So, People of Ramonia, what has been happening in the world of the Republic's Official Band the mighty Mutt Ramon? Well, therein lies a story a or two (thankfully, or this would be a very dull entry). Mutt has completed a move (for weekends at least) to deepest darkest "Baköv-Bęyon" and spends his weeks holed up on the top floor of one of the many stately towers of Steęlskí (inevitably the steel making capital of Ramonia) where the Mutt and I work in one of the many silicon forges. As he moved into his penthouse squat (although his flatmate has finally extracted some rent from him so I suppose he is no longer squatting - although the chairs are a bit lacking), he requested that I bring one of his guitars which I was borrowing on the train with me from Ramonia's State Capital Cheędol Hölm. He stated that he would be "Bored in the evenings and needed something to do". Given that he was away from his family, I thought this sounded reasonable enough, although slightly insulting to his new flatmate (let's call him Mr Gray shall we). I carted the great stringy thing with me on the train, with various work colleagues asking me if was going busking etc. and handed it over. Towards the end of the week I was chatting to Mr Gray (something which Mutt seems to have forgotten that I am capable of doing) and discovered that Mutt has been rehearsing all week so he can go to the End of the Road festival in Baköv-Bęyon and perform at an open mike spot without me. Mr Mutt had returned back south at this point so I wasn't able to confront him then.
Sure enough on the following day I get a phone message from an excited Mutt who had gone on stage and sung a couple of songs and got a good reaction to his unplugged session. Now, don't get me wrong, this is all generally a good thing, and I don't mind in the slightest that he played without me (I'm not that much of a diva honestly). What annoyed me was that he lied to me about why he wanted the guitar and what he was planning (you may take a guitar with you to a festival I suppose, but you don't practice first unless you intend to play it!).
Anyway we chatted (fairly) good naturedly on his return, and even planned a rehearsal last Thursday in his Steęlskí Garret. I was slightly dismayed when he wanted me to bring a tambourine/shaker or some other such ELC (Early Learning Centre) Instrumentation with me. I said I would be fairly loaded down with my laptop (the trusty Ramon junior) and USB keyboard, and directed him to the nearest ELC if he wanted to shake something. So we went through some songs and played in the plugged and unplugged methods which each of us favour and it went generally pretty well. I played him a new backing track I was working on for a song he gave me as a demo a while back called Vouchsafe for which I had also written some slightly biting lyrics (it starts "If I gave you a vouchsafe, to keep you amused in the evenings, would you use it go to the end of the road?"). He didn't seem very impressed and said it sounded like a good New Order song which he thought was a problem but I didn't. He did say it was catchy and we could do something more with it.
So I went away and played with it some more at the weekend, reducing the bassline a bit and changing the drums to be less drum machiney and using samples of real drums and then put some vocals on last night and stayed up late transferring it to mp3 so he could listen to it (whilst he went to the pub). This morning I sent him an email letting him know it was ready to listen to, and got a reply saying how he had heard it and "liked it but I Dunno - is this how we want to sound? We'll talk at lunch...". At lunchtime I ascended from my test dungeon and tried to discuss it with him. During the course of the conversation he expressed various opinions:
1) He doesn't like the treatment of the song, but when pressed on how he would like it to sound says that he no longer likes the song anyway.
2) He doesn't know what he would play on it live - I suggested he could play the guitar chords (that was too boring), he could add another guitar tune (that was too difficult), he could sing the bridge part which is too high for me (no reaction). I couldn't work out what he would play on any of the songs if playing guitar chords or tunes was not possible.
3) He doesn't like half the songs from the last album anymore. They are "too serious". Hey! Let's do comedy folk music instead!
4) He doesn't want to do electronic stuff (no laptops/backing sequences except maybe drums) live.
5) He doesn't want a conventional indie band setup.
6) He doesn't want a line up of people playing keyboards live either (that wouldn't be us!).
7) He doesn't want to do it all alone (although he does seem to think that went down well when he did it).
8) He doesn't really like electronic music (I knew that, but really, he doesn't even get "Blue Monday" which he gets bored with and it isn't at the exact BPM which he dances at - along with the majority of music which isn't 131 and a half BPM either).
9) Maybe we could release the electronic stuff as another band, and then sound more like how he perceives Mutt Ramon should sound - Swedish I think, but as I don't come from Sweden I find that difficult.
10) He doesn't know.
11) Erm
12) Dunno
13) ...
I Dunno either.
