Laurence and the Slab Blog

Think of a Name, Get the Tattoo

We formed Grumpy Records almost five years ago, my younger brother, some friends and I. It started as a tax-dodge. My brother was making money hand over fist and his accountant suggested to him that he should try to offset his tax burden with some recorded losses – a ghost company that would appear to lose as much as his other company made. I was present at the meeting because I was listed as company secretary, a nominal position which did not distract me from recording songs, reading books and writing pretentious blogs. Like a modern-day Theo van Gogh, my brother’s unfailing support allowed his elder sibling to indulge in artistic pursuits, rather than grind to the capitalist bop.

We sat in Nice n Sleazy after the meeting with the accountant. It must have been a Monday, because the open-mic was rambling on downstairs. I pointed out to my brother that if he wanted to appear to lose money then the best idea would be to start a record company. No-one loses money like a couple of idealists in the world of music, I thought. My brother was instantly enthusiastic, although I don’t think we properly considered the vast difference between appearing to lose money and actually just losing it all.

The next day he called me and suggested that we call the label Grumpy, which I agreed to, and that we should meet in The Goat for tea-time drinks to discuss our founding aesthetic principles, which I also agreed to. By the time he pressed my flat buzzer two hours later, I had designed a logo for our new label, which he approved of and asked for an A4 copy. I wasn’t sure why he wanted the printout, but I thought to myself that if he tried to augment my art in any way then I’d change his surname by deed-poll. When he reappeared at my flat early the next day, still hungover and with the logo tattooed on his rib (pictured), all became clear. “Think of a name, do a wee drawing, then get the tattoo, Larry Boy – that’s the Grumpy way!” he shouted as he crossed the door.

Before we ever got to release a record and lose much money, my brother suffered a freak stroke and spent days in a coma, hooked up to life-support machines. Sitting by his bedside on the first night, I caught a glimpse of the tattoo as the Nigerian nurse fixed the sheets on the bed. She must have thought I was some kind of sicko when I burst into an uncontrollable, nervous laugh.

Soon after he recovered from his ordeal, I told my brother that I wouldn’t be able to continue with the label. I’d spent years sneering at the stitch-up of a beauty pageant that is the music industry, along with some fellow outcasts that I tried to walk a high road with. My brother’s brush with death had scared me senseless, and there seemed to be too much bad juju in Glasgow then, so I decided to get out of the place, get in with the stitches and walk whichever road was easiest underfoot. I joined a good band, made some records and travelled around on tour for a few years. I had fun for a while, but I always promised my brother that we’d release records on Grumpy eventually.

From Monday, you can buy the Mushroom single (GRUMP001) from iTunes and other digital stores, and you can also purchase a pre-release copy of Lo-Fi Disgrace (GRUMP002) from Bandcamp (the official release is not until next month). The links are not live yet, but will be by Monday. We think we have found a couple of other bands to release after the dust has settled on the Slab Boys record, and my only hope is that the second incarnation of Grumpy Records sees less heartache than the first. 

Electronic Propaganda Kitsch

One of the more frustrating tasks of being in a band is trying to conjure interesting answers to vacuous interview questions – “How did you all meet? Who thought of the name? What’s your favourite film?” – Who the devil cares?

We did a good interview recently where the questions were free of indifference and sycophantism, and both of my frontal lobes were required intact to answer. With less brandy I may not have claimed noise-pop as my birth right. Regardless, I suppose the responses offer some insight into the band, the album and our hopes for the future, so Ringo has kindly allowed us to use the interview recording in the video below.

The background music is a work in progress we recorded in the rehearsal room and the visuals are pieced from from archive footage we found. 

Please Release Me, Let Me Go

It was a mere 14 months ago that I finished recording the first Laurence and the Slab Boys album. In the time passed since I put my guitar and fuzz-pedal away, I think I’ve let around seven people hear the complete, finished results (though, of course, I have made quite a few of the tracks available online, and the people that I’ve trusted with the album will have, without doubt, also let other people hear it, so this is hardly the Ark of the Covenant we’re discussing). I have come to wonder about the value of writing songs if no-one ever hears them, so…

The first single from the album, Mushroom, will be released on 28^th May (download link to follow.)

The album, Lo-Fi Disgrace, will be officially released on CD and digital download on 18^th June. It will be available from Bandcamp, iTunes, most other digital stores, and selected record shops (though quite who is doing the selecting is debatable).

There will be a limited amount of physical copies available to buy on pre-release from Bandcamp on 28^th May. I believe this offer will apply worldwide.

A number of people have asked me about a vinyl release, and while I would like to see the record available in this format, I’m told manufacture is prohibitively expensive and so this will have to wait until the second-pressing. We’re not looking to wage any format wars, so perhaps at such time we would offer a vinyl discount to any fans that have already bought on CD, though don’t decry me as a villain or traitor if this turns out to be an unworkable arrangement.

Some of these tracks are several years old, and the youngest is already 16 months old, so I find myself eager to write and record new songs. If Lo-Fi Disgrace finds an appreciative audience, we may make another album this year yet. The boys and I have already started to sow the first sonic seeds of a bold new sound.

As ever, you’ll be the first to know when and where to buy the album, along with any news of shows we might play. 

If You Want to Believe, I’m Just Being Naïve

I haven’t written in some time. It’s not that I’ve been idle, just swamped by the crocodile-infested waters of modern life. With the fruits of my past labours diminishing fast, I thought I should place at least one foot in something with a more stable future than the music industry. So I invested in a new fashion design label. It’s not exactly a sure-thing, but we’ll see how it works out.

Back in the world of music, I’ve resolved to release the Laurence and the Slab Boys album after all. I recorded it about a year ago now, but since this time I’ve left it doing nothing, letting only a handful of trusted friends hear it. I’m told I have something of a martyr complex, and I can see why some of those closest to me might say this – I did have half a notion to never officially release the record, and instead allow it to propagate naturally. This way, in the decades to come it might be critically appreciated for the strength of the words and music alone, untainted by press releases, promotional videos, and all the other industry mechanisms. What a pretentious sod!

Regardless, dear reader, I’ve chased away my own naïve posturing, spoken with the people I need to speak to, approved the artwork, and I believe that the cogs of industry are currently churning out the physical product as I write. As a result, copies of “Lo-Fi Disgrace” will be available relatively soon, through all the usual channels, and will be preceded by a digital single release. You will, of course, be the first to hear when I have more details available to share.

Look after each other, 

L. 

The Monetarist Mix

In this day and age, where almost everyone is a bandit on the information superhighway, plundering recorded music at will, and where major corporations respond by flooding the market with more and more Product, in some anti-Keynesian musical monetarism, I must wear many hats to keep the hungry dogs from my door. When I’m not tangling metaphors and making factually-woeful macroeconomic statements, amongst other things I remix songs for other bands under any number of aliases, usually for money but sometimes for love.

In most cases I dispatch the track to whoever solicited the remix and then leave them to disseminate it as they see fit. Recently, however, a good friend of mine – the singer in a post-punk band from West Germany – asked me to remix one of his songs, but he hated my version so much that he insisted I remove the band name from the track! I can understand his frustration, because, sensing that aggressive German singing would not compliment a dance-beat, I replaced his vocal almost entirely with an electronic, dissenting, neo-feminist rant about pop culture and pornography.

If my friend doesn’t want it, then you can have it…

http://soundcloud.com/vibemaxx/dance-scenesters-dance

It’s not exactly high-art, and it is a departure from the music I usually offer you in my own name, but some of you might conceivably like it.

Larry’s Golden 25

Following yesterday’s assertion that we’re suffocated by choice and that no man needs more than 25 albums, here is my golden 25. I’m not saying these are necessarily the best records ever made, just the ones I don’t think I’d like to be without, and these albums alone could keep me happy forevermore. Most will seem pretty obvious choices for a white male in his twenties, but they are obvious for a reason. The list is in alphabetical order, so I’m not raising any individual album above the other two dozen. 

Astral Weeks (Van Morrison)

At San Quentin (Johnny Cash)

Blood on the Tracks (Bob Dylan)

Bringing It All Back Home (Bob Dylan)

The Colour of Spring (Talk Talk)

Darkness on the Edge of Town (Bruce Springsteen)

Empires and Dance (Simple Minds)

Forever Changes (Love)

Funeral (Arcade Fire)

Greetings from Asbury Park (Bruce Springsteen)

Harvest (Neil Young)

I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning (Bright Eyes)

In Rainbows (Radiohead)

London Calling (The Clash)

Loveless (My Bloody Valentine)

Low (David Bowie)

Neu! (Neu!)

Ocean Rain (Echo and the Bunnymen)

OK Computer (Radiohead)

A Pagan Place (The Waterboys)

Psychocandy (The Jesus and Mary Chain)

Songs From a Room (Leonard Cohen)

The Velvet Underground & Nico (The Velvet Underground)

XTRMNTR (Primal Scream)

Zuma (Neil Young & Crazy Horse)

All That’s Digital Will One Day Be Lost

My laptop went kaput recently, so I had to reformat it and lost most of my documents in the process. I’m a hard-drive hoarder, so losing two years’ worth of complaint letters to my bank and the makers of malfunctioning household items might be a blessing in disguise, but I did lose some important things along the way.

In a past-life, I enjoyed getting boxes of old photographs from my parents’ or grandparents’ lofts and then spending an hour laughing with family or friends at the strange fashions and the hairstyles that we all had in years long gone. Lots of the photos were blurry, the blemishes on our faces were not touched-up in Photoshop, and some of them even had the dreaded red-eye, but at least they were there. I wonder if people will be able to reminisce like this in the future, because it seems that every time I upgrade my laptop or camera I lose hundreds of photographs – countless emotions and memories, in their digital incarnation, fated to landfill somewhere.            

When I was on the road with my last band, I lost three iPods in back-stages or dressing rooms, along with clothes, mobile-phones and money. On my first iPod I amassed 80GB of incredible music, and I console myself with the knowledge that somewhere there’s a barman or hotel cleaner with an immaculate collection of the best guitar and electro music ever made. I’m now on my fourth music player, and I’ve populated each one since the first with less and less diligence and enthusiasm, knowing that it’s a futile task, since all that’s digital will one day be lost.    

I’ve written before about how music is now almost entirely disposable, but I’m as guilty as anyone of devaluing it. We now have unlimited choice of what we listen to – with the internet and the hideous, dastardly Spotify – but this abundance can’t have enriched our enjoyment of music. I think I was happier when I was 14 and had only two dozen albums to choose from. With this in mind, I’m going to cease my dependence on digital music and buy on vinyl only the 25 records which are most important to me. That way I can cherish and study every harmonic and melodic nuance again in the music I love. Perhaps, in time, the elite body will overspill into a greater number than 25, but when that time comes I’ll put the surplus in a cupboard or garage somewhere. Some of you should do the same, and I flatter myself that one day some people will count the first Laurence and the Slab Boys album – Lo-Fi Disgrace, when it is finally released this year – in their magical 25.

In the time it takes the grooves in the plastic to wear and the cardboard sleeves to degrade, a hundred trillion digital songs will fade.

Misspelt Revolution

I feel like I’ve moved in a full circle this last decade, since my high-school friends and I grew tired of trying to force our socialist, anti-imperialist principals on a passive common room and decided to get active. We designed a handsome poster to proclaim our message and set about pasting it on every prominent surface in the middle-class suburb we lived in. “Your handiwork, I presume, Reid?” my headmaster asked between sniggers, after he summoned me the next morning. Pasting a poster on his office window may have been too brazen. “You should have asked one of the other politburo members to check your spelling, son!” – I was horrified, mortified, aghast and disgusted with myself when I realised that the first proclamation of our bold revolution read “Join the YOUNG SCOTTISH MARIXST PARTY”.

One week later I left school, three months before my sixth-year exams, partly as a sacrificial protest at the headmaster’s continued insistence that I play an active part in the school life by joining the Young Enterprise Group – “Capitalist swines!” I sneered – but mainly because I was so embarrassed that my revolution had sank without dignity in the harbour. The poster catastrophe made it too easy for every sub-group of cynic to tell me that I was only reckless and naïve.

I didn’t concern myself with politics at university, because the Glasgow University Labour Party met in the wrong student union, where the Yahs and the Sticky Biscuit Eaters played, and joining the Socialist Party was dependent on signing a Legalise Cannabis petition. I was neither for nor against the Free the Weed campaign, but I couldn’t understand what it had to do with the pursuit of social progression, so I decided to wash my hands of the whole bureaucratic lot and divert my attention to beer and girls.          

In any case, I was reneging on my school-boy politics by then. Communism failed every nation that adopted it, and it would be years before pure, unbridled capitalism would pull the rug from under our feet. At the start of the twenty-first century, with a supposedly centre-left government in power and the nation enjoying a period of plenty, anything which threatened upward mobility and the free market was a hard sell.   

My girlfriend bought me a Charles Dickens biography for Christmas. I remember reading his novels at school and shuddering when I read those accounts of nineteenth century London. For a privileged few it was the greatest city the world had ever seen, but most people there lived and died like dogs in the underside of the empire’s brightest jewel.                             

The arrogance of chronology tells us that the times we live in are the best there has ever been and that things will only get better, but the human race may be regressing. Until two hundred years ago men built vast cathedrals that no man today could begin to plan, in 1969 man landed on the moon but today we cannot, and in 1976 the Concorde flight from Europe to America was twice as fast as the same journey today. Science and technology have cured many diseases and made most of our daily lives more convenient, but they have failed to answer all the questions they once asked and have worked themselves into a stalemate. We are left with only Humanity and Art to pin our hopes on, but there is still time to destroy those things, and if anyone imagines that it cannot happen then they are the reckless and naïve ones.

Future historians might remember that for a brief period at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first all men were born more or less equal (and artists and musicians made a living before they died!) For fifty or sixty years we were protected against abject poverty by the welfare state, able to live in affordable homes, safe in the knowledge that if we became sick then we would be healed or cared for, and free to pursue an education and be what we wanted to be. Then we gave control back to the old order and let our destiny be dictated by financial vultures, healthcare mercenaries, scoundrel arms-dealers, media hegemonists, and self-serving, elitist politicians. If we are not vigilant, once again only the very few will wear silk and velvet while the rest of us stand in the gutter, begging for alms in mud-stained rags.  

I wonder if all those years ago, on balance, I was right to try and stand against the wave of selfishness, indifference, automated inhumanity and corporate imperialism that was sweeping our time. If we are to be saved from a future that looks a lot like the past, however, then it won’t be down to any establishment or ideology – I’ll venture we will owe our salvation to beauty and brotherliness.

What’s the Bloody Point?

I drank too much filter coffee too early in the day and now the caffeine-comedown has me cursing the futility of being. When journalists have asked me in the past to explain the “story” or “meaning” behind one of my songs (yuck!), I always say that the song is the best expression of itself, so it’s a curious thing to try and convey ideas in a medium like this.

Five minutes ago, I read that there are probably half a billion blogs online today, and I can only imagine that relatively few people read any of them. When I post one of these entries, a number of the more saintly and loyal amongst you hit “like” on the Facebook status update, but I imagine very few of you actually read these tirades. Still, the New Business Model for Music states that you must keep people engaged – when you’re not giving them songs, give them something else. Well, I have a green Audi that one of you can have, if you want?

When I turned down the first offer of a recording contract, eons ago, when people just about still bought albums, my greatest fear in the world was that my life as I knew it would be stolen from me by tabloid intrusion. My songs were probably better than everyone else’s and I would be a victim of my own success, I thought. I suppose I should be glad that my great fear has never come to pass.

I’ll lay off the rocket fuel tomorrow.