Jeremy Norris | Brad Spurgeon's Blog

“Borderline” – Fifth, and final, Song and Video of the Melodium Sessions in Montreuil

August 17, 2014
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Borderline music video

PARIS – In recent months, I posted my first four videos and recordings of the songs I recorded in the studio in February, in the posts for “When You’re Gone Away” and my song “Crazy Lady”, and “Mad World,” the Tears for Fears song,
and “When You’re Gone Away,” another of my songs. As I said in the previous posts, I plan to do different style videos each time, and today, with my final song from the session, “Borderline,” I have again added several new elements as well:

As with the others of the five-part series of songs I recorded at the Melodium Studio in Montreuil outside Paris in February, I recorded this one with my favorite lead player, Félix Beguin and drummer, Jeremy Norris – both of whom are in two excellent Paris bands, The Burnin’ Jacks and the Velvet Veins – and also with Scott Bricklin – a Paris expat musician originally from Philadelphia – on bass. Together, as I mentioned, we spent three days in the studio.

The beauty of doing these recording sessions was the incredible cohesion and talent I was surrounded with in Félix, Jeremy and Scott and their wonderful arrangements and Félix’s mixing. All three have worked together extensively, and often at the incredible Melodium Studios, and of course, I have gigged with Félix regularly in the last five years. So it was all just so together.

So with the above song, “Borderline,” I complete the Melodium session recordings. But I still have a couple of other recent recordings and videos to add in the coming months – including a new song I just finished writing last week – so I’ll keep you posted.

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“If I Only Had You” – Fourth Song and Video of the Melodium Sessions in Montreuil

June 1, 2014
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Brad Spurgeon – If I Only Had You

PARIS – In recent weeks, I posted my first three videos and recordings of the songs I recorded in the studio in February, in the post for “When You’re Gone Away.” and my song “Crazy Lady” and “Mad World,” the Tears for Fears song.
Today, from Paris, I am posting my fourth video and song recording, another of my own songs, “When You’re Gone Away”. As I said in the previous posts, I plan to do different style videos each time, and this one is has a completely new element in it – a guest vocalist and…a “co-star” in the video, I might call her.

But this song is also quite different from my other songs, in being the only song that I actually wrote at the request of another musician. It was an interesting exercise, because I wanted to write for this other person’s style, but also put my own spin to it, and equally, make sure that the song was completely true to my own heart. When it turned out that the other musician – actually, a duo – said they liked it but never acted on it, I decided to record it myself….

As with the others of the five-part series of the five songs I recorded at the Melodium Studio in Montreuil outside Paris in February, I recorded with my favorite lead player, Félix Beguin and drummer, Jeremy Norris – both of whom are in two excellent Paris bands, The Burnin’ Jacks and the Velvet Veins – and also with Scott Bricklin – a Paris expat musician originally from Philadelphia – on bass. Together, as I mentioned, we spent three days in the studio.

In the coming weeks I plan to finish this cycle of videos with my final song, “Borderline,” and then I plan to put out a CD of the whole, as well as others of my songs.

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“Mad World” – Third Song and Video of the Melodium Sessions in Montreuil

May 9, 2014
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Mad World (Brad Spurgeon)

BARCELONA – In recent weeks, I posted my first two videos and recordings of the songs I recorded in the studio in February, in the post for “When You’re Gone Away.” and my song “Crazy Lady.”
Today, from Barcelona – although the video was filmed in Paris – I am posting my third video and song recording, which is the only cover song I did during the session, for one of my regular covers: Mad World. As I said in the previous posts, I plan to do different style videos each time, and this one is definitely a slightly madder video than the previous two – as befits a song like “Mad World,” by Tears for Fears (later covered brilliantly by Gary Jules).

In the coming weeks I plan to continue making videos of these songs and releasing them, and then I plan to put out a CD of the whole, as well as others of my songs (and a wicked cover song). The videos, as I said, will all be quite different; the first one I did while walking around Paris and being filmed by Raphaëlle. With “Crazy Lady,” I decided to have a completely different kind of fun doing a completely different kind of video to illustrate my song, drawing on black and white films from the public domain to try to illustrate this song with a story to tell that is a little tricky to illustrate otherwise! With “Mad World,” it too is in Paris, but I decided to add a few mad aspects of my own personality – as you will see – and some mad places in Paris.

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“Crazy Lady” – Second Song and Video of the Melodium Sessions in Montreuil & Mysterious Elsewheres

April 10, 2014
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Crazy Lady

PARIS – A couple of weeks ago, while in Kuala Lumpur, I posted my first video and recording of the songs I recorded in the studio in February, in the post for “When You’re Gone Away.” Since then I have been working on the second video while I was in KL, in Bahrain and now in Paris (where I’m back again for a few days before taking off for Shanghai). I’ve now finished that second video of the five-part series of the five songs I recorded at the Melodium Studio in Montreuil outside Paris in February, I’m talking about the video for my song “Crazy Lady.” As with “When You’re Gone Away,” I recorded “Crazy Lady” along with my favorite lead player, Félix Beguin and drummer, Jeremy Norris – both of whom are in two excellent Paris bands, The Burnin’ Jacks and the Velvet Veins – and also with Scott Bricklin – a Paris expat musician originally from Philadelphia – on bass. Together, as I mentioned, we recorded five songs.

In the coming weeks I plan to continue making videos of these songs and releasing them, and then I plan to put out a CD of the whole, as well as others of my songs (and a wicked cover song). The videos will all be quite different; the first one I did while walking around Paris and being filmed by Raphaëlle, and adding two bits of “mystery footage” from the past and from elsewhere in the world that I took – see if you can spot it! This time, with “Crazy Lady,” I decided to have a completely different kind of fun doing a completely different kind of video to illustrate my song, drawing on black and white films from the public domain to try to illustrate this song with a story to tell that is a little tricky to illustrate otherwise!

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“When You’re Gone Away” – First Song and Video of the Melodium Sessions in Montreuil, Paris and a Mysterious Elsewhere

March 26, 2014
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When You’re Gone Away

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – This post has nothing to do with my location of sitting in a hotel room high above hot and humid Kuala Lumpur, where I will be working and playing music for the next week…except perhaps that high in the air (although not high in the head) is also where I was when I edited this music video of the first of my songs from the Melodium recording sessions last month in Montreuil.

In fact, yes, this post is all about a chain of events that started at the Melodium Studio in Montreuil outside Paris last month, that continued in the streets of Paris’s Latin Quarter over the weekend and that I finalized on my flight to Kuala Lumpur from Paris last night. I’m talking about the video that I put together for my song “When You’re Gone Away,” the music of which I recorded in Montreuil last month, and that I filmed in Paris over the weekend and that I edited on the flight and uploaded in my hotel room in Kuala Lumpur.

That actually seems a fitting chain of events for my song called, “When You’re Gone Away,” that I recorded along with my favorite lead player, Félix Beguin and drummer, Jeremy Norris – both of whom are in two excellent Paris bands, The Burnin’ Jacks and the Velvet Veins – and also with Scott Bricklin – a Paris expat musician originally from Philadelphia – on bass. Together, as I mentioned in a blog item about my session at Melodium Studios, we recorded five songs, of which “When You’re Gone Away,” is one.

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