John Lacey » Voice

Sting: This Ain’t No Time For Doubting Your Power - Send Your Love

John Lacey — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 01:07:59 +0000

I’ve always adored this song (and particularly this remix). I’m hoping by listening to it today, on a day when I feel particularly meek, that I’ll be inspired to take life and run with it. Hey, I might even do some art.

Sting:

There’s no religion but sex and music
There’s no religion but sound and dancing
There’s no religion but line and color
There’s no religion but sacred trance

There’s no religion but the endless ocean
There’s no religion but the moon and stars
There’s no religion but time and motion
There’s no religion, just tribal scars

Throw a pebble in and watch the ocean
See the ripples vanish in the distance
It’s just the same with all the emotions
It’s just the same in every instance

There’s no religion but the joys of rhythm
There’s no religion but the rites of Spring
There’s no religion in the path of hate
No prayer but the one I sing

Your Contribution: It Matters…

John Lacey — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:14:54 +0000

Somebody left a comment on a video of a song I wrote and performed. It read:

[...] your voice is so unique.

I wondered momentarily if that was a compliment or an insult. But in any eventuality it struck me as true, that in a very real sense – whether by accident or design – nobody sings exactly the same way I do.

You Mean The Whole To Me (Demo) by johnlacey

Vocal Stuff by johnlacey

Born To Lose You (Distorted Organ Version) by johnlacey

I went for a walk earlier and Rickie Lee Jones’ Matters came on my iPod.

Doesn’t matter if you’re fat
Wear a helmet or wear a hat
If you’re sorry or if you’re sure
Who you are is who you were
Who you were
Who you were… matters
It matters

There is much talk about about making ‘great’ art and, actually, making ‘great’ art is tough for a number of reasons – not least the anxiety a need to be ‘great’ can often produce. There’s often talk about finding an agent, getting published, signing a deal, finding an audience. These things are all perfectly wonderful in their own right. But what I would like you to do today is really understand that you are unique, that nobody else in the world would’ve created that thing you created in exactly the same way you did. And I think that makes it special and gives it a value we don’t often appreciate.

Dave Stewart: Flaunt Your Imperfections And You Will Be A Star My Dear

John Lacey — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:24:36 +0000

Dave Stewart, of the Eurythmics, on finding your own voice:

But very shortly after that the trick is to find your own voice or your own style of playing, your own way of looking or being and not be scared to make that as extreme as possible. You know you can always reel it back in again if you’ve gone too far out there. But it’s like, flaunt your imperfections and you will be a star my dear. You know it’s… Anything about yourself that you feel uncomfortable with make it bigger. Like Mick Jagger would do with his lips or Marilyn Manson would do or Alice Cooper would do or, you know, all the characters that you would probably name that are very very very successful in music if you really looked at them they’re very extreme. Everything they’ve done has been very extreme. Whether it’s Kurt Cobain to Madonna to the Stones through to Prince, you know. All of them, you know. Eminem. Kanye West. And they’ve all sang about their real lives and sort of put themselves under a magnifying glass. When Doves Cry when Prince is singing about his mum and dad. Eminem, when he’s singing about his mum, you know. I mean they all just lay it all out on the line and they dress in a way and they perform in a way, they become – and why they become iconic is because all of the things that you would love to do and say and be multiplied times a thousand, so they become larger than life. So if you’re starting out as an artist and you really want to be an artist that becomes somebody who means something to a lot of people [...] its very very difficult to be that person if you just adopt a generic bland persona and use sort of bland, cliched lyrics to describe your emotions. You’ve really gotta go out there.

Tori Amos: Most People Don’t Show Up For Essence

John Lacey — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 02:08:25 +0000

Sometimes creativity can be a lonely business. You hide away in a lonely room working on your novel or writing that song or doing whatever it is you do, and eventually you release it to the world and hope it reaches an audience. It is easy to become discouraged if things don’t work out the way you had hoped they would.

Tori Amos:

Finding your voice is the most important thing you can do. Its different for each of us in this room. But you have to recognize when you’ve found yours or when you really haven’t and you’re just agreeing with everybody because it makes pops happy or it makes the girlfriend happy or it gets people off your back at work. You have to know, hang on a minute, what path am I following? And sometimes that’s a lonely walk. Sometimes everybody leaves you. Trust me, when the champagne is flowing, there’s a line out the door. Everybody’s there. But when it’s not – very few people are there. Because most people don’t show up for essence. They don’t show up for the art, for the work. They show up for the success. And once you begin to understand that then you really know what people are made of.

This interview is from Channel V’s Box Set series. I had hoped to link you directly to the relevant section of the interview from the site’s official content, however after watching an ad for some skin product I was informed that The Selected Video Is No Longer Available.

John Lacey » Voice

Sting: This Ain’t No Time For Doubting Your Power - Send Your Love

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