I need a concept for a concept album
After listening to a lot of prog rock late last night, I came to a few conclusions. One was that I really love old synthesizers and want my Roland HS-60 back. Another was that Roger Waters may be very clever, but he’s still a dick. Then, and more importantly, another was that I should really try to do something like this again.
If you’ve only known me for a short while then you probably don’t know that I misguidedly once fancied myself as prog metal’s answer to Trent Reznor. Back in the 1990s I did a couple of solo recording projects. One was a really badly produced concept album based on Mervyn Peake’s ‘The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb,’ which I recorded on a 4-track in my bedroom when I was 16, and somehow managed to get 4 Ks in Kerrang! The other was called Metropolis (yeah, Mr Original, I know), which is quite aptly summarised on the MySpace page I set up for the project:
‘At the time that he wrote the script, Ben was only 18, and thought that he'd made a ground-breaking commentary on modern life. However, it later transpired that he was actually just a depressed student who'd split up with his girlfriend, and wanted to blame society for this by writing a load of pretentious pseudo-philosophical bum spooge and calling it a concept album. Still, what do you expect when you have Roger Waters as a role model? You live and learn, don't you?’
Dodgy concepts and lyrics aside, I had a listen to a few tracks off it yesterday, and I’m still extremely chuffed with the music and production, especially considering it was all done on a crap tape recorder in my bedroom when I was 18. It’s a kind of ‘heavy metal with a drum machine meets John Carpenter with a bit of Pink Floyd thrown in’ thing, although that makes it sound slightly better than it actually is. I had it pressed on CD, got some good reviews and even got a distribution deal in the US. Twelve years later, you can pick up a ‘RARE’ copy on eBay from time to time. There are a few tracks on the MySpace page if you fancy having a listen.
Anyways, now that I’m my own boss, working from home and all, I figured that now could be a good time to do something else again, learning from all the benefits of hindsight i.e. you’re not the most important musician since Robert Johnson, you’re not even remotely hard done by, you’re probably never going to get a record deal and FFS just chill out! After all, if Axl Rose can take 17 years between original albums, then 12 years doesn’t seem quite so bad. As well as this, a lot of people are saying they'd love to get involved with me on another recording project.
Just one problem with this - I’d really like to do a concept album, but it’s not easy coming up with ideas. I want something that’s simple (doesn’t matter how cheesy), and something that will easily lend itself to music. I tried to do a musical project about a man who killed his wife in order to stuff her full of spiders’ egg sacks and invade the planet with mutant spiders and insects. It was called Insection, and I even recorded a bit of it in 2002 - a demo of the first track can be found here. Thing is - it turned out to be a rubbish idea, and the script never really developed beyond ‘stuff her full of egg sacks' (I wanted to pay Mark Heap just to say that line).
As such, I’m calling on the LJ community to come up with some ideas for me. If I like it, and I can get my arse in gear, I may even turn it into some kind of industrial-prog-metal concept album, by which time you’ll probably want to disown me. Any ideas? Then please leave them in the comments section below.
If you’ve only known me for a short while then you probably don’t know that I misguidedly once fancied myself as prog metal’s answer to Trent Reznor. Back in the 1990s I did a couple of solo recording projects. One was a really badly produced concept album based on Mervyn Peake’s ‘The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb,’ which I recorded on a 4-track in my bedroom when I was 16, and somehow managed to get 4 Ks in Kerrang! The other was called Metropolis (yeah, Mr Original, I know), which is quite aptly summarised on the MySpace page I set up for the project:
‘At the time that he wrote the script, Ben was only 18, and thought that he'd made a ground-breaking commentary on modern life. However, it later transpired that he was actually just a depressed student who'd split up with his girlfriend, and wanted to blame society for this by writing a load of pretentious pseudo-philosophical bum spooge and calling it a concept album. Still, what do you expect when you have Roger Waters as a role model? You live and learn, don't you?’
Dodgy concepts and lyrics aside, I had a listen to a few tracks off it yesterday, and I’m still extremely chuffed with the music and production, especially considering it was all done on a crap tape recorder in my bedroom when I was 18. It’s a kind of ‘heavy metal with a drum machine meets John Carpenter with a bit of Pink Floyd thrown in’ thing, although that makes it sound slightly better than it actually is. I had it pressed on CD, got some good reviews and even got a distribution deal in the US. Twelve years later, you can pick up a ‘RARE’ copy on eBay from time to time. There are a few tracks on the MySpace page if you fancy having a listen.
Anyways, now that I’m my own boss, working from home and all, I figured that now could be a good time to do something else again, learning from all the benefits of hindsight i.e. you’re not the most important musician since Robert Johnson, you’re not even remotely hard done by, you’re probably never going to get a record deal and FFS just chill out! After all, if Axl Rose can take 17 years between original albums, then 12 years doesn’t seem quite so bad. As well as this, a lot of people are saying they'd love to get involved with me on another recording project.
Just one problem with this - I’d really like to do a concept album, but it’s not easy coming up with ideas. I want something that’s simple (doesn’t matter how cheesy), and something that will easily lend itself to music. I tried to do a musical project about a man who killed his wife in order to stuff her full of spiders’ egg sacks and invade the planet with mutant spiders and insects. It was called Insection, and I even recorded a bit of it in 2002 - a demo of the first track can be found here. Thing is - it turned out to be a rubbish idea, and the script never really developed beyond ‘stuff her full of egg sacks' (I wanted to pay Mark Heap just to say that line).
As such, I’m calling on the LJ community to come up with some ideas for me. If I like it, and I can get my arse in gear, I may even turn it into some kind of industrial-prog-metal concept album, by which time you’ll probably want to disown me. Any ideas? Then please leave them in the comments section below.