Monday, August 31, 2009

What Murfy Did


Friday 4th of September, Murfy's fLaW will be back on the scene after an intense 2 month hiatus.

The reason for the hiatus was noble. On October 6th, 2007, Murfy's fLaW accidentally began to take itself seriously as a band. It started with a gig we organized at the GoDown, and for the next two years, it was non-stop shows at Dass Restaurant, which funded non-stop recording at Ketebul, which led to non-stop worrying about launching the album, which led to non-stop shows to promote the album...

In other words, the band was burning out. The plan was simple: step away from the public eye, rest, bond, regroup and come up with a fresher, better, tighter Murfy's fLaW.

Shock on us.

I haven't seen this many solo projects since the Spice Girls split up.

In a bid for a testosterone fix, 9 teamed up with Guy of Syndon, and Mukasa + Toma from M2O to form supergroup Cydonia Nites. Cydonia Nites existed for a grand total of 2 shows, during which they delivered amazing a symphonic power metal sound, and gave reigning champs LYT a run for their money at the August Battle of The Bands.

Jojo joined up with psychoblues band The Beathogs, which has jokingly been referred to as the Murfy's fLaW preferred internship centre, based on the number of fLaWs that have passed through The Beathogs Band Camp.

Jozie went on to become a model in the Liz Ogumbo band. I kid you not. Singer/Model/Designer Liz Ogumbo, put together an Urban Soul All-girl band, who's primary role was to provide instrumental backing, while wearing outfits from her Dress-a-croch collection. The nights were cold, but the girls were beautiful. Freeze and shine, baby!

Punky and Reema decided to go see the world, facing many challenges along the way. Reema battled airport security and customs officers. Punky battled the hot sun, innumerable hills and various scary things in the Mara. Both returned safely.

And then... there was Vicky. The one person who actually took the break seriously. She did her drum exercises. She practiced. She drafted a band agreement for us to become a legal entity. She was there when the band members finally decided to come back and do what we'd promised the fans. (Too bad, we only got our act together 1 week to our show.)

Which brings us to today's challenge question? Can a band really take a break to strengthen the band without random members sneaking off to do their own thing? I guess if there's anything that our little break proved, it's that Murfy's fLaW is at par with the major bands. (Well, not in terms of record sales or even skill, but just like the big bands, when we stop to breathe, people go off and do their own things.)

On, October 13, Out Of Ashes, the debut album from Dead By Sunrise will be released. If you just asked who Dead by Sunrise is, slap yourself. Dead by Sunrise is Chester Bennington's side project. How selfish is that?! It's not enough to be the lead singer of Linkin Park, he has to go and create another band. But you know I love Linkin Park and you know I'm going to get myself a copy of Chester screaming his guts out in yet another band. Because, I'm sure, he's doing this, just so that he can be better when he goes back to Linkin Park. ;-)



(If you're going to click on any of the links on this post, click on the one above. If I get enough clicks on it, I stand a chance to win a guitar autographed by the members of Dead by Sunrise!)

This is the end of this extremely long post. Catch you at Dass on Friday! Experience for yourself the well-rested, newer, better, brighter, shinier Murfy's fLaW.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

The Mystery of Creativity




Of course, 9 will forver insist that he's the one who wanted Murfy's fLaW to cover "Careless Whispers" waaay before Seether recorded their amazing cover. But really, it was my idea. Anyway, as much as it pinched to see that Seether had done so well with what I thought was a creatively unique concept no other rock band could come up with, I was willing to accept it as a coincidence until I saw this.


Now, the youtube jury is still out on whether this is a nice video (personally, I LOVE IT), but I think everyone is willing to agree that they've never seen anything quite like it, right?

WRONG!

Behold a video I made last year for an online competition. Coincidence...? I think not!

Anyway, despite all that has been said in this post, I have nothing against Seether. I'm a big fan. I still believe that they must have a mind-reading machine with which they steal poorly executed ideas and improve on them for commercial success. Of course, one could also postulate that I have a time-machine which I used to travel forwards through time, steal ideas and then quickly release them in shabby style so that people would think I had them first!

And of course, anyone reading this post will probably realise that this train of thought is totally un-original and stolen in large part from a fake argument that occurred after Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics, and Drew of Left Handed Comics happened to draw comics that had similar punchlines.

Talking about webcomics, one may notice that the comic today (oh! That's our news! We are going to devolve this blog into a comic!) may bear a not-so slight resemblance to Tim Buckley's Ctrl+Alt+Del sillies series. Well, that's because I stole his style since it seemed easy for a non artistic person to duplicate.

Now, the thing is you probably didn't notice this stole style thing because:


  1. You're not reading this blog

  2. The artwork ain't that great

  3. The joke ain't that funny

BUT, what that means is that I'm successfully creative because I stole his idea and repackaged it with considerably less talent. Thus, no one will KNOW I stole the idea. They will think I'm being creative! Which brings us to today's lesson:


  1. Steal ideas.

  2. Ensure you have as little talent as possible, so that by the time you execute the idea, no one will link your idea to the original.


And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how to be creative.

(And if you'd like to read the hilarious book where I learnt all this, its by Scott Adams The Joy of Work: Dilbert's Guide to Finding Happiness at the Expense of Your Co-Workers)