After two weeks of basking in my liberation from university, it's increasingly dawned on me that it'll all mean shit if I don't get the thesis revision done. And soon - yes, the deadline's on August 16th, but the stipulation is that I'll have it all bound in hardback by then, and that takes time - maybe a few days, maybe even a week. So to sum up: I have to get it done, submit it to my examiners and hope they give it the thumbs up (as opposed to The Finger, otherwise it's back to the drawing board), and then send it off to the printers. Fingers crossed.
On top of that, there's still my monthly work to do, and fit in the Hoobastank gig (which at the moment isn't a done deal, but considering who the promoter is, it's a 75 percent certainty I'll be there). And then there's the very real possibility that Danny Murphy might leave Liverpool after all. It rains when it pours, doesn't it?
And now on to a section I'll call Useless Pop Culture Observation of the Day:
So I was watching 'Things Will Go My Way', the new video by
The Calling. Basically it's a collection of live footage of pretty-boy singer Alex Band on the road with the hired help musicians. The thing is, afro-ed fat boy guitarist Aaron Kamin isn't in the video with him. I thought he was, but the guy whom I mistook him for had longer, blonde hair and was much thinner.
Why is this important (well, not important as in big-deal headline important, but important enough that I actually spent some brain-power on it)? For the answer, you've got to delve a bit into the history of the band. Or more specifically, the initial public perception of them. When they first came out, they came across a proper five-piece rock band that just happened to have Alex and Aaron as their founders and songwriters. Then they started losing members, something I'd assumed was down to the old "creative differences" excuse - in this case, wanting more creative input and not getting it. So far, so what...but when that happens, bands usually find replacement members. Wasn't the case with these guys, who were presumably a proper band, at least until the 'Here For You' video off the
Daredevil soundtrack. Yeah they were the only two members visible (you couldn't even see the drummer properly, and everyone else was in the string section), but the thinking was,
maybe they haven't drafted in full-time replacements yet.
Then came the promotional campaign for the second album, in which Alex and Aaron went to great pains to underline the fact that the two of them were and are The Calling, full stop. Everyone else (including the bassist and drummer who sued them) was hired help and was told so since the beginning, but the record company were the ones who "misled" the public and made them out to look like a five-piece. So to recap: The Calling are a two-piece, and everyone else is just there to make them look like a band. Hence the 'Our Lives' video, which sees a quartet performing in a garage, but only Alex and Aaron get any significant camera time. All clear?
Well it would be, but then the new video came along, with no Aaron in sight. I'd read that he was recently sick, which meant Alex had to go about promotional duties on his own. But not even appearing on tour, and by extension, the video? Had things got so bad that Alex's chubby buddy finally bailed and Alex decided to soldier on while retaining the band's name?
As it turns out, nothing so dramatic: after a little research, I've discovered that Aaron's pulled a Brian Wilson/Beach Boys on us, where he's decided not to tour in favour of writing and producing at home, while Alex deals with the promotional stuff. Mystery solved, case closed. And now I get to wonder why I just spent five paragraphs writing about this, as I'm not even a fan of theirs (I find them tolerable, at best).
