From the Manufacturers

Just got word that The Scaremongers' First Double A-Side is due back from the manufacturers on Tuesday. Barring mishaps and problems with the CD, hopefully we can get it to our distributors by the weekend. They need time to process it, but fingers crossed we should be able to make it available by the end of the following week, ie the 14th September. You'll be the first to know when it's ready!

I'm both super-hyper to see it and yet deeply apprehensive that something is wrong with it and that I might be disappointed. I spoke to Emma from The Pocketbooks a couple of weeks ago about their single, and she said she hadn't dared play it for fear it wasn't as good as she hoped it would be. I can understand exactly how she feels! It's silly really - these are simple problems that can be sorted out, but it's more than that, it's all your dreams going into one piece of plastic, and you don't get too many opportunities in life to create these artifacts. You want them to be as good as they can possibly be.

What I keep forgetting is that everyone else involved wants it to be as good as it can possibly be, as well. The dreams and reputations of the engineer in the studio, and the CD manufacturers themselves ride on the fact that they come up with something professional and cool whenever they are paid to do it, so they will make an effort with our CD just as much as they would with any other band. In some ways doing a good job is even more important to them than it is to us because their livelihoods rely on it: they need strong word of mouth to get them the next job and the next after that. They want us to come back because it's a tough market out there, and they are banking on repeat custom and recommendations for new business, and they know that those are far more likely if they show commitment and diligence. So we have to trust we are in safe hands.

It all goes to show how collaborative creative endeavour is. These two songs will find their way into the hands of others only because a team of people came together to make it happen. Beside Armitage and Smith, the aforementioned CD manufacturers and the studio engineer, Jason Salisbury, are in the mix. The musicians Glen Smith and Geoff Bird helped us out big time, as did Speedy Sue with a glorious vocal performance. Lyndon Hayes painted the original art that we used for the cover, and Fiona Macnab let us use it. You could get even further into it: the ladies in the sandwich shop where we bought food while we were in the studio - whole moods can swing on the quality of a sandwich; the people who made the equipment - the band's gear, the studios gear, the cars we drove to the studio in; the people from Typepad, MySpace, Spice, Indie Store, Last.fm; certainly Tony and his team at Vinyl Tap for making the CD available. All of those people influenced the making of the CD in a very direct and positive way. It's awe-inspiring, when you think about it, bewildering - swap out any one of those people, and the record would have been different. I'm sure it would still have been made, but it wouldn't have been the same: they certainly made it easier.

Music is collaborative - don't let anyone tell you any different.