[Photography] Lazy Butterly.

Polaroid SX70 [Red] | Polaroid Time Zero [Expired 1999]

[Music] Ginger's Genius Album Genesis.

Now this is genius.

Wildhearts front-man Ginger is looking to record a new solo album.  Nothing shocking or amazing there, you say. He has some sort of addiction to releasing albums, putting out hundreds of original songs. OK, but he needs to finance it and doesn't want to get a record company involved - you know, punk ethos.

So he has created a project on PledgeMusic, a website where people can pledge money to a recording artist to enable them to afford to get into the studio and record.  In return, they get the album.  So it's kind of like the music industry in reverse. It's taken the idea of a pre-order to a whole new level. So says the man himself:

"I love music being independent. Always have.

The D.I.Y approach has appealed to me since I watched the original punks gatecrash the charts and infuriate the press. But the thing was, they couldn’t be stopped because the people were behind their militant stance and the mainstream could only stubbornly hope that they’d just go away. But we never went away. Revolution was born.

I remember thinking how cool it was to hear Jimmy Saville, on Radio One, refer to ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’ as, simply, ‘Nevermind’. And when “God Save The Queen” stormed the charts at number one? Well, there just wasn’t a number one that week, the slot was left blank.

But we all knew. To the believers this was victory.

What I want to do is keep that spirit thriving. Music made for the people by the people."

Ginger's plan is to record a HUGE triple album of solo material which will be presented to the fans who pledge in one of 4 ways: standard download of all 30 songs, a triple CD set, a deluxe signed triple CD set, or a special package of the triple CD set with you named in the liner notes and a 3 LPs. Each option is available at a different price point to cover all pockets, the downloads from a tenner, to £100 for the "thanks" CD and vinyl package.  Those who pledge will also have the chance to vote for their favourite 12 tracks off the triple album, which will be made in to the commercially available version for the shops.

He set the time limit as 60 days to raise the money needed (I think the figure of £40,000 was touted at some point) and posted the information on his Twitter and Facebook pages.

Ginger is a well known artist, but only to a core group of fans.  He isnt like some "stars" on Twitter with 1Million+ followers.  He has about 5000 of them, modest by rockstar amounts.  About the same amount also "Like" his Facebook page, although it would be safe to say there a huge overlap. So 60 days to get the funds needed looked sensible.

But no, it wasnt to be.  He greatly under estimated the loyal group of followers.  After 30 minutes of the PledgeMusic site being live, he was already on the way.  After 6 hours it was done, 100% funded.  After 2 days (the pledge stays open after it reaches 100%), it is sitting at 219% with all the special "thanks" packages gone.  You can still get pledge towards the other levels though.

Me?  I got in at the start and bought up a pledge to the signed triple CD set.  Hell, Ive been a Wildhearts fan all my life, own all Gingers solo material, SilverGinger5, Super$hit666... you name it, I've got it; so there was no way I was missing out on this.

It's an interesting plan and I for one hope it comes off well.  The theory behind it is sound (assuming the artist has the talent and back up to pull it off) and should allow more artists to record what they want, rather than what the record companies want.

Oh, I almost forgot. 10% of the total funds pledged will also go to charity - not in to Ginger's pockets, but to Save The Children.  This comes after Ginger put his infamous black Gibson Les Paul guitar (the one he used on ALL Wildhearts albums) on eBay and auctioned it for the Japan relief effort.  It sold for around £17,000 with all of it going to the British Red Cross.

The PledgeMusic page: http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/gingerwildheart#project

Ginger on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/gingernyc

[Beer] Heineken.

Been a while since I've had a lager, but we were having a family BBQ and got some in as sometimes you just need a cool beer in the summer sun. Anyway, a few were left over so I thought I would include it on my series on here for a laugh.

The first thing I noticed was that it was so sweet after drinking ales and bitters recently. I mean really sweet, like someone had put sugar over the rim of the bottle. Not that that was a bad thing, just that I wasnt expecting it. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the taste to be honest. Yeah, it's a pretty generic and mass market lager, but much tastier that Foster or Budweiser. Very summery golden colour, good fizz, and when cold and refreshing taste to my buds.