"Why Don't We Do A Blog?"
And here we are. Such is the utter fucking nonsense of the modern world; it is not enough for us to pour ourselves into music, we also must write a blog.
“It must be so cool being in a band.”
It isn’t. Well, it is...* Most of the time. I hope these pithy little puff pieces will see you well as we pull the dusty, velvet curtain back on being in a lowly unsigned band in an area of Britain which can often feel like Tatooine, out beyond the Dune Sea.
(I sound like I’m being held at gunpoint in a jangle-pop band, that isn’t the case. We really do enjoy it. Honestly. We do. It’s great. Don’t hurt my family. I’ll tell you anything, please just let me go.)
Already at this point in writing a ‘band blog’ I feel that I am somehow an imposter. An egotist who is hammering away on a keyboard as The Big Question with Nicky Campbell is wittering away to itself in the background. Islamophobia. Again. They want to try being in a band…! Apologies if you couldn’t care less. Mick Hucknall never had to write a fucking blog.
I digress. For this inaugural post I want to quickly talk about the process of creating the video for our new single, Lip Service. (I have actually, just this morning realised that Elvis Costello has a track called Lip Service and to be honest, it’s really fucking pissed me off. The worst thing is, it’s on This Year’s Model; an amazing album I’ve listened to many times… Maybe it was subconscious? Costello’s isn’t about dick pics, though.)
We’re currently dotting the Is and crossing the Ts on the difficult second album, Frame Yourself and we needed something to release which would prove we weren’t just sitting around working on the best filters and angles to compliment our little fellas. After hours of heated, often tense conversation we resolved to “release ‘a single.”’ Any music fan worth his salt knows a single is essentially worthless crap unless it has a slick video to go with it. Alas, we booked into a photography studio in Beverley and called upon the services of good friend, Katie at Fly Girl Films (@flygirlfims). (Yeah, we’re doing tags in this blog, that’s where we’re at.) After a hastily arranged planning session in Katie’s kitchen on the way home from a ‘few pints’ I explained the basic idea in a clear and erudite fashion. It 100% did not involve me swaying back and forth repeating the words in Hare Krishna styling, “SIMPLE. WHITE. JUST GO WITH IT. HONESTLY. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING.” At this juncture I would like to apologise to Katie’s Husky dog for accidentally standing on him.
The studio was booked and the cameras were hot and primed. “Let the magic happen” was the call as we put on our best shirts and Russian Ushanka hats. Katie and her colleague, Aimee who hadn’t met us up to this point and probably wishes she never had, did a great job in getting the best out of three fucking idiots. The big thing with videos is the editing – you could film someone painting a front door and with the right shots and editing it could win a BAFTA. Probably. If Ant & Dec did it then it absolutely could. It always astounds me how a video goes from being not a thing, to a thing. There’s a genuine magic to it. We can only imagine how people felt all those years ago when first their innocent eyes gazed upon moving images. It’s one of those cool little nuggets that the first moving images were filmed in Leeds, I think? The very first in human history. Outside TK MAXX on the Headrow.
In terms of the actual logistics, as with recording, I genuinely think people would feel sorry for us if they saw how dull a video shoot is. There are of course, many moments of laughter, fun and frivolity as we mime playing guitars and mouth the words to a song we think is shitter and shitter with every back-to-back repeated play. We are genuinely lucky to be in a position where we can do things like shooting a video, I’m not moaning! (I feel like this blog is going to be the end of us as a band.) Drums pose a slight problem in the video shoot as they’re the loudest things on earth. A cool little trick we employed is to stuff the drums with Luke’s dirty washing – thus rendering them only moderately deafening in a large, concrete floored, cavernous space. I’m struggling to hear Wanted Down Under which is now on BBC1; the things we do for our art.
A final huge thanks to Katie and Aimee @flygirlfilms, We would recommend them to anyone. For filming, not for building an extension or anything like that. They can’t do that.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this peak into the heady, glamorous world of music videos. I don’t think the future blogs will be as bleak or hopelessly rambling as this one. Maybe they will? Who knows? Go and watch the amazing video for Lip Service on YouTube and download the single!
“Hey Mick, are you coming to band practice? We need to work on that Holding Back The Years track you told us about!”
“No, sorry. I’m gonna’ skip rehearsal this week to work on some killer content to post online!”
Kind Regards.