Friday 28 March 2014

Groupthink - RIP Tony Benn


I was saddened to read of the passing of Tony Benn recently. I had the great pleasure to hear him speak a few years ago and was inspired and moved by his words and ideas.

I wanted to pay a small tribute to him and I think that this song is one he might have enjoyed! It concerns a psychological phenomenon called - Groupthink:

Groupthink, a term coined by social psychologist Irving Janis (1972), occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of “mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment”.  Groups affected by groupthink ignore alternatives and tend to take irrational actions that dehumanize other groups.  A group is especially vulnerable to groupthink when its members are similar in background, when the group is insulated from outside opinions, and when there are no clear rules for decision making.

I thought this song to be a good tribute when I read this quote from Mr Benn:

"I try to operate on two unconnected levels. One on the practical level of action in which I am extremely cautious and conservative. The second is the realm of ideas where I try to be very free."

I think that this personal philosophy is one that could protect anyone in the realms of power from the detrimental effects of groupthink.


Anyway, here are the lyrics:

Groupthink

A tight knit group of people from a similar background
With no clear purpose, no outside opinions
Come under pressure with crucial decisions
Groupthink starts restricting visions
A belief in their inherent morality
Discounting warnings, minds made up blindly
Filtering out anything contradictory
The Subtle pressure toward conformity

Groupthink
We'll never learn any lessons
If our assumptions can never be questioned
You may start out with the best of intentions
But you'll become careless and irrational
Censor yourself to appear affable
Oh, Groupthink

When a group of politicians confront a situation
They've always got one eye on the next election
Toe the party line, stick to your faction
No room for doubts or deviations
Under pressure to have an opinion
Especially the one from the party meeting
Consider the facts but do it quickly
There's strength in unity so don't contradict me

Groupthink
We'll never learn any lessons
If our assumptions can never be questioned
You may start out with the best of intentions
But you'll become careless and irrational
Censor yourself to appear affable
Oh, Groupthink

In a state of confusion, swiftly drawn conclusions
It's bad intelligence that's seen as truth when
It fits in with hidden agendas
Group think is, in the the end a
Phenomenon that can be tragic
We make mistakes and we're quick to panic
Sometimes the truth is hard to find
If you don't dissent and open your eyes!

Groupthink
We'll never learn any lessons
If our assumptions can never be questioned
You may start out with the best of intentions
But you'll become careless and irrational
Censor yourself to appear affable
Oh, Groupthink

Thursday 2 January 2014

Happy New Year!

A very happy new year to you all, my resolution this year is to maintain the band's website and promote our gigs better!

Here is a start to that with a glimpse into how 2014 is shaping up so far...

- A proper CD available to buy with the album Egotesticle on it. The music has been ready for over a year but we've not done anything with it as it's not played live anymore. You can hear it here:
                                             https://soundcloud.com/leo-brazil/sets/egotesticle


- A new album recorded at Grubby Nun studios. It'll be the first time I've relinquished control of the recording to someone else but I trust Kerry at GN to do a great job. It'll be totally recorded live in one room and will be the new line-up playing all the new songs as we do LIVE. For those who are familiar with my recorded output this is quite a departure!

- Lots of gigs!

- Today I compiled some highlights from reviews and messages from fans that we have received, here it is. Thanks to those who wrote them, we love you!

A few choice phrases from promoters and magazines:

'Never fail to entertain with their set of exquisite songs'

'Leo Brazil and his Twitch brought the house down tonight! What an awesome set.' - Bar 122

'...compulsory toe tapping, hand clapping, head nodding...it definitely keeps you on your toes...' - Dirt Cheap Magazine.

'their style of music is certainly unique...rocks with fuzzy blues...something for everyone' - No Title

'...absolutely fantastic set on Friday night and one of the highlights of the festival for most of us!' - Strange Reality Music

'...makes a very strong impression indeed...lyrically delightful...energetic songs and lively performances.' - The Leeds Scenester.

'Leo Brazil and his Twitch shook the canvas with a memorably avant garde folk rock performance'. - Ale Talk review of a beer festival gig.

and a few selected nice words from people who sent us emails etc after being in the audience...

'Thoroughly enjoyable. I was intrigued by (the) band; with most there is a recognisable style / theme etc but Twitch were thoroughly eclectic - everything from urban blues, via Morrricone, hoedown etc, with a discernible political theme.' - Martin

'Stellar performance...rare because it has ethical depth, political truth and emotional significance, but the musicality is also beautiful.' - Yasmin

'You guys are awesome' - John

'You lads were brilliant' - Andy

Saturday 7 September 2013

Bow Down



Of all my songs I think I am most proud of this one! I'm going to write a bit about the origins, some other songwriters may recognise the twisting and turning path that some songs take...

It started life in Derbyshire, round a campfire with a jam in open C tuning that reminded me of Fairport Convention. Later this tune became merged with a comedy poem I wrote in Manchester Museum, I was looking at a collection of old firearms, including a buffalo hunting musket, and wrote a few short lines in which a cowboy boasted about killing Buffalo and the size of his balls. It was loosely inspired by Monty Python's Lumberjack song and I intended to lampoon the cowboy mythology and create a character to laugh at.

However, after some consideration, I realised that wasn't the kind of song I wanted to write, the subject matter was just too horrific and I wanted to reflect that.

The song grew and grew as I researched more and more about the colonisation of the so called 'New World' and I ended up going right back and starting with Columbus and then referencing other figures; Pizarro, Cortez and Coronado. I tried to make this song as historically accurate as possible and spent many hours reading articles and Wikipedia so I could give the song a very journalistic vibe. I wanted to avoid using emotive language, let the facts speak for themselves and allow the listener to feel the emotions themselves.

This song will be on the new album recorded with the band. For anyone interested in how this version was recorded; both the guitar and vocals were recorded through Fender tube amps and each had echo added from Watkins Copicats tape echos (one a Varispeed, the other an IC400). I sang through a Shure bullet mic and put a bass microphone directly onto the floor to pick up the foot tapping (one foot wearing a gorilla slipper, the other a wooden soled shoe tapping next to a tambourine). The video can be watched in HD, I recommend listening through something other than laptop speakers to get the full thud of the gorilla foot!

Thanks for reading!

Here are the lyrics:

Christopher Columbus sailed west for Japan
He had no idea about the mass of land
Which lay between him and his goal
Lucrative spice to line his pockets with gold
He made landfall where he didn't expect
The Arawak were the first that he met
He said 'I need just fifty men
To subjugate and make servants out of them
Send more ships for I have found
Very many islands to claim for the crown
And these people have gold by the pound'
They were born to, they were born to bow down

Encomiendas grouped together
The natives to protect them from the settlers
The churches controlled and collected the tithes
Ingraining the faith, saving the baptised
The land you left never to return
No way you can now son, everything was burned
We are the new masters of your town
And you were born to, you were born to bow down

Cortez made a landing in Mexico
He set fire to his ships so there was nowhere left to go
His men had to fight just to survive
Ally with the Totonac, conquer and divide
They massacred thousand at Cholula
To send a message to Montezuma
We'll grind your great empire into the ground
Because you were born to, you were born to bow down

Francisco Pizarro in 1502 captained thirty ships en route
To the 'New World' with twenty five hundred migrants
For what they were told was their birth right
Rumours came to Panama
Of riches untold and a great empire
So with the backing of the Spanish crown
Pizarro set sail to see what plunder could be found
Times were tough, times were hard
Pizarro and his mercenaries slept under the stars
So very hungry, so nearly starved
He drew a line in the sand to see who would pass
Through the mountains and through starvation
To capture the king and ransom the nation
To spill the heathens blood onto the ground
Take their false idols and melt them down
Take the women where they were found
They were born to, they were born to bow down

Settlers come
Bringing diseases
Smallpox, typhus, influenza and measles
British, French, Dutch, Swedish and Spanish
Arriving on the shores, seeking to banish
The people from their own lands
They'll spit in your eye as soon as shake your hand
They'll burn your villages to the ground
Because you were born to, you were born to bow down

Blackfoot, Lakota, Comanche, Crow
Roamed the plains with the buffalo
Pawnee, Ponca, Ioway, Otoe
Stayed at home growing corn and tobacco
Coronado from Spain arrived on the plain
Five hundred and fifty eight horses to his name
Looking for seven cities made out of gold
Demanding the Zuni submit to the pope
Or with the help of god we'll wage war upon you
Then we'll enslave your women and your children
We'll burn this village into the ground
You were born to, you were born to bow down




Friday 29 April 2011

Magazine in the Toilet

Just a quick one today as I realised it has been sometime since I blogged.

Great gig last night at Sleepers in Huddersfield, great crowd and sold a whole bunch of albums.

Good things on the horizon:

A one off catchy comedy pop tune with an accompanying video that just needs editing.

Some more gigs - Holmfirth Folk Festival on 6th May, Pickering with 3 Wise Men on 30th April and a whole clutch of gigs around my birthday on 15th May.

Lots of new songs coming together: Woman, Magazine in the Toilet, Super Amazing...

Here is a little video of me playing Woman on the banjo:

Tuesday 18 January 2011

Frank

Shalom!

Well, we just had the first Twitch rehearsal of 2011 after a little new year sabbatical. It felt great to have a play, seemed longer than the 18 days since our gig on new years eve. A couple more tunes from the album should be appearing in the set soon and potentially a duelling vocoder break!

The next gig is an acoustic show with just me and Dave. It is at Hepworth village hall which has been putting on quite a lot of folk gigs recently. It is a charity show as well helping out banana farmers from the Caribbean island of St Vincent. It's not even a charity, the money goes directly to them which is fantastic! There is a facebook event here -




As well as myself there is some great acts on that are well worth catching: Stefan Melbourne, Owen Phillips and The Sail Pattern.

I have been busying myself since new year working on the studio and building some baffles for the shiny new Gretsch drum kit I bought before christmas. I have also been trying to learn how to set up guitars which i've been meaning to do for years. This guitar pictured below (Frank or Frankenstein to give him his full name) started life as a Squier Tele back in 1999. Over the years I painted it a variety of different colours and patterns and upgraded the bridge pickup to a piercing Di Marzio Twang King. One day I got bored of the shitty paint job so decided to sand it down and go for a natural finish. However, my arm swiftly got tired of the sanding action so I decided to go for the 'driftwood' look and finished the job with a chisel and a blowtorch. Not exactly a professional finish but certainly unique!

Anyway, for years the guitar had been fitted with flat wound strings and used exclusively for slide work (the bad intonation made any chords sound bad) but Eddie's gift of a very nice 80s left handed ESP strat neck he saw sticking out of a skip gave me the motivation to get the beast in shape and back in action. 12 hours of trial and error sorted out the action/intonation and now with the flatwound strings and a Seymour Duncan Seth Lover in the neck it sounds beautiful. 

Having just used it for a two hour rehearsal I am pretty happy with how it's turned out, it is bloody heavy though so I may try and do some more chiseling around the back and try go for a contoured strat feel!


Well, that's enough of that guitar geekery. I went to see Richard Thompson at the weekend with my dad so i'll leave you with a link to a video of him.  It's amazing he's not better known, he has to be one of the greatest guitarist the world has ever seen and an amazing songwriter as well!

 




Monday 13 December 2010

Dead By Dawn Records

Hello again, welcome to blog #2. I have been getting the band's web stuff together and this blog is going to be the new hub for our online presence. I like the simplicity of it and the links across the top to all the other shizzle. Unfortunately myspace is still our top listing when you google us but I may redesign that to redirect here. Anyway, enough of that...

It may be slightly old news now but we are now on Huddersfield's newest label: Dead By Dawn Records.
The label has been set up by Mikey from the band Mr Shiraz - http://www.myspace.com/mrshiraz and is
going to be a showcase for the finest underground music from Huddersfield including Mr Shiraz, Pinpim and ourselves.

Anyway, the album is out now and available to download online (google us to find sources or better still go to our bandcamp), to listen to on Spotify or to order through our new bandcamp. (http://leobrazil.bandcamp.com/)

We had a fantastic album launch show at The Parish in Huddersfield with support from label mates The Coroners, afterwards I got very drunk and danced the night away to the amazing Dr Huxtable Axis Sound System, my legs hurt for days afterwards. 

This was also the debut for the fifth member of The Twitch - Steven Beever. I have known Beeves for some time as the fantastic keyboards man in Huddersfield's finest funk/soul revue The Nu Popes - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nu-Popes/137713776248267 and it is a total buzz to be playing with him.

I leave you with some pictures of the album launch and a few of a gig we did for a friend's birthday fancy dress party, thanks to Beezly (http://www.flickr.com/photos/beezly/) and Leah for the pictures!











Saturday 11 December 2010

Blogasaurus

Hello,

If you don't already know me, my name is Leo Brazil. Welcome to the new blog for my band: Leo Brazil and his Twitch. I have kept a blog on myspace for several years but been forced out by the constant "improvements".

This blog will contain news for the band (i've not done a round-up for quite some time on myspace so soon will post a proper blog with all the exciting developments in Twitchville) as well as music related goodness from the fantastic West Yorkshire scene and beyond.

I am currently setting up a Bandcamp site for us as well as a few other bits and bobs so stay posted for news on that!

Thanks for reading, take it east,

Leox

Each blog I will post a link to a video or something of interest, this time it's one of my favourite bands, Wilco. I've been a fan since their second album way back in the day. This is from a film of a recent tour

Wilco - The Late Greats