Ah man it's just so frustating to play with a delay XD

That's true too... I think cancellation is more likely than people being scared though? I think we're really going to have to wait it out and see. I know one of my friends (the bassist in the BTTB live band) has had 1 gig cancelled already and one of the event organisers has capped gatherings of more than 100 people apparently, so it's not looking great, but in any case can't count the chickens before they've hatched (or whatever the phrase is). Sorry to hear about the flights, that sucks :C

+1 on surviving the panic mode. I'm just waiting for the shops to restock on toilet paper! Running low over here...

All the best!

The things you do for the fans. :P

Yupp, maybe so. Some seem insanely paranoid, but some don't seem to care at all... it's interesting to see how differently different people react. The trains are getting pretty barren though. Rice and sanitizer's sold out everywhere. Interesting times!

Oh man that's the worst thing to run out of. XD Hope you're stocked up on old newspapers if naught else. Heard they had that in the US too. Fortunately it seems that apart from the above it's still only c-vitamin and face masks so far over here. Of course there are those buying up stock just to sell it themselves though, not really helping the rest...

You too! May we all make it through this wave of fear-inducing hawkings and hysteria intact!

Indeed XD

I think it depends on their goal. Are they worried about getting the virus or spreading it (or both)? We have hand sanitiser, but could really do with more rice DX Pasta's being bought up over here too, but we have a bit of that in the cupboards at least. All the dry long lasting foods...

Well there's some kitchen roll is worst comes to worst DX Yeah... I heard about those people buying stuff just to sell for profit... not cool...

+1 to that! Let's see how everything is in another few weeks DX

Yeah that's true, and varying opinions as to how much of a threat it really is. I wouldn't worry so much about myself as about older individuals in the family, wouldn't be fun if they get drawn into it, but you get swept along with that spreading public paranoia.

Personally I'm a fan of soap btw, if used properly I hear it's a bit more efficient - alcohol-based solutions don't always manage to kill all bacteria, but you can always wash it away. Though sanitizer's great for travel.

And yeah this stockpiling's becoming a problem... I tend to buy batches of food when it's on sale so we're pretty well off at least. Recently ordered 30 kg oats for long-term worst-case scenarios. :) Doesn't seem like there's any real shortage of food overall, though pretty weird to walk through shops where certain shelves are just totally empty.

Viable alternatives! True that.

And to that too!

I'm in the same frame of mind. I'm not so worried about getting it, rather spreading it to the folks with weaker immune systems...

Agreed with the soap vs sanitizer too. Soap is best, but when that's not an option, sanitizer's better than nothing (and good when you're out and about) :)

We've still got some pasta from a big bag we got last month (noodles too). Sniping those sales is always a good shout (feel like we've spoken about that before) XD Indeed pretty spooky too those completely empty ailses with just the packaging left on the shelves but no items... Today we walked past the pasta shelves at our local supermarket and it was bare apart from a spilled bag of Rigatoni and all the empty boxes... dystopian... And all 3 of of the locals had not a single toilet roll in sight either. I think tomorrow's mission will be "spawn camping" to try and get some XD

*Nods*

For sure. :)

Yeah we've probably spoken sales in prior conversations. XD Feel like it's becoming a bigger interest with time too. But man, that's just crazy... saw some pictures of US shelves here. Similar? Will be interesting to see if everything sells out this coming week too, or if people calm down a bit/feel like they've prepped enough already.

Good luck with that early morning shopping spree!

Indeed those pictures are pretty much the same as over here... crazy. Indeed too, there's only so much people can hoard... update on the situation: Toilet paper acquired thanks to Eva! That's a win for the moment at least :D

And more news to report:

$5 rewards have just been sent out: early access to 3 Patreon exclusive bonus tracks to be released in April + an updated rewards schedule for March / April / May!

Hello everyone and hope you're having a great March so far! You may be thinking, wait... it's not the final Wednesday of the month and indeed you're right, but it's time once again to mix up the Patreon rewards schedule for some new music which means the $5 & $10 patrons have just been granted extra early access to not 1, not 2, but 3 Patreon exclusive bonus tracks! 

Become a $5+ patron for instant access to all those tracks on top of all historic rewards for your tier:

Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

Get these rewards: https://www.patreon.com/posts/34612358

I'll not be saying what the tracks are here (that's for the $5+ patrons to know), but with a new batch of tracks completed comes a diversion from the usual first and last Wednesday of the month Patreon reward schedule, so here's an update on what's to come over the next few months!

Firstly with this new $5 reward out which covers March and April's rewards there will be no new $5 rewards in April, only new $1 and $10 rewards as follows.

First Wednesday of April:

$1 patrons will receive the 1st of the Better Than The Book bonus tracks

$10 patrons will receive another demo & article from the upcoming Jabun album (delayed March reward)

Friday April 24th:

$1 patrons will receive the 2nd of the Better Than The Book bonus tracks + another bonus track (early May reward)

$10 patrons will receive another demo & article from the upcoming Jabun album (early April reward)

There will also be no extra $1 reward in May since it was given at the end of April.

You may be wondering why April 24th, and that's because the reason for these bonus tracks is that it's my 30th birthday! They're nothing too special (or extra special depending on how you view it) but all 3 tracks will be exclusive downloads only for patrons (though they will be available for streaming on YouTube as well)! I hope you enjoy something slightly different and fun to start my 3rd decade of living and look forward to seeing what I'll create in the next decade to come!

With that schedule lined up, it should be back to the usual schedule and the Jabun back catalogue for the end of May with $5 & $10 rewards on May 27th and $1 rewards on June 3rd. There are still however 2 new and bonus pieces of music currently in the works with the aim of releasing this summer, so I'll keep you updated on any changes to the schedule! It's certainly set to be an exciting few months!

And that wraps things up for this post! Become a $5+ patron to be among the first to listen to these 3 new bonus tracks (and grab all previous rewards for your tier when you sign up including the full Better Than The Book discography), and I'll be back with another post and Better Than The Book LIVE video on Wednesday! Until then, I hope you have a great few days and thanks as always for supporting Better Than the Book and my various projects! Enjoy the music and take care!

Awesome. :D

And awesome here too! Will be interesting to see what surprises those three anniversary tracks have to offer in particular.

Hehe, don't expect too much, just some silliness but hope you enjoy them. I guess it'll be about 2 weeks until the first one! A mystery until then :D

Silly things are the best things sometimes. :) Looking forward!

Cheers :) And...

A full song play-through of Better Than The Book's "And I Fear" from the first full-band LIVE and loud practice in December!

Hi everyone and another LIVE & LOUD full song play-through video to share with you today from Better Than The Book's first full band rehearsal back in December! This time we're moving onto the Hopes and Dreams album for "And I Fear" and as with the last track, this would have been literally the 2nd time we'd have played this together (the first being a few minutes before). Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8OgLGLfms0

Line-up:

Nick Standing: Composer, guitar + lead vocals

Eamon Standing: Harmonica + backing vocals

Sam Brown: Bass + backing vocals

Andy Forman: Drums

"And I Fear" and the rest of the Hopes and Dreams album are available on all major digital distributors as well as the Better Than The Book Bandcamp page:

https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/

Or of course you can pick them up if you haven't already when you become a supporter on Patreon, complete with the

full Better Than The Book discography and more when you sign up! With the project going live, we could use all the support we can get to push it as far as possible, and another set of $5 early access rewards was just posted on Monday too so come join the community:

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

Just one more of these videos to come next week before we move onto something different! Subscribe to the BTTB YouTube channel to get them fresh off the press, and I'll see you next week for another one! 

That's it for today's update and I'll be back this time next week with the final LIVE video (for now)! Looking forward to it and until then, thanks as always for supporting Better Than The Book, and my various music projects and I hope you have a great week to come! Take care!

Almost seems like these updates are coming out at a quicker pace than usual these days. :) Awesome.

Indeed they are; there's just been so much going on recently! Which unfortunately brings me to....

An unfortunate update: Better Than The Book's debut gig on April 11th has been indefinitely postponed due to COVID19...

Hi everyone and hope you're staying safe and healthy in these rapidly changing and uncertain times. It is with mixed emotions that I must report less than a week after I excitedly announced it, that Better Than The Book's debut gig on April 11th in Haywards Heath (Sussex, UK) has been indefinitely postponed by the event organisers due to COVID19 concerns.

Given the current times, I fully support their decision for the safety and comfort of the attendees, staff and entertainers for the evening, though of course it saddens me that it'll be longer until we can hit the stage.

I'll be sure to share updates as and when I receive them and hopefully we'll be able to make the future rescheduled date when it comes around. Keep up to date on the events page for the time being:

https://www.facebook.com/events/892633854540874/

And until then and always, stay safe, be kind to each other, and keep on skankin'! All the best!

Man that really sucks. :/ Guess it might be a good thing they're at least announcing it so far in advance, then again I was sort of hoping this might all blow over way before then...

Hope things work out for the best however they do work out. Maybe you manage to build up an even greater hype before whatever date your debut gig actually does take place. :/ Real bummer.

Yeah... to be honest, I was expecting this to happen at some point this week, more a matter of when than if, and I'm glad it's been announced sooner at least rather than getting people's hopes up even more. I've been discussing it with the rest of the BTTB live band and we'll still be trying to meet up in a practice studio to do something that day if we can, but depends on how things keep progressing. So much has changed in the last 2 weeks, I wouldn't be surprised if in 2 weeks time, the studio we practice at has to close or even worse, public transport gets shut down so I can't even get down to Sussex! Just going to have to play it by ear for the moment.

All the major UK cinemas have just closed indefinitely and most of the people I know have had to start working from home (Eva's Uni has shut down with all classes being remote). Over 70s and venerable people have been told to not to leave their homes anymore or have unnecessary visitors (volentary at the moment, but I think it might become enforcable by law by the end of the week). It's a crazy time we're living in at the moment. Hopefully it blow over soon.

The next BTTB gig scheduled which is still on is in November so hopefully everything blows over before then at least! I sure hope so!

Yeah, seems to be far from over at this point, though it seems the UK strategy is more so not to contain the virus, so a large part of the population become immune faster...?

Same thing over here regarding the cinemas and 70 y/o, though schools are staying open so far. I'm working home a couple days now, but will probably be back in the office on Friday. Not sure how big a risk it really is to take the train. If we had some statistics it'd be easier to know if it really is important to stay home or no, but they really don't have any reliable numbers on anything. Feels all the more surreal when you don't see the sickness; it's all in the media. Crazy times indeed!

Definitely hope it's over by then! I took the opportunity to book flights for this summer, so really hope it all calms down by then - plane tickets are pretty cheap right now. ;)

If you know what to invest in there could be some good in this too...

I have no idea what the UK goverment is doing TBH, but I just heard that from Friday onwards all the schools will be shut down properly (with very few exceptions). I'm sure the trains will be fine to take if they're empty XD Went shopping today and it was a completely different vibe to even a few days ago. No fresh fruit or veg apart from pineapples, melons, corgettes and peppers, no fresh meat, no bread?! And that's on top of what there wasn't last week... things are getting a bit scary over here if I'm honest...

My parents were supposed to be taking a trip to Portugal but that's had to be cancelled. That is true with regards the investments at least :) A silver lining to everything I suppose. Speaking of which there's a lot of software and stuff being given out for free which is nice :) Just got this Modular Synth software to keep me busy. Highly recommend if you're into that sort of thing:

https://www.gearnews.com/get-voltage-modular-nucleus-with-22-modules-completely-free/

Yeah we heard that too, was pretty surprised after those earlier reports on supposed strategies to just get everyone immune quick! I guess they realize hospitals just don't have room for everyone at the same time. Haha yeah, problem is there's always at least the one person on the train who just doesn't care if they're sick or not. :) Those at such times most dangerous people...

Wooooah, man, I thought it'd be turning around by now... scary indeed. Was at the local shop today and they'd stocked up on pretty much everything, just still a bit low on rice and toilet paper. But pasta shelves were food. No serious shortages anywhere... maybe ordering some food online is still an alternative?

Did you get some of those melons btw?

Yupp yupp, airline canceled my most recent flight too. Full refund at least. :) Might not be so wise to go traveling around now anyway, potentially getting quarantined in some other country...

Oooh nice! Thanks for the tip. I haven't tried much such software but can't refuse a free download now...

So far all I'd heard about was Cloudflare giving out their VPN for free to small companies, and team collaboration software, Microsoft, Apple, not sure about the details...

Been Googling casualties, cures and case numbers a bit too much lately. Seems like free downloads would be a way better use of that time...

All reasonable worries above... No indeed the shops seem to be getting worse over here, though we'll be heading back to Manchester for the weekend and hopefully be able to get some rice at least :) Naw I'm allergic to melons so those were a useless fruit to be left behind for me DX

Extra tip, the free version has 22 modules but there's also a custom shop online with lots of modules and there's another 16 free modules there too! They're mostly utilities but still useful (and free XD) Easy to set up too :)

Keep up those spirits!

Aw man. :/ Peppers, then? Hope Manchester's still a bit better supplied...

Awesome. I'll check those out soon as I get home. Thanks for that too.

You too! From the sounds of it you probably need some more uplifting. Maybe this could be of assistance.

We just got some corgettes (wasn't sure what to make with the peppers without other ingredients). We should be heading to one of the Chinese supermarkets to stock up on things tomorrow so hopefully they have some stuff on the shelves there :)

No worries! Indeed I could do with a pickmeup. Cool freestyle you sent btw! I think it'll just be a case of waiting out and seeing how this all goes

A meal with just peppers... would be interesting. XD That's nice. Hope so, potentially plenty of food suited for long-term storage there too...

For sure. Well hopefully not just waiting but staying busy all the while! Distractions work wonders.

Indeed those were my thoughts XD Got some rice now and some preserved meat and veg which should last a while so that's good. Distractions do indeed work wonders! A good time to knuckle down for more music writing etc... :)

Nice. :) Indeed good time to get stuff done, gotta make the most of this...

A full song play-through of Better Than The Book's "Cathode Ray Days" from the first full-band LIVE and loud practice in December!

Hi everyone and another LIVE & LOUD full song play-through video to share with you today from Better Than The Book's first full band rehearsal back in December! This time we're back to the Two Years On album for "Cathode Ray Days" again, this time in full for the finale of this live rehearsal video mini-series! Enjoy some TV nostalgia (amongst other things) below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_iRw3lsJrg

Line-up:

Nick Standing: Composer, guitar + lead vocals

Eamon Standing: Harmonica + backing vocals

Sam Brown: Bass + backing vocals

Andy Forman: Drums

"Cathode Ray Days" and the rest of the Two Years On album are available on all major digital distributors as well as the Better Than The Book Bandcamp page:

https://betterthanthebook.bandcamp.com/

Or of course you can pick them up if you haven't already when you become a supporter on Patreon, complete with the full Better Than The Book discography and more when you sign up! Another set of $5 early access rewards was just posted last week too so come join the community:

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding

This unfortunately brings us to the end of the current video series taken from BTTB rehearsals I can share with you, and with the coronavirus stuff going around at the moment, it may be a while until we can practice together again and record some more... Fret not though, there's still some more non-live videos and new music to come next week so subscribe to the BTTB YouTube channel to get them fresh off the press, and I'll see you next week for something a little different! 

That's it for today's update and I'll be back this time next week with more things to share as well as another set of $1 and $10 Patreon rewards! Looking forward to it and until then, thanks as always for supporting Better Than The Book, and my various music projects and I hope you have a great week to come! Stay safe, take care and keep on skankin'!

The $1 & $10 rewards have been sent out: an exclusive download of Better Than The Book's bonus track "Mark Your Wall" + another exclusive demo from Jabun's upcoming 2nd album for the $10+ patrons!

Hi everyone and hope you're having a great start to April! It's the first Wednesday of the month which means the $1 Patreon rewards have just been sent out, and this time I have something extra special for you, an unreleased bonus track from the 2016 Better Than The Book album "Two Years On"! Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liE7nsRbgJY

... is what I would say, if there were such a thing! Anyway, here's Wonderwall...

and happy April Fool's Day!

This silly mashup has been sitting half finished in my projects folder since about September 2018 but now seemed like the right time to finish it up ready for some April Fool's fun! I hope you get a kick out of it and sing along loud and proud!

Songs used:

Better Than The Book - Make Your Mark [Instrumental]

Oasis - Wonderwall [Acapella]

This bonus mashup track is a Patreon exclusive download so if you want to pick up a copy, come join this lovely Patreon community! Remember that you'll be getting not just this mashup but all historic rewards for your chosen tier when you sign up too including the full Better Than The Book discography and much more! With the REWARD ARCHIVE tag it's never been easier to catch up with all those posts and music downloads you've missed too! I hope you enjoy them :) 

https://www.patreon.com/NickStanding (Sign up and find out more)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/34612394 (Exclusive download)

And for the $10 patrons, you've got another exclusive demo from Jabun's upcoming 2nd album to look forward to as well as an article on the composition/production process for it and early access to all the upcoming music later this month! Become a $10 patron to access that article and music and much more now!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/34612377 ($10 rewards)

That's it for this post, but as it's my 30th birthday on April 24th, there'll be new rewards including 2 more Patreon exclusive mashups coming early next time! I'll leave all the details as a surprise for later this month, but until then, I hope you enjoy the new music and thanks as always for supporting Better Than The Book and my various projects! Enjoy the new tune(s) and see you on the 24th!

Considering the date I was really expecting some kind of joke in this post. :) Or in the aforementioned video, but it turns out it's actually a bad-ass mash-up! Pretty metal compared to the original. Good stuff.

One of those tracks that bring with it an air of memories too. Always appreciated.

Really happy you enjoyed it CD! Yeah... I really did mean this to be just a joke but it seems to have gone down really well... like I'm not even sure some people realised it was supposed to be a joke, which is good I guess?! Strange feelings XD

So it was meant to be one! XD Yeah I was confused... it sounded so good. Was thinking maybe with the severity of the worldwide situation you decided to just put out some bonus material type of stuff for appreciation purposes purely.

Either way this was great.

Hehe, well that's good at least XD In times like this I think humour is what we need personally, but whether funny or not I'm super happy people are enjoying it:D (more to come later on in the month btw :O