Why I Write (sad songs)

Don Blake
Don Blake
Jul 28, 2017 · 5 min read

My mum’s got pretty good taste in music. Her favourites are anything from the Tamla Motown era and Michael Jackson, of course, but she’s also into Metallica and jams Jimmy Eat World regularly in the car. We went to see The Get Up Kids last year and a stage-diver jumped on her head.

What I’m getting at is, the possibility of her actually listening to our band’s stuff when we release something is as good as certain. We’d have to play something way meaner to go into the parents’ “unlistenable racket” category.

(Starting our first blog post inadvertently indicating that the band must be good because my mum likes us shouldn’t have made it through the editing process but you know what? It’s staying in …)

When our last album, Pocket Universe, came out in 2015 I wondered if she would think that her son was miserable weirdo for the first time, as if I may somehow have possessed the skill to suppress that information for an entire twenty eight years.

When I posted up the video for the first song from our new EP, “A Broken Baritone”, with the chorus, “I’m looking deep into myself, I think I’m beyond help”, on Facebook, my Grandma commented: “Don’t need much help Joseph, you and friends doing great x”, which is super sweet but also making my Grandma think that I’m struggling is a bit of a downer. It just fitted the vocal melody nicely, Grandma!

As I’ve alluded to, in Don Blake we tend to sing kinda sad songs. When our other guitar player, Rob, and I originally discussed starting a band called “Don Blake” years ago, the idea was for all the songs to be about stories from the original Thor Marvel comics, by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. The idea didn’t seem to have too much mileage and it fell apart (though one song made it through), until we were starting this band and the four us of couldn’t agree on a name for it and resurrected that one. A lot like the thunder god himself, in a way, lying dormant for years inside mild-mannered Dr. Don Blake’s body.

We’re a pretty small band who have been plugging away on and off in the corners of the UK DIY punk scene, opening for great US bands like Chumped and Masked Intruder, and playing with peers and mates (also great bands) like The Murderburgers, The Kimberly Steaks, Throwing Stuff, and Andrew Cream, to name a few. A big part of our audience is made up of our friends, either from our regular non-musical lives, or people we have met through being in the band. So, like the situation with my family, it can be a bit weird pouring out the saddest and most vulnerable parts of yourself onto the page before shouting them through a microphone, if it’s mostly going to be your friends hearing the words.

Is that scarier for big bands, who have 100x (1000x? 100000x?) the amount of people hearing those lyrics? Maybe it is. But they also have their hard-earned fanbase around to sing them back and confirm that they aren’t so odd.

Another pitfall of writing sad songs or having a catalogue where the a lot of songs touch on mental health/illness is not wanting to diminish its seriousness.

If I’m honest, sometimes I do have to wind back some of the sentiments expressed, not wanting to become too melodramatic or exaggerate any feelings. I have never been formally diagnosed with a mental illness but the moment to moment and the greatest hits/clip-show versions of anxiety are definitely a thing. However, if my friends and I are anything to go by, I get the impression that people who don’t suffer from some level of mental illness are in the absolute minority, if they exist at all.

I feel lucky to be in the position where songwriting and playing music can provide a decent outlet for those kind of thoughts and feelings. A couple of years ago I had some kind of RSI-type wrist ailment going on (I’ve heard every wanking joke on Earth at this point, don’t @ me) which pretty much barred me from playing guitar for a about a year. That seriously sucked and the line between the physical stuff and being depressed by that situation got pretty blurry.

Obviously a lot of people have far worse things going on in their lives, but you never know what is going on in people’s heads. Everyone lives in their own bubble to an extent and this shit is not logical.

With some lineup reshuffling and the drafting in of another mate, carrying on with the band was super helpful during that time, even if I did make a bit of an awkward non-instrument playing frontman, and writing and recording our Pocket Universe album was even better.

Can’t Turn It Off”, the opening track is about the blurred line mentioned above, and bunch of the other songs cover similar topics. I know the others in the band approached writing that record in a similar way. We didn’t want it to become too downbeat though, so why not recycle this mental rubbish and turn it into pop songs?

This isn’t something especially original, and I won’t talk about it as if it is, but it is something powerful.

Being able to take your darkest thoughts, transform them into petty scribbled symbols on a white page, then obliterate them two minutes at a time with power chords and harmonies is pretty special. Doing that with your best friends is even better. And if the end result means something to anyone else then that is pretty much amazing beyond words.

Even without the lyrical content — if people like listening to loud guitars and nice melodies while having a bit of a dance sometimes, that’s some pretty great catharsis too.

Ultimately, I think we’re all trying to escape the shittier moments in our lives and the times when our brains are up to their usual fifth columnist sabotage. If you manage to figure out something that helps with that, even temporarily, then keep doing it; you are likely doing better than most.

I think for some people it can even involve things as weird as doing exercise, or listening to music involving more than three chords but I couldn’t comment on that personally.

Don Blake

Written by

Don Blake

Pop punk band from North West England - https://donblake.bandcamp.com

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