This time, I worked on a recorded version of a song I wrote last year, called ‘Dreams (Don’t Get Me Started)‘. As usual, I don’t really know what it’s about, so just have a listen to it and let me know what you think:

If you enjoyed listening to that, check out my debut album ‘Nocturne‘ on Spotify or iTunes and visit my SoundCloud page to hear more tunes from ‘Dipsomania‘, which will be my next release.

You can also download Dreams (Don’t Get Me Started) for free.

The result is a song called ‘Get Together and Dance’, which is a little grungy and, as far as I can tell, about medication and insomnia. Oh, and dancing. Here’s my original demo:

Dane Cobain – Get Together and Dance (Demo)

Which got me thinking – shouldn’t I be working on my next album? I mean, Nocturne was released in 2010, and I have a decent number of songs still to record.

So I’m pleased to announce that I worked on a proper recording of it with Laura on backing vocals and myself on lead and backing vocals, guitars, percussion and keys:

If you’d like to check out more of my tunes, follow me on Soundcloud. You can download Get Together and Dance for free here.

Don’t forget to check out my first album, Nocturne, on Spotify and to subscribe to my mailing list and follow me on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with the latest news, including work on ‘Dipsomania‘.

Before all that happened, though, I picked up my guitar and we performed a cover of Somethin’ Stupid, originally by Frank and Nancy Sinatra. Watch them in action here:

Frank and Nancy Sinatra – Somethin’ Stupid (Live)

I think it’s quite clear that I didn’t learn the introduction and that we both slip up occasionally, but who cares? Here we are, lager-faced and all, paying homage to the song (and each other):

Dane Cobain – Somethin’ Stupid (Frank Sinatra Cover) (With Laura McIntosh)

I usually post new covers and new songs on YouTube, so if you want to keep up with all of the latest videos before I get chance to write a story about them, subscribe. Follow Laura on Twitter too, while you’re at it.

In other news:

I’m in the middle of negotiations with a couple of exciting new projects. The Lexicologist’s Handbook is now up to ‘refractory‘, 471 pages and over 42,000 words. Better, when I finish work on that, I’ll be dedicating most of my writing time to my ultra secret upcoming project.

I’ve been in contact with a guy called ‘Kevin‘ from Deadstar Publishing, and he’s expressed interest in publishing ‘Angels‘. I’m in the process of scheduling a Skype call with him, so keep your eyes peeled for future updates.

I don’t have any live dates coming up, sorry – they’re taking a back seat while I work on tunes for ‘Dipsomania‘ (working title) and get a couple more books finished. That’s not to say that I’m not still taking live dates when offered, though – click here to find out more about booking me.

I’ve also written a new song called ‘Get Together and Dance‘, which uses the happy title to hide the fact that it’s about medication and exhaustion (among other things). That should be out in the next few days, depending – I might record an album version of it (lo-fi sound, standard)!

I’ll also be helping songwriter Chris Onslow, one of Nobull‘s clients, to release a single called ‘Secret Dancer‘, performed by Andrew James and the Secret. I’ll write an article about that too, if I get the time.

Last, but not least, me and Laura heard back from Pointless and it looks like we’re going to be on the show. I’ve updated the old article, so find out more about that here. Oh, and buy us the Pointless Board Game.

Why Pointless? Good question – me and Laura love it, we watch it all the time on iPlayer and, other than Eastenders (which you’ll hear more about in a minute), it’s our favourite TV show. It’s on most nights when we’re in bed.

A recent episode of Pointless.

A bit about Pointless:

Pointless is a general knowledge quiz show with a twist – the aim is to get a low score by giving obscure answers. 100 members of the public are asked the question, and your goal is to reveal the correct answer that the fewest number of them were able to give. For example, if asked to name characters from The Simpsons, Comic Book Guy is a more obscure answer than Homer. Four teams of players are whittled down to two after two rounds, after which there’s a head-to-head. The winners win a trophy (each) and get the chance to win a jackpot, which is £1,000 per show with rollovers, plus £250 for every Pointless answer (when 0 of the 100 knew it) – usually between £5-15k. Oh, and if you don’t make it to the final on your first attempt, you’re called back for a second show – if you fail again, tough.

Our application:

A few months ago, I half-jokingly suggested that me and Laura should apply to go on the show. I found out that you could print out an online application form, so we filled it in, sent it off and forgot about it. Then, a couple of weeks ago, the show’s producers gave us a ring and offered us an interview. They had a hard time getting hold of me because I’d lost my phone (I’d rather not talk about that), but on Good Friday (6th April) they called Laura and I was there, so we booked an audition for 9-11 AM on Wednesday (11th April). Luckily, Anne-marie and Steve were kind enough to give me a half day off without much warning.

Comic Book Guy: A Good Answer

En route:

We had to get up at about 6:30 AM for our mammoth journey – it began with a taxi to the station and a train from High Wycombe to Marylebone. From there, we took the Bakerloo Line to Piccadilly Circus and the Piccadilly Line to Russel Square. We got there at about quarter to nine (after getting lost), just about on time. The audition was at the Russell Hotel inside a labyrinth of doors and passageways. Despite the fact that I’m a writer, I’m not that observant – I’ll hand over to my beautiful girlfriend to talk you through her first impressions:

Well now, I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced. I’m Laura, Dane’s girlfriend and impromptu proof-reader of this site. I’m sure you’ve heard of me before, having been mentioned in previous news stories, but you’ve never had my input. Dane’s been kind enough to let me co-write this with him, so prepare yourselves!

Me and Laura: You can probably tell which is which

Like Dane said, the Russel Hotel was a labyrinth – we started off in a lobby where we were told to go to the Lower Ground Floor, and from there it looked like we’d have to find our own way. The corridors reeked of grandeur, and I’ll admit it made me feel just that little bit more important – it’s a shame we couldn’t work out where we were going. I’m usually one to relish a challenge, but there are only so many times you can walk down the same corridor before it starts getting boring. Thankfully, some of the other interviewees were lost too, and together we managed to find our destination.

Everyone seemed friendly enough. There were a few quirky pairs – you know the sort: awkward, slightly geeky and  friendly, like Dane. Most of the duos were fairly normal, though. I’m not the type to judge people on first impressions, so I can’t say I formed any immediate opinions – that comes later…

Inside, we were introduced to James and Izzie, Pointless researchers and our interviewers for the day. Their friendliness made us feel comfortable and a lot less nervous, which was great. We sat down around a large table and the auditions began!

"We sat down around a large table and the auditions began!"

The paperwork:

First, we had to fill in a couple of forms with some basic information about ourselves, including our names and dates of birth.  We also had to provide ID to prove that we were who we said we were. Easy enough, right? Then the fun began…

General Knowledge Quiz

We can’t say too much about this because we don’t want to reveal the answers, but it was a pretty good quiz. The time limit almost got me though, I had to skip a few questions and barely had time to revisit them – hence my answer of ‘Margaret Fish‘ who, it turns out, was briefly the oldest living person in the UK.

Margaret Fish: Formerly the oldest living person in Britain

The results of the quiz don’t matter, though – your score doesn’t affect your chances of getting on the show. It’s all about seeing how you react to the situations that arise in the interview. Want to practice? Go to a good pub quiz, and have a drink while you’re at it.

It definitely wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. As soon as James told us that we had to answer the quiz individually, my heart sank – I thought I was a goner! Turns out I have decent general knowledge, and I definitely didn’t think ‘Margaret Fish’ was an answer…

The game begins...

The Game

What happened next was a thrilling game of low-budget Pointless, played on a flip chart with a chorus of ‘oohs’ instead of the traditional TV-show sound effects. I’m pretty sure we can tell you the questions that they asked us because they were from an episode that had already aired.

Round One:

We were offered two categories – soaps and famous actors. I had to take one and Laura had to take the other – I’m almost proud to say I chose ‘soaps’. There was method to my  madness, though – I used to watch Emmerdale, Coronation Street and occasionally Eastenders with my mum, and me and Laura watch Eastenders habitually, now. Plus Laura’s studying film at university – it all makes sense!

Archie Mitchell: Evil old man and good answer on Pointless

We were asked to name members of the Mitchell family – I was thinking about Darran, so it’s a good job that I didn’t go for it because apparently he’s a Miller. Out of nowhere, I remembered Archie‘s scary face and went with him, which netted us a pretty low score – the best in the round (not to brag). Ben Mitchell scored surprisingly low, but then the data was probably from before he went mental and killed our Hev.

R.I.P., Hev...

Round Two:

Jack Nicholson films! As a third year film student, I’m ashamed to admit that I did pretty poorly. The only film that came to mind was The Shining (a brilliant movie, by the way). A couple of the pairs got the question wrong, but the ones that did answer correctly, with the likes of The Little Shop of Horrors, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and About Schmidt (which was pointless), fared much better than I did. I let the team down, man!

The Shining: Here's Daney...

Round Three:

In Round Three, we were allowed to consult each other, but it didn’t really help because we were asked to name members of NATO. They told us that it stood for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation but that didn’t help, so we took a guess – Andorra.

I didn’t have the faintest idea what NATO was before round three and, honestly, I still don’t have a clue. My instinct told me that the answer lay in Croatia and the neighbouring countries but, having no faith in myself, I trusted Dane, mistakenly thinking that he knew best. BAD IDEA – hello, 100 points!

Andorra: Not a member of NATO

The Aftermath

And that was pretty much it – afterwards, all of the contestants were asked to stick around to be interviewed on camera. It was pretty simple, a quick five or ten minutes to capture the players’ personalities. We had to leave straight after though, ’cause some of us have to work to earn a living.

The team at Pointless said we’d hear from them by Friday 11th May if we’ll be needed for the show – if we haven’t had a letter or a phone call by then, we didn’t make the cut. Still, to use a cliché, it feels like we’ve already won.

I’ll update this article at a later date if there are any further developments, so make sure you follow me on Facebook and Twitter if you want to hear all about it.

Update: 26th April 2012

We’ve received a follow-up e-mail from the team at Pointless to let us know that we’ve successfully reached the next stage of our application. It’s now likely that we’ll be called up for filming at some point in May or June, although nothing is definite because they have to progress more people through to the filming stage than they’ll actually use in case people drop out or can’t make it.

In an e-mail to us, the Pointless team said:

“Unfortunately, even though you have been short listed for Pointless we cannot guarantee you a place on the show. This is because we are looking for certain combinations of contestants and sometimes have to make last minute decisions to ensure that we have a variety of personalities.

"We are looking for certain combinations of contestants and sometimes have to make last minute decisions to ensure that we have a variety of personalities."

Please be patient during this time. We may call you to check your availability which is good news, but it does not mean that you are on a show until we give you the final confirmation.

Also, if you are cast in this series you are able to bring along friends and family to sit in the studio audience; so it might be worth having a think who you would like to come and support you on the day.”

In an official statement, Laura said: “We’re going to be on TV! Ahhh! I’m so excited, but also scared out of my mind! If I knock us out in the first round, I am never coming out in daylight again. Time to get my revision cap on!”

We’ll update this post with any further developments as and when they happen, so keep your eyes peeled!

The first, called ‘It Sank in the Now‘, is about the Titanic and uses a new form and style of writing that I’ll be using to write my first ‘epic’ poem after I finish work on The Lexicologist’s Handbook.

It Sank in the Now

“It sank in the now,
ex-pat ruined with all hands
seen one Wednesday hit Oceanus’
cube in a sinking southern city.”

Click here to read It Sank in the Now.

The RMS Titanic Sinking

I also wrote a poem called ‘How to Write SEO-Friendly Poetry‘, which is slightly tongue-in-cheek and mainly inspired by the work I’ve done on the text and tags for the new Nobull Website, which should go live within the next month.

Posting this poem online comes with a unique set of difficulties – it uses HTML as part of the poem, and most websites automatically display the code instead of leaving it as it is. Because of this, I had to alter the poem for online publication by switching the < and > symbols for brackets – <b> becomes (b), and so on.

How to Write SEO-Friendly Poetry

“Use keywords
and repeat them,
keep it short and to the point
and deliver
when you promise to deliver.”

Click here to read How to Write SEO-Friendly Poetry.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the DaneCobain.com mailing list for the latest updates, including the upcoming news story on our audition for Pointless!

You might have heard of them because of their energetic and often chaotic live shows or their appearance beside the Dandy Warhols in DiG!, a documentary by Ondi Timoner.

Their songs are always catchy, often psychedelic and rarely celebrated, so I filmed a couple of covers of two of my favourite songs – Anemone and Servo:

Dane Cobain – Anemone/Servo (Brian Jonestown Massacre Covers)

I planned to merge the video with a second recording, which filmed me playing lead guitar while listening back to the original. I was going to overlay the first video with the second so that the recording had two guitarists, but the one piece of software that I have that was capable of doing it kept on crashing and I didn’t have the time or inclination to find another.

Anyway, hopefully my covers have put you in the mood to hear the real thing – they’re such a fantastic band that you *need* to check them out. Here they are performing the two songs that I covered:

The Brian Jonestown Massacre – Anemone

The Brian Jonestown Massacre – Servo

If you want to find out more about the Brian Jonestown Massacre, check them out online, buy or download one of their twelve studio albums or buy tickets to see them at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire on Saturday 7th July – me and Laura will see you there!

It’s a collection of 23 short stories based upon my dreams, written shortly after the completion of Annie but left forgotten. It was completed before I even went to university, so the first draft had none of the finesse or style that I’ve learned since finishing.

Revolution: Front Cover

However, it was salvageable, and ironically the disjointed feel of the work feels like the thought process of the dreams when I was in them. Here’s the blurb:

Half dream-diary and half story-collection, Revolution chronicles twenty three trips in to the unconscious mind. Drawing inspiration from the psychedelic world of Bill Holt and The Beatles, Revolution proves that dreams are inspirational.

Learn about the Nowhere Man, and discover what happens after we die. See what hapens when an Islamic militant visits an open-air festival, and what was special about Christopher Grisholme’s father. Learn this and more, as you wade through twenty three tales of dreams, nightmares, and night-time adventures.

Revolution: Rear Cover

It’s essentially a collection of my dreams translated in to garbled prose, then turned in to something far, far more confusing. There are 23 of them because William Burroughs had a terrifying theory about the number twenty three which Jim Carrey later stole.

If you’d like to, you can pre-order Revolution on my store.

In other news

• The Lexicologist’s Handbook reaches the letter ‘P‘ and 375 pages
• Phase one of the top secret project I mentioned before approaches

I came up with something with a catchy melody, something I’d heard from a dream or hummed at random while waiting for the bus. Here’s the tune I wrote – it’s called ‘We’re Going to be Friends‘:

Dane Cobain – We’re Going to be Friends

Does it sound familiar? Because it should do – Jack White has already written it. Check out the (plagiaristic) similarities between my song and this song by The White Stripes, called ‘We’re Going to be Friends‘:

The White Stripes – We’re Going to be Friends

Yeah, so I guess it’s more of an altered cover of it with fewer lyrics, not exactly what I was planning on writing. Nevertheless, I’d had a couple of beers and it was good fun while it lasted.

If you want to listen to some of the tunes that I didn’t accidentally steal, check out my album ‘Nocturne‘ on Soundcloud or Spotify.

You could say that I’ve already been managing myself, sending manuscripts off to publishers and e-mailing my demo to venues and promoters all over London and the Midlands. Now, I’m expanding, offering my experience and determination to some of the talented artists that I’ve worked with.

DCM

DCM is launching with two artists on the books – myself and GiffordMusic. GiffordMusic is a dubstep and drum ‘n’ bass producer, with a long line of catchy tunes and live performances under his belt. We’ve worked together before, but this is the first time that I’ve offered him management.

GiffordMusic, performing as ‘Giff Ryderz‘, is also a member of Bad Habits Recordings, a local team of MCs, producers and performers that specialise in d ‘n’ b and dubstep. As part of Bad Habits, he’s performed all over the Midlands and even set a date for the end of the world – Armageddon Rave.

GiffordMusic – Bad Habits

You can find out more about GiffordMusic by visiting his page on the website or by checking out his SoundCloud account.

Demo Submission

At present, there are no plans for DCM to take on any new artists because we don’t have the time to dedicate to them. However, if things change we’ll hold an open submission period where all demos will  be accepted and new artists will join the fold.

If you’re interested in being represented by DCM, follow us on Twitter and sign up to the mailing list on the website to keep up-to-date with the latest news and information. Until we open submissions, feel free to e-mail us links to your music anyway – we always welcome new tunes!

There’s been a lot (a bit) of debate about who ‘she’ is on Facebook – let me tell you the story.

Twilight: New Moon

The night before, we’d had a few (a lot) of drinks to say farewell to Vic, my boss at Nobull and (former) head of Sociabull. She’s gone to join the social team at Ogilvy, which is a great opportunity and best of luck to her.

Anyway, I’d already Photoshopped her next to Edward and Jacob from Twilight which, with the help of Bobbie, Simon and Kally at work, was mounted on to a wall-hanging. I felt like doing something else, too:

She’s Leaving Home

“She walks like a winner,
she talks like a winner,
but she, she’s leaving home.

She taught me to be useful
every ordinary day,
but she, she’s leaving home.”

You can read the rest of ‘She’s Leaving Home’ here.

So there you have it – that’s the story. Make sure you tweet at Vic and wish her good luck in her new job!

In other news

As some of you will have noticed, DaneCobain.com has been attacked by hackers on a couple of occasions. I’ve actually been updating my original news story with the latest news – you can read that here.

I’ve implemented a couple of additional security measures and it looks like it’s done the trick – I was last hacked on Friday 9th March. Attacks were coming every couple of days before and I’m reasonably confident that the changes I’ve made have done the job.

I’m also very close to the end of the finalisation stage of Revolution, so keep your eyes peeled for its release in the coming weeks! I’m also up to ‘n‘ in The Lexicologist’s Handbook and have a top secret new project that I’ll be working on from the middle of April.