It's amazing...

...how long it can take for a song to 'take' with an artist! My song 'This Is Me' was written for a fundraiser for Mencap something like three years ago now, and has floated around (mainly in cyberspace and on my publisher's hard drive) ever since. Then suddenly I hear that Belgian ex-Idol artist Born Crain has recorded it and may even release it as a single. Great news, and I'm really pleased it's Born as he's already included my song 'I Won't Be There' on his last album, which charted in Belgium and Japan. We met up a couple of months ago when he was in the UK and wrote some new songs - he's a really nice, grounded guy. Let's hope it works out.

Here's wishing a very Happy Christmas and immensely successful 2010 to one and all

Simon x

Strictly or X Factor?

Arguments abound in my house as the family is divided between BBC's or ITV's popular culture-thon. And despite trying my hardest not to be interested, I can't help but stick my head in the lounge and see what's happening - especially in X Factor. Those twins are a good example of how hype wins over talent, but I'm sometimes a little sceptical about how they always seem to have a massive production number, choreographed by Brian Friedman, to 'carry' them through.

It clearly works, as they survived last week despite a complete mess-up of 'We will rock you', coming in at the wrong point and having to be saved by their backing singers. I think it's about time the twins were made to stand with microphones and deliver a song all by themselves, just like all the other acts have had to do. Doesn't seem very fair at the moment!

New music

Got some new songs on the go at the mo. 'Waiting for you to come home' is a country ballad and we're pitching it at Rascal Flatts and Westlife at the moment. Come on guys, you know it makes sense! 'A little lie' is on YouTube in a very rough version and is kind of poignant almost emo-ish minor key stuff. 

The rest of my time has been spent on TV advert stuff - quite fun to write as you have to get everything sorted in under 1 minute. Not easy.

Of to Wales on Sunday for a break and to have a significant birthday. Back next week!

Hear ye, hear ye

Just got over a bout of something - don't think it was swine flu though....

In the UK a judge has got into hot water because he spoke out about UK immigration laws, calling them 'lax' and blaming the government's immigration policy for the huge national debt the UK has to bear.

The comments weren't intended to be racist, but they have caused controversy because judges aren't supposed to make political statements in court. The guy in question was summing up after sending down a Jamaican man for two years, and clearly got a little carried away.

I have always respected those musicians who have the strength of character to make use of their status, and sing of social inequality, human rights abuse, power-hungry corporations and the like. The majority of humans on this planet rely on people in the public eye to air these opinions and get people thinking, and, perhaps, acting.

It saddens me when I turn on the news and see stories of arrests or deportations of those who have dared to speak out, irrespective of whether I agree with their views or not. Free speech is valuable, so long as it is peaceful. My mother used to tell me that words cannot hurt me - perhaps some of our leaders should remember this occasionally!

I'd be interested to know what people think is the greatest 'protest' song. Comment back with your views!

Billy Joel - legend!

One of the most underrated living singer-songwriters has got to be Billy Joel. I spend far too much of my spare time playing his songs, and as a pianist I have to say that his piano writing is far superior to the likes of Elton John or even (gasp!) Freddie Mercury. I've posted a reasonably lame attempt of mine to recreate his classic 'Scenes from an Italian Restaurant' which comes from his great album 'The Stranger' - and in this song we see Joel as a balladeer, showman, supreme musician, poet and composer. He has also had the services of  great saxophone players in Richie Canata, who played on the recordings of 'Scenes' and 'New York State of Mind', and, since the 1980s, Mark Rivera, whose playing on Joel's live albums such as '12 Gardens' has to be heard to be believed.

Over and above his eminently singable melodies and superb arrangements (many thanks to Phil Ramone, his producer throughout much of the 70s and 80s), Joel is a terrific lyricist and his work appeals to Americans and New Yorkers in particular because he writes from real life experiences, often mentioning people and places who are particularly close to him. His partners have inspired songs like 'Just the way you are' and 'Uptown Girl', his daughter Alexa (now a musician in her own right) gets frequent mentions and had a beautiful 'Lullabye' written for her, and even history teachers can thank Joel for 'We didn't start the fire' which contains about 40 years of historical events in its lyrics.

He writes in so many styles - the album 'An Innocent Man' is a homage to 1950s rock n roll and doo-wop, there are blues and jazz tunes, heavy rock songs, all-American anthems, protest songs (like 'Goodnight Saigon'), and of course the great piano ballads - not just the love songs, but the stories like 'The Ballad of Billy the Kid'. 

My favourite Joel songs - well, 'Scenes' is right up there, of course, along with 'Miami 2017', 'New York State of Mind' and 'And So it Goes'. Please let me know what your favourite is!

Oh, and the video of 'Scenes' is in the video bar to the right of this page. I think I took it a little too fast.....

Are music, dance and drama exams worth it?

I've just waved my eight-year-old daughter off as she goes to her ballet exam. She seems ok about it! There's a lot of debate about whether exams in the performing arts are valuable or not, and I've heard plenty of stories, maybe exaggerated, maybe not, about 'nightmare' experiences when taking grade 2 trumpet or whatever it might be.

Are these exams valuable or just unnecessary suffering brought on by over zealous teachers and pushy parents? Well, in my opinion, it really depends on what you think the point of them are.

I think exams in performing arts have a lot of value, and a lot of point. If you act, dance, sing or play an instrument then presumably you are doing it to give pleasure to yourself and, most importantly, others. You are an entertainer, a story-teller, you provide an opportunity for escapism, a suspension of reality, you are an ARTIST. 

It doesn't matter if you are performing for 3000 people in the Royal Albert Hall or Granny and Grandad on a Sunday after lunch, you are doing the same thing.

Artists perform for people. They act, sing, dance and play in front of people who watch them. Not wanting to do this is like deciding to become a vet so long as it doesn't involve animals. Exams can be scary, nerve-wracking, they can go well and they can go badly. Examiners can be lovely, warm people, and they can be cold and heartless. 

In my view, exams provide experience, in handy bite-sized chunks, of performing under pressure, which is what every artist chooses to do. Of course they are also indicators of progress, targets.

You might disagree or agree - feel free to comment!

Some new music

I must blog more regularly!

I've spent the last week writing like mad and am really pleased with the results. I'm going to do a new video of one of the new songs soon, but for the moment, there's a new song called 'Waiting For You To Come Home' posted on my website. It's a country-style tear jerker, sort of in the Rascal Flatts style I guess.

Towards the end of last term at my school my Year 10 GCSE set and I were really inspired by a famous video doing the YouTube rounds at the moment. A filmmaker, under the banner 'Playing For Change', has traversed the globe recording street musicians from Johannesburg to Toulouse, San Diego to Moscow and has compiled an entire album of songs carefully put together from his recordings, so that they are playing together, without actually knowing their fellow musicians.

Anyway, we thought we could do this too, and the resulting version of 'Stand By Me', as performed by 16 Year 10 students, is fun! You can download it at my website.

By the way, I'd really welcome comments on these blogs. Is there anyone out there?

Reactions to the Michael Jackson memorial

I just sat through all two hours of the televised Michael Jackson memorial service. Here are my reactions to it!

• Stevie Wonder - never fails to amaze me. One of my biggest influences
• Jennifer Hudson - one very brave individual
• Shaheen - GO SHAHEEN! Can you believe he's only 12? And slightly cynically, I bet Simon Cowell is over the moon about that performance
• Al Sharpton - that guy could get a standing ovation reading out the phone book. Good speech!
• Martin Luther King III - the great man's words didn't quite come across the way the great man himself could make them
• Heal the World - everything that Michael stood for and represented at the end of the service - lovely
• Usher - hats off to you mate
• I would have liked the wonders of technology to have allowed video of Michael to sing the lead on Heal the World
• The family - clearly very strong and close-knit. His daughter - what a beautiful girl

Some might say cheesy, some might say shallow, but actually I thought it was everything that Michael would want it to be, and that's what counts. 

Can you teach someone to write music?

How do you teach someone to be creative? I've been working on a project with some 13 year olds at my school, using logic pro to write a short piece based on three or four chords and some basic rhythms. 

Having given them the important info about chords and how they relate to each other, we then got on to talking about how you develop your piece once you've worked out your chord progression, and then how to arrange different instrumental sounds to make it effective, and then how to spice it up with some funky rhythms and maybe a catchy melody.

It struck me sometime during all this that there has to be a point where the person teaching needs to just let the student 'be creative'. So where is that point? If a student's piece is all out of time, or the melody clashes with the chords, why is that not OK? There's plenty of music out there which has little sense of rhythmic or harmonic 'order'.

I guess it could be like a politics teacher trying to impose certain political views on a student. All we should be doing in composition is showing the students what successful composers of the past did, but then letting them get on with it. After all, neither Mozart or John Lennon made their name by doing exactly what someone told them to!

Musical stars of the future

Brits always talk about the weather, and boy it was hot today! There you go...

We had a fantastic evening yesterday with all the senior musicians who I have been working with at RGS (my school). We got together at lunchtime and spent the afternoon putting together a performance of all our favourite songs, which ranged from songs from shows such as Avenue Q, Rent and West Side Story, and a great selection of classics by Dylan, Stevie Wonder, The Carpenters, my main man Billy Joel and even some Jason Mraz. We then performed them all to a warm and slightly moist audience of about 180 yesterday evening.

I don't think any of these students follow my blog (yet!?) but it was such a lot of fun and such a great opportunity for me to work on a concert with guys who undoubtedly have got such bright musical futures ahead of them. Despite their only being 18 or thereabouts they performed with so much confidence and talent, and whether singers or drummers we had no weak links and no worries about anything not going smoothly. It was a long day, but it was really satisfying.  

Miley and Kylie

Late on a Saturday night after a warm UK day! MJ really has died, and with my band we played three of his songs in our set last night, ending with 'One Day In Your Life' which I don't think I've properly listened to since it was in the charts when I was a kid.

I'm working on some new material at the moment - two songs with fellow writer Matt B. One, 'Fly With Me', is a dancey euro-pop tune in the vein of Kylie's "Spinning Around" or maybe an Empire of the Sun song (have you heard them? They are really good).

The other, which Matt wrote the bulk of, I'm quite excited about as it's our first foray into the huge market of 'tween' pop/rock along the lines of Miley Cyrus, Jonas Brothers etc. It's called 'With You' and Matt's daughter Jas is proving herself a very useful and worthy guide vocal singer.

People are signing up for the free downloads I'm offering but there's plenty of space for more names on my mailing list - so if you're reading about me for the first time why not click here to go to my website and sign up - no catches, nothing to lose, but four free new songs to gain. Go on.....!

Tomorrow I'm performing with some really talented students at the school I teach at, and I'm really looking forward to it. Happy days :-)

Enjoy your Sundays folks.

x

Welcome to my new blog! Today I'm going to be shameless and publicise the fact that I'm giving away FOUR free downloads of my own songs (from recent years) to anyone who simply signs up to my mailing list at www.simonrushby.com

Why?

Because I write songs, and songs need to be given wings, and the only way that can happen is ifpeople listen to them and let themselves be entertained, affected, moved or repulsed by them.

So I'm hoping that lots of people will help themselves to four of my songs and, perhaps, like a little of what they hear.

As I write this, unconfirmed reports are emerging that Michael Jackson, often dubbed 'King of Pop' is dead. If this is true, the world has lost a unique and extremely talented artist.

Jackson's personal life, such as it was, has always been controversial in a myriad of ways, but underpinning all of this was the immense skill of the man, as a singer, songwriter, dancer and all-round entertainer.

Michael Jackson was a private man who nevertheless lived his entire life in the public domain. If he is indeed dead, as it seems he is, then we have a legacy of storming songs to remember him by.