Jul 10
An email to XFM’s John Kennedy
AddHi there gang. Thought that this might make mildly interesting reading. I’ll post again if I get any kind of a response.
Hi there John, my name is Ian. I don’t much like radio shows (the adverts) but yours is excellent.
I’ve written recorded and produced music for years. Not in the usual “I’m a music producer because I downloaded a copy of fruity loops and worked out what 4/4 is.” way, but in the other, you know, professional one. Four studios, a robbery, a dodgy Argentinean con-man, and a lot of music later I finally pulled the plug on my dream of making music for a living and settled in to making websites to pay the bills. I still have a studio (Stormont Studios) in Clapham, but it’s for the love not the money that I’m there. My apologies for the long winded tale, the point is approaching I promise!
I made a track. I made it, put it on my hard disk and forgot about it. Yes I liked it, but I’ve worked on dozens of tracks that I liked and that never went anywhere. As far as I can tell unless Daddy happens to know Blur, or you’re an affluent waste of space with a bad hair cut and an opium addiction you shouldn’t plan for a career in popular music. I know too many insanely talented and completely unemployed musicians to be swayed from this mindset. Maybe that’s wrong. I digress. So I have made this track. One of my aforementioned insanely talented friends phoned me up and demanded that I do something about it. I have no idea what that means, and the only credible person that I could think of to contact was you. If you listen to it you’ll probably quite like it. The track is called “Far Far Away” and the recording artist is none other than myself. Just little old me doing my one man band impression. If one person can do every job in the song making process it certainly adds credence to the argument that musicians are lazy. (We are.) Maybe I’m a genius and the voice of a generation (like Kanye West is. Right?) or maybe I’ve spent too long in padded rooms with no windows. Anyhoo I have attached a copy of this track. I’ve called the project Clark Parker after my two favourite super heroes. Both had normal day jobs and amazing powers. I can relate. I also enjoy wearing my underpants outside of my trousers. That last bit was a lie.
I don’t have any expectations as to what will happen to this email, but it would make my day if a real human replied to it, even if it’s just to say: “John Kennedy is in fact an apparition created by the music industry to fool kids in bands into thinking that if they practice really hard, they will become the Beatles. Your surname isn’t Opennheimer and as far as I can tell you are not on Crack. Fuck off!”
Pardon my French and congratulations on recently becoming a Dad.
Ian Alexander Wood (Clark Parker)
Posted by: Ian Alexander Wood