Welcome to the Underachievers

So, here we have it: the follow-up to 'Capturing the Wry'. It's taken a long time to get this out into the big wide world - not that it is completely there yet - and even after the pre-sale launch I've been correcting errors so you get the best possible reading experience. That said, I refuse to rule out any more errors being discovered, but like wrong notes in a piece of recorded music and heavier-than-intended brush strokes on a painting, we'll just have to live with them. I am human after all, and if there's one thing humans are good at it is making mistakes.

I feel privileged to be including a foreword written by Richard Blackborow of the band BOB. BOB have been a source of continual musical pleasure for me since I first stumbled upon them in a 1989 Peel Session. I was lucky enough to write the band's official biography, and very much appreciate Richard taking the time to write the introductory words to  'Welcome to the Underachievers'.

'Welcome to the Underachievers' picks up from where 'Capturing the Wry' left off. Meeting Jacques Cachecarte was a significant marker in my social life; he was the first person I can remember sharing the love of similarly obscure bands as I did, other than my newly-acquired extended family. He could (and still does) write terrific songs and was (and still is) a really talented musician. I may have written the songs, made the videos, done the posters, written this book, but his role in the story cannot be underestimated.

In keeping with its predecessor, 'Welcome to the Underachievers' is being published with an accompanying CD. This time, however, you will have to be quick to get a copy, as only the earliest purchasers from the pre-sale at Bandcamp will get one. 

Here's the link

The Broken Bottle Soundtrack (addendum)

Not all of the soundtrack for 'The Broken Bottle' can be included on a Spotify Playlist. That's because the songs written and recorded by the band during the course of the novel are not widely in the public domain.

Indeed, some of them don't exist at all, other than in your imagination. 'Titch's Song' and 'Jackson's Five' go exactly as you would expect them to, and the lyrics are so clear you can sing them to yourself now. Go on, have a go.

On the other hand, three tracks were kept for posterity from the demo tape the boys record in the music room after school. They are available to listen on Bandcamp. For those of you unfamiliar with Bandcamp, it is a site that allows independent artists to share and sell, or give away as they see fit, their musical creations. Bandcamp take only a 10% share of all revenues on digital sales, and 15% on physical sales. On the first Friday of every month they waive their share completely. This a great model for small scale musical artists.

So the good news is you can listen to three songs from Wilf's band The Sally Cinnamons: 'Half The Magic', 'Hold On' and 'The Bridge'.

Even better, you can download the songs AND the ebook version of the Broken Bottle for a mere £5.00, which seems like good value to me, but then I might be biased. You can also, should you choose, get a physical copy of the book plus the downloaded songs, if everything works how it should do.

The demo tape within the novel is partly inspired by a cassette my own band at school badly recorded in Bolton on a cassette player. The song I contributed to proceedings was a jaunty little affair entitled 'The Puppet'. It has never seen light of day since and, due to its unintentional melodic resemblance to a line from the theme tune to the children's TV show 'The Wombles', is unlikely to any time soon. Never mind ...

The Broken Bottle soundtrack

Stand down, relax; it’s not a whole load of jangly stuff I have concocted in my head purely for the purposes of self-promotion.

No, it’s a whole load of jangly stuff I have collated from professional musicians for the purposes of self-promotion.

Music is, of course, a hugely important theme throughout ‘The Broken Bottle’. As well as the songs written by the band there are songs the friends reference, songs they cover, and songs that crop up naturally during the course of the story.

One afternoon I idly contemplated what a soundtrack album might be, if the novel were ever to be made into a film. The results are the Spotify Playlist linked at the end of this post.

Not all the songs have obvious links to the narrative… take ‘Berth 24’ which opens proceedings for example. It’s an instrumental version of the early Sea Power single ‘Childhood Memories’. I can picture this soundtracking the opening shots of the film, starting with an overhead view of the UK, zooming in towards the north west and the west Pennine moors, before the drone footage sweeps through the moors, over the reservoirs and the cemetery before closing in on the red sandstone school in which the group of friends are gathered one lunchtime. 

‘Childhood Memories’ features the line “God help us if the radiation leaks/God help us if nobody knows for weeks”. My mam used to fret about us living downwind from Sellafield; not in a particularly neurotic manner, just in the way she would fret about about many things, like whether she switched the iron off before we went on holiday. I think Wilf’s mam might be able to relate to that too…

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/34BLxJomE3zp2Dv4ZtW8V1?si=lyweKaAITTatd5Gg06WzrA&pi=e-HdOafGYPRl68

Copies of The Broken Bottle are available here, £10 for signed copies… https://brokendownrecords.bandcamp.com/merch/paperback-the-broken-bottle-signed

And if you prefer your reading on an electronic device, the ebook can be found in several stores. Take your pick: https://books2read.com/u/3nBzEP