'HOORAY FOR EVERYTHING!'

The opening tune on my last album was called 'Hooray for Everything' and was a bleak, bitter diatribe about modern life in a minor key. I only mention this to point out that, being naturally inclined to a grim, existential world view, I find that 'upbeat and positive' is not a mode I usually embrace except when diluted with deep draughts of irony.

However, since I am asked to reflect upon the present musical scene here in Swindon I find myself contorted into an unaccustomed posture of rampant optimism. How can this be?

Consider the events of this year in only my little corner of Swindon's musical life:

In May we released the improvised album 'Monstrance', which I recorded with Andy Partridge and Martyn Barker at the New College studio; I then put out another Shriekback album: 'Glory Bumps,' also recorded here in Swindon with Stuart Rowe producing.

Create moved into the Wyvern where I fitted out a new sound studio for them and this is where I now produce and teach.

The Fluxbus -a 40' American 'Airstream' bus packed to the gills with sound and video equipment hit the highway and I have been recording projects on it as diverse as a Rockschool band of 14 year olds who sound frighteningly like Aerosmith, and a gang of young hoodie kids called the OTS (Old Town Soldiers), whose genre is 'Grime' -savagely accelerated rapping over harsh plastic sounding beats they get from their mobile phones.

I'm also working with Isambard School to get a studio together for them.

The Alfonz and the She Beats have both had London record companies traversing the psychological chasm which is the M4 to check them out.

And there was the embarrassment of riches which was the Swindon Shuffle -40 local bands -no less- playing over four days and spectacularly well attended. As Rockschool and the courses at Create show, young people still seem to think music is an exciting thing to do and grizzled old veterans such as myself are still keeping on keeping on. Everywhere you look Swindon seems to be teeming with musical creativity. Are these not Reasons, as the man said, to Be Cheerful?

Come with me, if you will, back to 1979

It was the year Sid Vicious died, Margaret Thatcher was elected, and, marking the end of one of my own personal eras, the year I left XTC. My first break away from the Mothership was moving into a squat in London and doing some demos for Virgin records. We recorded in a tiny studio in (as yet non-aspirational) Stoke Newington called Pathway with an enormous 8 track tape machine. The reason a lot of people came to Pathway was because Elvis Costello's first album -produced by Nick Lowe- which did (and does) sound great- was made there. In a glorious mixture of squalid muso-boy's humour, and genuine pride in a moment of musical history someone had stuck a notice on the wall above the toilet which said 'may your aim be true'. Sweet.

Pathway cost about £200 a day in the old money which, let's say, is equivalent of £1000 a day now. The plan was to demo some tunes for Virgin which might become tracks on a solo release. I got lucky - there was a tune Virgin liked and so they put me into the newly built (24 track)Townhouse studio in Shepherds Bush to record it 'properly' (the Elvis Costello at Pathway idea was, I should emphasise, an isolated experiment in those days -viewed by me and my peers at the time as akin to climbing Everest in a Primark anorak: ballsy and you might just get away with it - but probably not to be imitated).

So I went to the Townhouse. Hugh Padgham - who went on to work with Phil Collins and Paul Mcartney - was the house engineer; the decor was impressive; and beautiful, friendly London girls brought you coffee and didn't ask you to pay for it. It cost £2000 a day (let's say £10,000 a day now) so I could only run to 2 days to record and mix a single and a b-side. The single came out and was admired by Mick Jagger on Round Table for referencing a Lisson Grove chip shop which he also frequented and was dissed by Terry Wogan for reasons he did not disclose. It became a bit of a 'cult' thing. That's to say that, although it sold a few thousand copies, it didn't recoup even its' recording costs let alone the expense of artwork, packaging and pressing.

Shriekback

In 1981 I formed a band called Shriekback with Dave Allen the former bass player from the Gang of Four. We were signed to 4 different labels over 10 years, making 7 original albums and touring across the world. A feature of our working process was that we wrote everything in the studio -a thing that I'd seen Brian Eno do with Talking Heads in New York the year before and been rather excited by. It was certainly a richly creative process but, since you never knew what you'd end up with -or indeed if you'd end up with anything at all- it was always something of a white-knuckle ride. In the early days we used our publishers demo studio which was free to us and, while only 16 track, was pro quality. An independant label called Y records ('papas got a brand new pigbag' paid my wages for a year) released our stuff on a 50/50 split).

I'll be honest - we used to muck about. We made tape loops that went all round the room, we recorded weird African instruments and played them in backwards, we worked with recently released mental patients and buskers that somebody had found on the tube that morning. We made songs that weren't really songs - soundscapes, tone-poems, music made with little green garden sticks (really!). We were sniffing at the boundaries, exploring ...mucking about. Some of our best work came out of that of course but it's also true to say that lots of experiments failed and there was always the bottom line of time and money.

So when Y's chief earner Pigbag failed time after time to repeat the success of 'Papa' we went to Arista and started working in expensive studios again -using the same methods. It was a high risk strategy because, although the records were selling well, without a fullblown mainstream hit we were never going to recoup the advances. We spent a very great deal of the record company's money - I don't even like to think how much - but - thanks to the miracle of the non recoupable advance - we never had to pay it back.

We also insisted on producing everything ourselves, typically sacking any producer the record company tried to foist on us within a couple of days.

It was of course seen as perverse and bloody minded by the record company but I still think it showed a certain class and as a result our records didn't - still don't - sound like anything else.

It couldn't go on indefinitely of course and though we toured our bony arses off in the States the big hit never happened and the record company - Island in New York - pulled the plug. I started doing film scores, installations, some collaborations with contemporary dancers, production, musical casual labouring. And so time passed..

And so to Swindon

In 2005, for an array of mostly family reasons, I moved back to Swindon. I'd just bought my first computer studio (with money from sales of some of the Shriekback back catalogue to an online music library, significantly) and - after something of a hiatus - dived back into the murky, insanitary but warmly familiar waters of the music business.

I signed Shriekback to a London independent called Malicious Damage and started making records on a cottage industry basis. With a laptop studio costing around £2k, mostly at home sometimes in other people's, and eventually at Create in the Town Hall (like some hi tech Quasimodo up in the bell tower) I recorded Shriekback's 10th album.

I spent the best part of a year doing exactly what I wanted - the recording process now becoming more like I imagine writing a novel to be: the only constraints being one's own imagination: little eureka moments; blind alleys explored and abandoned without stress - because the process was the thing. It was everything, in fact, I wished I could have done back in the day without spending a fortune of someone else's money.

Factoring in train fares, a day in a big studio recording drums and refreshments the latest two Shriekback albums probably came in at about £700 each plus manufacturing. They sound, I would say, at least as good as those albums of the past that cost the price of a decent house. Thus it was that I had, for the very first time since 1981, the heady sensation of a Shriekback album making actual money. So I made another. And obviously I'm going to make some more.

Sea change

I think that this model marks a sea change in the making of music. Increasingly, we musicians have, purely as a function of developing technology - and if you wanted to get Marxist about it - reclaimed the means of production and distribution. We no longer have to wait on a record company's permission before we can work. We can record, release and promote with miniscule budgets compared to even a few years ago. And instead of going into hock with a major we can be making money almost from day one.

So it's all good...

I'm sometimes asked if the Rock n' Roll lifestyle is all it's cracked up to be and my answer is strongly ambivalent:

When you're in your early twenties there is much appeal to life on the road. It's all true: it's loads of fun, there are drugs, everyone wants to be your friend and - yes - some even want to have sex with you - for no other reason than because you are in a particular band (which is not terribly flattering if you think about it too hard). On a more elevated plane: there are few better ways to see new places than through the eyes of a visiting rock band. All the cool people get dressed up and come and see you. You - if you're doing your job right - bring some new inspiring thing right into the heart of the town. Contacts are made, accents compared, sights are seen -and let's not forget -CDs and Tshirts are sold. It's really alright.

And there's more: for as long as it lasts, you get treated like the young geniuses you always knew yourselves to be. Journalists ask for your opinion on big subjects (as though you knew anything much apart from how to knock up a tune). Record biz people twice your age who have hung out with James Brown treat you (or appear to treat you) with respect. It's a heady brew and not suprising some people start believing in it.

And there's no other branch of the arts where you get to be such a dilettante in so many fields: you get to be a graphic designer doing your sleeves; stage and costume designer for your live show, movie director and actor in your promos, writer in your press releases and interviews - and oh yes, a record producer and a musician. The last thing is the only bit you absolutely have to be good at. The rest you can bluff or hire people to do the bits you can't. That's another thing that makes you popular - you can give people well paid fun jobs. It's a beautiful thing.

Rather satisfyingly, I imagine, to all the people who got proper jobs, this state of affairs does not continue for very many beyond their 20s when the investment cycle ceases and the Faustian demon demands payback.

The first intimation that all is no longer as it was takes place when, perhaps in ones' early 30's, you have to say goodbye once again to your cosy home, your books, your friends, your fascinating young kids - just starting to talk - and your hard pressed missus to go prop up the bar yet again with the unhinged Goths of Johnstown Ohio in a big smelly room.

Plan B

It's at that point that a plan B seems like it might have been a good idea after all. But, as I have discussed with my son Finn, even relative success in the music industry is down in no small part to how much you want it - and the sort of person who is circumspect enough to nail an NVQ in business studies BEFORE they hit the rock n' roll highway may not have the necessary reckless determination.

(Finn, who has a deal with Rough Trade Records, and who has reckless determination in spades is, as we speak, touring Australia so you can see what he thought of my careers advice.)

I would conclude that professional involvement in the music business is, like being a priest or a junkie, something of a vocation and should best be avoided if there's anything else which will make you happy.'

'Music was my first love, and it will be my last..' - I started to get involved with music at the age of 7- so, like any relationship spanning 40 odd years, there were times when we were sick of the sight of each other. Come the mid 90's I needed a break. She didn't care - she was seeing some Grunge boys from the States at the time as I recall. But I was serious - I stayed away 6 years -but then, there was a phone call, I'd been thinking about her a bit; just now and again. Ah you know how it goes..

So it was I found myself - for the first time in 6 years - in front of a keyboard in a rehearsal room. In Swindon. With Dave Marx, Dave Gregory, Lee Fellows and Kev Wilkinson. I had been asked to play at the Kosova benefit gig at the Oasis in 96. It was at the exact moment that we all started up playing that I had (cold sober in the afternoon) one of those stoned 'if I was a martian' epiphanies. 'So,' my brain observed, 'each of us is a different sort of person and, based on that, we pick a certain kind of noise-machine which suits our personality and then we learn it on our own and then we get together and all make our noises together to make one big noise. Wow! That's really weird man. ' Yeah I know - it doesn't communicate well - but I really, really saw what a very peculiar thing making music is. And the creatures that make it - us humans - how remarkably inventive we are. Whatever will we come up with next?

I would like to end with the words of Jah. Jah Wobble.

He said: 'You make music for one of 2 reasons: to make money or to see the face of God'.

I don't actually believe in God but I hear what Jah say. And I suggest there is a common reason all of us are here at a music symposium: because at least once in your lives each of you has had an experience with music that felt like your version of seeing the Face of God. That's pretty amazing. And something all we musicians here should consider whenever we get down to work. We need to work hard and get it right. There's a lot to to play for.