fruits of Dartington College workshop

It’s a month since my half-day interview and listening workshop at Dartington College and I’ve just seen some fruits of the students’ continued labour, so I thought it was worth writing about and linking to.

The session was facilitated by course leader Rick Rogers (former Specials manager and veteran of the great days, with some incredible stories to tell and not tell). We opened with an extended interview, Rick asking me about DIY business and trying to assess the value of longevity and the homemade approach, versus the mainstream rise-and-fall, although this soon became a free-ranging discussion around a lot of issues.

Then we listened to tracks the groups of students are working on. Rick has given them a specific remit with their songwriting: to pick a playlist and compose a song for it. A clever way to encourage students to think clearly about what they are producing. The resulting songwriting was impressively high quality, across a range of genres. In particular there were a lot of alt-pop things, reflecting the current intense hybridisation of indie, mainstream pop and electro.

If there was a flaw in the students’ approach, it was a small one: that they were too flexible about the playlist, tending to suit that to the song, rather than the other way around. In several cases, even with high quality material, they got their own genres wrong, so for example a Radio 2 piece was actually more suited to an XFM playlist and vice versa. That wasn’t important though – says more about the confused state of radio playlists themselves, really. It was a fascinating session, listening to some great songs.

Since then, the groups have had to work on a video and compete to gain the most attention publicly. Where I’d made comments had mostly been arrangement suggestions, not really finding anything to improve in the core ideas. So I want to share this – a few days ago on tour, I was sent this video, of the song I thought had the most ‘hit’ potential of all, by Half Pint Joe:

Larry David’s notebooks of different sizes

They re-broadcast that programme the other night where Ricky Gervase interviewed Larry David. It’s very funny and – extremely rarely for a show like that – even had some writing insight. Like this: Larry David uses a small notebook and a big notebook. He (obviously) keeps the small notebook with him at all times for catching any ideas that come by. Then he writes the good ones down in the big notebook (“in his best handwriting”) which he keeps at home. And it’s that big notebook that is the source when scripting begins.

I’d love to see his notebook page containing the phrase “carwash cunt”. I’d pay good cash for that and frame it. Actually that’s an amazing idea: Mr David should auction off old notebooks page-by-pagey. Imagine owning the page of the notebook with the idea for the hooker in the carpool lane, or Newman.

Anyway, I was watching, thinking, oh yeah, that’s what I do, yeah cool I’m like Larry David…

Because I hadn’t even noticed til watching the programme that my long-held Notebook Strategy seems to have snaked into a Notebooks-Of-Various-Sizes strategy. So actually I carry around two: an A6 one for casual notes, shopping lists, to-dos and ideas about the world (ie. not songs). This is usually a cheap-shit corner shop 50p notebook. I also carry around 95% of the time a medium-sized A5 notebook specifically for song ideas, which is usually a posho Moleskin one, partly because they have narrow lines and I can keep stamps in the little wallet bit at the back, partly because I’m a snob. Finally at home by the piano, there’s the big-arse A4 notebook where the best song ideas try to turn into songs. Simples.

Except mostly I end up having a good song idea on the shopping trip where I forgot Notebook 2, so I write it down in cheap-shit Notebook 1 (or sometimes a random back of an envelope) and end up forgetting about it. It never makes it to Notebook 3 until the album is done and dusted. And “Ah fuck, that would’ve been the best final verse to track 8. Cuntsticks.”

By the way, Larry and Ricky agreed that sitcoms are the highest artform but they’re wrong, the song is the highest art form by far.