2008

Amy Blue: “2008 FAIL”

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We’re nearly at the end of the year and I feel that I’ve achieved practically nothing. After the positive 2007 (getting things published, finding Lex, recording the new album, etc.) this year has been pretty much a constant bummer. There have been some highlights, like trips to other continents, walks on beaches, eating a lot of houmous, but I’m hoping next year will be more exciting, challenging and inspiring. Note to self: write more songs. Note to self #2: write more songs that don’t sound like other bands or other songs you’ve already written.

Shit.

My friend Jen from work is leaving on January 9th. She brought the following ridiculous thing into my life: Fail Blog. The best thing I saw on it was MARRIAGE PROPOSAL FAIL. Absolutely horrendous, and featured my new bestest pal, Consolation Bear. God bless ‘im, and her.

Amy Blue played one of three(ish) shows this year. Here’s a video from the last show of Simon’s song Amy Dates Destiny. It’s the fifth track on the album.. a reasonably upbeat song for us, melodic, intriguing lyrics, and of course any excuse for us to put loads of fuzz and feedback on the end. God forbid we become formulaic!

Good news though. The album is finally (yes!) finished and we’re just waiting on Rich (Random Colours) to send over the final mixed down wav files. In the last trip to the studio, we belted through six tracks, doing a bit of top and tailing.. fixing the odd blip and click, and then mixed two tracks from scratch that were bothersome. It’s come out better than I expected – very powerful, very loud, and it should make for a good listening experience if you dare attempt to. Pop in places, dark, distorted as all hell, and featuring a song about Ipswich prostitute murderer Steven Wright. It’s a Xmas stocking filler for 2009.

The final task is to finish putting all the artwork together, cropping and photoshopping the hell out of everything and maybe even doing 90s things like TYPE LYRICS OVER THE TOPS OF DEM. Or maybe that’s so played, and we need to paint the words on in our own juices. Maybe it doesn’t matter, as most of the cunts we send these to will probably not even use them as a coaster. I dread to think how many live out their days in a bin in some wanker’s office. Hopefully not SPIN magazine’s either.

Thank you to you if you came to the shows this year. You poor bastards. Though I think they were the best yet. Well done Lex on producing a wonderful little child. Thank you band for working so hard. See you all in 2009.

Amy Blue: “Bassflakes”

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Things have been very quiet on the Amy Blue front for the past few weeks. I’ve not seen Lex since the 3rd March show, and Simon and I recorded together 2 or 3 weeks ago (I forget). We got down the basslines, which while a little ropey, can probably be edited or manipulated to sound okay. Danny has not been seen since the March 3rd show either – though he was meant to record on at least three occasions since then, but has flaked out.

This has been an ongoing issue since last year when we started recording at Enterprise Studios near Charing Cross and Tinpan Alley, working out the kinks and getting rough versions down in a dry run before going into the studio proper where we are spending a lot of money for the privilege. The third studio date in December was for simon and I to finish any overdubs and Danny to record his parts in the afternoon. He didn’t turn up, so we’ve had to record the parts ourselves.

Neither of us are great at bass. People (the collective ‘people’, that being you, and anyone who has ever seen a bass guitar) make the assumption that bass playing is easier than plain old guitar, or just a generally easy instrument to learn, but I disagree. It puts enormous pressure on your wrist and fingers, and I was practically crippled after some long takes. Thick strings do not agree with my weedy wrists. Having a buggered wrist/arm which may be CTS doesn’t help either.

The most time consuming part of the process of putting the album together is the mixing. We have so many recorded parts for these songs, on 3 different computers of varying levels of capability, that it’s a nightmare of logistics right now. Songs like “Itch” and “Speak of the Devil” sound pretty much there; “The Yellow House”, the ‘pop hit’, sounds a mess. The guitar tones are just not doing it for me. We did another version which has a real groove to it, but the studio version sounds too clean. It’s a dark song, and somewhere along the line the grime has been washed off with Radox shower gel.

Simon is approaching songwriting from a different angle at the moment. I myself am getting bored with the guitar, but i’m not massively comfortable with my current surroundings. I like space to be able to play. Ideally i’d have all my gear set up at all times so i can just pick up the guitar and flick a switch. In an 8x8ft bedroom, next to a room where water and bird shit drips through the ceiling, you can’t do that. My songwriting output this year has been atrocious. I’m hoping that by the time we get back into a rehearsal room we will be playing all new songs and none of the ones we’ve thrashed out over the past year. To us they are old.

To you they are brand new.