As part of their prize for winning the 2006 School of Rock competition, Shropshire band Wish of the Day shot a professional video for their single, Mistake Me.
Watch Wish of the Day's new video Mistake Me
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Among the other great prizes which the band picked up thanks to School of Rock, was a chance to play live at July's National Rock and Pop Festival at Birmingham's NEC, and radio airplay. Remember in 2007 it could be your band! Meet Wish of the Day Shropshire's not short of bands, but it's always refreshing to stumble across a local band with both talent and focus. Winning 麻豆官网首页入口 Midlands Today's 2006 School of Rock competition, Wish of the Day have been not so much stumbed-across, but thrust out into the open. Wish of the Day is a four-piece, originally formed at Wrekin College in May 2005, and now with a stable lineup featuring Rob Knight on vocals and guitar, Dan Richards on lead guitar and backing vocals, Jack Brodie on drums and James Hardy-Lane on bass. | "We just clicked straight away. Jack knew when I would stop the bass riff and we seemed to understand each other pretty much from the start." | | Rob Knight |
The four young lads were inspired to enter the 麻豆官网首页入口's School of Rock after seeing another Shropshire band, Ripchord, win the competition in 2005. Ripchord have since gone on to sign a deal with 1965 Records, a fact that encourages Wish of the Day. 麻豆官网首页入口 Midlands Today's School of Rock asks viewers to vote between seven songs from seven different bands. It's perhaps unfair to judge a band on a single song and luckily the band are anything but a one-trick pony. Wish of the Day have a mature outlook and it's easy to forget that three of the four lads have yet to sit their GCSEs. The lads know that any future success, which they're determined to achieve, will ultimately stand or fall on their music... and that's exactly how they want it. The Music
 | | Wish of the Day play in Market Drayton |
They describe their style as 'Brit Rock', more substantial than the Brit Pop groups of the 90s, but not quite as heavy and perhaps a little more readily-digestible than most rock. In just 12 short months the band have written enough of their own songs to release a 14 track first album and they're already looking towards a second. Most of the songs are written by Rob Knight and then brought to the rest of the band to refine the individual parts, or developed during a jam session: "Won't Let Go came about by us just messing about with a couple of notes and it just came. By the end of the practice we had it finished. "Mistake Me came around from me skipping a double design lesson. I was in my room and I just started trying to learn She's Lost Control by Joy Division and I completely messed it up and it came out with the chord sequence for Mistake Me - I kinda thought actually that's quite nice... and I got these guys out of lessons, go down to the studios and we wrote Mistake Me." It's certainly not all about quantity and there are enough good songs to encourage record-industry speculation. What do they sing about? Rob's pretty sure about one thing - they don't sing about love. They're clearly not short of material. The extremely catchy Mistake Me might have won them School of Rock, but perhaps doesn't do them justice. Rob's voice in particular sounds far more comfortable on the very visceral Won't Let Go and the intelligent and upbeat Notice, written perhaps surprisingly about the London bombings in July 2005 "People listen to that song and they don't really understand the meaning of it. I saw the London bombings on the TV and I was playing my guitar. The chord sequence came and I just put the lyircs to it - they just seemed to fit." A less obvious choice of subject matter was a friend straightening his hair, "At the end of the day we try to go for vibrant and rhyhmic guitar parts, with interesting drums and bass and then really simple vocal lines." As with many other bands they drop a couple of cover songs, including Wonderwall and Knockin on Heaven's Door into their gigs 'to lift the crowd and let them sing along.' But people are already starting to sing along with the likes of Mistake Me and most importantly for any band, there isn't a gulf of quality between the cover versions and their own songs. Wish of the Day's influences include Radiohead, Razorlight, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Joy Division. Dan also suggests the Beatles. Bloc Party are a more controversial choice as Jack's nomination draws a few wry smiles and the odd grumble. Oasis's songs are also tentatively mentioned, while Rob is less hesitant: "Tom Yorke is my main vocal influence, he is a God". Wish of the Day also know how to play their instruments... in fact they even know how to play each other's instruments!听 Dan (who's been playing guitar since he was five) can play drums and bass as well as guitar; James can play guitar as well as bass; Rob can play drums, keyboard, bass and guitar and Jack can also play violin and piano as well as drums.
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听"We can relate to each other. If we're in the studio we can get a lot of different people's angles on it [how we're playing]." There are also other benefits when the bands are in the recording studio. Their multi-intrumental approach allows them to layer different sounds, including keyboards. Like Ripchord, Wish of the Day have one foot firmly in the Wolverhampton music scene and both bands have recorded in the city's Mad Hat studios. The band put plenty of effort into both their recording sessions and their live performances. They gig regularly around the region, and particularly enjoy playing at Coventry's Jailhouse, the Manchester Academy 3, Carling Academy 2 in Birmingham, The Haygate and Fusion, both in Wellington, and their second ever gig at Stourbridge's Rockcafe was a memorable experience as they supported the Bluetones.
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There's never been a better time to be in a band. The talent is out there, as it's always been, while technology has made it easier and cheaper to record and distribute your music and introduce your sound to new audiences. Audiences, for their part, have a hunger for live music that just wasn't in fashion 20 years ago. Bands such as the Arctic Monkeys have shown everyone that it's possible to become a huge success without the traditional backing of big record labels and mainstream broadcasters. All you need is a decent band, some good tracks and a group of fans keen to spread the word through the world wide web. Record labels and broadcasters have been both frightened and excited by what they've witnessed. So if bands capable of getting on the internet are such masters of their own fate, why are they all so keen to be signed to a label? The problem is a simple one. With so many bands and songs around, there are inevitably quite a few bad bands and plenty of bad songs. The audience might be patient and open-minded, but we all need some direction, even it's just word of mouth. Getting a record deal and airtime, or just securing a decent distribution deal is one way of showing yourself above the cacophony of the modern music scene and proving that you're a member of the wheat, not the chaff. Wish of the Day are undoubtedly a name to watch out for and surely a fair bet for future success. | 
