stuck. I was literally dreaming of tomb stones covered in moss. I think that it was the first bout of serious depression that I had ever truly experienced. I thought that I was going to die.

BUT lets fast forward to today. I am fired up like never before at the moment. In the last couple of weeks I have been working hard to resurrect myself from the end of the above and its working. I was going to post more of the last show in Camden here, but I really feel quite uncomfortable about how far down Pie Alley I had gone and so will post just one of the songs here for you.

So you have today, In The Eyes Of The Storm. A rehearsal and a live version. I hope that you enjoy them. I am really tremendous form at the moment. I am going great guns on so many fronts. Managed to finish in the top half of the field on the Finsbury Park 5km run on yesterday, I play tennis a couple of times a week, football too and running most days.

Direct Link - In The Eyes Of The Storm Rehearsal

Direct Link - In The Eyes Of The Storm, Live In Camden






My confidence is back. Its tremendous. The dates and venues for The Who Convention are about to be announced and we are hoping that it will be at Dingwalls.

The music used to introduce the rehearsal video was one of my Lifehouse Method portraits from Pete Townshend's interactive music project, that uses harmonic composition based upon the golden mean to generate musical portraits of individual sitters. I was one of the twenty Beta testers, who first tried out this software, and I think that from memory this was the first Portrait that I generated. I woke this morning with this playing through my head, again and again and again. Its rather beautiful.

After me, the storm. There is a new benign storm brewing from behind my eyes at the moment.

Did you know that we can fly?

Your friend,

The BoHo Scarecrow