Rock and Roll Stories #74 - Difficult third album syndrome!

The False Dots have just released our 2nd album with our current line up. Technically it was our 5th album, but three have languished on the shelf, one for nearly 40 years! Another was only released on Myspace and got lost when Myspace crashed, feaaturing Fil Ross on vocals. The third, was never quite finished and featured Allen Ashley on vocals. One day we will release it as a retrospective when the time seems right, but it is very different to what we do now. 

 But when we restarted in 2021 after lockdown, we had a bit of a reset and so in many ways it is a new band. I am now writing the bands third album with Tom Hammond on trumpet in the band (although the first album was largely recorded beforeTom joined). Our second album "We don't live in America" has been really well recieved. What next? Well there is a term called difficult third album syndrome.

The theory is that the first album is the best of a bands career before they started putting albums together. The first current album "Don't be afraid of a finger in the Sun" had a song we wrote in 1980, one we wrote in 1983 and one from just before Allen left. It also featured many songs I wrote in lockdown, when I didn't have much else to do. As for the second album, the idea is that the band still has fresh ideas and a few old songs to rehash as they know the way studios work better. We actually rehashed two songs from 1979 for it, albiet with different arrangements etc. There was also another two songs written with Allen that was due to appear, albiet with a different arrangements,  on the album we recorded with him. Also there was a song from the Myspace album, again heavily re-arranged. The other eight songs were new. I think it is works well. If you didnt know the history, I doubt you'd guess which songs are the old ones. 

So now, whilst we are plugging our new album like mad, we are working discreetly on the next album! The theory is that the third album is hastily hashed together by a band that ha run out of ideas. So is the cupboard dry and have we run out of ideas? There is still one old song we may add, and that will feature Fil on vocals, but other than that, all of the songs will have been written in the last year. Can we keep up the run of great new songs? Well only time will really tell, but I am really excited by the new material and the new songs we are writing. We played three at our recent album launch and they seemed to be well received. Do I feel daunted or uninspired? No, not really. I actually feel quite energised by the concept of writing new material. Of course the proof is in the pudding. But for me, I write when something inspires me. I also get a huge kick out of playing new songs with the band and hearing what they bring to the show. And then there is the process of recording, I love this. 

What I've come to realise though is that most musicians don't really enjoy the process of writing songs. They see it as a necessary evil and once they develop a formula that works, they struggle to adapt it.  Some of this is inertia, some of it is laziness and some of it is that they are terrified that if they change what they are doing, they will lose their audience. Not everyone has the fearsome attitude of David Bowie, who shed images and sounds and reinvented himself almost every year in the 1970's and early 1980's. By the time Bowie was releasing songs like Lets Dance, he'd largely shed the audience that loved Rebel Rebel. He made albums that were left field, like Youg Americans.  Now he's hailed as a genius, but then, many of his fans just switched off. 

If we look at the big Indie war between Oasis and Blur, we saw two every different bands. Oasis had a formula that worked brilliantly for two albums, Blur changed the spots constantly. When Oasis reformed it was a celebration of those two albums. When Blur reformed, it was a celebration of a long, diverse career. I know which works for me, but for Oasis, the cash still rolls in, so there is something to be said for their approach. 

So I think that the difficult third album is very much a syndrome for bands that are scared to evolve. If your music is very genre specific, I guess it is harder to keep pulling rabbits out of the hat. Artists that sell out stadiums often have the problem that their audience don't want to know about the new stuff. One of my wife's favourite artists is Paul Weller, I've rarely been to one of his shows where someone hasn't moaned about the lack of songs by the Jam. If he played a set pulled entirely from the Jam's first two albums, I guess most of their fans would go home ecstatic. Their third album featured songs like English Rose, that hinted at what was to come. However with Jam bangers on like Down in the tube station at midnight and David Watts, they managed to keep the fans onside and avoid the difficult third album tag. 

I get the feeling that artsist like Weller and Damon Albarn write songs because they enjoy it, rather than because they feel they have to. People have often noted the huge influence of Ian Dury on my music. It is funny because I was chatting about this to a friend, who commented "Well Ian Dury's third album was a bit of a clunker with no hits on it". They didn't realise that Stiff Records and Ian Dury didn't like putting singles on albums. Of course, Dury's first album Handsome was with Kilburn and The High Roads, so many consider Laughter his third album.Had it been on an album, Dury's biggest hit "Hit me with your rythm stick" would have been on his third album. It has sold over 1.29 million copies in the UK.  It does occur to me that we were very lucky that Dury hit his peak during the height of punk. He had a supportive label and an audience eager to buy into his talent. Perhaps the biggest tragedy is that if there is another Ian Dury out there, we won't hear their first album, let alone their third, because the gatekeepers will deem it "uncommercial". 

To sum up, I believe that the concept of difficult third album is a myth. For 99% of artists, the problem is difficult first album. If that is no good, the chances of a third album are miniscule!.

Anyway, here is the False Dots second or fifth album, depending on how you want to look at it!

A new PM, a new start?

 So today was Mr Andy Burnham's first day at the office as it were. He's been PM for around six weeks, but today is the first day he got to face Parliament. There has been some criticism of this gap,but I have to say I think it is rather sensible. It is not a trivial job and he needs to get on top of his briefs. One of my biggest criticisms of the UK system is that Parliament is as much about theatre as it is about actual proper governance. Sir Keir Stramer showed just how hard it is to be PM with a charisma bypass. It is very easy to conclude that an extremely competent PM is useless if they are bad at dealing with the House. 

The problem the UK has at the moment is that we have a whole swathe of massive decisions for our politicians to take, that will require tough decisions and these will affect our lives for decades. However, the electoral cycle means that Andy Burnham has two years to convince us he's the man for the job. Everyone on all sides of the house, who is a serious politician, knows we have to massively increase spending on things like defence, Adult social care, the NHS, schools, roads, railways, airports, water, electricity and gas, or the whole thing is going to fall apart. All of this costs serious money and so big tax rises are needed. Sadly, no politician has the guts to tell the truth. If they did, it would be suicidal as the opposition would crucify them. The alternative is managed decline and failure of the UK as a nation.

The post Thatcherite consensus is one which has ripped the UK apart. The concept that tax rises are a bad thing is a lie that we've all bought into. The right are currently pushing the line that we need more privatisation in the NHS. This ignores the fact that people living in countries where there is not a social healthcare system pay far more and many end up bankrupt when they get ill. We all want to walk the streets safe, but we won't pay for prisons and gaol's to ensure the law is enforced. Do we actually save money? No because we pay a fortune in insurance premiums instead. 

We want a railway that runs on time and safely, but we don't want to put in the investment that will deliver this. Does this save money? No, we are chronically inefficient as so many people spend so much time waiting for trains that don't come. The Tory mantra is that Taxes are bad,but they never lay out the consequences of a 'low tax economy'. The say that socialists only want to spend "YOUR MONEY" on services for "SOMEONE ELSE". We buy this old claptrap. We never say "hang on, my insurance premiums are going up due to rising crime, I can't get a doctors appointment and my train was late three times this week, because we don't spend enough monet doing the stuff we need to do as a nation".

I have a theory. I believe that the billionaires who are the biggest beneficiaries of these policies are in fact the biggest parasites of all. Not only are they greedy, but they actually damage the economy. They stockpile their cash ensuring it does not stimiulate the economy. Let me explain, A billion pounds is a thousand million pounds. If we took a billion quid off Britains richest people in taxes, they would not be any worse off materially. They wouldn't notice any material change in the quality of life. If we ere just to go out and give this to the million worst off families with children in the UK, a thousand quid each, this would massively improve their quality of living. They would put the money back into the economy and help drive economic growth. Local shops and businesses would get a huge and much needed injection of cash and the children of the families would see massive benefits. 

Now I can already hear the squeals of the right wing press, who work for billionaire press barons, and the bots controlled by them on Twitter. Why should 'hard working people' have to give up their hard earned cash to subsidise the poor? Well mostly because it is the right thing to do, but the idea isn't unique. When Rishi Sunak was Boris Johnson's chancellor, he did something similar with the "Eat out to help out" policy, to get us out and spending again. This policy largely benefitted the middle classes who like a bit of free dinner. But it did stimulate economic growth and saved a few businesses. It is now much ridiculed, but it gave the economy a massive boost. I am not an economist, I am a musician, but I understand the way the economy works, as I was born and raised in a family that ran small businesses. What you want is ordinary people to have cash, if you want a strong economy. Ultimately that bebefits everyone, even the mega rich. 

I do not begrudge the likes of Elon Musk and Bill Gates their billions. I just think that they should share a little bit of it around. They would not have to go without. You need people like them to take risks, start business, come up with innovation. They should be handsomely rewarded. But I do think that when they are sitting on piles of money that they will not spend in a dozen lifetimes, something is wrong. 

All of this probably explains why I'd make a lousy politician and why it is Andy Burnham and not me in No 10. I wish him well and I hope you do, even if you can't stand him or his politics. The reason is simple. If he screws up, we'll all suffer. One last thing. I suspect that Andy Burnham is the first PM since John Major that I think you could have a pint and a chat with and it wouldn't be excruciating.