Last Person Alive

Last night Fili was doing the vocals for Last Person. It's a kind of powerpop song about a guy fantasising over being the last person alive and being hunted down by machines. He gets lonely and kills himself.It's a great little song. Unfortunately I'd written it and never kept the lyrics and I havent got a clue what some of the lyrics are. I've tried listening back and so has Fili and Jimmy but they dont make sense. One bit where I'd sung "the why's and wherefores" Fili had translated into the "the werewolves in my mind" which was actually better. There's another bit about "concrete pillars and...." and the forensic investigations team for the Metropolitan Police would struggle to know whats' being said. It's backwards singing. Like Russian. Russians always sound like they are talking backwards.

Fili said to me "do you never keep your lyrics?" and I had to say no. For every half decent one there's a few others scrawled on the back of an envelope which dont make the cut. You tend to be trying to write something and you see these terrible unused lyrics and you feel like puking up or sending them to Hallmark or setting fire to your room in a frantic rush to get rid of them. That's why I bin them. They annoy the f**k out of me. Even when Fili sends some lyrics over, I usually chop them up to fit the music, and if you then go back to something that was maybe better originally it's not good for your psyche to know you've actually made something worse.

Still, Fili was using an inhaler and coughing and her voice had lost most of it's range due to the cold so we ended up just scrapping the singing. I've got a week to go back and try and work out what the words are while she recovers.

But that's not the point is it?

We were back at Jimmy's on Saturday doing the bass guitar overdubs. It had been the last few chords of Mr Rocky back in July last year since I'd been there on recording business. Nothing much had changed. There was still the map of the world on the wall and a borrowed White Squier Stratocaster tuned down 1 note from E sitting in the corner. Although quite sparse and hanging together with thread there's something quite sweet about the place, especially when the breeze blows in the window and the leaves are on the trees outside.

We had to start at 10 which is not really a time of the day for rock and roll but who cares. Joe, who is our new bass player turned up with a Gibson Firebird and a Rickenbacker. We set everything up, turned the speakers up and off we went. Everything was finished by 4 o clock. We decided not to redo "Choices" as the original had a good feel and was done in a quick 5 minutes in my house.

Fili turned up and the conversation moved to a youtube video by Carly Simon for a song called "Why" and Fili and Jimmy were ending themselves laughing about it. I need to watch it.

Just about finished with love

Wrote this one last Summer. I'd been for a walk in the little bit of woodland where I live. It's about nature and owls and insects and stuff like that. I think it's just trying to bottle the euphoria you sometimes get when you're out walking in the country and everything seems to be coming together in your head even if it's temporary and you get home and all your problems then weigh heavily on your shoulders again.

I knew it would totally suit Fili when I did the demo because it has a great range between soft gentle singing in the verse and full on in the chorus. The song has only 2 chords in the verse and 4 in the chorus. All the dynamics are created by little overdubs of synthesisers and delay effects. Kind of wanted it to be modern and late sixties at the same time. Kind of like Berkeley Mews by the Kinks mixed with synth pop.

We have been trying to keep the songs revolving around the people in the town and this song is about the edge of the town where you walk out into the country. It's always a metaphor in popular music for happiness and escape, the whole "countryside " thing.  Sounds great, anyway.