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FWIW: About "Awake but in Bed": (WARNING:Long thread)
Firstly the elephant in the room. Bread, who sings & plays trumpet is only on 3/10 songs
Unfortunately for all, he was unable to contribute as much as I would've liked.ABIB would've been better IMHO, but it is what it is.
Firstly the elephant in the room. Bread, who sings & plays trumpet is only on 3/10 songs
Unfortunately for all, he was unable to contribute as much as I would've liked.ABIB would've been better IMHO, but it is what it is.
In summer of 2016 we & our families met up. We managed to get some stuff done, but having the wives & kids around was kinda restrictive. FF a year later and I tried to get some of the tracks into shape, starting with "Gordian Knot". Here's the first demo
I spent some cold hard cash and hired a guy. This ageing sound engineer was working out of his mum's house, but didn't have the accompanying humility & thought he was some sort of genius. Common problem when doing music is that everyone thinks they're so special.
The finished article is this. "Gordian Knot" is a song about the alienation from friends & family that comes from being a 911 truther, but it's language is sufficiently vague that it shouldn't come across as such. That, I saved for the video.
There's a candle in the shape of a nine followed by a single candle being blown out and then relighting (911), and the train shows different dates via the clock for different false flags: 7.35 (7/7 London Bombings), 2:27 Reichstag fire, 9:18 Manchurian Crisis, @ 9.55 (9/11).
Following this I got him to do "Take Your Clothes Off". His girlfriend was a talented singer (god knows how much younger than him but I found it creepy) who I paid to sing on it. However once the job was done he refused to give me the master files, only supplying me with an mp3.
Twitter at the time gave support which was nice.
"Take Your Clothes Off" came about because of my views on the burkini. French gammons were becoming apoplectic to see muslim women wearing them on the beach. It's my opinion that people should be permitted to wear what they want, with the caveat of some basic ideas of decency.
The opening line Where d'you get that burkini from?" is kinda meant to be misinterpreted as bikini, but once you know, the rest of the first verse lyric's meaning should fall into place. The rest is about judgemental attitudes to women's dress in general
Time passed, until in 2019 I decided to do "Knock Yourself Out". A song about the inability to get facts heard faced with an uncaring and complicit public. I agonised over one particular lyric as to whether I should keep it or not. You can hear it here
The lyric was "Mock the truth and hope you don't become a wandering Jew" replaced by "... hope it doesn't come back to bite you". The wandering Jew was someone who didn't accept Christ's resurrection and was doomed to walk the earth forever. I liked the parallel with 911 but...
... what with the weaponisation of AS I didn't want to die on the hill that was that one line. The importance of the idea was the rejection of truth (Christ's resurrection being thought of as such) resulting in later damnation, and not the adjective of nationality.
Factor in that I wanted to make a video for Jeremy Corbyn's election campaign, I didn't want to provoke comments of "See, his supporters are AS". The song's original intent had nothing to do with him.
Btw: the closing hammond organ plays "911 was an inside job" in morse code
Btw: the closing hammond organ plays "911 was an inside job" in morse code
Here's the video. Biggest political dissapointment in my lifetime was that Corbyn didn't get elected. A true and 100% honest politician with a caring heart. That bus doesn't turn up every 5 minutes.
Moving swiftly along, the idea was to get the album finished as it was becoming an albatross. Next up was "The Man Can't Sing". Based around a walking bass line, here's the demo
Yes, the Man can't sing. Never wanted to sing my stuff but who else is going to do it? This is what it turned into.
Which takes us to January 2020. Tucked away here in the nth part of this thread will be the only place I say it. My mother died of an undiagnosed cancer after a short illness. I'd started writing a tune for her a year ago, which I'd showed her, & now I wanted to finish it.
It wasn't meant for the album, but felt appropriate, so a cheerier tune got bumped and ABIB finishes with Amaita. It's an amalgamation of the Basque words Ama & Aita, meaning Mother & Father respectively. That's my mother at the end of the video.
I hate when personal tragedy is used for influence; like on reality talent shows "This one's for my dead granny". When I put it online, I tweeted it once (twice?) with no explanation and left it at that. I'd asked Bread if he would play on it. I gave him 6 months but got nothing.
In July 2020 I got all the old work from 2016 out and put it into some kind of shape, starting with Polysemous Love Song. It's a song full of things that only really mean something to me; specifically about a few girls that I used to go out with.
That left Postcard'88 a tune written in the fag end of the '80's when cheque guarantee cards were a thing. https://open.spotify.com/track/6p48mMKDugAscSSsFmjGpb?si=z6q4A6HASKyhLYmOpNX_HA
Next "On My Own", a fave with the guys I used to play with in '88. We called ourselves "the mooncars" & this is us as teens; two takes played around one mike in a front room. Cop from 3:50 when the bass, clarinet, & trumpet do their stuff. Happy days :)
... and "On My Own" played on my own. Sad eh?
https://open.spotify.com/track/5X1swECPViQ8zYZo3nvvnN?si=x-zmekTXRa2JVmtBR0qGtw
with a spot of "Another One" for comic relief
https://open.spotify.com/track/5FXxa349n0VUJyhesXa2Fu?si=LF_5kJIAS0a8f_GOaEt0lg
https://open.spotify.com/track/5X1swECPViQ8zYZo3nvvnN?si=x-zmekTXRa2JVmtBR0qGtw
with a spot of "Another One" for comic relief
https://open.spotify.com/track/5FXxa349n0VUJyhesXa2Fu?si=LF_5kJIAS0a8f_GOaEt0lg
Finally ABIB itself. Here's the demo
Here's the finished version
Here's the finished version
I could disappear up my own arse, banging on about my tunes.Thanks for your interest if you've made it this far. I don't know what the future holds for Bread and the Man, if Bread is absent. Hopefully we'll do stuff together again.
yours
the Man
yours
the Man
