About Us

Introducing The Diaries’ debut book Music, Love and Impossibilities, and The NOW Hustle

“For The NOW Hustle to work, we knew we would have to write songs 

that were going to pin people to the wall on immediate first listen.”

“We needed to write instant hits and we needed to write a lot of them. 

Our track record across Europe proves that we succeeded.” 

The songwriting, and the hustling, continues.

Meet Camden based original acoustic duo The Diaries. We write and play explosive and hugely catchy rockpop with a punk attitude and an 80s vibe. The Diaries are Mark from England on guitar and Maja from Sweden on vocals. 

If you like what you see here, it would be great to meet and see if we could do something with you in the future. Please also feel free to quote anything in here freely. A Now Hustle is where we turn up at a random bar and ask to play there and then. This is how we have twice toured Europe, played all over Ireland, and how we are now taking on London and beyond. We invite anyone to come along on a Now Hustle to see what it’s all about.

First, here are three studio tracks and a Youtube link from a show in Madrid so you can see what we look like live.

How You Rock’n’Roll

Rock’n’Roll Tree

Insanity

MUSIC, LOVE AND IMPOSSIBILITIES

Music today is essentially all about the merch and discovering new audiences to play live to. With that, we can now announce our debut book, Music, Love and Impossibilities. 

Taking place in early 2021 and told with day to day diary entries, at times the book reads like a suspense thriller as it covers our ridiculously eventful first three months together and a little before.

All of our subsequent adventures have been written in the same style as the story continues to this day making this the first in a proposed series. There is already enough for a further two or three books and counting. 

What follows next is our move to rural Ireland, two European tours, extensive playing around Ireland, and the move to London. We have played well over a hundred shows and, among other things, are planning to tour Japan during 2025 with Maja being fluent in Japanese. 

We’ve been writing our story in real time in this style since the beginning and it’s (almost) kept up to date here: www.thediaries.band/the-diaries

The whole thing is over 400,000 words long, meaning we already have enough for two or three more books. 

We have included the back of the book at the end of this feature.

THE NOW HUSTLE

The NOW Hustle takes us straight to audiences who would never discover us otherwise, creating a direct and immediate marketplace for book sales.

This is how The Diaries have played across Europe, Ireland and now London without having to rely on promoters, venue managers, or even any kind of promotion or planning for gigs or audiences. 

Our record is five shows in a day. The concept is to turn up at a bar completely unannounced with our own equipment and ask to play there and then. Most of the bars we have played in so far were not even regular music bars, or music bars at all. By definition, we are playing to cold audiences who do not know us and who have never heard any of our songs. We even imagine that a massive proportion of people we’ve played to in such scenarios have had very little to no exposure to original grassroots music. 

We hit them hard and fast. Three, four songs. Five tops if encores are called, then we’re out on the street and looking for the next hustle. From first approach to leaving, we can be in and out of a bar in less than half an hour. Our record is five shows in one day. As for the encore thing, in one NOW Hustle we had the doors of the bar (semi jokingly – we think) locked on us so that we couldn’t leave after we had played two encores and packed our gear away. We played along, set up again and just carried on.

If you or a colleague would like to accompany us on such an excursion to see how it works, we would be delighted to accommodate.

WHY THE NOW HUSTLE SETS THE DIARIES APART 

First, very few people could even do it. It simply isn’t a viable option for full bands, no matter how basic their set up. For an acoustic solo or duo, you need the energy, confidence and above all, the material to be able to look a cold audience in the eye and play songs to them they have never heard before. Such audiences often need to be hit hard and fast and this is something a lot of original acoustic acts don’t have in their locker. Even if someone had an original masterpiece to rival Bridge Over Troubled Water, they would struggle to cut it in such an environment. As for full band, forget it. Even if a band did have a set up that would work, it would be a huge challenge of logistics, morale, and sheer collective belief and desire to get your three to six people together to hit the road as consistently and as determinedly as required to make this work; trying to get their three to six people to a rehearsal at the same time is enough of a challenge for many bands. On top of all this, even cover acts can struggle when trying to introduce a ‘new’ song to audiences. If they try, an individual, or audience as a whole will shout out, ‘Play something we know.’ In short, playing songs people don’t know and getting them to respond positively first time is one of the biggest challenges in music. But it’s something we have a huge track record of doing, to the extent of receiving encore calls from brand new audiences.

Having The NOW Hustle as an attack mode means we can cut through so many obstacles facing everyone in today’s music industry. The record companies have got nothing. Apart from a few outliers they are completely unable to break new bands. Even bands with that hitherto golden ticket of a record deal are often told to create viral content before their company will release their latest work. Record companies are not working to help new bands. They have nothing and are totally bereft of ideas. The proof of this is in the absolutely proliferation of eighties, nineties and noughties bands being thrown back together and back out on tour. Sure, over the years there have been occasional comebacks and reunions for reasons sentimental, artistic and cynical. But never to this extent.

Richard Osman is the oracle of all things entertainment. His brother is Mat Osman, bass player of Suede. On a recent edition of The Rest is Entertainment with Marina Hyde, Richard said that making it as a new band in today’s environment is impossible. Not, it’s really hard, or, kids, be warned, most of you will fail. This has always been the case. No. It was the devastatingly matter of fact way in which he delivered the line, ‘it’s impossible,’ that really cut through. And Richard, while realistic, can often be quite encouraging when talking about people pursuing their dreams in whatever entertainment field. In this one, he basically said, forget it. It’s over. 

The field of new music has grown exponentially louder with random noise ever since home recording became more and more accessible. But now with AI, this noise has reached absolutely deafening levels with an average of 100,000 new songs uploaded onto Spotify every day. How do you even begin to cut through that? The whole thing really is a constant race of chickens chasing chicken chasing eggs. Uphill. In the rain.

Playing live has always been the call. Get in your car, on your bike, on your feet. Get out and play live, live, live. But how? Venues are closing at a frightening rate. This was already happening pre 2020 but the pandemic accelerated it massively. Not only did a lot of venues simply not survive, but many of those did only because they were bought by bigger companies that had pockets deep enough to be able to subsidise the empty periods until bars were able to open again. And with more  and more bars being bought out by corporations, the concept of open independence is being not so much eroded as eviscerated.

Even those independent bars and venues that remain and that will allow, or even welcome new acts to come and play, they still of course have to make their money. Of course they do. Which means if you can’t bring an audience you ain’t getting in. Fair enough. But with the price of drinks going up and up, the concept of casual people going out to gigs on the off-chance of catching something new and exciting is just disappearing. It’s not like there’s whole scenes of bars and venues full of people out and about and all eagerly anticipating whatever new thing is about to walk out on stage in front of them. No. You book a gig, the people who go to it are people who know you or who are fans and that is it. Again, fair enough. But how do you build momentum in such an environment? So you have twenty to thirty friends who will come out and see you. Great. They come out and see you. Everyone has a wonderful time and the venue owner is happy. Made enough at the bar to make it worthwhile. When are those friends going to come out and see the same act again? Probably not for another six months if you’re lucky. You can also get up and play all the open mics you want. Open mics are definitely a valid part of the whole thing. But for exposure and audience building? Forget it. All you’re playing to is other people waiting for their own turn to play.

With The NOW Hustle, we smash straight through all that and go straight to a new audience every single time. Unless a bar we already did The NOW Hustle in calls and asks for us back, which has happened. And guess what? We are now going back, by demand, to a bar that is going to be excited to have us and where people who saw us the first time have now told their friends, ‘The Diaries are in town tonight. You have to come.’ 

When we first started, we had an idea we were going to do something like this. We knew that good, nice songs were not going to cut it. No. For The NOW Hustle to work, we knew we would have to write songs that were going to pin people to the wall on immediate first listen. We needed to write instant hits and we needed to write a lot of them. Our track record across Europe proves that we succeeded.

That story is of us travelling all over Europe, walking into bars and hustling for a chance to play. Our prize, the opportunity to face a cynical and sometimes mildly hostile audience. Sometimes maybe only playfully hostile, but still. Curious at least. Waiting for it to fail, or possibly wondering how this thing is going to work. Or maybe worse than all of the above, total indifference.

Then we begin

And we pin them to the wall

THE DIARIES

We became an item the day we met, February 19, 2021. Almost immediately we started to write songs together. Within four weeks we had decided this was going to be our life. On May 13 2021 we moved from Kentish Town to Clara, a 3,500 population town in Ireland’s county Offaly. Among other reasons, this was so that we could rent a large(ish) detached house in its own(ish) grounds where we could make noise 24/7. This became our staging post where we really honed in on what our sound and style would be and where we began to write songs and develop what by now had become The Diaries.

In November 2021 we played our debut gig in what was now our local bar of The Trap. Our second gig the following month was in Berlin as we began our first European tour. In August 2022 we were off on our second European tour. In December 2022 we returned to London.

We’re going to put out our studio recordings one at a time. Once the first planned twelve are all done, they will be repackaged as our debut album, HEᒐ. All of the songs have been heavily road tested and are all at the final stages of recording. We also have album two and three completely written with parts of two recorded. We’re going to just keep putting stuff out and keep hitting the road.

JAPAN

Maja is a fluent Japanese speaker having spent time living and working in Tokyo. We think this could give us an edge in a huge national market that very few western bands could compete with. The idea here is to build an audience in Japan and then tour there with the complete ability to engage with the Japanese media. If we are able to make any impact in Japan we will be able to use that to help facilitate entry to other markets all over the world. We are already doing live streams on a Japanese platform in Japanese, and are also contacting promoters in Japan to try to secure supports with acts playing in London. 

Thanks a lot for coming along with us

Mark and Maja

The Diaries

www.thediaries.band

07724 804782 (Mark)

The back of the book and a Diary entry of a Now Hustle follow these pictures.

A larger file is available on request. We also have more shots from this wonderful photoshoot around iconic Camden Town locations. Please credit: Charo Galura, who also took the book cover image.

The back of the book 

Maja’s life in Stockholm is falling apart. A newly discovered passion for music has blown apart the final cracks in a fragile marriage.

Mark is an experienced professional musician living in lockdown London and on furlough from his bar job. When Maja comes across his online musical diary, she reads it then gets in touch. From there Mark becomes her online music tutor and mentor. He has no idea of the turmoil in her life.

With nowhere to turn, Maja confides in Mark who says, ‘You could come here.’

Exactly one week later they meet for the first time at Heathrow Airport. Before they arrive at Mark’s house in north London they are an item.

However, Brexit means Maja can’t stay in England long term and Mark can’t live and work in Europe. There are also worldwide travel restrictions due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

Surveying all this, they decide to become professionally touring songwriters and performers. Oh stop. That’s impossible.

Isn’t it?

A Now Hustle entry from The Diaries

From: https://thediaries.band/category/the-making-of-the-album/the-album-diary/

This is from while we’re living in Clara, Co.Offaly, Ireland. Population around three and a half thousand. Pollagh is about 15 km away from Clara and The Pull Inn is its only pub. 

Sunday October 16, 2022

Maja:

As the evening draws near the rain continues to fall. I mean we’re no strangers to rain here in Ireland, but this is something spectacular. Last night I woke up at 3 AM to the biggest skyfall I’ve experienced so far. It wasn’t like pitter patter, it was like, SPLASH! And as the evening draws near, it’s picking up again. We load the car up at around 7 pm, and have to run from the house to the parking lot just to avoid the equipment from being destroyed by rain. As I set out on the road, the rain is absolutely smashing down. It’s just picking up more and more. I have the wipers on max and wish they could go faster as I struggle to drive 30 m/h on a 100 km/h dark country road. This is by far the strongest rainfall in which I’ve ever driven. 

As we arrive at the Pull Inn in Pollagh, the rain shows no sign of stopping. We park up next to the door, grab our gear, and run in through the door, not having any idea what’s going to await us inside. 

The pub is packed. It’s a small pub but it is absolutely packed and some people are even standing without any barchairs close by just having a pint. And now everyone is looking at us. We’re smiling as the most common question gets asked ‘Are you going to play here tonight?’ ‘Maybe, we’re just asking for permission first’. And with that we make our way into the bar, and ask the bargirl. She runs to ask her manager for permission. As she’s doing this, the owner of the bar, Gary, walks in through the entry doorway. ‘Oh, The Diaries! How are ye doin? Ye playing tonight?’ 

Mark:

Now we are.This is the first time anything like this has happened. We’ve walked into a bar and we haven’t had to hustle. Our reputation has got here before us and there’s an excitement that The actual Diaries have just walked through their door. It’s almost like being famous. Maybe this is how it begins.

Maja:

We start setting up, which is now a very quick process with minimal equipment. Mark goes away to tune up the guitar, and I connect our PA to a plug socket I find in a corner somewhere and turn on our wireless equipment for my microphone and Mark’s guitar. When Mark comes back from tuning we do a short line check for the levels, ‘one, two’. Then we’re off. It’s literally this simple nowadays. If we use the toilet and ask for some water at the bar which we usually do, the whole thing takes maybe five minutes. It’s incredibly smooth and quick and everyone is so used to it taking more time so we’re always met with impressed surprised faces.

And off we go. I Like You (Better When You’re Naked). And the crowd of maybe 20 people is shouting, cheering and bobbing along. It just continues like this. And when I hit the money notes, the big notes that continue for a really long time, I can hear how the crowd is just exploding into applause, going harder and harder with their shouts the more I carry on. It’s amazing. Just such a confidence boost for me. 

In this manner we do four songs, and an encore. Then, as we get ready to do the hat, thinking we’re done, we get convinced to just keep going. Forget the encore. Just keep going. This is coming from Gary, the owner, and everyone is cheering him on. We have to do this.

It’s a bit much for me vocally to keep up only playing big songs like this, but we go for it. Another three songs. And oh my god. I wish we had been recording this. This is just the best gig so far. The cheers are deafening, the crowd are completely getting into it. It’s like we transformed this little countryside bar into the coolest rock concert on earth. That’s what it feels like. 

As we finish, I’m also screaming yeah, at the top of my lungs, with my hands in a victory pose over my head, totally embracing the explosion of the pub. 

As we’re packing up to leave, something that’s never happened to me before happens. A stranger comes up to me, shakes my hand and tells me ‘You are an amazing singer.’ Thank you so much. No-one ever praises the singer. I think it’s just assumed that they know they’re good because if the band gets praise, that means the singer gets praise as well. People don’t really feel the need to tell the singer specifically that they were amazing. So to finally be told this, is amazing to me. Wow.

Mark:

All that stuff Maja just said about singers rarely being singled out for praise is, in my experience with many fantastic singers I’ve worked with, absolutely true.

Now into the car we go. And the rain has stopped. If it hadn’t, we would have gone straight home, probably at super slow speed again. But as it is, after a show like that, let’s just keep going. And we feel like going safe. So Ferbane it is to target Hennessy’s, where Fionulla was such a supporter of ours. But when we get there, the place is totally empty, apart from one guy who looks at us like we’ve just dropped out of the sky before suggesting we try Gleesons down the road. Everyone’s in there, he says, and he’ll be popping down himself soon. 

So we go and have a go at hustling Gleesons. The manager’s up for it so we set up, introduce ourselves around the bar, and hit our first song. It feels OK, but just kind of a little bit off. We finish to a smattering of applause and we hesitate a little as we think of what to play next. This isn’t our usual kind of exuberant flow. As we’re just deciding on Rock’n’Roll Tree, the manager, says, ‘Sorry lads, this just isn’t the place for it tonight.’ Oh. OK. It happens. He sounds apologetic as he continues, ‘Some old university friends are in here for a catch up after quite a few years and they really just want to talk rather than have loud music going on, and they came in here because it was quiet.’ You know what? Fair enough. But it’s still not a nice feeling to have to go and meekly take your gear down after being told to stop playing. We do it with good grace, and a few of the guys in here are kind enough to make a point to tell us they were really enjoying it and it’s a shame we’re having to leave. Again. OK. Great. Thankyou very much. 

So we head back off to the car, passing Hennessy’s on the way. As we do, the guy who directed us to Gleesons comes out. We stop and chat to him and he introduces himself as Tommy. He’s massively surprised we’re not playing and says he was on his way to see us. We tell him what happened, and then he tells us what just happened to him. It seems he was a bit too shocked to say anything earlier on. He’s been following us online through our Youtube videos for some time, he says. He’s been into all our adventures across Europe, especially Germany, and just assumed we were a German based band. Then, out of nowhere, on a ridiculously quiet night in his local, we just walked in the door. This European internationally travelling band he’s become a fan of. He just had no idea how to react. It seemed too surreal and simply not possible. And now he’s equally shocked to hear that not only are we actually based in Ireland, but just a few miles down the road from him in the tiny town of Clara. He’s also quite disappointed that, once he’d got over his shock, that he had the opportunity to see us live, and now we’ve been stopped from playing. We tell him we’re thinking of heading to Banaher now, the next town further down the road. We can’t guarantee him a show, but would he like to come with us. Yes. Yes, he would love that. As we get in the car and set off, he says, ‘I feel famous now. I can’t believe I’m actually in the touring car with The Diaries.’ Oh wow. We really can’t let him down. This hustle has to work.

I am delighted to report that once we get to Banaher, we decide on the large, well lit and lively looking corner bar, named for some reason, The Corner House. We arrive just 20 minutes before closing and once he hears we’re only looking for a short show, the manager in there is well up for it, and all the regulars are equally keen. After what I’m sure has been a lovely but quietish evening, they now have the prospect of some live music to round it all off. We give them exactly what they had no idea they were looking for. Or probably they even weren’t, but here it is. Diary Shaped, Pollagh warmed up, Ferbane rejected, and fully up for it now. And this lively and happy crowd is with us every step of the way. Up front, mingling very nicely, and euphoric in something like disbelief, Tommy is almost acting as cheerleader. A few nights ago we had it really big at Sallynoggins. What’s happening here tonight is just all different kinds of levels of special. And as I said, The Pull Inn happened earlier on too and it’s so easy to forget that. A gig of that magnitude, almost wiped from our memories just an hour or so later by even more epic events. What an amazing turnaround, and what a rollercoaster night.

After saying a triumphant goodbye to The Corner House as we’re clapped and cheered out the door for the second time tonight – a night which also included a bar telling us to stop, just to remind you of that – we drive a wonderfully satiated Tommy back home, receiving his thanks for a memorable night, and seeing him off with warm hugs as he joyfully walks home. I really think this is one night that will stay with him. It certainly will with us.

Mark:

In my previous life as a journalist I became the go-to music writer for the Cork Evening Echo, also contributing to Hot Press, Ireland’s number one music magazine. After The Echo I became the editor of Backstage Traffic, a bi-weekly glossy magazine that covered the city’s music scene. There were also a few guest appearances on Irish TV and radio.

A short journey through my media history before Ireland: England correspondent for India’s weekly million selling current affairs magazine The Week. Editor for Leisuretime, a weekly entertainment supplement inserted into 11 newspapers across London. Editor of the hugely exciting men’s lifestyle It Magazine which didn’t quite make it out of the nineties. 

While on the surface of things I was enjoying a successful media career, my heart was really in music and I played bass in a number of bands, generally as the main songwriter. And for around a year I hosted the legendary singer/songwriter night at Cork’s Fred Zeppelins.

After illness forced me out of journalism and I somewhat made a recovery, I decided to devote myself to playing bass on the rich professional cover scene of Ireland, traveling all over the country with many bands playing bars and weddings.

Leaving Ireland for Madrid, I played in yet more bands there over a six year period before, in the summer of 2014, deciding to try the professional music scene on eastern coast of Spain. This episode saw the beginning of Mark’s Diaries which led directly to a move to London. Soon after Maja made her own move there, I switched from bass to guitar, at the same time ending Mark’s Diaries and beginning The Diaries. Which brings us right up to where we are.

Maja:

I first picked up the bass at the age of 15 when trying to start a rock band in my home of Stockholm. The band, and my bass playing, went nowhere and in May 2020 I decided to try again. This time it was different and I soon joined my first band. 

Before the age of 15 I hadn’t really done that much with music at all. As a child I was in a choir, tried to learn the violin for a year, and showed a brief interest in guitar, but that was it. In truth, I was more dedicated to my studies.

At university I often took on a double workload across a variety of subjects and research projects, along the way attending seven different universities. This included conducting research at Keio University in Japan, in the process learning fluent Japanese. At the end of it all, from Lund University, I received my masters degree in Science and Engineering specialising in Communication Systems.

I then became a computer engineer specialising in cloud infrastructure at several exciting tech companies. 

Now my purpose in life is The Diaries and my focus is singing.

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