Mike Marlin

Making "Man On The Ground"

2011-08-31T07:58:00.001-07:00

I have been busy. Which explains the lack of recent blogs. At the start of this year I decided to write, record a new Marlin record and gave myself three months to complete it. Madness. The last record took 25 years.

As a result the last few months have been intense and exhilarating. I had some song ideas before I started, but the majority of the songs were written as I went along. I worked with a new producer, Catherine Marks, and we worked flat out. I now have no friends, but I do have an album and I am emerging blinking back into the real world. Or what passes for real if you are Mike Marlin. Apparently I missed some riots, some revolutions, some cricket and the last Potter film.

Song Writing

I am often asked how I write songs (and sometimes why I write them). No two songs are the same. Sometimes I write the lyrics first - "Left Behind" started as a poem and turned into a song. "Grand Central Station" started as a simple riff and the line: "You barely touch the ground, only trouble holds you down." Rather like those clever hip-hop stars, I have been known to start with a drum beat and build a song around it - that's what I did with "This Town". And occasionally an entire song just emerges as if delivered from on high (or from the bottom of a wine bottle) - "Lost and Found" just happened.

Generally speaking, nothing cheers me up more than a depressing song. So I had to be tortured to to extract the irritatingly happy "Girl From Chelsea Bridge". It was worth it if only to get the chance to play some Ukulele.

Here are some snippets from the album. I was tempted to include the very first version of some of these taken straight from my Apple dictaphone - just me and an acoustic at 2am - but I would hate to destroy the mysteries of the creative process.

Man On The Ground - Sampler by Mike Marlin

Most of the record was made by Catherine - producer, engineer, piano player and hysterical percussionist; Jarrod - engineer, drummer and professional Australian; and me - vocals, guitars and beard. My band also popped in from time to time. Rachael worked some very long days adding sparkling lead guitar and replaying some of my ropier demo guitar parts properly. Fabio added bass and tried to persuade us to jazz up the bass lines. We said 'no' on the grounds of good taste, but it won't be so easy to stop him when we play live - so watch out for that slap bass solo.

An amazing number of demo takes are on the record - usually because we were too lazy to replay them. The demented Ukulele part on "Girl From Chelsea Bridge" was cherry picked from a single chaotic first take that started with my reassuring words: "I have never played the Ukulele before.". One thing for sure - I will never play it again.

We recorded in a little basement studio near Baker Street. Given Catherine's keyboard allergy (she can manage to hit record, stop and rewind - but anything more than that and she comes out in hives), we did the minimum of editing. To give some insight into the process, you can see a video of us recording "Lost and Found" below. We recorded the song live (though we overdubbed the lead guitar later). This organic approach makes the record sound very natural (i.e. just wrong enough to be real) - or as Catherine often said when I pointed out mistakes: "Don't worry - a little bit shit is good.".

Mixing

Because my hero is Kermit the frog, we spent three weeks mixing the record in Henson Studios in Los Angeles. We discovered that Henson isn't just famous for making awesome Muppet music - all sorts of great records have been made there by everyone from the Rolling Stones to the Jonas Brothers. The picture below shows Catherine, me and Miguel (our local guide and faithful assistant) behind a vintage desk with lots of knobs and faders on it. Below that is the frog himself.

What Next?

Finally. "Man On The Ground" is finished. My first reaction to finishing was a massive emotional crash. What am I supposed to do now?

They say that the answer is to get busy (and keep taking the pills). Luckily I can expect to be very busy for the next six months in the build up to the album launch. I have a launch for the first single "The Magician" on the 28th of September at Hoxton Hall in London (you can see the details on my web site here). We are rehearsing the new album live and we will take it on the road. I have a video to promote (you can see it here). I have to finish painting the album cover and pressing the vinyl. And so on.

Now I know that I can make a record in three months, I plan is to do this every year. Whether Catherine agrees to produce the next record depends on how long it takes her to get over the trauma of working with a dinosaur.

Mike

Golf, Stenography & Song Writing

2011-04-12T03:54:00.000-07:00

I am back in song writing mode, which has an interesting and not altogether positive effect on my general outlook. I cannot write when I am too happy. Even happy songs are generally written by manic depressives (for example Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys). The good news is that it is going well and I am not much more depressed than usual. Happy days.

It has also set me thinking about creative processes generally. I was asked in an interview how I write songs, and (to my surprise) found that I had an answer. The key for me is to separate writing from reading (for lyrics) and playing from listening (for music). To put it another way, the analytical processes of reading and listening get in the way of the creative processes of writing and playing.

I think this explains the role of class A drugs in song writing historically. It is not the hallucinations involving giant rabbits that produce great songs; it is the closing down of analytical systems. This loss of analytical reasoning can be seen on any Friday or Saturday night in any town centre after about 11pm. Nobody with any analytical skills left would drink Red Bull mixed with Jaegermeister.

At this point I should clarify that I don't use class A drugs. Ever. Or drink Jaegermeister. Luckily it is possible to train oneself to switch off analytical thinking through repetition. Professional golfers hit a lot of golf balls - not to improve their swing but to make it automatic. Brain scans of professional golfers show no activity during a golf swing (and in some cases precious little activity at other times). In contrast amateur golfers' brains light up like christmas trees as they try to remember to keep their left arm straight, keep their head still, watch the ball, come back down on the inside, follow through to the target and not to swear when the ball duck hooks into the artificial lake.

Court stenographers are another example. Their job is to type court proceedings as they unfold and they achieve extraordinary transcription speeds (200+ words a minute). This puzzled scientists because it exceeds the speed at which human brains can process language. By monitoring stenographers' brains it was established that the words being typed simply bypassed the part of the brain responsible for language. When asked to read it back, it is as if they are reading something written by somebody else.

It would of course be much more fun on the course and in court if golfers and stenographers were permanently high. However my thought for the day is that creativity requires practice. Through endless repetition the conscious mind can switch off and then good things happen. Unless your job is to fly an aeroplane .... but that is the subject of another blog.

The Monkey & The Pulley

2011-02-22T01:25:00.000-08:00

I was reading a christmas gift compendium called The World's Greatest Puzzles Ever Solved (1). On page 101 I found the following physics conundrum that was originally posed by Lewis Carroll before he fully committed himself to hallucinatory drugs and wrote Alice in Wonderland:

"A massless rope runs through a frictionless pulley wheel which hangs from a beam. Hanging onto one end of the rope is a monkey, on the other end is a block mass equal to that of the monkey. Both block and monkey are equal distance from the floor. What happens to the block when the monkey begins to climb up his side of the rope?"

I knew the answer (naturally), so turned to the solutions section of the book to check my reasoning. The solution was correct, but the reasoning given was hogwash. I was scandalised! How can a puzzle compendium compiler be so lazy that he cannot be bothered to get basic physics right? All he had to do was search on the internet and the answer would be immediately available. Copy and paste.

Demonstrating (again) that I have far too much time on my hands, I decided to search on the internet for myself (not literally for "Mike Marlin"). Perfect. I found a site called Science File where the puzzle is posed on the site forum. It is a popular topic - in fact there are two entries for the same puzzle on the site and there are 10 pages of responses. None of the responses is both right and correctly reasoned.

It set me thinking. The wisdom of crowds? It may work when guessing the number of beans in a jar (2), but if you want an answer to a science question, then ask a scientist, not the internet. Ha!

But not so fast ... I must be missing something (other than humility). The simplifying assumptions in the puzzle do not apply in the real world. Pulleys are not frictionless and ropes are not massless. So I re-read the forum. If I discarded the assumptions then the majority of the answers were right; just the reasoning was wrong.

I think I have just solved the world's greatest science puzzle. Scientists are perfectly reasonable; but usually wrong. Crowds are perfectly unreasonable; but usually right. That's why scientists are first against the wall come the revolution - they are wrong, we know it but it is easier to shoot them than to reason with them.

While I am about it, let's apply this new rule to another burning question - one almost as important as the monkey and the pulley. Most non-scientists think that global warming is either bunkum, or that it is not caused by human behaviour, or that it cannot be reversed. Most scientists believe that causality is proven, we are responsible and it can be fixed. The most likely answer? The assumptions are wrong, the crowd is right, and that something is happening that nobody can figure out and which we probably cannot fix (3). Oh well, back to music.

Mike

(1) Further reading clarified that these were neither the greatest puzzles, nor were they solved. A better title would have been "Some Puzzles With Mostly Wrong Answers Explained Badly".
(2) Don't get me started on beans in a jar!
(3) To re-assure my readers, I am carbon neutral. If I plan to travel in an aeroplane, then I always shoot a cow.

Shopping and What It Has Taught Me

2011-01-21T16:12:00.000-08:00

I spend a lot of time and money in Tesco Express just round the corner. Most of the time is wasted because they keep moving things. I am a creature of habit (though not a monk) so I buy more or less the same things every time - white wine, cashew nuts, orange juice, bananas and milk - plus occasional inessential items like soap. Somehow Tesco knows when I will run out of nuts. Fifteen minutes before I arrive the shelf stacking elves move everything I want to a new shelf in a far distant aisle. I assume they want to re-route me past all the things they have that I did not know I wanted.

It does not work on me because I am a hunter and not a gatherer. Instead they should put everything I want in one place (always the same place). It should be in a specially marked basket tethered to a post (like the goat in Jurassic Park). Right next to it they should put whatever it is they hope I will buy, with a little message saying "Mike, try this." I would save time and, out of gratitude, I would buy the extra thing (unless it was alphabet spaghetti). You never know - with the extra boost to turnover the little Tesco Express could grow up and become a Tesco 24.

In spite of their best efforts I usually escape. As I leave the shop I always pass the same sour looking teenager sitting on the pavement outside the door. He looks at me (and the world) from under his baseball cap and says "Got any change.". He says this to all the shoppers leaving Tesco. He says it in a monotone, without the inflection of a question. I pretend I have something important to do and keep walking. My excuse is that my mother told me all the money goes on alcohol and drugs*. It is a poor excuse that I have never been challenged to give. The boy never says: "Why don't you give me some change?".

Come to think of it, I have never seen anyone give him any money. Ever. He must have a reason for choosing this particular spot. He must have a reason not to be at home or at school or anywhere but outside Tesco begging from people who have both hands full of shopping bags and no hands free to dig for change. I could just ask him. He could tell me or not. He could tell me to f*** off.

I don't ask because that would involve eye contact. Even worse, he might answer. I don't ask. Instead I worry that the boy knows quite a lot about me. He knows where I shop and what I buy and when I buy it. He could be the one warning Tesco that I am coming so they can move the milk and swap the nuts around. He might have a secret signal. That's why I have changed my routine and buy my bananas from the greengrocer. He always keeps them in the same place, and that's way I like it.

Mike

* For the record that was before my mother gave up gin and heroin. Now everything she collects goes on books for her Kindle.

Burgers, evolution and music

2010-12-21T11:57:00.000-08:00

I am sitting in Macdonalds in Alperton Lane waiting for the band. I have just eaten a quarter pounder with cheese - my first this century. The amazing thing is that it tastes exactly the same as it did last century. Delicious! How do they do that?

It set me thinking about Fast Food Nation, which is a great film, but not one to consider too closely while chomping on a burger. The point of the film is that the industrialisation of food production has destroyed the quality of life for those that eat it and those that produce it. I agree with the premise, but here I am enjoying industrial food. I like Macdonalds. I love the chips and the apple pie (even though the label says quite clearly that the contents may be hot, which does not sound like a guarantee to me). Let's face it, I like it though I know it is bad for me.

But perhaps that is the reason we rule the world rather than the dolphins. Bear with me (no, there isn't actually a bear with me in Macdonalds). We can know things and still behave in ways that are inconsistent with what we know. Our stupidity is our evolutionary edge. It allows us to take foolish risks and try silly new things - and every now and then we find out something that is really useful. Like velcro or the electric guitar. A dolphin would never come up with the zipper or rock and roll.

Speaking of which, the music in Macdonalds defies belief. Given that it is the Christmas season, every other song is a Christmas classic. But they are not the problem (though if I get back to the start of the loop tape I may go mad). The issue is the pop music in between. It is auto tuned to hell, slammed and then thinned into a keening rape alarm by the special music crusher installed in the ceiling.

I have to go now. I am about to get in a little tin box with four rubber wheels and drive several hundred miles on a three lane skating rink at seventy miles an hour. What could possibly go wrong?

It's a lie, and that's the truth!

2010-12-05T07:03:00.000-08:00

We believe what we read in the newspapers. We really believe it. And yet ..... when we read an article that we know something about, it is always wrong.

Here is a great example. A friend of mine went to Glastonbury with a newsworthy musician. For accommodation, like nearly everyone else at Glastonbury, they bought themselves a couple of tents from Halfords, in the sale.

Meanwhile the Daily Mail reported that the musician in question was staying in Camp Karala, the luxury bedouin encampment for those who do not want to get their diamond studded converse trainers muddy. It costs £8,000 per night. The story then spread across the Internet, with copy and paste 'journalists' adding it to their blogs as fact. It was therefore a FACT, confirmed in multiple publications.

Nothing remarkable there you might think. Just run of the mill bullshit. Until my friend was asked about it by his mum. He told her it was not true; that he had personally bought the tents; that he had put them up; and that they had both definitely slept in them. However because it had been printed in the Daily Mail, his mum assumed he was covering for the musician. She did not believe her own son's word over that she had seen in print!

By the way, I made up one bit of this story - I cannot remember whether it was my friend's mum or his sister who did not believe him. I cannot be bothered to check. Anyway, now I have published it, it is irrefutably true. Sorry.

Mike

Thinking About Blogging

2010-11-11T04:49:00.000-08:00

I am thinking about starting a blog. On the one hand I have lots of views on many subjects; on the other my instinct has always been to keep these views to myself. I will consider this again next week.