How to be Charlie Burchill in 10 easy steps

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1. Confuse your fans by looking and sounding a little like Gordon Brown [see 'Is Burchill The New Prime Minister?' posted September 2006]. Keep all your hair unlike other guitarists we could mention that you never see without a hat.

2. When playing live, mouth the words to the songs,…..but wait, those arent the same words as the songs. In fact, they’re not words,….they’re sort of words but are slightly closer to random mouth movements. Do this whilst smiling an nodding at the audience.

3. When playing live, remember to pull the ‘rev up the guitar moves’ on your magic music making monstrosity. As you pull off a fantastically classic minds riff, pull back on the guitar a little to show how powerful and ‘only just under control’ your axe really is and wail away with those cat sounds. See the Nelson Mandela 1990 tribute concert intro [click on link] for some of these moves.

4. Its 1989 and you’ve just finished the Street Fighting Years tour. You tell Michael McNeil that if he ‘doesn’t stop playing those bloody piano-harpy noises and throw more sawtooth into the mix’ you’ll wrap his squeezebox round his head, hide his Book of Brilliant Things, poke him in the Glittering Prize and make him Cry’.

5. Its 1991 and you’ve replaced McNeil with the Mc Midi guitar for the Real Life album but you dress the guitar in a curly wig and glasses just to retain the mood in the studio.

6. Speak with such a broad Glaswegian accent that you need to take an interpreter with you on tour. Also, never sing or try backing singing [though random mouth movements are allowed].

7. Play a guitar that is at least as big as you. Preferably a guitar so big [such as a White Falcon Deluxe GTI 16 valve] that its even more difficult to keep the beast under control and therefore this accentuates the need for some classic ‘guitar rev moves’ in step 3.

8. As with Jim, refer back to your happy days in the sandpit with Jim but don’t mention that this was only 3 weeks ago and that you actually take a sandpit on tour with you to keep the romance alive.

9. Its the 80’s and you buy an echo machine but realise that you need at least 3 other state-of-the-art echo machines to barely touch that Simple Minds sound. Remember that at least 15 patches are required for each song as just when you think you re loaded up on phaser, delay and distortion….what have we here….well, lets load on some Harmoniser to give it that bagpipes ‘Big Country p*ssing contest’ sound.

10. Wear cool clothes except for the red table cloth worn on the Verona video.

Other than that, there’s a brand new Simcoemedia YouTube Channel and here’s the artwork for the cover of the Soundtracks 4 album available at the end of May. You can also download prints from the Simcoemedia iStockphoto archive!

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Tags: 80's, artwork, Charlie Burchill, design, designing, guitarist, guitars, Jim Kerr, Michael McNeil, Simcoemedia, Simple Minds, Soundtracks 4