These are busy times to be a W!LD, which is why I repeatedly end up writing this blog in the middle of the night, and also why I write a lot of gibberish… no only kidding I’d do that anyway.

So here’s what’s been happening…

On Monday morning, totally out of the blue, we got a call from the manager of Cyprus Avenue in cork. He’d red our interview in the paper, and wanted to offer us a gig, this Friday.We accepted of course, so now we've got two performances this week, Thursday and Friday night. Yay!

Details of them are here: breakingtunes.com/wld. 

We've never done a headlining slot in Cyprus Avenue before, so lots of rehearsals have ensued, and loads of new songs are being road tested for possible inclusion in our set.

Meanwhile I decided this would be a good time to go book some more W!LD shows for later in the year, which has meant designing a flier, and yet again rewriting our Song Century  press release, to fit with it.

Wish me Luck!!

Speaking of press release; operation press release is still ongoing, and in my cheerfully drowsy state, even that thankless task seems full of promise. I almost can’t sleep with the excitement of it all… or is that because I’m writing a blog at one in the morning... Yeah it probably is that... Where did I leave my bed…? I’m sure I've seen it around here somewhere…..Ow! That’s the floor… oh well it’ll do….night….

songcenturyproject.com/

Last night we went to see the marvellous Calvinists in Couglans, and were invited to do an unusually impromptu W!LD  performance.

Wont Say a Word, Stardust, and Searching for Delilah all got a outing, and it was during the third of those songs, (by which time I’d gathered my senses enough to actually start moving!) I realised just how much the Calvinists had deserved a breather. It was swelteringly hot up there, but as usual they were putting on an amazingly energetic show, we counted 6 broken guitar strings during the night.

Anyhow it was really nice to see the lads, and great to have a chance to air a few songs. 

We also managed play a bit the night before, at a delightful party of some old friends of ours. 

That night was a bit of a trip down memory lane, as they were Friends we used live just round the corner from, back in days when mine and Perry's singing was slightly less tuneful, and our songs were full of gurgles, possibly adorable drooling, and references to Peti Filous.

Mind you I still like Peti Filous, and probably do the other things too, so maybe we haven't changed that much? 

Some news: We just found out we're gonna be on the radio again next month which is cool,  we'll be on something called The Arts Show, I'll let you know when we find out more about it. 

In the mean time keep on voting everyone, and in case I haven't mentioned it here before, come see us play in the Roundy on Thursday!

bye for now

Louis

http://songcenturyproject.com/

Hey folks, Perry here (that's right I hacked Louis' account and am taking over the blog. Be afraid).
Don't know if you saw our interview in the Evening Echo today. It's the reason I've been running about the place screaming ECHO at the top of my lungs (MRS Milligan if you're reading this I'm very sorry, I didn't realize your hearing aid was turned up.) The interview had to be edited down somewhat before it could fit in the paper (I tend to twitter one like a raving buffoon.) However, here in Blog land there are no such space limitations. So here, for your viewing pleasure, is the full unedited interview.


How long have you been making music?
Since I was ten when I wrote my first song, it was called Bird Turd. The band have been together in some form or another since 2006. You can hear the original lineup on the recording of Jackhammer.

What does the Song Century Project entail?
We've set up a website containing demo recordings of 100 songs written by myself and my two band-mates. Using this website we're trying to raise €15,000 with which to record our debut album. The way it works is that anyone who makes a donation (of any amount) gets to vote on which of the 100 songs we record for the album. Once we've raise the money we'll record the 10 songs with the most votes.

How did this idea come to you?
I realized that I'd written all these songs and nobody was ever going to get a chance to hear them. Imagine how much it would cost, and how much time it would take, to get together professional recordings of all those songs. I didn't want them to just sit there on my hardrive, unheard and unloved. So I decided to release everything. All the demos, warts intact.

How broad is the scope of the songs up for the vote?
They're very diverse in terms of style and mood. Some of them are very comic and theatrical (First Failed Escape for example) and others are more introspective, in the singer songwriter vain (Enduring Summer Showers). Then there's progressive stuff (It's Just Begun) straight up blues rock (Jackhammer) jazzy piano songs (Runaway Park)... Every song is different!

How old/new is the material, what is the oldest song there for instance?
The songs were written over a period of 8 or 9 years. The oldest song on the site is called Backup Soldier, I wrote it when I was 13!

What has the feedback been so far?
It's been great! Some people have been amazed, many have been baffled ... I guess what we're doing is pretty 'out there'.

Do you think that whatever 10 songs are selected will have an influence on how the record sounds/is recorded?
Absolutely! Every song need to be treated differently in the studio. Some are recorded one instrument at a time over a metronome, others are recorded live in the studio. I'll be very interested to hear how the finished record sounds, it could be a bit of a challenge trying to tie all the different styles together.

Are they all arranged/preproduced already, or are they "living" songs still open to change?
That very much depends on the song. Some of the songs have been played at countless gigs so we're pretty sure we know how we want them to sound, but most of them haven't been arranged at all! Those ones are gonna need a lot of work. There's a song called Universal Supernova which we've recorded five times, each with a different arrangement, and we're still not happy with it.

Have you personally got a song that you really hope makes the cut?
Hmmm. I'm torn between choosing one that I really like and one that would be easy to record! I think I Wont Say A Word would be nice form both points of view. Plus, a lot of people seem to like that song.

Have you any gigs in Cork city in near future?
Yup! We're playing in the Roundy on the 29th of August. We're in the process of organizing a Song Century launch tour, checkout breakingtunes.com/wld for updates to our tour schedule.

How can people hear the music thus far?
Easy, just head to songcenturyproject.com and you can listen to all 100 songs for free!

Thanks for reading kids! I better get out of here before Louis realizes I soiled his nice clean blog.
Perry.

As I'm sure you can imagine Me and Perry spend a lot of time talking about music; "why on earth didn't they go back into the middle eight there!" or "did you know 'such and such' sung harmonies on 'blah de blah' when they were sharing a studio in 1977" you get the idea.
Anyhow something that came lately was the dreaded second album syndrome, and it got me thinking about our Song Century album and what we'd do for the follow up.

The way I see it for W!LDs second album we’d have one of two options: either we could write a load of new songs, in which case we’d be doing very well to make them better then ten songs narrowed down out of 100! Or we could take another selection of songs from the Song Century collection. If we did that though what would be the chances the public would like those songs as much as the ones they'd actually picked out themselves?

It could be a bit of a conundrum, but when I thought about it a bit more, I realized a few reasons why it probably wouldn't be.
You see although we did our best to give all the songs in the Song Century project an even chance of being voted onto the album, some of the songs do have a slight advantage. Any songs with full arrangements for-instance, or that we regularly play in W!LD’s live sets, will stand out from the pack, as will the songs with catchy beginnings and good titles.
Therefore a few songs are bound to slip under the net, which is great news for album no.2! As well as the songs with boring titles, and the ones that will sound very different once they’re fully arranged, it could contain the epics that no one can quite manage when there's 100 other tracks to get through, and the songs that only reveal their true nature after repeated plays.
Alternatively of course we could just do an electronica concept album based on the adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

I’ll have to put it to the rest of rest of the band when the time comes.

Anyway the point of all this is, that if like me there's a song on song century you're rather fond of but think might get out overlooked, then by all means vote for it, tell your friends about it, even drop free copy's of the song from a helicopter, but don't worry to much if it doesn't make the final 10, there's always a chance it could be on the next W!LD release.

Louis

PS an interview with us is in the evening echo today which we're delighted about, its so cool to see a big picture of W!LD in the paper!   

That was a busy weekend!
I've spent a day the big city, (cork), been to see an unlikely 'musical' production of Pride and Prejudiced, played and watched far more football then was probably good for me, seen some delightful people, and finished up yesterday by toasting marshmallows over a seaside bonfire.

However unless I write a song about it, I can't say I've had a particularly W!LD centric time.
We have had a few bits of news though; the most notable being that there will be a W!LD interview in Thursdays edition of the evening echo, so look out for that.

Perry got back last night as well, sporting a tidy new hairdo, so with the two restored to our places at the helm of the W!LD corporation, things should get a little busier, or at least sillier over the next couple of days.

 

For now though, courtesy of W!LD, have a good day folks!

Louis  

Our new Pa speakers and stands arrived this week, so W!LD HQ is now a mess of  boxes and bubble wrap. Perry’s currently away, but when he gets back he’ll me find enclosed in a fort of cardboard, just like Joey in Friends. I wonder if I could find a chick and a duck.

The speakers are for our forthcoming W!LD tour, as the last time we had to organise our own gig, getting a pa together was a bit of a nightnare. We ended up having to borrow speakers from the Kinsale College Amphitheatre, a lengthy process that involved taking apart the front of the stage, and trying to clear copious amounts of bark mulch from the electrics.

Said tour is going to include some lengthy acoustic gigs, so from inside my fort I’ve been having fun picking out songs from the 100, to add to our live set.

I’m currently attempting to write a bass line for Perry’s song John Martyn.

    

Meanwhile our press releases have so far achieved little result; (unless somebody has decided to feature Song Century on their site, and just not tell us about it,) however we’ve barely scratched the surface of all the music press out there, so we’ll keep on trying.

Luckily plenty of you are still voting and donating without needing a nod from the music mass media; many thanks to you all!   

Louis

I'd like to offer a small apology here, to those of you i revealed Song Century to a little early. You see the thing is I'm a terrible optimist, and almost since Christmas I've been convinced that the launch of song Century would just be a few days away. So like a broken record I've been telling my nearest and dearest "just another week or two and we'll be ready to go!"
Still, at least we got there in th end, unlike the infamous uncompleted 'W!LD EPs'. Its obvious what the problem with those were now, too few songs!!    

W!LD are currently existing in a sea of Press releases, so last night it was with some relief that we managed to get out and visit the Fred's open mic.

It was a night of few musicians and consequently unusually long sets, and incredibly despite having just released one hundred original songs, a piano-less W!LD only had seven acoustic numbers rehearsed!

I definitely need to write some more bass lines, once this press release sea has been reduced to a puddle that is. 

Goodness me i think i just saw a dolphin, I must go see go see if he can tell me the email address of NME.......

Louis

Where writing this blog was concerned, the Song century project a gave me a rather frustrating problem. I was delighted when we came up with the idea, as recording 100 songs was bound to be an exercise ripe with intrigue and anecdotes. unfortunately though the realization then dawned that the project was going to have to be kept a secret, otherwise we'd run the risk of nobody being interested anymore when we were finally ready to launch. 

So as all W!LDs energies went into recording songs and designing our crazy website, my career as a famous blogger ground to a halt...

Nearly a year has past since then though, and today i am pleased to announce that as Song Century is finally launched, I'm now fully able renew my attempts to entertain and intrigue you with all things W!LD!!!

So, watch this space and I will endeavor to keep it free from tumble weed, and full of goodies.

bye for now,
Louis