On Monday 5th December I parted company with Downtown Lester Brown, the band that I started earlier this year. The main reason behind my quitting the band, both as a band member and their manager, is that I feel the band’s arrogance outweighs their ambition, although this mainly applies to Ben and Richard.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was the text message that I received on the Saturday following the gig I had organised on Friday 2nd December at The Telegraph.
The Telegraph - Friday 2nd December 2011
The Telegraph is a small venue and for my gig it was only about a quarter full, only thirty-five or so people attended the gig. Obviously I felt disappointed at the turn out. The crowd Downtown Lester Brown attracts has seemingly been getting smaller the more gigs they do. I feel that the more gigs they do the more followers they should acquire. That would denote some level of success. But to be pulling smaller and smaller crowds each gig, is stepping towards failure. So to receive a text message from Richard the following day claiming to feel “like a god after that”, I was highly dissatisfied. It shows a terrible lack of ambition as well as a ridiculous amount of arrogance for someone who had just played a gig in front of a handful of people.
Unfortunately this was not the first act of unwarranted arrogance from Richard, let alone the band. Richard cancelled a gig that I had arranged, to go to another gig. The gig I arranged was set to be Downtown Lester Brown’s debut EP release. At that point Richard claimed to be too big to play at venues of that stature and Ben also stated that that gig was unimportant as it was a free gig and not one where we would earn any money. When a band has just started out, every gig should be important but to cancel a pre-arranged gig to go see another gig shows a lack of dedication and ambition. As well as the arrogance shown by Richard thinking he’s too big to play small gigs of the stature that I was arranging, as it’s “not Wembley”, and Ben’s attitude of it not being important as we weren’t getting paid, there is the wasting of the time and the effort I put in arranging gigs in the first place. Ben is also the self-proclaimed “voice of a generation”, although he’s not saying a great deal with tracks such as Each To Their Own, which despite being free was only downloaded twenty times.
Despite that arrogance though, they totally lack ambition. When I put the band forward for the Battle of the Bands, in Redcar, Ben didn’t want to do it and claimed it was pointless because his last band, the generic and unoriginal Casino, always sucked when they did them. I had to convince him that it was a good idea and the winning isn’t important. It’s an opportunity to play your music in front of people who might not otherwise ever get the chance to hear it.
Another massive issue for me was the style of the new material. When I set this whole thing up I had a specification that I wanted to work towards. I wanted to create a band with a fun attitude that would play psychedelic, up-beat music that would get people dancing and in the mood to go out clubbing because, after all, if you’re playing Friday and Saturday night gigs then your demographic is the pre-clubbing market. Unfortunately neither Ben nor Richard has enough attitude or edge and, due to Richard having too much influence over Ben, we’ve ended up with songs with whiney vocals and songs crying over girls. Too many of their new songs are songs that you can’t dance to. The psychedelic guitars, such as the style in Empty Heed or High Definition Jazz Kitten have been dropped and I feel the music is heading in a more mainstream direction. They’re heading back down the same route as their old band Casino. I also have major concerns that all of the lyrics Richard writes are wet, too tame and basically shit.
After getting back from a short break in Amsterdam near the end of November, I was basically told by Ben that my input in the sound of the band is no longer wanted as I can’t play an instrument so know fuck all. At this point I told them I would work with them for one more recording and the promotion of that release, and after that I would leave the band and concentrate solely on managing the band. I am aiming to set up my own independent record label in the new year and was hoping to commission a Downtown Lester Brown album through my label.
As part of my role in managing the band, I sent the tracks from our EP away online for some independent reviews. The reviews basically supported the things that I had been saying from the start. Tracks such as Empty Heed, High Definition Jazz Kitten and Man On The Run were reasonably well received. Those were three songs that Ben wrote before the band took off and before Richard had gotten involved. Each To Their Own was unanimously panned for being generic wannabe-Beatles stuff, but that was an unrecorded Casino track that we used when we first started and has now been dropped. Dufresne’s Escape bombed. I had said that I thought the vocals were weak and let the track down because it’s just Richard whining again. All the reviews seemed to agree with me and one even went as far as to say the vocals “ruined” the song. However, Richard also sung on Fun & Games and there were several reviews raving about how good he was on that track. On Fun & Games Richard sings with a bit of grit. When we recorded it I was blown away. Unfortunately that’s the only track he’s done like that and at the last practice I attended before leaving the band, he was whining on a new song and opened with the lyrics, “I was feeling down..” and went on to do the crying, “Why? Why? Why?” throughout the track. It was typical Richard Gilroy music; it wasn’t anything new or original.
I also have concerns over plagiarism in some of the new songs, and the legal ramifications that could come from that. I wouldn’t want anything to do with the recording of Be Someone, another of Richard’s tracks, as that’s basically Breakfast at Tiffany’s and also the exact same guitars are in some crap pop song that I heard on whichever mainstream shite radio station Wor Colin listens to. I also expressed concerns over several other songs. There are only two tracks that I would want recorded, Mallaz Beats The Devil and Eesh’s Jam.
So after Richard’s “god” text, I have decided to quit Downtown Lester Brown to pursue other ventures. I’ve got my next Telegraph gig on Friday 3rd February 2012 and hope that the next couple are successful enough to start looking for bigger venues. I’m going to be starting a new band after New Year and I am also going to be setting up my own independent record label in 2012. I’ve also got the art to keep me occupied and several other ventures that I’m looking into.
I have processed Downtown Lester Brown’s debut EP, ‘Love & Other Diseases’, and that will be available to download from Boxing Day 2011. As for the physical copies of the EP, I am not sure if or when they are going to become available. That’s now down to the band to give me the green light to get them manufactured. Also, as far as I’m aware, they don’t have anything at all book for before the Battle of the Bands, in Redcar, on 10th February 2012. There was some doubt whether they will actually attend that though. Ben was telling me that the band had all basically agreed that it would be pointless as they wouldn’t win, I shit you not!
I wish Downtown Lester Brown the best of luck for the future.
WHAT MALLAZ IS SAYING! 