Ahhh....New Zealand....

3 things you need to know about New Zealand:

1) They take their home-grown music more seriously than any other nation I'm aware of, and I mean that in a good way.

2) They have a uniquely liberal attitude towards the use of vowel sounds.

3) They don't have a Navy.*

*(My sister told me this in the pub. It may not be true)

Here's a fabulous story from that country this week.

Currently the number one song in New Zealand is a cover version of The Kinks' "You Really Got Me". The group who have covered it is a five-piece male pop group called BOYBAND.

BOYBAND are the deliberately cynical, tongue-in-cheek, ratings-week-focused creation of a radio station. They advertised for five guys who would be "Gay Boy, Hot Boy, Bad Boy, Mummy's Boy and Fat Boy", and promised that the winners would get "no big prize, major recording deal or guarantee of fame, just the chance to record a hit single, $500 cash, a 5th share in a 1994 Mazda Bongo van and enjoy a fleeting moment in the 'pop music' limelight."

Read more should you wish

http://secretpassage.livejournal.com/152734.html

Heaven forbid that UK music companies begin cynically putting together deliberately shit bands in order to score cheap chart hits. Imagine also if they did it on live telly and got the general public to not only unwittingly focus-group the whole thing for them, but also line the pockets of the organisers..

.....oh, hang on.

Two Harmonica Players.........

(or Saturday pt2)

Sometimes things occur that make you think 'Well, I bet that doesn't happen every day'.

Yesterday was one such day.

After watching X-Factor I went to a house party. It was a lot of fun. At one point, the DJ played Voodoo Ray and I was a very happy man indeed. I love that tune so much and it was a pleasure to hear it played really, really loud to a room full of a happy people.

Later on at the party I was talking to a bloke from Chile. We talked about music for a while and he said that he played the hamonica. He then produced a harmonica from his pocket and began playing it.

He was pretty good, as it goes.

That in itself is not altogether strange, granted. However, in my case it was the 2nd time that this had happened to me within the space of 8 hours.

Earlier on I had been out watching the football and on my way home I had bumped into a mate. We stopped and chatted for a bit, and he introduced me to his friend who was visiting from Manchester.

My mate told his mate that I played music, and the guy said 'I'm a harmonica player'. He then produced a harmonica from his pocket and began playing it. Right there in the street.

That was yesterday...

So far today, I have met NO harmonica players.

Ain't life strange?

Saturday..........

So, what do you do whilst you're waiting for your album to be finally, eventually ready?

Sulk? Pine? Moan?

Get motivated?

Ah, motivation....

I could start working on the next album.... but, to be honest, I've already started doing that (more of which soon) but that's another story....

Instead, I found myself at an enjoyable loose end.

Mmm...

What I did on my free Saturday (pt1)

I woke up early and had a breakfast few beers with my sister and her husband. Tomorrow they fly back to Uganda to continue with the project they are working on. Here's a link to their blog (it might look familiar)

http://www.softpowereducationcentre.blogspot.com/

Before they left my house they dumped approximately 100 kilos of childrens football equipment into my basement. The idea being that Nicola and Dave are helping set up a Football League for kids in their region of Africa - There is currently no organised inter-school sport in the region and they hope to change that. My end of the bargain (I'm told) is to raise the necessary funds to ship this bunch of stuff out there at a cost of about £500. I will be calling on the better natures of the residents of Moseley to make this happen.

After that I went and did my recycling. Recycling in Birmingham is a total pain in the arse and it's no wonder that people can't be bothered. This lot used to collect outside my house but now they don't. Ho hum. Anyroad, I spent an unpleasant 15 minutes feeding beer cans and bottles into boxes whilst a wasp tried to sting me.

I don't blame the wasp.

After that I went to meet my friend Andrew Dubber in Jibbering Records for a coffee.

Prior to my arrival he had been joined at his table by a lady who can only be described as a fucking nutter and I found Andrew cowering behind his coffee with a pleading look in his eyes. Mistakenly thinking that the lady was a friend of Andrew, I made the grave error of engaging her in conversation. Her opening gambit was to admire my cigarette papers and to ask whether they were vegetarian (!) before fishing out of her bag a portable version of the classic board game Cleudo. Things went downhill from there.

There was temporary respite when my sister and her husband arrived, shortly followed by Andrew's wife and son. A bloke at the next table (who turned out to be the current tour manager for Mistys Big Adventure) also helped to return some semblance of normailty to procedings..........until we all got on to the subject of vegans.

......the long and the short of it is an entirely sweeping statement. And here it is:

We all agreed that vegans are humourless muthafuckers and that their diet was probably to blame for this.

Eg...

Vegan 1: "What's for dinner?"

Vegan 2: "Brown Rice, Pulses and that"

Vegan 1: "Again?"

Vegan 2: "Yep"

Vegan 1: "I see"

(pause)

Vegan 1: "Would you like to hear a joke?"

Vegan 2: "No"

Vegan 1: "No, me neither"

Anyway...

After the 7 of of us had thouroughly trashed vegans and thier culture for a good 10 or 20 minutes, the long forgotten strange lady spoke for the first time in a while. She said;

"I'm a vegan"

..........

Oh man....

I tried to bite my tongue.

I really did.

But I couldn't help myself, and I desperately wanted to prove the group hypothesis.

So I asked her to tell us a joke.

She obliged.

What followed was an extraordinary stream-of-conciousness anti-catholic rant that involved (if I recall correctly) the new Pope Benedict getting two nuns out of the bath in order to berate Britian's attitude to just about everything. At the point of the joke in which Pope Benedict questioned the Nuns' attire, the lady stopped abruptly and looked at us all expectantly, as if she'd just told the perfect knock-knock joke. She said nothing afterwards. Nothing at all.

We paid for the coffees and left.

Visibly shaken, we retired to the nearest Alehouse to calm ourselves down with a variety of alkyholic drinks.

By 2pm normality had resumed.

At 3pm I went to watch Aston Villa get beaten like a red-headed stepchild by Liverpool. I don't wish to discuss this further.

Then I came home and, as I write this, I'm watching X-Factor....LIVE!

(I'm not going to edit any of this after the fact, I'm writing this with our friend in the record shop earlier in mind - i.e. thoughts, straight off the top of the dome.)

Here's the first...

X-Factor is fucking brilliant.

Here's the second....

The main thing that strikes me about X-Factor is that if Louis Walsh thinks you'll suck his cock in the car park afterwards then you'll probably get through.

That said, if there is any (non-car park blowjob related) justice in this world, then Leona will win. She's so beautiful I'm even prepared to forgive the fact that she's a Mariah-Carey-a-like.

Eton Road are fucking rubbish, by the way. Honestly, they're shit. That lad with the cheekbones should sack the rest of them and carve out a career carving stuff with his cheekbones.

........

Now, after some food, I'm going to have a kip and then later I'm going to a house-warming party.

It's all go!

Saturday Pt 2 will follow.....

The dilema of prostituting Robson for commercial gain..

So, I received an email this morning from someone who has been checking the site and enjoying it, and in particular the videos of Executive Producer Robson we've been posting (of which more will follow in due course)

Anyway, the reason this person has been checking the site is because he works for a firm that is involved in some kind of interweb content distrubution and, for whatever reason, he has identified www.friendsofthestars.co.uk as a potential 'channel' of webtertainment. Or whatever it's fucking called these days.

(I'm not making this up)

He closed off his email with the following:

"Personally, I'd pay a tenner to see a blog video of Robson stripping for crisps"

(I'm not making that up, either)

This raises a whole host of moral and ethical questions for us...

Were we able to convince Executive Producer Robson to take all his clothes off in exchange for deep-fried potato shavings then Friends of the Stars PLC would, at a stroke, become £10 cash rich. For the potential investors amongst you, this is approximately £10 richer than we currently are.

On the other hand, are we selling ourselves (and Executive Producer Robson) far too cheaply and should we hold out for a better deal? For example, what if Call-Me-Dave Cameron wanted to use the same video of Robson debasing himself for bar snacks in order to further convince the British people want a throughoughly ordinary bloke he is? And what if he offered £15?

(I am, of course, making that bit up...We'd never endorse the Conservative Party)

It's all a bit weird, to be honest. We thought we were making a commercially inviable country folk record that would be enjoyed by literally dozens of people, but now it seems that there is a potential market for the secondary, peripheral nonsense that has occured as a consequence. As a group of musicians and songwriters we have poured our heart and soul into creating an album yet it's our trusty sidekick and friend who becomes an interweb tv star. How very odd.

For what it's worth, we haven't asked Executive Producer Robson whether indeed he would 'strip for crisps' (or even negotiated his share of the £10) as he is in Cornwall on ugrent Friends of the Stars business and does not return until the middle of next week.

We will keep you posted as to further developments.

Video: "Been Down"

Here's a video for one of my fave raves off the LP (which is definately coming soon now, you can believe it this time)



Just in case you are wondering... the sea is Menorcan but the pub shots are pure Moseley. As if there could be any doubt.
Cam
x

Tracklisting

Here's the tracklisting for the album

1: Dragonfly
2: The (Out of) Jail Fire
3: Nobody Out There
4: The Peoples Express
5: Monday Morning
6: Sharpening a Blade
7: Frequency of the Word Turtle
8: Been Down
9: Feelin' Blue
10: Why Are The Movies of Jane Seymore
11: Fork in the Road
12: Old Souls

The record goes off to be mastered at the end of next week, so at the moment we're making some last minute changes, topping and tailing all the songs and finally getting ready to send it out into the world....the official release date will follow shortly.

It's been a long process, and we've missed out self-imposed July deadline by a pretty impressive margin, but we're nearly there and we're very proud of it. We hope you like it too!

Ta
x

FotS internet promotional activity approaches warp speed

Erm..

We did a gig last night.

Of course, I realise that perhaps we should have used the communications miracle that is the internet to tell those of you who may have been in the area in advance about the gig, but it slipped my mind.

We were pretty good as it goes...and people seemed to like it. The promoter said he'd love to have us back and kept on giving us beer until we agreed (we eventually agreed). To top it off, one very kind person said that when we were singing and the harmonies hit, the whole room fell into 'a reverent hush'. We blushed.

Next time, eh?