Have trenchcoat will travel

Have Trenchcoat will travel

We’ve been recording this song this week.   Fili wrote the words about a Goth she knows who “plays trombone in a marching band” and “drives around in a Micra dressid in lycra". I had an electro type backing track lying around and when we put the 2 together it sounded pretty fine.  The drums come off a little Korg drum machine and the synths are all from the one Roland SH201. I think the marching band bit sounds good because the little drum machine sounds like a mechanical drummer marching along in front of an army of synthesizers, all heading to their electronic park somewhere for a transistor festival .

I’m never too bothered about whether it’s real drums or pretend drums. Drum loops or sequencers- it’s just rhythm. However  I cant honestly remember the Hussy’s using a synthetic drum. It’s always been Gordy or Chris and their playing is of such a high standard that you don’t ever feel like tightening it up. The only loop we’ve used is Greatest Living Actress.  That’s a 16 second sample of Chris playing his drums in the big room at the Byre, repeated endlessly. We were trying to get that Kate Bush 80’S thing and once Jimmy had processed the drums through a set of effects as long as a length of garden hose it did sound like we’d bought a loop of the Cadbury’s Gorilla laying some beats down in his Malibu studio.

Also been reading a book called Mixerman about a guy recording a band on a major record label in California. He put it up as a blog every night and the whole thing was so amusing that eventually the president of the record company that was trying pathetically to get some kind of record out of the muppets in the band started reading the blog and decided it would be a great PR tool for the band. Dead funny.

TOTP

TOP OF THE POPS MAY 11 1976 BROADCAST ON BBC4 ON THURSDAY 11 MAY 2011

Noel Edmunds appears wearing a gorgeous grey pinstripe suit with a carnation. His hair is perfect and he has a little beard-just like always. Did he have that beard as a 4 year old? I notice his microphone looks like a silver Berol  Handwriter pen.

Mud are first. They are dressed in bright green teddy boy drape suits. They look like Hibernian Marchers who’ve lost their way and just decide to give Top of the Pops a twirl anyway. They are singing a disco song that sounds uncannily like “Cant get you out of my head” but the singer keeps breaking into that Teddy Boy dance you always see in 70’s documentaries about British Leyland. It’s  “50’s disco”. The bassist has black fingerless gloves with little studs and he has that look which says “I wish I’d left these in the dressing room”.

Noel Edmunds reappears and seems to disapprove. He’s almost saying telepathically “you had your hits in the early 70’s now F**k off mud”.

Next up it’s Frankie Valli. He’s left his Hoseasons behind in New York. He’s got a medallion round his neck like a bin lid from Top Cat. The song’s about a Fallen Angel.  Frankie seems preoccupied with what he’s having at the Indian Restaurant after recording finishes. Pianos and strings.

Noel makes a sarcastic comment about the tragedy of the fallen angel. It’s meant to be funny but maybe he’s seen the future?

Then it’s the Stylistics singing the old Elvis song " Cant help falling in love" . It’s not them though. It’s some dancers called Ruby Flipper.  The Stylistics version of the song passes and disappears into a distant sun on the other side of the universe. There’s a clock on the wall and it says 20 to 8. Pianos and strings and a disco beat.

Noel then introduces Barry Manilow. He’s wearing a white leather jacket that looks like he bought it in that shop opposite TJ Hughes in Argyle Street. For any non Glaswegians, this shop has been there for years and seems to sell leather stuff. I cant remember its name. Barry kind of half stands/half sits on his seat, like he’s got the tag nut blues. There’s a lot of pianos and strings. Cant remember the song’s name. It’s quarter to 8 and I’m thinking have I pumped up the tyres on my bike?

Cliff Richard sings Devil Woman. Things are looking up.

Noel introduces a guy in a green suit with a lovely green shirt. He has the Berol Handwriter microphone as well. I don’t catch his name as a call centre from India calls me up about buying some telecoms. I tell the guy to call back later as I’m in 1976 and they didn’t have call centres then.  He’s confused but agrees. The guy in the green suit looks like the guest in Fawlty Towers that hides the lady in the room. In fact I’m sure he’s got a tiger’s tooth fertility symbol round his neck. Pianos and strings.

Then it’s a guy called JJ Barrie singing a spoken word country song about a kid invoicing his mother 5 dollars for cutting the lawn. Fair enough I think and I’m just about to phone my Mum and ask her for £3.50 (allowing for international currency fluctuations).He spends the next 3 minutes reciting all the tasks the mother did for the little boy as he was growing up while the words “no charge” keep getting mentioned. JJ Barrie is angry and making a moral point . I shout “no one forced her to have kids “ at the screen but he’s in 1976 and doesn’t hear me.

Finally Noel announces the number 1 record. It’s ABBA with Fernando. ABBA’s worst song by quite a distance. Why couldn’t it be SOS or Mamma Mia? They reach the end of the first chorus and it’s back to Noel. He’s looking in a mirror and kissing himself.

Please don’t bring back Top of the Pops BBC.

Kings of the Rumbling Spires

We were  back in the studio last week adding backing vocals to Fili's singing on the new album. It's kind of pointless doing lots of singing until Fili actually does her vocals. It's a bit like building a huge fountain and discovering you dont actually have a pond. Sometimes a song needs just Fili and sometimes Fili and lots of little Fili's singing around her and sometimes lots of little James' singing as well.  It just depends. You kind of get a feel for it the more recording you do. I could have predicted that Instruments of the Orchestra would suit baroque vocals in 2 or 3 part harmonies and that's exactly what we did and it sounded fantastic. Meanwhile Last Person Alive was always going to be just Fili and couple of little bits.

I never actually saw Fili. I was there from 12pm to 7 and she was there from 7 till 11pm. The microphone was like a bus and we were just drivers swapping over after our shifts. I'll hear it all tomorrow.

We did a bit of guitars on Daddy Day Care as well. Jimmy had a Russian made Big Muff pedal. Totally unreliable. One minute it was going fine the next it had disappeared off to the bar for a couple of vodkas. I read that Lee Perry saw someone using one of these in the 1970s and thought it was a funny smutty joke and that the pedal was a one off custom made special. No it's real. Mudhoney had a song called "Superfuzzbigmuff" and that kind of sums up the sound of the pedal.

Singles Going Steady

Picked up a copy of Singles Going Steady by the Buzzcocks in FOPP the other day. I'd lost my old copy. It reminds me of a summer working as a gardener when I was at University. It was my required morning listening. Whenever I hear "Harmony in my Head" I remember cycling uphill at 10am with my head down and then crashing into the back of a parked customised VW Beetle.  I know. I still dont understand it. One minute the road was clear the next minute I was scraping my handlebars down a specially customised bright blue metallic freshly painted back bonnet. I was only 4 doors away from my morning's job. The owner came out in his dressing gown and went mental. I managed to get back on my racing bicycle. I got to the bottom of the road and then decided to walk as my front forks were twisted which made it quite an expensive morning. I went home , made myself some coffee and continued my Singles Going Steady obsession.

I never actually knew what the Buzzcocks looked like. I only had the picture of them playing on the cover of the album. It looked like a grubby rehearsal studio. I think it may actually be Abbey Road. Of course last week I checked them out on youtube and they looked great, kind of like a Mancunian Ramones with Gibson Les Paul junior guitars. Anyway the album still sounds amazing, one of the greatest "greatest hits". And even though they've added all those superflous songs to the CD at the end I still  stopped listening at Harmony in My Head just like I always did. What you like and what you dont like never really changes.

Another funny bit about being a self employed gardener was the guy who kept phoning me from my advert in the local paper. I think I was charging £5 an hour and he said he would give me £55 an hour for a massage . I called my straight, red haired, short tempered brother from upstairs and told him there was a good gardening job for him that I couldnt do and handed him the phone. I went back to my room for some more of "Singles Going Steady".

We are made of stars

Fili did the last of the lead vocals tonight on Stars and Choices. I turned up an hour or so after proceedings began and there was a bit of self doubt hanging around the room. Fili was singing in a falsetto, kind of like Prince or Barry Gibb -Barry Prince. It only took me 2 seconds to give it the thumbs up. Sounded magic to me. I was acting as kind of human paracetamol to the troubled world of artistic merit, a kind of low rent Simon Cowell without the visits to the gym and slightly more sarcastic. I think just because it was out of her comfort zone and strange she had her doubts.

I wasnt really that involved and leaned on Jimmy's speakers. Nearly knocked them over. He explained that one speaker stand was balancing on an old Sanyo tape deck and he other was balancing on a little Peavey amplifier. Fili asked me to write down the lyrics to Choices which I did. I then checked Fili's lyrics and I'd got them wrong. 

Jimmy's talking about getting my old Roland Space Echo out for some of the mixes. This would involve bouncing some of the synths over to this piece of late 70's machinery which runs on tape and then bouncing it back to the laptop. I need to find somewhere that makes tape for it. Probably some guy hoarded it all and keeps it in his basement in Croatia or somewhere.

I heard a rumour

I was listening to that Rumer album on Spotify the other week. Anyway, I quite liked it and I could see how it’ll become the top unit shifter this year in the “Garden Centre Rock” stakes. Rumer does the whole Karen Carpenter/Dusty Springfield thing so well that it’s almost creepy how good she is at singing. It’s like she’s had a Ouija board direct through to Karen Carpenter in the studio control room and Karen’s been saying “no , no. Sing it like THIS!”.

The other good thing about the Rumer album is the extremely simple lyrics, mostly about love and failure. People can put records like that on when they meet a new guy, when they’re on their way to a funeral and when they’ve just been made redundant-it’s like anti perspirant-it works everywhere. The cleverness is in the universality of the songs. It takes huge skill to be able to do that as a songwriter.

I  own 6 Carpenters albums. The last couple they made aren’t the best. But the first 5 or 6 years of their recording career they were magnificent. Richard’s songwriting was top notch before he got too far into drugs and Karen Carpenter is such a top, top singer, that listening to her always feels like drinking a fresh glass of ice cold water. 

I think it may just be a few years ago me and a few mates were sitting around, drinking and  everyone was playing stuff they liked. The one thing we could agree on and which we played 5 times was “Goodbye to Love”.  The vocals, the arrangement, songwriting and a guitar solo which you just know was off the cuff. For something a bit  weird try “Druscilla Penny” where Richard does the singing and their version of “Help” kind of shows where they were coming from.

Falling off a Cliff with a good

We were down Jimmy’s doing some vocals on Thursday.  Rephrase that. Fili was singing. I was sitting on a chair listening on a pair of headphones.  I have run out of phrases in the studio to try and describe Fili’s singing. Most of the time I use the word “good” with a few variations along the lines of “really good”, “very good” and “that was good”. I did try “excellent” at one point but Jimmy and Fili took their headphones off and looked at me.  Actually she was singing brilliantly.

We were finishing off “Last Person Alive” and “Car Boot Sale” and "Daddy Day Care". It was going reaaaaaaaly good until Fili mentioned Cliff Richard. I have this instantaneous reflex to the words “Cliff Richard” where I start this silly debate about how he was great in the 50’s and 60’s and that people shouldn’t slag the old tennis playing Alex Kapranos impersonator too much. Also someone I knew who worked with him in the 80’s said he was “an old darling” and never gave him a hard time when working for him at a record company-which is unusual because very famous musicians are always described by Mooks(a record company employee) as "c**ts". Of course Fili downloaded “Saviours Day” or “Lords Prayer” or whatever it’s called and played it on youtube , while pissing herself laughing.  She’s right. All that dressing in white singing songs to cranky old  holy goalies has pretty much ruined his already squeaky clean image permanently and for 90% of the population that's what he'll be remembered for. Which is a shame because if you check out “The Next One” and “In the Country” and even “Wired for Sound” you’ll find he was very good at one time.  

Anyway we had a good laugh and the new album’s shaping up real good. It’s maybe going to be gooder than the last which itself was quite good.