You Are Allowed to Enjoy This...

Ahhh, the band that inspired the title for this thread...

Pulp - Bad Cover Version

I remember getting into Pulp in 1994. I think I'd heard a couple of tracks and recognised a few Roxy Music stylings in their tunes and when the "His n Hers" album came out with its faux-Roxy sleeve, I snapped it up and was immediately impressed by the tunes held therein. It would have been obvious to cover "Babies" or "Do You Remember the First Time?" or even "Common People", but it was a toss-up between "Sorted for E's and Whizz" and this tune, "Sunrise". Jarvis Cocker is definitely a hero, of sorts.

This is taken from their overlooked, underrated and truly magnicifent "We Love Life" album. It is the last track of their final album...so far. Why cover it? Well I like the power of the original and also appreciate the lyrics. As a former insomniac, I know what it feels like to rise with the dawn, be so twisted by tiredness to resent the sunrise and want to shut out the day. I also like the track as it was used to superb effect as background music on the show Monkey Dust:

The Revenge of Ivan Dobsky

Anyway, this is my attempt at Sunrise. It's not perfect, but it's not as bad as the others.

Direct download: CLICK HERE

Posted by Darren at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I came to the Scottish band Belle and Sebastian late, through choice more than anything else. Like Nick Drake, I had resisted them for years, preferring for their popularity to wane before exploring their fey, poppy music. This song is the first song from the first album, Tigermilk, which is their best album I believe. My version was meant to have a surf-guitar feel to it, but I think I fucked it up a bit.

Direct download: CLICK HERE

Posted by Darren at 09:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Yesterday, one of my regular readers challenged me. Oh yes, he challenged me good. He asked that I cover "Wannabe" by The Spice Girls in a prog style. Now unfortunately, I am not too good at this kind of thing but I thought I'd meet him halfway and cover the song in my style, whether it be prog or not. The resulting recording is probably the scariest thing I've ever released into the wild.

The initial idea was to do something so utterly prog that it would be bombastic, you know. Perhaps 20 minutes long and lots of keyboard solos, but I realised that would take too much time and effort and I basically like to knock this stuff out quick. So the opening is a soundscape based on the chords to "Wannabe", which then launches into a proto-prog-punk effort. When I listened to the backing track without vocals, I thought it sound too good. It could have stood on its own as one of my very own tracks if I'd have come up with a guitar melody over it, such was its pop brilliance.

When it came to recording the vocals, I realised that if I recorded them straight, people would think this is a serious cover, so I had to sing in another voice. In envisioned a deep, growling blues voice hamming over this - a sort of cross between ZZ Top and Mike Patton from Faith No More for the rapping bits. This is what I came up with and may the musical gods have mercy on my soul. When the day of rock judgement comes, I can stand up and say that Daniel Hoffmann-Gill made me do it...

Direct download: CLICK HERE

Posted by Darren at 06:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here is reason 479 why I'll never be Peter Gabriel. It is my cover of "The Carpet Crawlers" from the album "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway", a record that had a great deal of influence over my teenage years and one that I still marvel at its musicianship and general wackiness to this day. You couldn't get away with that stuff nowadays, I can tell you.

Anyway, I cheated a bit with this cover version because some generous fellow posted a backing track he'd recorded over at the Genesis website. All I had to do was supply the vocals and add some atmospheric lead guitar in the style of Steve Hackett. Not sure if this cover works because my vox are all over the shot, going flat and wobblying here and there. The guitar ain't much betterer either!

Direct download: CLICK HERE

Posted by Darren at 08:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was digging around on my hard drive when I found the master tracks for this. I'd recorded it last year when I first got my VG-99 guitar unit and did it to cheer myself up. My favourite Adrian Belew album is Op Zop Too Wah and there's a great upbeat song on there called "Something to Do" which is a little ditty celebrating those things that we do to waste our time and provide a distraction from our impending mortality.

I like the simplicity and energy of the original and I wanted to capture it with mine. I also wanted that "Beatles" sound that Belew manages to get on his records, but my vocals just ended up sounded a bit nosey, instead of Abbey Road-ish. Oh well, enjoy!

Direct download: CLICK HERE

Posted by Darren at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here are some comments cut from the WWW about my tunes:

Via Jamendo:

"musictomyears" wrote about Without Words:
Fantastic. 10 out of 10
This man has ability with his music, each piece of much is so different and so catchy and more you listen more you want to listen to his music. love this album.

"codearray" wrote about "A Pocketful of Stars":
Great 10 out of 10
I love the album, but torrent files aren't seeded. I think this the best album you have done so far. Keep up the good work.

Via YouTube:

NeronDomitius has made the comment on Seville:

Middle eastern touch of perfection. Your work is always fantastic, keep 'em coming mate.

Posted by Darren at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today was a disaster movie made flesh. We had a flash-flood that lasted an hour. A torrential downpour that actually scared me, but at least I discovered that I can cope under pressure. The shop suddenly flooded and I found myself armed with mop and bucket, trying my best to bail out. That failed, so I soaked up excess rain water with cardboard boxes and use the hard brush to force the water out of the shop. Thankfully, we held it back and won that battle.

As the rain seemed to subside, there was a small lightning flash in the distance. As I looked out of the shop doorway to see where the lightning was heading, there was an almightly flash of light and the crack of thunder almost instaneously after it. I leapt back, my vision a mess of colours and my teeth rattling in my head - my fillings felt like they were vibrating.

We had a massive electrical storm over the village, the resulting snaking bolt of lightning came in through the window upstairs, blew up my modem and AV amp that powers my surround sound system. In the shop, our PayPoint and credit card processing machine got fried. The funny thing is both the amp and the PayPoint machine were disconnected from the mains. The Missus and Baby V were in the living room at the time and saw the electrical charge come in through the room. The sound upset the baby. Normally, I would turn off electrical equipment and unplug it from the wall at the first sign of a lightning storm, but I didn't even get the chance.

Truly terrifying.

This place is cursed.

I hate it so much.

Posted by Darren at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)