Hennessy Love Machine

It was a fairly large weekend for the Love Machine, we played two mega sets - one on Friday at good 'ol Vespa then we popped the Tru Bar cherry on Saturday. If you haven't ventured to Tru, I suggest you do, they're fully 100% Kiwi - beers, food and most of music. Richard and his team push NZ music every day of every week, so don't just make a token effort to see some Kiwi talent during May, Tru Bar serves it up all year round!

Last night we got some band photos taken. Dan Watson (aka Golden Lion, aka Little Golden Lion Man) snapped us down at Vespa Bar in a couple of those little rooms/booths that run along one side of the space. Thanks heaps Dan, bang up job! All the best for your mission work in Southeast Asia too bro that's wicked.We talked about what we should do for these photos at length - the possibilities are virtually endless and you could waste hours debating where the best location is, what you should wear, if you should smile or pull stupid faces... At the end of the day hell, if they turn out shit you can always do some more! I think our greatest fear was appearing to 'cool'. If you have seen us play live (if you haven't, what the hell?? Come down, we'll shout you a spritzer) you'll know we're hardly rockstars on stage, we believe in having fun, playing well and cracking a grin or three as mentioned in a previous post. This whole serious brooding band thing is a sack of shit basically, so we were presented with the conundrum - looking good without being to posey and looking fun without appearing like amateur goofballs.

I was going to write some magical philosophical emotional brain exapansion about my experience with Susan Boyles amazing performance on the tube, but since we had an epic recording session last weekend, I have decided to invoke my flatmate's experience of the event. She arrived when we were wrapping up the major tracking takes and experienced all the fun and chaos that ensued, and here she is:Hi, I'm Lydia and I live with Kurt and Moses and was lucky enough to be invited to hang with the band while they recorded Follow my Nose.I turned up with a box of beer and no expectations. My first memorable experience was Kurt's amazing ability to sing. I didn't realize his balls were so high! Lol! But in all seriousness the song didn't really need his fantastic singing talent, it was already amazing! The vibe of the studio was comfy and I felt part of the team, especially when they included me in the percussion. It was joyful. Hahaha. The most interesting part of the night, where I saw the guys work the hardest, was when they decided to remix a Timbaland/One Republic song with the chorus of their song. It was highly amusing, as I stood round filming them holding hands in a circle singing ...It's too late to apologize. Good times!After this tomfoolery, the actual seriousness took place where they focused on minor technical difficulties and it got quite heated, but I just sat back, drank a beer and observed. I never realized how much work goes into a song, and now I have the appreciation of why a lot of band members get pissed at each other and at extremes, break up. It was enlightening and entertaining. By this time I think the guys had been in the studio for 12 hours so it was a unanimous decision that everyone should go home, chill out and return the following day (sober) with fresh ears!In the end it was great fun and a great experience. I hope they invite me along next time they record! ;-)

I was going to write some magical philosophical emotional brain exapansion about my experience with Susan Boyles amazing performance on the tube, but since we had an epic recording session last weekend, I have decided to invoke my flatmate's experience of the event. She arrived when we were wrapping up the major tracking takes and experienced all the fun and chaos that ensued, and here she is:

Hi, I'm Lydia and I live with Kurt and Moses and was lucky enough to be invited to hang with the band while they recorded Follow my Nose.

I turned up with a box of beer and no expectations. My first memorable experience was Kurt's amazing ability to sing. I didn't realize his balls were so high! Lol! But in all seriousness the song didn't really need his fantastic singing talent, it was already amazing! The vibe of the studio was comfy and I felt part of the team, especially when they included me in the percussion. It was joyful. Hahaha. The most interesting part of the night, where I saw the guys work the hardest, was when they decided to remix a Timbaland/One Republic song with the chorus of their song. It was highly amusing, as I stood round filming them holding hands in a circle singing ...It's too late to apologize. Good times!

After this tomfoolery, the actual seriousness took place where they focused on minor technical difficulties and it got quite heated, but I just sat back, drank a beer and observed. I never realized how much work goes into a song, and now I have the appreciation of why a lot of band members get pissed at each other and at extremes, break up. It was enlightening and entertaining. By this time I think the guys had been in the studio for 12 hours so it was a unanimous decision that everyone should go home, chill out and return the following day (sober) with fresh ears!

In the end it was great fun and a great experience. I hope they invite me along next time they record! ;-)

Jon was up first. I'm not even going to attempt to get technical with this so here's a picture of the drum mic set up, with Ben about to attack that mic above him.We came to a compromise on the speed of the song, settling for 130bpm and Jon had the trusty 'ol click track going through his cans. While tracking drums we were all in the room playing along toned down, as playing a song on drums with nothing else doesn't do much for your vibe. Jon experimented with a fill that brings in the last chorus after the break down which turned out mean, it gets cut a little short in the finished track with a reversed cymbal but you hear enough to appreciate the awesomeness. Jon's tracking took a good couple of hours, and I say good because we (Jon especially) were stoked with the outcome and left the rest of us warmed up and amped to get cracking with the rest of the tune.

Often the bass comes next but we opted for Kurt to lay down the rhythm guitar instead. Kurt's famous for his big Maori strums meaning he is quite a percussive, rhythmic strummer. This helped everyone later being able to hear the drums and his guitar together which furthered the tight cohesive vibe we were striving for. Ben had all instruments running to amps in the main room and the players in the control room. We've all played music infront of each so many times now, this set up didn't effect nerves, infact Dave loves showing us his playing while imagining us all as Jo Barus which apparently helps him perform at a higher level. Anyway, Kurt nailed his takes as well as laying some extra bits to flesh the song out. Piece of cake. Legend.

Next up was Dave on bass, it basically took him 1 and 1/2 takes. He's a bit of machine is our Dave, it was sounding warm and sweet and just another step in the process where you can really hear the track coming together as every instrument gets layered on. Hearing it played back gets you more excited as this seemingly crazy bunch of sounds and bars on a computer screen is becoming a proper song. Just look how happy he looks.

So then there was Moses, adding the icing on the musical cake - lead solo, picky bits in the chorus and general embellishments that really make the song sound sweet. A sudden gust of wind blew his top clean off, but that didn't stop Mo busting out some catchy shit. We were getting into late afternoon by this stage so well on schedule. There was a lot of changes of amps with Mo's tracking because we needed to get different sounds for pretty much every separate track, this gives the song notable variation and keeps an integral part of the track sounding fresh.
Next up was me, Morgan with vocals. The thing about leaving vocals to last is that I began to feel just a smidge anxious after everyone has done their part, the song is sounding mint and it hasn't even been mixed or mastered yet! I felt like a lot rested on my shoulders, and I guess it did to be honest. Next time I might attempt to do things differently but at the end of the day I gave it my best shot and Ben had something workable so that's good. Mo laid some beautiful harmonies and Jon did some "Oooo's" in the final chorus which sounds fantastic too.

By the end of Saturday we were all pretty much ready to get out of the studio, 12 hours straight in there is just about enough. Any longer and you begin to notice the cabin fever kicking in. We had put in the work and now all that was left was for Ben to mix and master it which would be happening on Sunday.

We left feeling tired and smelly but knowing we had just recorded a very cool single, one which not only sounds great but carries with it our tentative hopes of receiving funding. We're being realistic here, our chances are slim at best but you never know until you try and hell, we've got a sweet track on our hands regardless of the outcome!

The day has arrived! In about an hour we'll be loading the gear in BOL (band van) and setting up at The Sitting Room getting the drums sorted first. This can take quite a bit of time so will be the main focus of the evening, if there's time we might even go for a take for drum tracking purposes but there's no major hurry, that's what tomorrow's for.

Just to mix things up a little, we've posted four of our new tracks on our myspace page - they're live practice recordings so are pretty raw but they'll give you enough of an idea how the songs sound. So check them out! Tell your friends, leave comments! Get involved is what we're saying here.

Shredding is a term that is used to describe the ability of a guitarist to play blistering solos or a guitar style that most players like to refer to as literally taking the guitar up and playing as fast as you can. It is a relatively subjective term, thus my definition of it is:A guitarists ability to play a pointless/meaningless sequence of notes as fast as possible whilst throwing in as many arpeggios and soloing techniques disregarding structure and feeling.Could it be that I am wrong and a cynic in having this attitude towards guitar solos? Well, discussions with other guitarists on the subject arrive at the same conclusion, shredding is not good when applied to a song dedicated to evoking emotion, but why is this the case?By taking a trip through time, there is a point (1980s) where shredding was the condiment to enhancing a song, mainly due to trends and technology of the time, and we (the listeners) were none the wiser as shredding was not something we had the ability to view/hear often, so there was something magical about the mad skillz of a sublime soloist being added to a song. But the major point here is that trends and technology determined this and funnily enough it has also determined its downfall.The information age has given us the ability to source many things we previously didn't have. An important media source that I frequent more than I should is YouTube, which contains a plethora of videos that explore the depths and skills of humanity and human experience. Some decent examples are:

• Guys that can fart real well with their hands: Popcorn
• Sublime acting skills: XBox Lady
• Random dudes that can shred with a guitar: Shredding

Now the ability to source all these amazing human skills leads to the outcomes of abundance and excess. All that is beautiful is absorbed within the anonymous sea of collective conciousness and mass media conglomoration that is the world wide web. This phenomenon is not totally unwholesome as it provides a clearer definition of where the bar resides skillwise. It also creates an environment capable of enlightenment to musical beauty due to the consistent nature of the extreme skills but in turn the interpretations of beauty within music can be distorted by the abundance. So as this technology has eased the acquisition of impressive guitaring, the actual impression of the skills declines.Technology has forced us a full circle where music is back to being reliant on songwriting skills, not musicianship. Although the ability to play blistering solos is a handy skill to have, it is not required emotively and less accepted in the whole context of performance and recording. At the end of the day, who wants to watch a bunch of musicians play with themselves on stage. I sure as hell don't!

Christmas has the Grinch, surely Easter should have an antagonist? A sworn adversary of the bunny? He/she would need a name... actually I think the Beast of Easter is quite catchy as is, there might be a song in that.

Well it's getting closer to NZ Music month which is pretty damn exciting, Christchurch will see a noticeable swelling in its live music loins and it means quite a few gigs for Hennessy Love Machine. Make sure you keep an eye on our upcoming gigs to see when and where we're playing next. I personally can't wait to get out and see some more bands, it'll be a great chance to catch new acts, see some fresh talent coming through. And then there's CHARTFEST at the end of May to top it all off which should be money.

Had a good practice on Tuesday evening tightening up Follow My Nose some more, just nailing solos, the ending and tweaking some 'decorative' parts. The structure is all sorted now and I have to say it's sounding mean! We had enough time to jam out a brand new track which is called We Know She Knows. The lyrics started out with a line that Kurt and Moses came up with when they were creating the tune "we know she know she's hot" so I took that and ran. After finishing penning the lines it had turned into quite a sad song about a girl who strives for attention but just isn't paid any. It originally began as a bit of laugh about a girl who basically thinks she's ALL THAT but just isn't, then it took a slightly blue turn. The song itself proved to be a little challenging to get a collective groove for but it definitely showed legs and I can't wait to see how it turns out when we get back to it with fresh ears. Here go the lyrics:

Verse.
Fading with the evening from a sullen day I missed
Undistinguished average grace she falls away
Always a grand entrance from the little side door
One or two they notice but neglect to explore

Chorus.
And we know she thinks she’s hot (a glow although)
She knows we know she’s not (at best so-so)
She’ll go til she gets caught (it’s all a show)
Beneath the skin she’s in it all begins over again

Verse.
Dressed to unimpress a voice compliments her deep inside
With emptiness she hikes her dress and heads into the night

Bridge.
You know that she’d come back if we’d
Given her a subtle second glance
Always sees with periphery
She’s ravenous for half a chance

Can't find the words to express how we feel about this... Photoshop Brilliance

It's always good to keep challenging yourself as a band, you can get complacent and comfortable playing at one or two places (if you gig a lot around town) and forget about what it's like to have to really work a crowd and get them moving. His Lordships at the entrance to SOL Square is one of those places we find challenging. It's very location, while being quite prominent, can also work as a drawback as it's positioned at the beginning of the alleyway to the square. People get sucked down right past Lordships as if swept into a wind tunnel and carried towards the glittering lights beyond. I think it's a great bar and if you haven't been in, you should definitely check it out, it has that quaint English pub feel while not being too stuffy.
Before we began playing we all agreed to push the smile test (mentioned in a previous post) -even if we didn't feel particularly 'up' because there weren't as many people dancing or watching as we're used to, we'd put on a smile. Sounds cheesy, but I have to say it really worked! Not only did it help us connect with the crowd, it somehow picked us up. I imagine it's kind of like positive affirmation, if you kept telling yourself you can do something, chances are, you'll be able to - keep smiling and you'll end up feeling happy. Or maybe it was the beer... Regardless, if you can change your band's cognition, anything is possible. As a group it's even easier as you can feed off the energy of your band members and who doesn't like being part of a team, a team who's kicking ass on stage??
Just want to say a big SEE YA LATER to Andy Rowe who has been working on the door at Vespa as long as we've been playing there. Andy's a big man with a big heart and always has something good to say, if I was ever going to get thrown out of a bar, I'd like to be thrown out by him for sure. I imagine it would be rough, but somehow... graceful. So thanks heaps dude for all your support and for doing a brilliant job down at Vespa, can't wait to hear you play a drum solo and make sure you let us know when your first strong man comp is, we'll be your support crew for a change!

I think Jake Edward's talents are wasted in music, the man should be a full time camera operator. He hung out with us last night when we had a jam up at RSR and filmed most tracks we played - here's one take we did of Follow My Nose, we're just sorting out the final structure for when we record it in a couple of weeks.There was much filming, with Jake shooting through sunnies and even an empty Hennessy bottle (of course) but I'll post some of that stuff later. The song structure is pretty tight now, and we're getting very close to being 100% happy with it which great, as we'll go into the studio feeling comfortable and will be able to concentrate fully on giving great deliveries.

I was just listening to what I consider to be a very cool New Zealand band. In this band there are about 9 members and on stage they rock, with a big sound and an amazing vocalist they really bring something special to the live music scene. Anyway, it got me thinking about what makes a great live show, does this band have more potential to give a bigger, better performance because they have greater numbers than other bands? What makes for a good performance?I remember watching Muse in concert, I had scored a ticket from my bro in law Jonny Schwass

I stumbled across an article this week about The Violinist in the Subway. It was a social experiment on the perception of beauty where Joshua Bell, one of the worlds greatest classical musicians, busked with 4 of Bach's most complex movements, on an instrument worth $3.5 million. He received the admiration of less than 1% of the 1097 people that walked past, and accumulated a reward of $32 for his time spent. The main focal point was summed up in that:If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that -- then what else are we missing?After reading this I realized many parallels in what he did to what we are currently doing when we perform 'unadvertised' gigs in pubs in the relation that a lot of people walk on by unflinching to the music. Now I am not trying to speak in comparisons of music or musicians as Bach to our music is like tomato sauce to ice cream and Josh Bell is a classical cover artist whereas we are original alternative pop artists. But the responses to the music can be similar.Every gig we play is not the same and a lot of the time people do appreciate the music (even though they don't know what it is) but every so often there are moments where its as if we are pillars of red dirt on a martian landscape, and people are the tumbleweeds blowing in the wind. My conclusion of why these moments occur is that there is the norm where we (humans) have a preconceived concept and context of a situation as to be comfortable and secure in their surroundings, for example, expecting a covers band at a pub or just another busker in the subway. As soon as we are pushed to think outside the socially acceptable box when treated to something different or special, instead of embracing it, we pull out the inhibition card and await others approval to react, rather than act, to follow rather than lead. My simple solution that I have found is a step in the direction of beating down the social barrier is simply a harmless smile and connection of eyes, because at the end of the day, we as a band get off on you having a good time, and removing all the 1st date awkwardness and connecting in the spiritual realm of FUN makes the experience more worthwhile.

Wow I just found this old video of Hot Rocket we performed at Yellow Cross way back when. It's a little painful watching old footage but really encouraging to see how much we've progressed, evolved and now have a new band member Moses! My favorite part is Dave yelling "what's that in your pocket?" bless. Make sure you watch it right through to the end to hear the audience response - character building stuff! haha I love playing with Garage Band.

Last nights practice was an amazingly productive event. We had 2 major agendas to attend to which were the continuation of creativity on a new track called I'm On It and restructuring a current song called Follow My Nose. The reason that Follow My Nose requires modification is the fact that we are recording a high quality demo for the specific purpose to acquire some dinero to help in our quest of world domination.Restructuring a song as a band can be a stressful task as the collective creative juice is flowing in all directions. Points of view work overtime where the 5 points of the pentagram bash heads trying to find which parts stay and which are culled. It is also especially hard when we are trying to shorten a 4:45 track to 3:30! Luckily the songs initial structure had strong foundations in the way we have all been trained to listen to and interpret music (via the radio):Verse : Chorus : Verse : Chorus : Bridge : ChorusNice and simple and aesthetically pleasing to the radio trained ear. The hard part of restructuring was removing content from all sections, especially parts that add flavour to the 4:45 version such as guitar licks and sections of the bridge. This has to be done as the people that will be listening to the song will be critically evaluating it therefore all the hooks, space, melodies, dynamic and consistency need to be optimized and succinct for their judgmental ears.Some might read this and think why? WHY? WTF? Well it is a fact of any thing involving business, especially if you are trying to win some contract for your skills and services, you must have some sort of bling or XFactor backing you up. This bling could be a great salesman, reputation, buzz or in our case a high quality prototype of what we intend to produce further.Money or not, business and art are not really the best of friends, but to capture minds with an artistic message of love, executive decisions must be made at some point to how best this message is propagated. li { padding-left:15px; }

We played an encore last night at the Vespa gig. While you may think 'so what? bands do that all the time' take a second to consider: we're playing 100% original music in a bar in town where no one has paid to see us, let alone knows who were are in the first place - and they wanted to hear more!! This definitely creates a brand new sub group for my personal definition of success. Thank you to all those who came along and had a boogie or just hung out and listened. Was really great meeting you folk who came and saw us for the first time too, after countless facebook messages you

I recently had a brief but interesting conversation with Jake Edwards recently about Music and Money and his hardcore socialist view towards it (also detailed in his blog):
Money should be the last thing on your mind when you pick up a guitar. F**k the money. If you get any, give it away.

I agree with this attitude approximately 60.52%. The remaining percentage sits with the why and the when relative to the point of time you wield your axe.

Money and Music are mutually exclusive entities in the whole scheme of our little universe. As a guitarist/composer, I view music as a realease valve, a free and easy formless drug that allows you to abstract yourself away from the world with the greatest reward being the music you create. Money on the other hand is a feature of society used as a means and end of exchange to facilitate trade, allowing order from chaos for humanity, but containing the undesirable properties of enslavement, a facade of power and control and extreme materialism. Where they cross paths is when the music is applied as an entertainment service (Captain Obvious Award) where its applications are direct usage (concerts) or indirect usage (super markets) with the end goal of some capital gain for someone. The capital gain is the contentious issue here.

I'll relate the issue to my motivation as a musician to why capital gain is contentious relative to live music performance.

When I pick up a guitar and start jamming, I am searching for the next catchy vibe that tickles my ears which I will devote my time to nurture. I visualize the beats, the bass and most importantly, weigh up its mojo in its ability to impress girls. The drive behind the songs creation is its live performance experience; to put smiles on faces, to get humanities foot tapping and to get a bunch of happy humans moving to the music and the beats. There is nothing more emotively powerful than when you have left everything on the stage and feel the love of people getting off on your creativity. As soon as the song is fully grown ready to unleash, the ego kicks in, believing unconditionally that the song is special and it must be devoured by as many ears as possible with the end goal of some sort of reward or appreciation. These rewards can come in many forms; abstract things like clapping, constructive criticism or a smile on a distant face to physical things like beer, girls and ..... money; and I accept all with zest, satisfying the small materialistic vibe that my ego wants the music to be recognized for.

Now this rewards for services idea doesn't really seem that far out as in essence we are merely contractors performing a specific task. But contention arises where creativity is lost when money is involved and music becomes a mundane regurgitation of bollocks. That may be true if you were earning hundreds or thousands of dollars a week off your music, but if your extended motivation is to eat well for the month, then I don't think creativity comes into question as you are playing for your survival. Therefore, receiving money for performing music is wholesome in the great scheme of things. At the end of the day, someone will be using your art performance for their personal gain so it is only just that you also benefit from it as well.

I have only covered music performance here as it is the most honest form of music there is. Other forms of musical income fall into the realms of free music philosophy and are another beast of a domain to analyze.

Hola comrades. I read quite an interesting blog post recently by Jens Roland called How to Kill the Music Industry. It describes the compounding reasons why a paradigm shift has occurred in the acquisition of music since (approx) 2000, relating specifically to the Pirate Bay Trials. The information described in the blog is not new knowledge to anyone as we have been there since the beginning, experiencing the shift in ideals, but with this information at hand, it poses the question: Where to next for the music industry and the business oriented musicians?

The battle that the music industry has chosen is to try and fight the pirates head on and enforce rules and restrictions to subvert piracy for the greater good of the parties involved who are losing $$$. Although it is within their rights to do this, having a fascist attitude to a situation that is already beyond any control is not conducive to either side of the coin, as history suggests, pirates are going to be around as long as the ocean has water. So as long as humanity maintains the sea of collective consciousness that is the internet, there will always be the pirates seeking out the abstract booty. The better attitude that the industry should have, to put it in an existentially positive way, is to innovate or die.

Innovation is the only way forward as the revolution has already begun with the technological evolution of hardware, media and information access. It is noticeable that bands are beginning to harness the technology rather than fight it, providing services relative to the trends of social networking/streamed media sites to connect more intimately with their fans. Janes Addiction for example, had a flash website up until last year that was based on the trends of '03-'05 flash design, focusing on the art experience and less on usability (Janes Addictions' old site). Their current website on the other hand (although not that good looking yet) is blog focused with band members individually posting, creating that individual connection with the readers and fans. This social interaction doesn't combat piracy directly but it is a step in the direction where the fundamental change is the direct connection to the people who support you and your vision. By creating an interactive communicative environment where the relationship between both parties is love and respect, then the outcome will be of greater worth to the musician that is trying to sell their product. Seth Godin (who's ideas I have heavily used here) aptly puts it:
Too often, we close the sale before we even open it. Interact first, sell second.
The days are numbered where we can just create music and expect people to buy it, we need to employ other strategies....

I was just looking at a gig guide for this weekend in Christchurch and dayamn there are SO many gigs on. Most of my mates are these uber-multitalented freaks which is great but I come across so many people during my days that blow me away with their 'on the side' projects. A graphic designer who just happens to be an amazing painter, has their honours in biology and can rock climb up to an Alaskan grade 6, or a young lass making coffee at my local caf who can fluently speak 4 other languages, is going for a TVNZ presenter role and plays bass in her band. I mean, you should never underestimate anyone, ever!

In Canterbury we produce some incredibly creative and talented people, which has got me thinking ChCh has a good chance at being the next Welly - some local bands are going to make it big very soon I'm sure. If only Auckland On Air would share the love... but that's a whole other post. What we can do in the mean time is get out there and support them. Not only is Hennessy Love Machine a great band, we're an awesome audience too!!