Searching for a new 'Song for Bath'

This first appeared in the Bath Chronicle of March 31

I have often waxed lyrical in this column/blog about the fact that Bath truly is a city of music.

No matter what tastes you have there is plenty of musical choice out there for you to enjoy.

And, just as importantly, it seems there are thousands of people in our community performing as well as listening. It is a city built on sound.

Even with that as a context, however, I can say that I have been truly staggered over the past few days as I have been listening to the entries for the first-ever Song For Bath competition which has shown what a remarkable collection of songwriters and musical storytellers we have in our community.

I am lucky enough to be one of the judges of this great competition and so a while ago I was handed (by the irrepressibly enthusiastic organiser Paddy Doyle), a box of CDs and a huge catalogue of music and lyrics of the near 100 entries from which to pick my favourites.

When it was set up those of us involved in the contest had no idea if it would take off and capture the local imagination and, indeed, in the early days it did look as though it may be a struggle to get the kind of numbers we needed to make this a viable musical battle.

Well, we need not have worried.

For as the deadline for entries got closer, they poured in and the result is a splendid collection of tunes covering everything from rock songs to choral and classical pieces. And just about everything in between. The idea is that my fellow judges and I (and they are all far more qualified than I am in this process) have now got to whittle down the entries to just ten for our grand final in June (more details of which will be announced shortly).

And it is not easy.

As we all know musical taste is very subjective so I've tried to bring other people into my selection process. But such is the diversity of songs that with other people's input the shortlist is now a very long list.

So, therefore, this weekend I will have to go back to the tunes again before making my final choices. My selections will be added to those submitted by the other judges in the hope that between us we can come up with a group of finalists we can all be happy with.

Overall, I have been genuinely impressed at the effort which people have put in to write and record these songs about our city which inspire both musically and lyrically.

The most important thing of all, however, is that I'm certain we ARE going to find a strong winner as there are plenty of golden nuggets amidst the collection. There are tunes I found myself whistling hours later and lyrics that quickly wrote themselves onto my brain.

A worthy Song for Bath is on those CDs. We just have to dig it out.

Time to get the old band back together again?

One of the many things that I love about Bath is that it really is a city that respects and reveres music. Whether your tastes are for the Mozart Festival or for Moles, there is something in this city for everyone. It truly is a community paved with melodies.

But it is not just the opportunity to get out and hear lots of different styles of music that makes Bath come alive – for this is a city that positively encourages people to make music all of their own. So, if you are in any length of queue with locals in Bath, the chances are at least one of them is in a choir, gospel group, rock band, jazz outfit et al.

Yes, this is a city of music.

It is for that reason that I am particularly thrilled this week to launch our Song for Bath competition to try to encourage people to write a tune that will encapsulate the city as it is now.

Inspired by the very enthusiastic brains behind the project, Paddy Doyle, it didn’t take long for us to see this as a wonderful opportunity to turn the creativity that is so evident in the Bath musical community into a fun competition. So, whether your tastes are for light orchestra or, err, the Electric Light Orchestra, we hope you’ll think about creating a tune which could lead to some great prizes as well as the chance to perform in a grand final.

It seemed apt to me that we should be running this competition right now because I am personally thinking about doing that classical middle- aged thing – yes, I’m thinking of “getting the old band together” again.

As I grew up in the punk era where the ethos was “don’t go and watch bands, form them and do it yourself”, nearly all my friends and I found ourselves starting bands – and having a fantastic time doing so.

Some of those bands didn’t last very long – I once fronted a group called the Vatican City Dance Band which went no further than coming up with a spectacularly good name – but my longest-serving band was called The Classified Ads (somewhat apt considering I’m now in newspapers!) who were together for the best part of my secondary days.

It was a thrilling time – we only played to youth clubs and relatively small venues in our home town area but, if I say so myself, I think we penned one or two pretty good tunes along the way. Now, some 25 years since we split (millions of teenage girls were NOT heartbroken) there seems to be a yearning among us to do something again.

Inevitably, the five of us have gone down very different paths but we’ve sort of discovered each other again and now have set ourselves the goal of doing a one-off something in the year 2011.

Of course, there are many reasons why this could be an utter disaster – but whatever those fears, even the thought of getting back together again and seeing four of the most important people in my life is enough to get us somewhere.

So, if a jaded old punky “singer” from the ’80s is thinking about bashing out a tune again, there is no excuse for all of you out there not to enter our Bath song competition.And, to make it easy, I promise The Classified Ads won’t enter.

Or The Vatican City Dance Band.