Biography
Every band page on the net has a bio page - so we thought we'd follow suit. It will be added to as time goes by and fantastic or weird things happen to us.
It all started in late 2005 as an idea that began around a couple of us sitting and wondering what it would be like to play music we actually liked for a change rather than keep on regurgitating all the things we had to do to make money. All those tired old wedding songs, party covers and things which were fun to play the first couple of thousand times, but kind of loose their appeal after a while. We sat there talking about how we were going to inject some interest into our musical lives again, and make losing our hearing a bit more worthwhile than it had been thus far. We all remembered what joy it was to have been in our late teens and writing songs in our first bands convinced we were going to be the next Jagger and Richards. So, we thought we'd fly in the face of reason and precedence and start writing and recording original material, whilst trying to ignore the commercial aspects of doing so. I think we've succeeded admirably in that respect.
We had already set up a company limited by guarantee for handling concert promotions. In a Jack Daniels fuelled late night session we named it 'Neale Downe and Begg Ltd' - it was eventually registered in the UK as Company No 4270451 and commenced operations putting on shows. We worked with some great acts, met some great people and some childhood heroes - but nothing quite seemed to do it for us like playing ourselves. In order to put it on the net we came up with the NDBWorldwide idea because we needed to stay legal on the names we used - and in the UK you can call something 'Worldwide' in its title, but you can't use words like 'International'. As soon as we started producing our own material we realised we would need something to perform the publishing role, so we came up with the idea of NDB Music, as the publishing function of Neale Downe and Begg Ltd. So, all the material for The Mighty Mirage, is registered for copyright in the UK by NDB Music, which is the publishing arm of Neale, Downe and Begg Ltd. If nothing else, it means that The Mighty Mirage shares its heritage with the other members of the interstellar stable of artists handled by that company. Name dropping is such shabby behavior I won't do it here - but I'm always willing to kiss and tell in private communications!
If you ever tune into our Myspace bulletins you'll be familiar with the concept of Mirage Mansions and the shenanigans therein. Well, the place exists (I knew it was all real! I hear you gasp) - we have a very quiet place in the middle of nowhere to look after during our time here on earth and to pass on to whoever looks capable of keeping it in one piece for later generations. Lots of land, lots of wildlife, and a purpose built project studio for our recording. So much more is possible now with the fabby software available for the PC. We use a mixture of ancient and modern techniques to get the results we want. Guitars are Gibsons and Fenders, Jacqui uses two bases, a MusicMan and a Bass Techniques. Mostly the MusicMan. The Gibsons are ES335 'Lucille' and an SG. The Fender is a good old Stratocaster copy. Guitar amplification is all courtesy of a Marshall JTM45. Bass is done mostly D.I. but sometimes J likes to use an Ashdown bass amp. Drums are a mixture of a Sonor kit, and good old Roland TR 808 samples sequenced via ACID Pro 6. Martin plays a lot of the basic drum patterns, and we embellish with the Roland stuff if we want to create a particular 'feel'. The great thing about the creative process nowadays is that anything goes. All that we try and do is avoid too much that we couldn't do live if we ever got the chance. However, with current triggering techniques, that makes pretty much anything possible. There are a mixture of traditional and 'in the box' processing methods employed. Voice compression is done with Alesis compressors, but the same vocal will have a little delay added to it via a bus effect inside ACID, for example. It depends whatever sounds best and is easiest to achieve.
Our work rate is slow - but we like it that way. None of us can figure out how we will make enough money to give up our day jobs and other band work to pay our mortgages, so until Sony BMG make an aggressive takeover bid on NDB Music, I think things are likely to stay the way they are at the moment.
Our songs start with a concept, then a vocal, then the music is composed to provide structure to the lyric. That's just the way we do it - some start with the guitar parts and write words to fit. Depends whatever works, there are no wrong answers - that's the beauty of this art form. That phrase just made me stop rattling the keyboard for a full minute. Art Form. That's what music is supposed to be, and I think we have lost sight of that over the last few decades. Well, here are a bunch of noble idiots who are trying to get it back.