These are all 128K mp3 (AAC) format, converted for iTunes.
This album is the result of what was meant to be a generous offer from Steve FP to let me record a 3-track demo at his house in Great Baddow, Chelmsford over a week in April 1982. In fact we recorded 13 tracks over 6 days and dubbed the vocals and violin on the 7th day. Only "Total Power" and "Sex With A Friend" remained unfinished (no vocal on the verses).
The guitar was a Fender Stratocaster reportedly stolen from a music shop by the Mick Rossi of Slaughter and the Dogs. The bass was a really nasty Eros and the synthesizer a nice Moog Prodigy. I don't remember the name of the drum machine but it was a tiny box, the size of a guitar effect pedal, with a few dials on it.
The songs were about half of those I'd written in my London period, 1979-1981. I'd been intending to record a double album but this week in a home studio was all the time I could get. Many of the arrangements were composed on the spot, the songs only having been written rather than arranged or performed before this recording.
I can sell you a CD instead if you like, just email me.
01 Sex With A Friend - I had a relationship in 1979 which was a sexual friendship rather than a romance and wanted to celebrate it, and the disadvantages of the alternative. The guitar and bass parts contain just about every rock-n-roll riff ever. It's not easy to teach this song to other people.
02 Backwards - The music was inspired by The Specials' "Gangsters" and the words are all about the twisted path to acquire wisdom.
03 Come Clean - lyrics inspired by The Exegesis Programme's ideals of living a less obstructed life.
04 Improbable - As the lyrics say, I wanted to sing about something you never heard about before. I use a kind of Jilted John voice, with interjections by a senior civil servant.
05 Hat - a mysterious or mystical instrumental. If there were such a hat, it would perhaps resemble the Nagarjuna hat worn by Dorje Shugdän.
06 Make Something Up - a song about future evolution, set to a rockabilly backing.
07 Last Day In England - I was shortly to leave London and Kent to start a new life in Devon and just exaggerated it as if I were emigrating to America.
08 Decision - written about a Devon psychedelic experience in which I realised the unplumbed depths of loyalty and love that friends could express given suitable circumstances.
09 Can't Move - written on a laundry-laden walk from Ramsgate to Harbour Rise along the seafront, in a very grumpy mood.
10 Frightened Of That Woman - dedicated to Mary Fane-Gladwin, the minx.
11 Bubble Kick - co-written with my groovy housemate, the late Nick Gilgen, using The Singles' Pete Risingham's acoustic bass guitar.
12 Play With My Heart - writen at Harbour Rise about a future partner in life, which turned out to be my first wife Jenny.
13 Total Power - a rough idea of how The Who would sound like if they liked classical music?