Yo yo yo!! Morning everybody in Dragnerveland!!!
“Holy shit!!” I hear you cry, “These guys are STILL going?? What the fuck, no way? I figured they all just died or something?”
Ha-hahahaha!! No such luck ya bastards!! We’re still here, kicking it strong, holdin’ it down, keeping it real and indeed any number of other colloquial urban metaphors you’d care to dig up.
So… to answer your question (assuming you had one of course) – Yes, believe it or not we are very much still here - although I am painfully aware that it’s looked a little quiet in the Dragnerve camp recently!
Not a lot of gigs or… well, anything really happening over the last few weeks. I’ll admit right here that, personally, the whole lack of gigs thing has sucked.
Really. Big Time.
However, I am almost orgasmically pleased to report that it’s got fuck all to do with want of trying. Yes kiddies, that’s right – we’ve actually had to turn down shows!! Shock! Horror! Disgust! Apathy? Hell no!! You see, there be a plan a brewin’!
Believe it or not, over the past month or so literally thousands of people (oh alright… Hundreds? Bah! OK, OK, alright… several. …No?? Gah! FINE THEN… Three), have all been asking me:
“Dude, what’s going on? What’s the band up to?? When’s your next show??? How do you get your hair so frikkin’ awesome???? Can I be you?????”
Sadly for all those involved, I’ve largely been unable to help with the last two.
Sucks to be you.
However, as for the first three…? Well, wouldn’t ya know it - that just so happens to be the nub and crux of this latest disjointed, self-indulgent, rambling little soliloquy.
Now before we go any further Dear Reader, I feel it only fair to let you know at this stage, that last night was a particularly “Heavy One” and I have yet to snatch even the tiniest suggestion of a wink of sleep. Rest assured, I wouldn’t blame you at all for bailing out now because to be honest – if you’re hoping for anything even approaching a vaguely coherent thread or narrative… sorry – you may be in the wrong place. For those of you planning on sticking around for a little bit, I’d be really grateful if you could just go right ahead and forget everything you were ever taught about spelling, punctuation and grammar as well. I can assure you I have.
Right then! Now that’s all sorted out, I can plough onwards, labouring under the misapprehension that anyone at all is anywhere near with me at this point… but totally guilt free!! After all, I did warn ya. Woo hooo!!
Ah-hem. Yeah, so anyway… back to my original point. I’m pretty sure there was one in there somewhere?
Yes! Stuff!!
Right…
So don’t be disappointed, disheartened, disgruntled or dis-anything for that mater, at our total lack of everything. It might LOOK to the casual observer like we’re nothing but a bunch of hairy, apathetic, shiftless layabouts but God-Dammit, we’ve been busy none the less!!
“Prove it!!” screamed the mob.
Well… no. I can’t. But what I CAN do is tell you what we’ve been doing, and I’m afraid you’ll just have to bloody well take our word for it, ‘K? ‘K.
One word: Album.
Yup - the time was right. It HAD to be done, really. Our little Freebie 5 track Demo thing (get it a www.Dragnerve.com kiddies if you haven’t already. And if you haven’t then you bloody well SHOULD… loser) we’ve been shilling around has served us well but it’s been doing the rounds for AGES! Paul and Lee really worked their balls off recording, mixing and polishing that little gem. And they did an awesome job, no two ways. Have to say, it’s fucking handy as hell having a fully qualified sound engineer and… ermmmm… a dude with a really big beard in the band (hehehe…). Still though, at the end of the day those tracks were what they were – Demo Tracks.
So now comes the real challenge – can we record 10 or 11 tracks, by ourselves, with all our own gear (mainly in Lees flat!), piece by piece in whatever spare time we can grab over the next couple of months and make it sound like Brendan O’Brien was twiddling the knobs?
I dunno. I hope so!! That’s the plan at any rate, and it all seems to be coming up Milhouse so far.
So that’s where and why we’ve been hiding ourselves away. All efforts are being hurled with reckless abandon into the creation of what (we hope!) will be a snarling, angry, tooled up, balls out, epic-bastard-monster of an album!!
…that is all assuming, of course, that Paul EVER finds the drum sound he’s totally happy with. Honestly, I love the guy to pieces, I do - but he’s the fucking Rain Man of percussion. Obsessive Percussive Disorder. Part of me thinks it’s beautiful… the dedication to perfection… the ability to differentiate between the most subtle of nuances on every individual inch of his kit… the sheer bloody-mindedness to whack the piss out of the same snare drum 14,000 times in one sitting and not go completely insane. It’s amazing.
The other part of me just wants to cry and hit him.
Nah! I’m only joking! We’ve got to get it right, right? I’d rather it took us until the end of time but we were all 100% happy with it, than unleash some half-arsed, compromise-riddled piece of shit we weren’t totally in love with. Although to be fair, I fucking hope it DOESN’T take us till the end of time! That would suck balls. I’m sort of hoping for the end of November myself but don’t quote me on that. This might turn out to be a bit more of an epic undertaking than we’d first thought. But don’t worry, whatever happens, you’ll hear about it here first. Or at some point at least. Maybe. If I can be bothered. =)
I suppose that’s the beauty of not being beholden to a record label, or anyone at all other than ourselves, really. There’s no real timescales. We’re not under pressure to get stuff finished… other than the pressure we’re putting on ourselves, obviously. Make no mistake about it – we want to get this thing DONE!! But thank God, there are no Bean Counters standing over our shoulders, quantifying the cost of the last 8 seconds.
Fuck that.
We can take our time.
I mean hey – if someone wants to pick it up and give us a little financial, marketing and tour support, we’re not going to turn it down! …well, not the right deal, anyway. But gone are the days when, basically, you were fucked without a record label behind you. It’s a different world now, a different industry… and probably for the better. But for every positive being independent brings, there are just as many negatives. Money, for one! It’s a trade off. Income or Integrity? Cash or Control? I suppose it’s an easy question to answer when no one’s actually waving fat sacks of currency in your face but still, I think I’d rather do it our way. I want this to be ours. I want it to be perfect.
So we’ll see what happens next. Time, as is regularly the case, will tell. It’s going to be Heads Down, Arses Up for us all over the next few months, there’s a lot of fucking work to do!! We do have a couple of one off gigs booked between now and the end of the year – the next being 9th August at the Tattoo Jam in Doncaster (which I suspect will be a bit of a Legendary Weekend!!) – but other than these handful of shows, our entire focus now is getting this album finished and making it as fucking punishing as we possibly can.
I said it earlier and I meant it… I really, really do miss playing live though. That’s what it’s all about for me. It’s just about the most fun you can have in the world and hell yes – I miss it. I’ve also found it’s pretty easy to let your mind wander off and feel like you’re standing still, not progressing, not pushing things forwards just because all of a sudden, the goal posts have moved. We’re NOT just focussing on booking and preparing for “The Next Gig” anymore. Realistically, I guess that’s been our single purpose up until this point: get gig – rehearse – play gig – repeat.
Now, it’s all a little different. It’s a case of adjusting the goals, the end points I suppose and realising that actually, this is IT – this is officially The Long Haul. …Or the beginning of it at very least. Ultimately, these next few months could end up defining or changing our lives entirely, in one way or another… and it really could go either way.
Spooky stuff, huh?
Maybe a little over-analytical and quite possibly entirely over-dramatic but hey – that’ll be the sleep depravation for you!
Meanwhile, do me a favour and don’t forget about us. We’re still here, doing our thing and for damn sure we’ll be back before long… with a whole mess of new stuff for you all to try and kill each other to. In all honesty, I can’t wait!!
...I just hope I get some fucking sleep before then though.
Nighty night...
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