‘Ed Sheeran asked us for work experience then drank all our beer’: Nizlopi on making JCB Song
‘We’d get big, rugby-playing men coming up to us in tears and saying “I miss my dad” – or “I love my dad and I’ve never told him”’
Luke Concannon, singer
John and I started writing songs together when we were 13. After we finished at university, we both moved back in with our parents in the Midlands and started writing an album. One day I went downstairs and my dad was cooking. I said: “What should I write a song about?” And he was like: “I don’t know. Diggers.” He drove a Massey Ferguson digger in his own father’s groundworks company and would pick me up from school in it straight from a job. One kid a couple of years older than me at school would often pummel me, and my dad always felt so warm, loving and safe by contrast. The two worlds were a massive juxtaposition. I went upstairs and 90 minutes later more or less had the song exactly as it was recorded.
(Bono…and maybe Voltaire)
Doing the Work
As a musician or performer, have you ever found yourself deeply and intently focused on your material as you prepare for that “really important gig”? Have you worked and re-worked your musical chops, putting in mammoth practice sessions? Perhaps you’ve experimented with all the latest ideas and technologies that might improve your performance? Have you taken a leaf from the 10 000 hours movement about practising so that you optimize the way you lay down those all-important myelin-coated neural pathways? Perhaps you’ve explored the world of “neuroplasticity” and the exciting breakthroughs in accelerated learning offered by stimulating the motor cortex as in Halo Sport? Maybe you’ve recorded or videoed your rehearsals and studied them looking for ways to improve aspects of your playing or performance? If the answer to any (or indeed all) of the above is an emphatic “Yes”, then I salute you. (We should get T-Shirts ‘cos it looks like we are all members of the same club already).
