The story of Crap Day

It’s been a Crap Day, nothing’s gone my way today, it’s been a crap day, just like every other day

The lines to the infamous chorus of what has now become the most popular DonkeyBox tune “Crap Day”. It is the only song that is a slight diversion from our edgy, otherwise darker melodic rock. But beyond a shadow of a doubt it is also the song that will instantly be picked up by newbies in the audience. The song is the story of how you can wake up on the wrong side of the bed and then no matter how hard you try, you are bound to have a bad day!

The song came about in the summer of 2003. Crap Day was originally just a jam. The bandmates had all got into the practice room and were all late. We all had tales to tell why were were late, mostly on how things, trains and eveything conspired against us. Strings broke in rehersal, Matt’s guitar strap came undone (he might have been hungover knowing him those days!) and it was all going unusually and horribly badly for us that day!

Those days we were learning how to play a song called “Amphetamine”, Atul played the chords to the chorus to that song, Mike started drumming, the others joined in and we starting shouting out, “It’s been a Crap Day, Crap Day, Crap Day”. It was a bit of fun and made things a bit lighthearted for us all. We were musicians so we just expressed ourselves. And that was the end of that jam, or was it?

Having got the jam on a taperecorder and listening to it later, the jam struck a chord, so Atul sat down and worked on some lyrics. The original demo sent to the band sounded fairly downbeat with it’s slow tempo and extra lyrics (that are no longer there in the song), but the message and lyrics of the song impressed the bandmates. Then came the hard musical task of making it a full song, namely joining the verse and pre-chorus to the chorus was proving tricky. A few jams later, we came up with the gem in it’s form today.

On top of that since the song was written over 7 years ago, there have been many line-ups that have played that song. Each line-up has added it’s own finesse to the song and we can practically always play the song blindfolded and near studio perfect live!

The song goes down so well with everyone live, people dance to it, sing along to it, and despite having performed it for hunderds of people in total over 7 years, we can never get fed up of it. The emotion of the song still remains the same.

Fancy hearing one of our earliest jams of the song? Drop a comment here and let us know.

Ariel’s Blog Challenge – Week 1

As Stephen Covey says in his famous book “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”:

Begin with the end in mind

Ariel’s book Music Success in Nine Weeks kicks off with how to set a vision and helps with the all important goal setting task. This week was going to be the most difficult one for me because of the soul searching I had to do..but I had to get this one down or else there would be no point to the rest of the book…

Five Mini Victories a Day – For Life

The first thing I really truly loved about in this chapter was the fact that she encourages everyone to write 5 small mini achievements of the day…this keeps the individual motivated and focused on positivity as it is just so easy to be dragged down by setbacks or negative stuff. By concentrating on positive achievements..even the smallest one, the brain gets more and more self fulfilling positive programming.

So I’ve now been doing my 5 daily mini victories for over a week in my diary and it feels good. I don’t think I will ever stop this process and build this as a habit for life. Even on “bad” days there are so many good things that I have done 🙂

Soul Searching – Choosing goals that only I can influence

Last year I signed up to Kavit Haria’s course and was for the first time forced to think of goals. That I did but I never really looked at the long term goals again. Even the 3 month goals flopped. The goals seemed way off and as I am in a band situation I always feel I don’t have control on many outcomes as a band of 4 should have everyone ticking with the same motivation and drive.

Of course this is not the case with DonkeyBox. The band is my creation and for years I have kept it going by motivating others to keep playing in it. And roughly every 2 years a band member leaves for personal reasons (like in January 2010 our current bassist may have to relocate to New York). I am completely alone in marketing and managing the band and it is a lonely job. My motivation is different to my band mates motivation for being a part of it.

But now that I have accepted this as it is..it is cool, Foo Fighters, Van Halen etc., are all one man operations essentially so this is nothing new. I just have to do things that I can control. In other words I use my circle of influence as Covey says.

So my goals really have to be my goals. I have to let go of the fact who will be around in the band in 2013 and who won’t. As long as I am still there it is all good 🙂

Goals and Target Areas

• 1000 True Fans – There is nothing in this world like true true connection. Music is a priceless commodity when it connects to the very heart. Yes, the manifestation of that many fans will come via revenue. The money isn’t important in itself. The 1000 fans who will be as excited as I am about everything to do with the band and it’s music 🙂
• Touring abroad – One gig in Europe by summer 2011; we’ve come so close to that this year
• New Songs – 5 new songs by the end of 2010
• Number of fans on our mailing list

So this is a short sample of my goals. In my diary I have made the goals very clear and explicit, there are goals for the next 4 years, goals for the next year and for the next 3 months. This time I will look at them regularly and constantly review and amend them.

Let my goals be my constant internal driving force.

Opening Act Stockholm 2010

Well well well, two articles in a row about playing in Sweden, it must be because we are popular there!

Well, according to Facebook after London, we have the most fans in Stockholm. That is pretty cool we say.

So it was natural for us to apply to play at the Opening Act for a festival in Stockholm in July 2010.

Check out our entry here and vote for us now!

If we get in, you’ll see us play live there.

Jessica Alba excited about DonkeyBox SxSW application

Jessica Alba is excited about DonkeyBox

Wow news spreads fast! Many of you already know that Jessica Alba has written to us before way back in December 2008.

Well, she certainly has been following the Box and was well excited when she heard that we are hoping to play a showcase gig at the South by Southwest 2010 festival in Austin, Texas. Here is what she wrote to us:

Guys I am really happy that you want to come to America. Austin is a really cool place and I have been there for the film festival. You guys are so sweet and you really deserve to play there

So there you have it, what better then to have an endorsement from the vivacious lady herself. We would certainly not want to dissapoint this one fan of rock music then, so wish us really good luck for the application to go there!