The projects.

No I'm not going ghetto on your arse (although a nice cheap apartment in New York City would be great!). I just thought it would be good to explain the "projects" I'm trying to complete in a little more detail. So, today we talk music. For the longest time (since I was three) I have wanted to be a rock star. And I've been working on it - on and off - pretty much ever since I joined my first band when I was 13 (I wrote my first original song at around the age of 9 and was hatching plans for starting bands then too). Now you might think that after all this time I would have lost interest, given up and gone and tried something else. Believe me, I've thought about it. But giving up actually isn't an option. Over the years of course, I've kind of adjusted my vision of what I want to get out of it. These days, it's more about making a musical product I love and getting it into people's ears, than being paparazzied into oblivion (can you think of anything more annoying?). I also absolutely love the creative aspect of the whole thing, and cannot actually control the flow of music coming out. Writing songs is something I need to do to stay sane. Sometimes it even feels like the universe just wants to use my body as a tube to put music through - like someone else wrote a song in the ether and fed it into the world via me. Not to sound like a wanker or anything (but sounding like one anyway). What's more, working, as I do, in advertising, I have always had a sick fascination with the creation of brand. I love big commercial brands that totally have their shit sorted and never stray from the core values, tone, look and feel that makes them who or what they are (think Virgin, Apple or IKEA), or those people that are so powerful in their essence that they are a brand unto themselves (think Madonna, Prince, Keith Richards, Beyonce, David Bowie, the list goes on). So part of what I want to do with my music project is to create a brand of my own and flow it seamlessly from the music, to the cover art, to the video, to my stage look. If I can do that successfully, even on the tiniest scale (one single, one cover, one video, one stage look) I will be a deliriously happy camper. So that's where I'm going to begin. While I go through the probably quite time-consuming task of finding cool producers to work on my other tracks, I am going to start with the track I have. This demo of Take the Ride isn't a million miles away from where I think it needs to be. First step is to re-record the vocal in a proper studio. Second step is to get the track professionally mixed and mastered. Then I need to get it into people's ears. This will involve sending discs to radio stations, and uploading the track to various locations - like iTunes, Triple J's Unearthed website and the like. And to make people take any notice of that lot, I'll need photos. And then a video for YouTube. So plenty to do then. But I'm not freaking out. First things first: record a vocal. Guess now would be a good time to get in touch with my friend Anthony, who has a recording studio. And so the project begins.