{Behind The Music} The Memo on Live Away

{Behind The Music} The Memo on Live Away

the memo indie musicChallenge yourself…
The only challenge is making greater and greater music. @thememo_boston


Jacqueline Jax logo photoGETTING TO KNOW THE MEMO
by Jacqueline Jax host of A.V.A Live Radio

An early start…
In about sixth grade, Martin, the lead guitar player and singer, started writing music. He had been playing guitar for a few years prior and usually kept to himself. In the eighth grade, Martin had met his friend Dom, who was a phenomenal musician, and inspired him greatly. After some time working together, they had grown apart. Enter Martin.  Andrew first met Martin, our rhythm guitarist and they had begun to play together. At the same time, Martin had convinced Jack to start playing bass, after introducing him to the Arctic Monkeys. The three of us started playing Martins music (we only had about 3 songs at the time) over and over in Martins garage without a drummer. After 3 or 4 months of desperately seeking the right person to fill that spot, a kid named Jake who also sits at our lunch table, was discovered to be by far and away one of the best drummers around. So as the story goes, Martin kept writing and we just kept practicing.

The band: Martin Writer Vocalist, Jack Base, Guitar Andrew, Jake Drummer


Live Away…
(Martin) Every song except for time travel romance is about absolutely nothing at all. I write every song the same way, I wake up in the middle of the night, I have a full idea in my mind and I write it down. The song was recorded the old fashioned way in an old studio in a really beat-up part of Boston. We didn’t really have much equipment other than instruments so Tim, the owner, shared a few amps and effects pedals and what-not with us. When it was recorded, it was done the old fashioned way. The four of us in a room, playing live, and then just throwing some new vocals and over dubbs on top.

The song hasn’t really been officially launched, frankly, it isn’t even done. It isn’t mixed at all, and we were supposed to add some more vocal to it. Even in it’s raw form, people absolutely adore it. They say it’s like a mix between Oasis, Arctic monkeys and Strokes, which is exactly what we’re aiming for. Performing for us is no different than in my basement, everybody’s confident, and on the same page. It’s an energetic and happy song, one of the favorites amongst the group. We haven’t really thought about a music video yet, we have to finish recording the song and album first (: but I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

The Music…
Its pretty significant to be able to say that we released one of the only rock records coming out, inspired by the visions from the Shoulders of Giants like Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes, and Oasis. There just isn’t enough people being inspired by them. Its proper rock, its proper fun. There’s no use or righteousness in saying that it isn’t any good, I don’t like when people say their own music is bad.

The Process..
All of the music starts with Martin and an acoustic guitar. The music is written and then shown to the band where it is practiced until perfect. When recording, we just use basic amps and drums, nothing special by any means, and we just overdub the mistakes and record, at least for the most part, live.

Braintree Ma…
We live in Braintree, MA. It’s sort of a shit hole. There are only about 15 people in our school playing music and half of them left last year. They were seniors. To go anywhere fun you really have to go into the woods, that’s where we have most of our fun, anyway. I guess from a touristy standpoint, the mall is ok. We only go to the record store in there though.

Music Business..
The music business totally sucks. We hope to change it by bringing back the importance of albums and artists over the importance of songs. I think it’s really distorted and mislead, and could definitely use a point in the right direction. Taylor swift has the right idea with no streaming and stuff like that. It seems music is more like an activity than an experience. Hopefully people will get more into specific artists and albums than different and scattered songs. With a bit of hope iTunes will do something like an album-only or single-only system and spotify and other stuff like that will diminish.

Social Media…
its a good way to get information out fast especially for people to share our music and the tracks of other people’s music as well. The ability to say what we want is good as is to meet people from all around.

Marketing Strategy..
We feel if people like us, they’ll share us and show us to people who’ll also like us. It’s hard to market music, because everybody is so different.

I would love to have 5 minutes alone with…
One of the workers on the Egyptian Pyramids. I would ask them if they knew that they were creating something that would leave the world in awe for the next 6000 year. I want to know if their contributions were far more important than they thought at the time. Its curious to think they might not have had any idea of the vastness of their projects.

Challenge yourself…
The only challenge is making greater and greater music.

I am most afraid of..

to me it mean being a household name.

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