|
|
|
|
WOODSTOCK SAYS: Welcome to Planet Woodstock is a compilation of most of the tracks of mine that are currently offered online as free downloads. While we're waiting for the stars to align correctly so that the recording of Road Movie 2 can begin, I thought it would be fun to put these together on a CD. So here it is. Welcome to my planet. Beautiful Afternoon came into existence just after three one Saturday earlier this year when I got to the bank too late to pay a cheque in and bounced a direct debit as a result. I walked home through Prince's Street Gardens, and the whole song was finished in my head by the time I got back. I set out to write the cheesiest song I could, just because I'd heard someone say "they don't write'em like they used to", and to make a virtue of the fact that the midi samples I have to work with are so gloriously shonky. This song and Emotional At Airports are home-produced demos featuring my limited production skills. Swimming With Sharks was inspired by two friends at BBC Worldwide, Matt Ogden and Jo Chivers. Matt thought he was going to Bermuda to play the trumpet (he never got there, Bermuda disappeared at the crucial moment) and while he fantasised about swimming with dolphins Jo said "They have swimming with sharks now." A song was born. Some of the clever effects John added to the mix nearly crashed his computer for good, but we think it was worth it. F U (If You) is about someone who still gets under my skin if I'm not careful. There's always one. It happened to be him. It was in a previous lifetime. These days I try to be careful. England was written in Scotland while I was packing to go to Germany one day. There's a whole lot more bla about it on the Road Movie album page. You don't really need to know any of that. I wrote Clone July in my kitchen in Edinburgh in March 1997. With all the talk of our neighbour, Dolly The Sheep, I'd said to someone in the pub earlier that evening that I wanted to clone July. I've always thought it would be a good plan to have three or four time-strands running concurrently. She said: "They call it California." So I went home and wrote a song around that, because I've always wanted to go there. Zoot and Ronnie turned it into an LA special in the studio. Pete brought in a special shaker percussion instrument that looked like a cat litter tray. He said it came from Mauritius, which I thought was nice because my father lived there when he was a little boy and my aunt was born there. Nothing whatsoever to do with that bloke out of T-rex, Mickey Finn is about a singer songwriter called Elias Fawcett who took something he didn't know he was taking, while his parents were away in August 1996, and never woke up. The Daily Express called him a promising young musician but they only mentioned it because he was with someone who was related to someone who knew Joan Collins. I wondered if Elias had ever had any other reviews. The first time I heard him play, at the 12 Bar Club, I felt like Jon Landau must have felt when he first heard Bruce Springsteen. I was blown away. Sadly, not long after, so was Elias. Between Us is a lovesong about a beautiful American whom I love deeply but am not in love with. For a while I got the distinct impression he thought I wanted more from him than he was prepared to give. In a way he was right - I wanted him to believe that I didn't, that was all. I think he probably does, now. There's a line by Pete in another song from Jack Bruce's Automatic (where he first recorded Make Love Part 2) that bothered me for ages - "Why didn't anybody tell me that you can love and still be free?" - so I've re-posed the question here, because I'm not certain you can, entirely. Either that or I haven't evolved enough to understand. Right Thing is my response to bureaucracy, among other things. As my brother-in-law says, things are usually not so much an intergalactic conspiracy as a series of cock-ups and minor justifications. It's also, obviously, about wondering why people do things. Big things or little things. We had loads of fun sampling mobile phones, keys and bits of paper to provide the sound colour on this one. Tongue Tied
is the story of my life. In a way. Everyone's got to write at least
one list song. I once spent the night with a dangerous-looking American
comedian who did a Rawhide routine (on stage, not later) and the bed
caught fire (later, not on stage). You've never seen anyone run so
fast. That's the half of it. I seem to remember there was an eclipse
around then. Road Movie was originally titled Summer Hysteria because that's the hookline. It's partly about men's fear of female sexuality and it's partly about a stiflingly hot day in Wherever, USA. I think it's my favourite song on the album. Ronnie Johnson's moody guitar completely captures the feeling I had in my head when I wrote it. It's the only track that all the Aliens are playing on. Resolution was nicknamed Turnip when we were recording (something's gonna turnip tomorrow). Every day is New Year's Day. Marc got seriously creative with the programming here (I got the feeling he'd been straining at the leash for a while). Zoot plays the Buddhist wishing bell on this track: I think he's hitting it with a biro. I bought the bell for 30p in a charity shop on the way to the airport to fly down for the session. The look of intense concentration on Zoot's face when he was recording that bit was worth every penny. Emotional at Airports is dedicated to my late father, who spent most of his working life based at Heathrow. It was one of the first songs I ever wrote, back in the late 1980s, and I was inspired to update it by the death of Concorde, which used to take off from just outside his office. Like Beautiful Afternoon, it's a home demo - my first attempt at working with samples. The track spent ten weeks on the playlist at Radio Six International in late 2004, which was nice. It also spent a fair bit of time at the top of the Acoustic chart on RocketRadio.com, which was odd, but also nice. I wrote Circus at the end of the 1998 Edinburgh Festival. I think most people know the feeling.
Thanks:
|
|
