Originality award 2007-8

  Originality is probably one of the rarest treasures in any area of the arts - in music, after thousands of years of musicians making it, it's become almost impossible. As a songwriter myself there have been many times while caught up in the flow of 'head to paper brainstreaming' when one phrase or set of words seems perfect...but familiar to the point where it bugs you for days or weeks. Almost as soon as you forget about it you put a record on and the lyrics jump out of the speakers like a giant salmon to slap you in the face and squirt water in your eye before laughing and diving back in to their protected lake of copyright. Music composition can be even worse because it doesn't matter which chord combination you use - the possibilities are finite and everyone has used a 'c' or 'e' at least once.

  So how do you define originality? It's something more than mathmaticalized combinations or the turn of a word, it's something in the way they're delivered.It's the essance of thoughts feelings and emotions behind the words and music and the depth of the personalities that created them. It's not what they've done but it's the way that they've done it that makes it unique to them and something that no one else could have done.This page is our top pick for our originality awards for 2007/08.

  We had this idea for creating some of the most perfect female vocalists in the world , something unique and truly 'new under the sun'. We borrowed a few millon pounds, built an underground lab and bunker, kidnapped the worlds most advanced expert geneticists, blackmailed them, retrained them on the psychological processes involved in becoming a great musician (- as well as how to tie people up , hide them in a cupboard and impersonate other medical professionals, sewage workers, binmen etc..) and then sent them off with their test tubes to loiter around the houses, dentists, doctors surgeries, consultant offices and drains of some of the best singers songwrtiters and musicians to have lived in the last hundred years. When the ones that didn't get arrested , killed or hospitalised came back we began our experiments.

  For our first attempt we took the physical frame of a young Kate Bush, added an extra dose of female pheremones, got rid of the outdated drama lessons, inserted the vocal chords of Dido, doubled the lung capacity and vocal range, then inserted the memories of enough personal experiances to inspire Shelly, Shakespeare, and every other poet or writer begining with an 'S' to write for a millenium. Then, just as we cracked it, we discovered that God had already beaten us to it by creating ' Amy May' (see Tale of Two Amy's page for more).

So then we tried taking the vocal chords of Kate Bush, inserting them into the body of Dido while using the facial genetics of Toyah Wilcox, but no...He'd beaten us to it again ( as you'll clearly hear by listening to WEH Live Lounge on her MySpace music player track) by already creating 'Robyn' (red triangle for swearing)

 For our third attenpt we sneaked into the premier of 'Once' to steal some samples from the cast while they were distracted in the back seat. We took the genes to make the body of Marketa Irglova and (while maintaining her incredibly high IQ) we inserted the thought processes and songwriting abilities of Glen Hansard and gave her the vocal chords of Icelands Bjork. FANTASTIC !! we all cried...at last we had cracked it... But no, the big bloke upstairs had thwarted our plans yet again by allready creating one of the most unique and original female songwriters in the UK and her name is Jo Greenwood.

  For our fourth attempt we gave up and subscribed to Jo's MySpace blog instead. Like most gifted genius' Jo has been entranced in her songwriting since the age of five and , once she came of age and spread her wings of 'independance'

her songs began to entrance all those who heard them -winning her the indie 'In The City' unsigned competition in the late nineties while fronting the indie band 'Hoop La Baby'. Since then she has continued to write songs and music with her name becoming a regular feature in the soundtrack credits of many UK major film and TV productions -having no doubt been aided greatly by her having an audio and video engineering degree. Unlike some of the geneticists we employed -whose educated minds were at times completely void of having any common sense- Jo has shown immense practical initiative in her approach to the digital age. In 2007 she teamed up with fellow musician and TV/film music provider Ged Flood under the name 'Jo And The Flood' to record a groundbreaking ep entitled 'Hey Jo' (due for general release in early 2008).Recorded online and Mixed by Jo in her yorkshire studio, castle and home the ep's originality rating is boosted by the fact that the pair have never met face to face and that the entire 'band' only exists 'online'...

Ged (former lead guitarist of UK band 'St Louis' and international busker) lives 200 miles away in South London.

  But behind the online novelty actualy lies some expertly crafted, rousing, moving and powerfull songs that have (unlike many other so called 'online' musical creations) the power of the full studio megahertz and instrumentation professionaly evident in every mili-second of sound. Jo And The Flood has clearly pipped us to the post on our own secret plans for forming an internet band (-although ours is international and will eventualy be 'live'-) but the quality of the sound and songs make their 'worlds first' venture something well worth -and even proud to be - coming in second place to...in other words their debut ep is unbeatable.

  For an audio preview of the ep on Jo Greenwood and Ged Floods MySpace page...

  And if Jo and The Floods music seems somehow familiar to you to the point where you keep thinking "Where have I heard it before ..?" Well , just for you, here are a couple of links to their original pre-EP sites that might unravel the mystery... This one for Geds past ventures...

  And this one for Jo's....

  Now, you might have noticed that Ged Flood is not a female vocalist ( though apparently, when he's got a beard he could -if he wanted to -pass himself off as one in some eastern European countries -Yes...that's right, even when he's got his beard !!) and so, quite rightly, the question arises about male genetic experiments... Did we do any..?

 ...Well yes actualy, we did. We packed our scientists test tube carriers and sent them all over the globe in search of the best singers and songwriters and had some very strange results....

  Unfortunately, most of our scientists didn't make it back alive but two of our experiments did have some measured success before finding that the big boss of creativity had - as usual -beaten us to it.

  The first experiment involved poaching some dna from David Bowie, Roger Daltrey and Bono(collecting from Bowie was no trouble at all - but whenever Roger saw a needle fists would fly and we lost seven scientists to knockout punches in one afternoon,the Bono sample was taken while U2 were recording 'Lemon' (-hence Bonos unusualy high voice at the time). Once successful the experiment began, and, just to add a little randomisation, we added a touch of Bjorks creativity for a real 'wild card factor' . The results were staggering ...but... as usual, blah, blah, blah...He beat us to it again. Not only that, but he did it with yet another Irishman and flaunted the fact by waving him back and forwards right under our very noses in Brighton in the UK. Alan O'Rourke is his name ,with one debut album tucked firmly under his belt and a guest appearance on Eires campaign album for saving the Hill of Tara from bulldozers (Tara is actualy the ancient capitol city of the Celtic Empire -mentioned throughout the site- and NOT the fictional house of Scarlet O'Hara) . Clicking the link will take you to what is possibly the greenest and brightest MySpace page in the world...So don't be surprised if a herd of deer (or a swarm of bees) suddenly jump through your screens before smashing through your windows and darting off in the direction of the nearest wood (or garden centre). His homepage is worthy of an originality award all by itself and as for his music!! Well, take a look and see what you think of these unique songs filled with some truly original vocal arrangements. We'll be expecting some big concept albums to emmerge from the mind of Alan O'Rourke in the future (as I expect that many of them are firmly etched in his mind already). Feast your eyes and ears..

 - we added a caution due to the lyrics of one particular song that may prove

disturbing to some and hilarious to most with a 'naughty schoolboy'mentality-

  The next experiment to bare fruit took well over a year of stalking, bribing and graverobbing just to gather the samples. It then took a further ten years of extensive cloning, graphting and cellular fusing before the remainder of our team were ready to reveal the pinacle of their creations. They had taken samples from every single male rock and pop star they could find, from Fleetwood Mac to the Arctic Monkeys, Thin Lizzy to the Stereophonics ,Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis ( a scientists choice not ours) to Tom Jones and Mick Hucknall, from the Monkees to The Banana Splits, Mamas Boys to the Gorillaz, Roy Harper to Seal....everyone. Our scientists guaranteed that this would be the best singer/songwriter/bandmember in the history of the world and kept their new 'superstar' very well hidden (-even from us) . A special date was set for the grand 'unveiling' , all the top brass from the worlds music industry was invited to our underground bunker and...when everyone had taken their seats and had been eased into a state of fervent expectation by a medley of soundtracks from all the greatest male singers of all time... the curtain was slowly raised to reveal the pinacle of mankinds creation.... To the sound of gasps and jaw bones bouncing on the floor our esteemed scientists revealed .... a @&@@~#@ chimp!!!!

  The gasps turned to hisses and boo's untill quickly descending into a hushed state of fear once our 'chimp', after knocking out two security guards by throwing 'poo' at them, stole their hand guns and fired into the air before aiming at our now trembling crowd of spectators. Instead of singing, the chimp told some jokes(-apparently while stalking Van Morrison one of our team got a bit confused and ended up with a sample from Frank Carson instead) before climbing out through the air ducts and hijacking a taxi to take him to Ireland (aparently the scientits had also swiped some of my dna also). At this point the sky shook with the sound of hysterical laughter from heaven and a voice was heard by many saying "You lot could'nt even pull the skin off a custard let alone design a complex creative being!"

  When the sound of the laughter subsided, a hand appeared and began writing on the wall in big letters that said...

  " Heres one I made earlier you dummies ...click the link." ...and sure enough he had. They are called The Deaf Animal Orchestra and they are certainly destined to become one of the biggest new bands of the new millenium . Originality and yet somehow 'familiarity' oooze from every pore of their sound- I'm sure Ive seen that chimp somewhere before..... From Waterford in Ireland, it's Gods big tip for our Originality award...so you better do as the big fellah says and click the link...but don't be fooled because these apes have an incredibly advanced IQ and can make the wolds most inteligent bands look very,very stupid ...'Altogether Now' 1... 2... 3....cick!

  In case you didn't hear the first time , it's THE DEAF ANIMAL ORCHRESTRA!!!

  (we've also had to award DEA a red triangle due an excessive use of anglo saxon farming terminologies in their blogs that would have left them expelled from an Irish speaking college for speaking excessive english...had they been attending one.)

More awards soon... COPYRIGHT 2007/2008 The Ryan O'Riain 22