Records in the works? I’m still working with Dave Miatt on our Oxjam charidee EP. The trouble about doing everything for free is that sometimes it’s hard to pull everything together. We’ve had about 8 different sessions with several people at the controls, as well as making a great live tape at Hamptons (thanks to everyone who showed up and sang!) … so by rights we should have pulled something together, a long time ago in fact. The reality is that we’re all busy with our own projects so it’s quite hard. Now we’ve got Tom, Rysia, Bea, Alfie and Audrey at Furnace Studios cracking the whip though, and I think we’ll get something tied up quite soon.. ‘down among the dead men’!! (for those in the know)
Erm what about my own stuff in all this? Well some of you will know that i’ve been slowly demoing up new tracks for about a year now, at home, with Neil Kennedy and Geoff at The Ranch in Nursling, and with Izaak Bullen in Winchester. It’s weird, I’ve never ever had any problems writing songs themselves but arranging – fuck – it’s not my strong point by a long shot…
Things have entered a new kind of phase lately, though. People are always coming up to me and saying ‘Hey Joe, if you ever want me to play with you, just give me a call’ and, for once, I’ve started listening. Without naming names we’re talking about some Really Talented People to a man and woman… . The guys at Furnace have also been really generous with their time and I’ve found we’re on totally the same wavelength when it comes to stuff like Pavement, Cat Power, Feist, PJH etc. SO we’re starting to gather a bit of recording momentum on the demos. Also gradually putting this band together – so at some point in the next several weeks we’ll hire a barn, truck all the hardware down and track it all.
The end result probably won’t be very Lonely-Joe-Parker-y, at least not in the ramshackle, unfinished way of old, but it still be seat of the pants stuff cos most of it’ll be pretty much live. Performances are gonna change, too – about 2/3 of the time it’ll just be me rocking up on the bike as usual, but for some shows we’ll do the slick luscious sounding full band thing. I won’t lie to you, that’s only gonna be shows where we get paid enough! You get what you pay for! I’ll still break strings and forget words though, just with a sick band there as well…
just a quick note to say what’s going on at the moment…
recording-wise, i’m meant to be finishing leila, brooklyn and shanty to go on this split EP for Oxjam with Dave Miatt. unfortunately we’re doing it all on tick, and its going really frustratingly slowly.. hence the shitty demos on myspace at the moment, sorry about that. the idea is to do some more tracking of the current sessions (produced by Izaak Bullen a.k.a. The Scarlet Letter Union) very soon. we’ll see.
longer term at least we’ve got round to putting this facebook page up which took longer to sit down and do than you might imagine.. “will people fan me?” “should it be just me editing it or should i let someone else do it?” “why am i such a massive cunt?” etc.. but we figured it was better to have these pages up and going rather than spend ages waiting for some mythical ‘jump off’ moment. so there you go.
in the summer months lots of fun happening – will be doing another bike tour like last summer, but this time it’ll be longer and (hopefully) a few bigger venues. also the legs will be shorter and planned longer in advance – this time i REALLY want loads more people to come along for the ride!
then sometime towards the end of the summer, depending on everyone’s commitments, we’re spending a few weeks at Furnace Studios – a residential studios in Bulgaria – to jam out an LP proper for an autumn release on Sotones. Also all the back catalogue is getting slowly re-issued on digital too – stay posted for that.
in the meantime, take care of each other x
joe
ps: don’t put tipex on the keys of your computer to tell black notes from white ones in gareageband.. really bad idea…
they are well rough – did about 11 tracks in an hour at the fabulous RANCH studios with mister neil kennedy cos he was in a hurry – and mainly they’re there to help me learn the songs.
you see i’ve got no way to record anything here. and my memorys fucked so learning songs once ive written them (don’t laugh..) is hard. but now i can go to sleep listening to them, learn the words, and work out what they mean
i hope you do too.
.. the background to all this is me and dave (who you might know better from thomas tantrum) in his incarnation as jackie paper are going to have a split 12″ out on sotones in the near future. yay
so – the US was crazy. Obama, hey?! they _really_ love that guy – was p[layin on election night and it was MENTAL. met some guys on williamsburg bridge, made a lil vid, bit silly. caught CMJ and especially Kirsten Ketsjer who were a.c.e., check them out. please.
lots and lotsa gigs, some of them in some really interesting places. i mean that as well, more later when i get a chance to write my little journal up! or maybe i’ll just scan it in.we’ll see. but here’s a sneak preview: what do ex-cons, spare shoes and oranges have in common??
answers on a postcard. whats up now then?
well, i’m pretty much utterly flat fucking broke. in money terms, at least. but one thing i found out is that when i’m travelling and touring, looking and listening, the songs come thick and fast and better yet, i have an ace ace time. why is it whenever you’re on the radio you miss it? cos we were on RADIO ONE thats right. thought i’d sneak in getting played by steve lamaqc really subtly. see what i did there? big mad props to dave jackie paper miatt for that one, love you dave x.
so the idea is to work really hard in some shitty jobs till the new year while i finish off some songs in the meantime. these ones are really good, i can already tell they’re better than anything i’ve written so far since just in gtr/vox they sound ace. when i get some other stuff on there it’s going to blow up. theres still some love and loss themes in there, but i’ve got a lot better at noticing what’s going on around me, so expect lots of other peoples’ stories too. they’re all our tall tales after all.
so in december i’m demoing some new stuff, doing lots of gigs nearer home to work the kinks till january and a bit of proper recordings in feb before touring a bit more widely. if you would like me to come and play for you drop me a line. I need to cover travel expenses these days though – if you end up out of pocket on ten gigs a month playing becomes a big fat un-fun expensive hobby, and i’m not into that! just so you know. for any charidee stuff thats different of course..
in the meantime the last few gigs planned before december are:
WHOOP!
actually that single solitary whoop can’t convey how excited i am to be playing NEW YORK in ELECTION WEEK!!!!!!
got some gigs in new york this week, me-doing-solo-stuff. come and say hi if you’re about, or get people down, hey? cos i could do with the spare change, innit.
MON 3rd – The Delancey, Delancey St, East Village
TUE 4th – Arlene’s Grocery, Stanton St, East Village
FRI 7th – Potion Cafe, McKibbin St, Brooklyn
…
..the sharp eyed amongst you will notice that basically i cross-posted that from the power page. i know. i’m trying to work out what to do really, what to focus on. oh well, we’ll see i suppose. answers on a postcard.
… bit of a ‘PS’ this, but i’ve got a CD knocking about of demos which i’m calling ‘Exiles Sketches’
as in , i feel like an exile stuck here
and its just demos, geddit?
there’s all the songs i can remember at the moment (88) which i put down in case i have an accident and cos of publishing stuff and in case my memory gets even worse. so its an MP3 cd, thats the only way i could fit it on.
My debut for Sotones (with Joe Parker And The Power) was this 4-track EP made up of the title track (“a slice of poppy exuberance Nightshift magazine praised as ‘… a summery pop thrash with some great pots and pans drumming…'” according to the press release), perennial LJP standard Number Nine (an oddly restrained version, in fact) plus the obligatory live version and demo. We thought we were gonna take over the world back then, and it kind of captures that youthful arrogance, even if the highlight of our career was supporting a late-decline Voodoo Glow Skulls. I quite like it.
Not available any more – CDs were limited and distribution deal with 7Digital has lapsed.
heres a bit recycled from the power page… then a bit that isn’t…
The Future
(i wrote a long, eloquent bit this morning and i poured my damn guts out. but myspace stole it away into the ether between ‘submit’ and you reading it. huh.)
Well we all know what Leonard Cohen thinks. And other people think it’s a foreign country. if that’s the case it seems like I must be on the wrong side of the fence. it’s all about the UK i think. there’s a whole land of weird little b+bs, couches to crash on and national distress coach tickets to fake and the other day i realised how little i really know about the rest of the country.
did you know you can’t even get pea fritters up north?
i mean, i’ve been there before, played a fair bit of it and worked in scotland, etc etc etc but with a whole band you’re always a bit distracted; focused; zeroed in on the mythology of Your Band On The Road. so i want to take some time to meet some new people and introduce them to my frankenstein guitar. and filthy moods in the morning before the coffee comes.
now, to a pretty large degree this is me rationalizing as the rest of The Power have all got their own very exciting projects to work on, but i’d like to think i’ve got some free will in it. which is either totally true or totally an illusion, depending on how you look at it.
also – after a wee break in the states to find out a bit about how they elect people over there – and probably a couple of months pouring concrete for dosh (like over twice what a scientist gets, which reflects shit on the people who pay the scientists) i’ve got a feeling that i’ll have some quite different songs in the book.
we’ll still release Do This! the last power EP at some point i hope, depending on what Sotones’ other priorities are, i guess. at the moment it looks like either a rush job before christmas, or shelving it for a year or so. i hope we do get to release it though cos its a cracker – ‘Points’ is like the third or fourth best track off it, ‘Buttercup’ is going to blow you away.
in fact making ‘Do This!’ was probably the most satisfying thing i’ve done so far. that’s probably why i’m not in a rush to get it out, cos i really, actually, for once believe its okay enough that i don’t need to worry. also it reminds me of bob and davo and cams and jimmy.
in the meantime there’s a bike tour to do, a guitar to fix, and some relationships to patch up. see you on the tour or a bit later on,
joe xx
—ooh, a new bit—–luckyReadersOfLonelyJoe—-
I really like cycling. i’m really pissed off at the moment cos i can’t cycle. i haven’t been able to for weeks now since i got hit on my way to camden and cracked out a cotter pin (bikeoids know what i mean) leaving my bottom bracket a bit of a wreck.
so i’m looking forward to the tour really.
but! don’t forget confidence – cos okay, he did pull out, but i was coming down the hill in the sunny, happy, isnt-the-day-nice-on-top-of-the-world way you do when you’re cocky, but don’t realise it.
first off thanks a lot cos we all know what a spaz i am at organising stuff…including crashing here n there.. anyway
here’s some flyers and other info type things
a bit of a mish cos i’m still trying to write up (15 days to go…) but pretty much there and so here are some flyers n that. any help u can give to promote, please do cos trying to think in promoter-speak and science-mind at the same time is driving me slowly crazy. well, rapidly crazy. well, crazy generally.. there u see??!?!?!?
SEPTEMBER
21 – Oxford (Port Mahon)
w/ Stornoway, Moneytree plus guest tbc
tickets from wegottickets, concessions here
load-in 5pm, doors 7.30pm, curfew 11pm sharp
22 – Winchester (Railway Inn)
23- Guildford (Platform Nine)
solo show
24 – London (Brixton Windmill)
supporting Let Our Enemies Beware, And So I Watch You From Afar,
tickets from wegottickets
25 – Brighton (hanging with the Moules)
26 – Southampton (Hamptons)
w/ Peter lyons, James Ewers (MY LUMINARIES), SKULLS (acoustic set), hellomynameisjoshi.
tickets from wegottickets
load-in 5pm, soundchecks: joe – 5.30 pete – 6 james – 6.15 emma – 6.30 joshi – 6.45, doors 7.30 curfew midnight, party till 1, who’s got the after party???!?
hello.
you’re at the end of the email…
i better go and write a thesis now. its okay, only 18,000 words to go. that’s only just over 1000 a day.
thanks, love you all lots and you know i’ll be mister-nice-and-calm once its all done…
joe xx
In the summer of 2008 (while I should have been in the death throes of my PhD thesis), I collated most of my recorded musical output to that date.
Weighing in at 88 tracks, this collection of archive tracks, demos, live material and unreleased studio recordings came in boutique (read: hand-assembled and really fiddly) packaging. I made a run of, yes, 88 copies, initially each 7-disc sets. After about five of these monsters at CD-quality, I switched to a single disc per copy with tracks as 320 kb MP3s (burning 7 CDs per copy by hand being a huge pain in the arse.) The inlay was also pretty special – handwritten, I spent a couple of days laying and re-laying it out before I was happy with it. The power of PhD procrastination, hey?
The tracks span the period 2003-2008, with tracks being roughly split chronologically over discs. The first disc covers early songs written as a student in London, mainly (of course) being about girls’n’stuff. These mainly fall into forgettable 3-chord pop ditties lile ‘Spanish Girls‘ or more interesting constructions like ‘Slurry Jamaica Rum Night‘ – which I like for their naivete. I gave a lot of these tracks out at open mic nights and the like, usually with art by Liz Moores and the title ‘All My Friends Wear Stetsons‘, or something similar.
Next up, the ‘Basement Songs‘ were recorded in my first year as a grad student in Oxford, mainly with my mates Ben and Finn, who lived in the building next door. Drinking wine late at night was de rigeur for them as Oxford arts undergrads. It had a worse effect on me and these are mainly pretty hopeless songs (as in, both rubbish and depressing).
The remaining sleeve art master
Disc Three is ‘Ten Friends‘ in its entirety, the demo disc that ended up turning into – with friends from Moneytree, The Beaux Hardts and Jimi Ray – The Mega Hairy Men and later The Power. The fourth disc was also released elsewhere, as the Power’s EP ‘Bee Stings’. Here it was also packaged with the vaguely Nick Cave-esque murder ballad ‘Mary Rose’, which was removed from the EP tracklisting prior to release. A shame as it was the best song on there, though a poor recording.
More tracks from The Power make up Disc Five, this time in the form of unreleased studio tracks (finished and unfinished) as well as live sets from the Access Festival (a 4000+ open-air fundraiser held in Southampton in 2007) and the Beaux Hardts’ leaving show at The Talking Heads in September 2007. After they left, the Power effectively dissolved despite a few ill-fated attempts to revive it with a different lineup. Songs like ‘Buttercup‘ and ‘Points / Quiet‘ are still in my live set today, however. The most finished tracks make up Disc Six, the ‘Do This’ EP which was – heheheh – never actually ‘done’.
Finally, Disc Seven consisted entirely of new works and demos from Jan – April 2008, after the van I was living in got stolen and I had to move into accommodation. I tend to write in busts and this was a great example of that – for a few months I averaged about three songs a week. Also, I was trying to pull a girl, which always helps get the creativity flowing a bit…
Tracklisting:
Disc 1 – All My Friends Wear Stetsons (2003)
Intro
Aim For The End
<3 U Baby
Caught In A Trap
Charly
Coke-A-Coke-A-Cocaine (Feat. Dave Wade-Brown, Alec Fraser)
Davy Crockett
…Ever!
How To Make A Rock N Roll Song (Feat. Dave Wade-Brown)
I Didn’t Try
Introductions
London Streets
Not That Good
torture
Spanish Girls (Feat. Dave Wade-Brown)
Sorry Lover Song
Walking Down Streets
Slurry Jamaica Rum Nite
Surprises (Feat. Dave Wade-Brown, Alec Fraser)
Disc 2 – Basement Songs (2004-2005)
bedsitroom (Feat. Finn, Benn)
beestings2
Concrete Gypsies
cowboyjam (Feat. Finn, Benn)
definitelynotbjork (Feat. Finn, Benn)
moreswing (Feat. Finn, Benn)
notevenslightlybjork (Feat. Finn, Benn)
princesses
somedaysaredifferent
spacemehbones (Feat. Finn, Benn)
Disc 3 – Ten Friends (Original Demo) (2006)
_mcs
_op
_r
_R
_t
_c
_e
_d
_mE
_m
Disc 4 – Bee Stings EP (2006)
Bee Stings (Feat. Campbell Austin, Dave Wade-Brown)
Number Nine (Feat. Campbell Austin, Dave Wade-Brown)
No Sex (Feat. Campbell Austin, Dave Wade-Brown)
Going Out (Feat. Campbell Austin, Dave Wade-Brown)
Mary Rose (Feat. Campbell Austin)
Disc 5 – The Power… (2007)
*Live tracks feat. Campbell Austin, Dave Wade-Brown, Rob Wade-Brown and Jimmy Hatherley, except where indicated.
