My reason for basic income

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(Found this strange gem…

written 3 years back before I had done any real research and was just looking at it as a supplement for everyone with no other concepts or arguments. It was also before I came up against much in the way of counter arguments. Later I wrote this blog when I became a little more knowledgeable on the subject…

https://tompogson.com/2020/08/20/a-creative-professionals-take-on-universal-basic-income

I now run the Basic Income Victoria BC multiple accounts at basicbc.wordpress.com)

Here’s the older original…

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I know I’m not alone. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if many readers have great reasons of their own.

I can’t physically work more than I do. Presently I have arthritis and certainly cannot take time off for the surgery and weeks of recovery it would cost. And I’m Canadian. I know this flies in the face of our “health care is magic” but I can promise you it’s not roses in every case here.

Here in Victoria we have a lack of doctors run off their feet. They no longer, for instance, do full physical check ups as they are considered “a waste of time”. In order to avoid any problems the only thing you feel you can do is improve your diet and exercise.

Now add that to the aforementioned low income, and inability to work more due to arthritis. If you exercise you push against the arthritis that makes what work you do even more painful and if you work more the same so you have to take what little money you have to actually pay for better food which costs more.

This is why there is the modern phenomenon of poor people being obese. It used to be rich=fat. Now it’s poor=fat. Rich people can do a paleo or southbeach diet. We can’t.

When you are poor you are eating to feel full. This is starches and low quality food. Food costs are up across the board as well as gas. Again with the interconnection.

This is the part that actually makes me crazy. That I actually studied Sociology in university that in the first term explains how “income dictates health”.

How can poor people pull themselves up by the bootstraps (a sarcastic physical impossibility, meant to be simply condescension) if their situation is built to fail. It’s 2019. We can do better and we do know how.

It’s the basic income model. I just got paid Friday, paid bills and now on Wednesday I have 2$. A supplement to this would not stop me working. It would have me work more efficiently, more effectively and for longer. I’m typing this into a crap phone on a city bus but I have seen and read cases on how when this program has been tested in not only didn’t make “everything worse” but it actually cleared up problems across the board. Medical centers, for instance, notice a significant drop in visits because people’s lives became healthier.

Reason I say my story is because, even though it is specific to me I know I’m not alone. I’ve heard through the cracks in media’s paint.

Most of us are not doing better than we were ten years ago.

If someone told me they were going to make things “great again” I will admit, my hope would be raised too. This isn’t going “that way” now but it’s connected. It all is. When things are impossibly hard in a way that cancels happiness and threatens your existence you grab for any rung. You can blame me or anyone else that “didn’t make it” but that also is logically flawed. We can’t all be the head of the company. The architects just didn’t make the executive washrooms that big.

Also many of us have a “side hustle”. We worry we’ll miss out. Only stands to reason you would be on your phone so much. It doesn’t stem from anger. It stems from trying to make it “great again” yourself. It’s true no matter how you politically alighn yourself. All of us fish see the same nets being used. And it’s freaking the gills out of us.

Please have a look at the different basic income accounts out there on social media and check out what they’ve been saying.

It may be early days for this still grassroots idea, but we got to start somewhere.

There is other gains as well that can occur from Basic Standard Income as well.

Firstly we can kick off we a general feeling of brother love and togetherness in a way that actually matters, and not as an abstract concept.

Secondly the boom in the arts and humanities cannot be overstated. It is at our peril that we discount these parts of our culture as some would do. They are our culture. They are were we step into our higher selves and think beyond the immediate. Examples range from Beethoven to Beckett, from the Charter of Rights to the inscription on the Statute of Liberty.

Supporting these is our “Why?” much as supporting infrastructure is our “How?”. If you can’t stop to think you can’t do it better than before.

This is about not just raising up some of us, this is about all of us. This creates hope and from this joy. Your need to stop violence across the world to within communities and families could reduce too.

This is about humanity’s purest potential.

To quote Jeff Goldblum in the movie Powder “Maybe one day our humanity will overtake our technology”

Cheers,

Tom

Thank you for reading! Please follow me and feel free to surf around my blog! 🌅

Cracking the Planet of the Humans

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We can’t electric car and solar panel our way out of this.

That was the gist of the groundbreaking film by Jeff Gibbs that was executive produced and promoted by documentary legend Michael Moore.

This film also got a full front page of my hometown’s paper, the Times Colonist. The local icon news source is based in Victoria, British Columbia Canada so not even the film’s county of origin in the United States.

The movie sparked immediate discussion and even backlash as people took the film up on a few technical points such as the dates of certain clips, but on the whole the idea stands strong, raising other issues that just can’t be ignored.

The one that sticks out to me is the one that Gibbs has repeated on multiple occasions in interviews…

You cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet

The timing of film was accidentally in the middle of Covid 19 outbreak. From a rumor of this “thing going on in the Wuhan, China” it quickly grew exponentially in the next few months until countries and their people found themselves in lockdown. We’ve all been through it so what need be said, but now even the most powerful person on earth has been proven as unable to be protected from this change of events.

Despite conspiracy theories of secret labs in the province of Hubei there has been the talks about involvement of bats, specifically in a wet market where animals are traded and that somehow it was able to jump species.

Like climate change it seems one thing overrides most of our problems, which is the same infinite growth Gibbs speaks to.

As we push the earth harder and harder things start to give. Some of our largest glaciers are disappearing. Rainforests are being destroyed and the polar ice caps are all but gone.

Mother Nature is forgiving, but it seems only to a point.

Now the thing is, what drives this? We humans know this is terrible but we persist with the same direction. Are we just crazy or greedy or thoughtless or what?

If I may I’d like to divert away to say a little about one human, myself before age ten.

Ever since I was about 6 I’ve watched nature shows and documentaries. I remember my mom being enthusiastic about this because she was taking night classes in early childhood education in the 80s. The reason for this enthusiasm was that instructor told all her aspiring teachers to “watch more nature programs like Nova and Lorne Greene’s New Wilderness” and there was me blasting through them with a boozy gusto just for fun.

But in every one of them it was the same thing, everything was going along great and then invariably man steps into the picture. Our report card at that moment was never glowing. There might be some scientist by the end of the show who was trying to reverse the effects, but on the whole we always came off as the bad guys and for good reason. Our thing was always to take over, push nature aside and destroy.

This activity was just the kind of thing that could put what was meant to stay far from us into close proximity, such as a defensive virus.

“I’m sorry humans”, says Mother Nature like a preschool teacher, “but you need to have a time out.”

Which, of course, returns us to the quote by Jeff Gibbs again.

So the problem is infinite growth. But what is behind that? I like looking at things this way.

Total tangent, but I think it’s because of another show I watched as a kid religiously…Robotech.

It was a Japanese cartoon but the gist of the whole series was that we were invaded by the Zentradi who looked like us but were just much taller, who were pushed by the Robotech Masters, who were pushed but the Invid.

So essentially behind what you see, someone unseen is pushing.

So, who is our Invid right now? What is the unseen force that is pushing us?

What’s wierd is that, well, we are.

We have created a world of cheques and balances. We have created a world of capitalistic neoliberal meritocracy where you are either making money or you’re not, where you’re ahead or behind. We have made a religion of it and we are all affected.

Even for myself when a YouTube video on the future of capitalism said “There will not be any jobs in the near future” it felt like I had just been punched in the chest.

And I’m into ideas that defy the norm. That’s how deep seated our connection is to our work…and the idea of bigger and better.

Infinite growth. Our Invid.

So we have heard and seen how AI and automation is coming, and from what the film suggests we have to slam on the breaks. But how?

What we need is something that allows us to not worry about having to create larger growth. We need to know that no matter what we do this year, next year will be ok. Lions, tigers and bears feel like this. Dogs and cats and mice feel like this. Baby dolphins feel like this. The whole planet does, just not the humans.

It’s because we’re the only ones who feel we have to work to live here.

This brings me to the solution which you may have guessed…the idea of a basic income.

This is an idea that has been around since 1516 with Sir Thomas More, later picked up by United States founding father Thomas Paine when he addressed critics around the time of the French Revolution in his book “The Rights of Man”

Since then the idea has been championed by a number of famous and not famous names from across the political spectrum like Martin Luther king Jr, Milton Friedman, Richard Nixon, Hugh Segal, Brian Mulroney, Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Yang and Robert Reich.

There are many different versions of it as well as different ideas as to how to fund it, but with the oncoming reality of our increased to cut labor, it seems more and more of us are awakening to the idea that this is the way of the future. John Maynard Keynes said as much years ago when he predicted that there would be so little work that boredom would be the biggest problem.

But here’s where I join the dots.

If we don’t have the fear of scarcity beneath us, if we know we will be ok, if we know we don’t have to push our earth to the limit, we can dial back the clock. Nothing helps with keeping local and not wondering what kind of car to use like not needing to use the car at all. Nothing helps a company made of people not worry that they have to beat the other guy like knowing that they don’t have to push for bigger and that they will be ok.

A basic income raising the floor beneath us has the power to create an absolute seismic shift in how our world operates for the better.

A basic income harkens racial equality as a basic income literally declares that all persons deserve the same ability to live as a guaranteed human right. It is not a hand out, it’s not a hand up, it is your inheritance.

A basic income reduces stress, proved by the smaller isolated cases in pilots such as the recent Ontario pilot, Finland two year project and ongoing South Korean experiment.

Income dictates health. Health dictates where money is diverted and the ability for everyone to calmly choose the best for themselves creates towns we would want to call home.

It’s time for this Planet of the Humans to be like the tigers, bears, cats and lions…

Let’s get a basic income.

Let’s sleep tonight.

Thank you for reading.

Tom Pogson

A creative professional’s take on Universal Basic Income

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Among the first political advocates for the Basic Income idea were conservatives.

I have been listening and reading as much as possible about this idea and the weirdest of wierd facts is the number of non-leftist types that are behind it. I mean, Andrew Yang blasted it into public consciousness with his one thousand dollars a month promise, but it was certainly around prior to that!

It was during the Nixon administration that the idea was first tabled (after the second bill of rights anyways). I mean, Nixon!

Milton Friedman, the guy behind the “no free lunch” wanted a work fair idea for workers that would endure working class people never slipped below the poverty line.

The first point to make is that this idea has actually been around in one form or another since Utopia by Thomas More in 1516 and then Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man in 1791. And now our former Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney has advocated for it. It’s been backed by tech giants like Elon Musk, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey as well as activists like Noam Chomsky and Robert Reich.

I’m not as great at coming up with financial details to combat the frequently asked questions like “hey, I don’t want to turn into a member of the former Soviet Union!” I can promise you that neither do I, but I’ve never been great at the intricacies of tax and the economy so I have to defer to someone like Scott Santens who works on this stuff full time, has a blog on Stitcher called The Scott Santens UBI Enterprise and has a FAQ on the front page of his website at http://www.scottsantens.com

You can also check out some deep dive podcasts on NPR (which I completely appreciate leans left, though not always) Anyways…

Is Universal Basic Income too Utopian to Work?

Universal Basic Income – Why and How?

These are just from a search but there is lots more, with a growing bi-partisan advocacy.

The “why now?” couldn’t be more clear. We have had a blast from how things can change suddenly. Just like the potential effect of automation, robotic or just in terms of how our civilization advances, we have experienced how the financial rug can be suddenly pulled out from under you.

For myself this happened ten years back, with continued changes similar to Covid. I remember a manager at the McDonald’s that I worked at, the same one where I was once taken into the office to go over my 100% Medical, Dental and Life Insurance, saying “well, you’ll get your 40” referring to the 40 hours a week that of course every full time employee gets.

This wasn’t generations ago; this was the mid-nineties. This was back before I had the twin kick of stomach issues, hearing loss and arthritis that threaten to shut down my ability to do any non creative job at all.

One of the buildings I clean now is a side contract, but it used to be my main one at 10 hours a night. Now it’s about an hour and twenty, full of empty, cobwebbed vacancies. One of the main offices in that building will be going on the 28th so I have asked my employer if there’s anything else out there because that location will end up being less than a half hour a day. Back in those nineties you could not be brought in for anything less than three hours.

So I think it’s fairly clear, especially now after Covid, that things are not like they were in the 80s.

I don’t believe that UBI would reduce incentive to work because we are no longer generalists like we were. Imagine an interviewer asking you now “why do you want to work here?” and you just saying “Oh I applied everywhere, I just need a job!”

Yeah, you’d be out the door quick.

UBI would give everyone the keys to the drivers seat of their own lives. It gives everyone the ability to say “I love this…I want to work here!” or to refuse work that is exploitative. Money is essentially value and it would give a sense of value and belonging. You get this when you do a busking set. No, it’s not “all about money” but when you make that first twoonie ($2 coin here in Canada) you feel better. You dont feel like a shlub. You feel like your life is right and you are appreciated. Financial lack creates stress, anger and division. It says that you are competing with everyone around you. This is further compounded by the bragging you see on social media of all kinds, even if it’s not meant to be.

Aren’t we supposed to do the things we want to do as if money wasn’t an object?

For myself I think it’s clear that I would want to work on music, but I absolutely want to take it beyond that. I want to study creativity on a deeper level in my leisure time and report back to everyone here. I want to take what I’m singing about to the next level. At present I have from essentially nine am to about one in the afternoon in which to incorporate everything. I am a cleaner so I have tried making use of YouTube premium and podcasts to learn while I’m working, but of course that’s not the same thing.

“You can’t do the job if you don’t have the equipment” – Paul Ironhorse, War of the Worlds

I have been a full time artist before (I still play professionally, but was also making money full time as a pitch writer through Canada Media Fund) and I can tell you that without even a second’s thought that artists have more than enough actual work to do to take up the classic eight hour day. In a previous blog I talked about Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA who spoke of being “an eight hour guy.” I need to put at least two hours a day into my principal instrument bass (that’s being generous) and then at least an hour into keyboards, guitar, drums and voice. So were at six and I haven’t even touched composition of any kind, which is not unusual these days. Then there’s promotion, research/reading, exercise to make it so you can at least get on stage as an older performer. So were at nine hours approximately.

I work every day. I have a wall calendar where each day has a blue dot for when I’ve practiced and that includes Christmas. This is because I am made to feel that unless I’m taking it to the next level I have financially no chance.

I am absolutely certain that I am not alone. I do believe this is the thing behind many of the crazy Instagram posts where people attempt to go viral. I might be another “dime a dozen musician” but if i am then i certainly not alone.

I like what one lady said on Twitter about UBI…that has only been echoed by not just Scott Santens but this article on the possibility of a creative and cultural renaissance…

https://www.mic.com/articles/125420/basic-income-studies-higher-minimum-wage-and-living-wage-creative-renaissance

Presently Canadians are being harrassed by fraud that tries to make use of the idea that they are in trouble with Service Canada which is undoubtedly about the Cerb benefit and how they are “in trouble for doing it wrong.”

What if we all got that money? All of us. Regardless of reason.

Wouldn’t there ability to make people scared drop through the floor. Most crime comes from fear.

“Constant fear of scarcity, aggression as its child” Sting

There’s the fact that income dictates health, and that health dictates income in a circle which you learn about in the first term and first year of sociology 100 at the University of Victoria.

If everyone is protected from the “Wolves at the door” that Roland Orzabel refers to on his Tomcats Screaming Outside album (a reference to his Tears for Fears successes keeping him in good financial stead) then people in poverty are not just more easily preyed upon but they dont feel the need to desperately take some kind of action. This is one I know about only too well. Like I mentioned in my song Precipice from my album The Goldblacks (of which I also blogged about previously) if feels like your life is on Niagara River floating past Goat Island towards the brink. In a state like that people will of course do anything.

Hell, they’ll even write a blog about it.

Thank you for reading. If your interested in this please share this blog or any other media you find the most compelling with your network.

Cheers,

Tom Pogson

If you are interested here are the links for Canada based petitions…

https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/petition/details?Petition=e-2821

http://www.leahgazan.ca
(If you are interested in the Guaranteed Livable Income version)

http://www.ubiworks.ca

Working with Headphones

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“To can or not to can THAT is the real question!” Hamlet

Sure, we use headphones to record but the question arises if you should just always use them?

The sound in the headphones is so focused and if you get good ones then they are really great for one of the most important things a musician does…transcription.

Transcription is basically learning a song by ear. Now here they are really good because you are not competing with local background noises and you are right inside of the engineer’s mix as it were.

I am practicing, writing and recording in a apartment as well, so for me they are great as I dont live alone and sometimes I want to work early or late. Cor songwriting they can be quite good in that kind of environment because you are literally creating within your own little world.

I use a Zoom L12 mixer and multitrack which is pretty intuitive and I did record my first cd on it. I’d say it’s only two weaknesses are that the effect you chose for that song is the only onboarding affect you get. You should vary effects per instrument preferably so I also use a few other exterior pedals and keyboards often have their own onboard as well.

There is, of course, different recording software out there like Protools and Reason but I presently dont have the money or time to invest in them. I do want to but it will sadly have to be later.

Where headphones fall a little I think is for the organic feeling of creativity and for rehearsing for a show. Especially for guitarists (and bassists like myself) you want to get closer to the feeling of not using them and the amp is part of your sounds creation. The headphones give you a sense of security that is going to be lost when you hop stage. I have found that as you go from headphones to not to rehearsal to gig to recording studio the stress naturally rises with the highest at a live recording. So for these you want to practice as close as you can get and leave the headphones for more coming up with ideas or study.

Getting ready for a show on this Friday out in Langford, British Columbia so my practice quickly popped through the other instruments before staying on bass. And yeah I did the exact same thing, standing…using a mic…no headphones…everything to recreate the same environment. You dont have to stand too but I find it does just for going over your set, give you that same angle that changes when seated.

So have a look online for what is good and within your price range. I use Audio Technica M40s which have a great sound and durability.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Tom

Between weekends

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Been a few days since the last one and I swear I’m learning about how to organize.

Organization is tricky and it is probably one of the hardest things for creative people because our natural default is to go with the flow. The problem with this is that you want what you do to grow and develop.

I’m not talking about getting necessarily to some career place but just getting to a good place with what you do. You have to get through the rough of not being able to play or having songs you’re not happy with to where you want to be. The only way to do this is to out the time in daily.

It’s not about hours and hours either. There’s a book worth checking out called the Talent Code which says the best stuff happens whe you look like this guy…

It’s the eyes. Basically if you are focused on what you are trying to accomplish, eyes narrowed (or this kind of focus) that’s when you make forward motion.

So its getting even a little of this each day and reinforcing your art daily.

It’s not like with a job where if you dont show, you’re in trouble. If you dont tend to your craft nobody’s going to get immediately upset, but you’ll stay where you were or even worse as the muscle of the skill gets forgotten.

And I’ve got to work on this too, clearly as I think the last day was Friday here. I had a show and a photo session. The former had me moving my schedule around and the latter had me cleaning just everything. The challenge with that is that taking everything apart to rebuild clean is like a vehicle overhaul and then you need to get used to the next vehicle. Each thing today was still slightly different and it was just crazy.

For me right now things are busy and bit wierd. My ultimate goal is to develop as a songwriter. I want the different instrumental skills to be strong (or grow in the case of drums) but I need to bring in the actual songwriting work, plus I have another two hour show on Friday and possibly two more in September.

Here’s us at the last one, in 98 degree heat. Whew!

Great fun, especially these days with the advent of Covid being able to play.

Getting tired and going to have a short nap before going to work.

Cheers,

Tom

Not a weekend warrior I swear! 😜

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Cookeilidh the Celtic Band : Me, Woody Wilson, Kim and David Cook

I know! Day three and I’m already out lol! Still here, I swear!

Spend extra time today gearing up for this show on Sunday and then a show next weekend at the new water tower in the Western Communities here in Greater Victoria. Been very lucky to have a situation where we can do these socially distanced reduced audience shows this summer so I want to make sure I do good work.

One thing I found was how working on drumming has had me focused more rhythmically on my playing. Seems silly but I swear it’s like different musical things have you focusing on different things. When I started playing bass it was like I was a pointer spaniel every time I heard the bass in the song do something.

If you are over hear definitely come out. If not follow our Facebook, our Instagram or head to our main site at cookeilidh.com which has lots of links, clips, photos and more!

Thank you for stopping by!

Hoping to write tomorrow even it’s short like this one!

Cheers,

Tom Pogson 😊

Challenge of digital songwriting

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Oops I did it again – B.Spears

I could have just as easily called this confessions of a songwriter in 2020 or oh to be young in the nineties again but there you go.

I had this song about helping people with universal basic income (dont @ at me please, I think ubi could work, especially for our lot who have lost gigs, street performing, and some have even lost teaching gigs).

So, this…I’ll call it a song…was literally written and improvised in two takes after it “happened”. The germ of a song is that moment when you (or I, anyways) suddenly realize there might be something before me.

This song I titled “Give People a Chance”.

I hadn’t planned that Lennon connection…maybe it was playing a song like this on the black and whites…

Then after I recorded a phone video of me singing and playing it on my Yamaha keyboard, I loaded the second take into an app called Powerdirector. I had done editing a long time ago when I worked on my first film Bass Line so for me this app is a easy simple version of using something like Adobe Premier or Final Cut Pro.

Even with having a very simple idea (I used Canva for the final image) the process of that took about 45 minutes which is a sizable chunk of a morning’s practice routine. I don’t do this full time and I have from nine to about 1pm to practice keys, guitar, bass and drums.

But, I suppose you can absorb that. One easy rationalization is that being creative with music that you make is surely the point of what you are doing, especially if you start bringing those other instruments in. I play bass in a band, but my other instruments are all about making music at home.

So that should be perfect, right? I mean, that is what all the practice is for. It’s applying the craft.

Well, there is a problem and yet again I got excited and swept up in all that excitement.

It was way…way to soon to launch into the public consciousness.

Glen Hansard (Once, The Frames) said it in this absolutely amazing YouTube broadcast that you have got to watch…

click here !

…songs shouldn’t be put out there until they’re ready.

You’ve got to be able to let them grow and develop. The best songs resonate with you on a personal level. They are an organic thing that grows from the first moment you conceive them.

The challenge which I swear I am trying to push towards is not so easily falling victim to just launching it out for that immediate fix. We have this same, almost flipside problem with studying music with YouTube and Instagram lessons.

Scott Devine of Scott’s Bass Lessons has said this repeatedly, that it is so easy to bounce from YouTube video to YouTube video and think that you’re practicing. You’re not, you’re watching videos.

Even if you went to a traditional music lesson I wouldn’t call that practicing. Practicing involving YouTube would be to watch a video, get the information down, and then put the device aside and actually work on what you just learned. In a way it is an extension of how we all learned back in the day, playing along to music. Only thing is, we didn’t just stop playing and stare at the radio.

One of the coolest, coolest examples of switching to lo fi (not that they switched per se but…) songwriting has to be the story of two men who, along with there wives, lived in two cabins in the Stockholm Archipelago in Sweden.

They would go to one cabin where they would write for eight hours a day with just a guitar and a piano. They didnt record anything. They didnt even bring a pen. They’re attitude was “If I can’t remember it, well…it probably wasn’t any good!” Now we dont all have that kind of time but even still it did work for them.

It gave them songs like Dancing Queen, Fernando and Eagle.

This was the writing process of Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and the foundation of ABBA.

The world of online is a powerful tool and it is exciting, but allow yourself that offline time. It is in the moments of quiet where you can make magic.

Cheers,

Tom

Ok, I can’t resist…here is the guys of ABBA talking about it themselves…

https://youtu.be/FHDRRiX1now

“…it takes time to get through all the rubbish…to make something special…to hear it…that takes time” Bjorn Ulvaeus

Starting Songwriting Somewhere

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Just DO IT! – Shia LaBeouf

We all start somewhere. And we are all not that great when we do. I started actually really late. I have had songs on the radio a few times which got me Socan membership here in Canada but I certainly didn’t start at 8. Not real songs anyways…

My first instrument was bass which is still to this day my strongest instrument and the thing I get hired for the most. I presently play in the celtic band Cookeilidh which I’ve been in (when I wrote this anyways) as of about 2006. Nobody is actually sure. We started so gradually and went through a few changes so nobody really knows exactly.

Anyways who’d write it down? Wierd…

Songwriting always seemed like lead guitar to me, something that was like “super talented genius” types only. But being a bass player I think slowly introduced me to how it actually was pretty reachable. And oh yeah, at first everything was pretty clunky and simple. That one on the top was one of my earlier, but that was one of the good ones. I think the first one was called Passages and it was described once as a “Car on square wheels”. Not really complimentary. I did have one song called Take Me Higher though which is now on my first album that I wrote back then in about 96 and it worked. My production of it wasn’t amazing but it was my nineties open stage winner at the time. How did I write it? It was lyrics first, it was guitar chords that seemed to work in church and other than that it was so simple and basic I though it obviously wasn’t any good.

Lots of songwriters I’ve played bass for are like that by the way. Everyone discredits their best songs because I think of how easily it comes out.

Playing guitar for came from a bass teacher who said I should use a chord instrument of some kind and my mom had this discarded classical guitar so I learned all the basic chords from a book. The church thing came when my first thing of playing bass for them switched when the guitarist left and i was thrust in front of the congregation. They were forgiving (hehe) but it got me to learn the basic open chords and basic fingerstyle fast.

The main thing is to just start. The story of famous musicians who literally learned on the job is almost a cliche and as a bassist I can give you multiple accounts of proof that you are never to old to try. Songs are great fun and have the effect of being like a sound and words version of a diary like “where I was then.”

I have just tapes and tapes (autocorrect fought me on that. Yes, tapes!) of my music from back then. These days people are using more computer software to mix songs but I still use a Zoom L12 multitrack which is just the digital upgrade from how I used a four track tape recorder. You had to use the good tapes to get the full four tracks and you heard stuff backwards when you flipped it over which was wierd but fun.

Anyways I got to get ready for work and I’m totally pushing it. I’m going to see how these posts go. Thank you for reading!

Cheers!

Tom

Writing ideas

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If you can’t write anything, write the truth

Kind of later in the day here on the west coast but I wanted to get going on this idea which I’m presently writing into my phone on a break at work.

These days I’ve been really trying to develop my musicianship to take my sort of songwriting and production to the next level as it were. I have my band so that makes bass have a place of priority, but I’ve also been a writer and songwriter since way back.

I guess for me it’s a place of not quite knowing where to go with that side of me. I have done one album called The Goldblacks and it’s sort of a mix of older songs with some newer ones but I like the idea of my work evolving from there and also creating more songs that are ironically not reliant on a multitrack or a whole band coming with me.

I did one show on the album and while it went ok it was a bit frustrating that many songs from it just didnt work live. So I guess my goal is to develop a sort of best of the different worlds with the good musicianship for recording, simpler approach for writing and also keeping the other fires burning like my band and other things.

Now it’s been recommended that as a bassist I journal what I’m doing and I’m doing that with now keys, guitar bass and most recently my electronic drum kit (I’m in an apartment with fussy neighbors). So I was like if I’m already doing that why not bring it into more regular blog idea?

I could try it like this for a while and see how I and everyone else responds. I’m not sure. It could be like a evolving behind the scenes thing. Maybe I’ll bring it to once a week, or every three days. Daily is possible but I just dont thing that there’s that much material and also some days I have more time than others.

I mean today on keys I’ve been working through two books and I’m actually trying to scale back to basic things that i know will help me and on a recommendation of listening to Rick Beato, trying to not just rip through scales but slow down, feel each note, and get more melodic.

Guitar is the same for that, which I’ve never really practiced until this year. Drums are fun but presently with new car payments and Long and Mcquade payments I’m trying to hold onto it all.

I should probably get back to work especially as I’ll be setting the blog up after I sign off.

Hope you enjoyed this or maybe just got a little curious. What I’d like to almost do is maybe show my creative methods and things for others who want to get musically creative or go into songwriting.

I’ll be studying it and working on it either way and it would be interesting to have the chance to take if beyond just selling my own songs but actually reaching further out. It just stems to stories I’ve heard of people being creatively shut down by so-called authority figures and I like the idea of showing that those voi as are wrong and you can do whatever dream you have.

There’s songs in the wood

-Alan Hutchinson

Cheers,

Tom

Experiments in leaving Social Media a confessional

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Probably doesn’t help being a Einstürzende Neubauten fan. They are a German band led by Blixa Bargeld that started back in the 1980s that event became so industrial that they had to rehearse under an overpass as that was the only place that could take what they dealt out.

Anyways, the band’s name means “collapsing new buildings”. You have to tear down so you start again. That’s pretty much been this.

The problems I’ve had is both time and the fact that its really easy to lose focus via the, as Sir Humphry Appleby said in the Yes Minister series

It is the department’s job to shield the Minister from the relentless shower of irrelevant information that beats against the window day after day

The problem is social media is genius at finding ways through the cracks. Because you do care. I care. We all I think to some extent, care. But if you are, to quote Scott Adam’s of Dilbert fame…

Bounced around like a ping pong ball in a dryer

all the time then you will inevitably not be in the best place to help anyone. Its also easy, especially for creative people to get suckered in to believing your bigger than you really are.

And this is where I got slammed. I was already planning the idea of escaping, or reducing my social media activity anyways and then I got just attacked, first thing in the morning because I had to check my bank balance. And that really did it. When something is not just horrible but seemingly unavoidable in future it is of course upsetting. I couldn’t even be angry because he wasn’t technically wrong. I had made myself bigger than I was. It was this, see if you spot it…

I shared it on the UK Office fan page on Facebook now removed. What’s the problem? Well why should anyone care? I’m not an A-lister. Why did I tag them like they’d respond.

Meanwhile what I should be doing is writing here. What I should be doing is studying creativity like I said. I should be doing morning pages (a la Artist’s Way), music study, production. I didn’t want to leave because of friends and family, which is how I think many feel trapped, but then something (usually political) these days will grab you by the soul and force a response, which then creates tension.

Even if there no attack you will be monitoring your device for the possibility of one. And bear in mind there is no gain for you doing this! I mean, I was bullied as a kid, but I can’t even imagine what it’s like for kids now who deal with online bullying. This was like waking up with a school bully straddling me and punching me in the face.

Meanwhile as a writer, songwriter and musician I can easy fill a 9 hour workday with things I have to do. I have lists on my note app of what I need to get to, watch later videos qued up on YouTube to go through, and just armies of books.

So after three or so days I kind of came back due to trying to do some creative work such as this below. Naturally it’s all joined so a reinstalling I went but since back I’ve been more viewing, maybe liking but only engaging with actual friends. I may reduce news and so on activity on Facebook and stick news to Twitter, creativity to Insta, Tiktok and YouTube.

Busy right now buying a car for the first time ever so this week has been goofy anyways but this will be continuing later.

Thank you for getting this far.

Cheers,

Tom