A Coma with Michael Cera - JJ#4

Welcome back to the fourth issue of the Jamaraz Journal! It's been a pretty busy couple of weeks for me, so let me tell you all about it...

Absolutely no golf or motorcycling.

Some of you may know that I'm in a band called Knutmo Five with a few of my friends. We're pretty new! A couple days ago, we released our first single, called 'No Golf, No Motorcycling'. You can listen to it here >>

The cover art for our first single.

For those who don't know, I'm the drummer in the band, and I also had a large role in recording and mixing this track - and the many more to come ;)

Thanks so much to anyone who's had a listen to it already, we love you!!! We've had so many lovely comments about the song, and believe me when I say, THERES MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM.

When it came out on the Saturday before last, I was actually pretty ill. It's just that time of year I guess, I know that a lot of people round college have been unwell recently too. Luckily I got over it alright, and it was actually nice to have some downtime when I've been working at full steam for a while.

Actually, I say that, but even while I was ill I was still working on some stuff. The main thing I've been working on is the 1st anniversary of my album Return To Zero. I was just sat in my bed sweating and coughing while typing up some posts on my laptop... the grind never stops!

NOW: That's what I call a fever dream

Okay, so at the height of my little illness I had the most insane dream/experience I think I've ever had, and it went something like this...

I was lying in bed, really tired, feeling achy all over, my throat was sore, the whole thing. I was just reading a book (rare) and I decided to close my eyes for one second.

I promptly fell asleep, but I still felt like I was awake, just lying there with my eyes closed. Then I remember hearing, very specifically, the guitar solo from Photograph by Def Leppard. I was enjoying it, it's a sick solo. Then I realised... I didn't have headphones on... how the hell am I listening to this??

I realised that I must've been in some sort of dream. I still couldn't see anything, but I knew I was asleep still. Now that I had gained consciousness, however, I wanted to see if I could properly have a lucid dream.

For those who don't know, a lucid dream is essentially where you become aware that you're dreaming while you're still dreaming. If done right, it could lead to you having some sort of control over the dream world, and people always talk about flying and shit like that. Lucid dreaming is actually a thing you can practice and get good at, look it up.

Anyway. To start with, I wanted to see if I had any control over what I was experiencing. So, I tried to essentially teleport myself outside my house. Surprisingly, after about 30 seconds of concentration, it worked, and I was looking up at my bedroom window from outside my house. Then I tried again and I was looking at my old school, and then again and I was looking at my college.

I teleported back to the outside of my house. Now I wanted to step it up a level; I felt like playing some drums. So I put all my thought into magic-ing a pair of drumsticks into my hands. I looked down, and to my surprise, I was holding some drumsticks.

Now, this is where it gets weird. I suddenly felt a weird sensation, like butterflies in my stomach, and I began to levitate in the air, but I wasn't doing it, it was like I was being lifted up. It was really weird.

Then, the view of my house disappeared and I was just in a blank white room, like typical depictions of heaven in movies.

Sadly, Morgan Freeman wasn't there.

As one probably would, I got a little freaked out by this. I don't really remember what happened next, but I remember waking up in my bed, but lying the opposite way, with my feet where my pillow was.

I tried sitting up, but I was hit with a massively nauseating feeling, like being on a small boat in a storm, and I immediately fell back. My vision was very blurry. I then looked down at my hands, and I kid you not, my hands were just two impossibly bright stars.

The dream had not ended.

I tried shaking myself awake but I couldn't move. I tried moving my arm, which weighed about 50kg (110lbs for the Americans), onto my face to wake myself up. Slowly, it worked, and I managed to open my own eyelids with my hand. I finally woke up, with my hand actually on my face still...

So there you go, make of that what you will, but it actually happened. It was a very interesting experience, and in hindsight I actually quite enjoyed it, even though I almost entered a fucking coma.

Tell me if it Hz

In other news, my next planned release for the JMU is finished! It's a 6-track EP by this dude called King Hertzie called 'Tell me if it Hz', originally released in October 2007. It's going to come out later this month... I would say when, but I think I want to announce it properly in a cool video or something, so I'll keep that information from you for now.

Little bit of a plug, but members of my Patreon have had the chance to hear all the songs as soon as I make them, and last week I shared the full, finished EP with them too.

If you want to hear all the new stuff I make in real time while simultaneously supporting me and my music, you can join my Patreon here for as little as £1 / month, which is super doable I think! BUT ANYWAY...

This is cover art I made for it. Pretty cool right? It's really trippy, because King Hertzie's music is pretty trippy. It's pretty electronic, it's (mostly) dance-able, it's pretty rough around the ages, and it's just got this overarching feel of psychedelia. You'll know when you hear it.

Below is is the original photo I edited. Pretty crazy change right? I couldn't tell you a single thing I did to it. I just changed random settings on Affinity Photo (which I got for free from a music competition I won with 'Microwave' lol) until it looked sick.

Random Sidequest

Last Friday, Alfie and I attended a little networking event in Manchester that was hosted by a local company called Venture. They basically put on gigs around the Manchester area, and they put on this event to allow a few local bands to mix and get to know each other, which I think is a pretty cool idea.

Neither me nor Alife are from Manchester, but we're friendly with the guy who runs Venture, and he'd helped us play a gig in Manchester before, so Knutmo Five qualified for this little event.

It was pretty okay, I got to speak to a few different people and made a couple friends, but Alfie and I felt like we didn't really fit in with most of them. Maybe it was down to the geography, after all, everyone else was from the local scene and we were the outsiders.

After a couple hours, we had to leave to grab our train back to Stoke (I was staying at Alfie's for the weekend), and luckily a truckload of pizza arrived just before we left, so we grabbed a box ;)

Bournemouth Motorhome

On the Saturday, the day after, our friend Ollie came round for the day, and he stayed over for the night. Ollie is the guitarist in the Ricky Jamaraz live band, and also the guitarist in Knutmo Five. Here's a graph to help understand it:

Rhys, of course, is an honorary member of both bands.

Ollie also fronts his own band, they're called Dorset Caravan. So many bands! Sadly, neither me nor Alfie are a member of Dorset Caravan, but I get to be involved because I'm mixing their first album :D

Over the weekend while Ollie was with us, I helped him record the vocals for the album, as that was the only part that he hadn't done yet. We got all 11 songs done pretty quickly, and now for the past few days I've been going through the songs and working my mixing magic.

By the way, if you're not 100% sure what mixing is, it's basically the process of turning a bunch of recorded tracks (vocals, guitars, drums) into a finished final track (the actual song). Extremely simply, it's about making sure everything is at the right level so you can hear stuff, but there are many ways to go about it. It's essentially the equivalent of video editing in the music world.

I personally love mixing, and I've gotten fairly good at it, so I've considered potentially opening up my services to earn a bit of extra money on the side. It's not something I'm planning to do anytime soon though, just a thought.

Here's Ollie recording some vocals in Alfie's dining room. Don't ask about the sock on the microphone.

Michael Cera Palin

Michael Cera is an Canadian actor known for his roles in coming-of-age films such as Superbad and Juno.

Sir Michael Palin is a comedian, most known for his work with the Monty Python group in the 1970s.

Michael Cera Palin is a midwest emo band that I went to see with my friend Sam on Tuesday night. IT WAS SUCH A GOOD SHOW! Sam and I agreed that it was probably one of the best shows we'd been to, the energy was insane.

The band let some people from the audience onto the stage with them for a little bit which was cool.

At the gig I also made a couple new friends, two guys called Lucas and Eric. Lucas didn't really know the band much, he was there because Eric dragged him along. Eric was a massive fan of MCP, more than me and Sam for sure. In fact, I hadn't listened to them for about 2 years before this gig. I used to be into them, then I forgot about them, then I saw the gig come up and nostalgia made me get tickets - Sam was the same.

Also at this gig, I saw this guy called Felix. If you go to gigs fairly often you may have encountered the concept of "gig friends". Gig friends are people that you see often at different gigs, like they just pop up everywhere. I first met Felix at a Crywank (don't ask) show, then again at Origami Angel, apparently he was around when I saw American Football, and this time he was at Michael Cera Palin.

It's nice to know whenever I go to any emo-or-adjacent gig, I can guess he'll be there too.

Here's a picture Sam and I got with the singer after the show:

Me, Elliott Brabant, and Sam.

Cool stuff!

'Student Night'

There's this shopping centre ('mall') in Nottingham called Victoria Centre, which is like the main indoor shopping area, and every October they put on this event for students where they have games and you get discounts in loads of different shops there.

I first heard about it last year, and I was going to go, but for the life of me I can't remember why I didn't in the end. This year I went with my friend Rhys though, and it was alright. They had some good discounts in clothes shops like Urban Outfitters and stuff like that, but that just brought the price down from overpriced to a normal amount.

When I buy clothes, I almost always by second hand, just because not only is it better to give clothing a second life, but it's soooo much cheaper, but you really don't lose out that much on quality at all, at least that's what I think.

Anyway, Rhys and I explored around for a couple hours, I ended up buying this incredibly cool mug pictured below, then we decided to wrap it up with some food from Maccies.

My amazing new mug.

What I found funny was that the whole evening we didn't actually need to show our student ID's to get the discounts, so I guess anyone could just walk in there and get cheaper stuff. Maybe it's just because we looked like students - that's probably it. There wasn't a single person over the age of 23 there, so if a 50 year old walked in and tried to get 60% off at Trespass, you'd know about it.

That's just about everything

Yep, that's it. The only other major thing is that on Sunday I'm turning 18. This is the last Friday of my childhood... that's... I don't know. It is what it is. I'm having a bunch of mates over on Saturday night so that will be fun.

Have a good one, till next time!

RJ

JJ#5 coming on Oct. 17th