The image and how you use it

I've always known this but it was made even more powerful when I was watching a few clips from Live Aid in 1985 on youtube.  U2 singing 'bad', which is a good song - it's not a great song - but the way it was performed, with Bono looking every bit the confident front man, looking like he knows everything worth knowing.  His not being fazed looking out at the thousands of people, not caring if any of them are standing there thinking 'this song is boring', they went on to riff the song into a nine minute epic while Bono wandered off into the crowd to dance with someone as he always did.

It wasn't just about the music - as good musicians as they were - it was all about what they represented, their message, their look and then with the Joshua Tree, it suddenly was all about the music and the countryfied image, the rock and roll and all those influences.  It was about creativity until they ended up morphing into a band that mocked that which had given them the pedestal.

Urban Fox will always just be a recording band - we have played live but we know we're hobbyists, and our songs are ok.  However, with the internet and distribution to various channels, you don't need radio play - we're happy if anybody stops by soundcloud or downloads us off I-tunes and likes what we do.  We'll never have an image, or a message and as such, we'll always be an internet band who writes and records and releases music into the ether to try and get one of our tunes into the soundtrack of someone's life. 

I know how important music has been to me, Peter Gabriel and Gary Numan managed over the years to speak for me, listening to their songs and hearing every word describing my own situation and Tears for Fears and Erasure representing everything that is maginficent about song writing - the layers, the powerful rhythms, great melodies, the usage of embelishments to light up a verse or a chorus.  Listen to Erasure's 'Chorus' album - Siren Song and Home are amazing tracks - the keyboard work is nothing short of magical and continues to influence everything I write when I'm at the synthesizers, and their 1995 album 'Erasure' was their very own 'Dark side of the moon', a masterpiece which I could listen to on loop for days. 

'The Hurting' is a  truly magnificent album too and listening to it start to finish with the lights down is an experience I wish everyone could have - and feel the same as I do. 

My hope with the new album - which incidently might be called 'Departure' after Douglas described the track 'Hope' as just that and I like it better than 'The Storm' - the album isn't a storm really, it's more of a celebration - is that someone stumbles across it and enjoys it.  And that's all.