You are allowed to enjoy this…

The digital archive says this was recorded in 1995, but I distinctly remember writing this when I was unemployed during the summer of 1994. 

So yes, this is a song about the mundane existence and utter frustration of being unemployed after leaving university. I remember applying to over 100 jobs – in those days you kept the rejection letters (remember them) as evidence to take to the Job Centre to prove you were actively seeking work. And boy, was I actively seeking work, but I’m one of those people who never seems to get called up and when I do, finds it hard to land the position.

But the point is that I’ve always been writing these kind of songs.

Here are the words so you can all sing along!

When I get up it’s half past two
Not in the morning, the afternoon
Why should I get up
There’s nothing to do
I’ve got no work
Or nowhere to go

If do go out
There’s no money to spend
Don’t talk to anyone
I’ve lost touch with my friends
There seems to be no end

I don’t remember how it got this way
I don’t even know how I make it through the day
There’s no escape
You know it’s true
There’s nothing else when I’ve nothing to do

If I’m lucky I might go into town
Some window shopping
But that gets me down
In the summer, I don’t go very far
Sit on the bench and watch all the cars

In the night, I don’t go to bed
I write these stupid songs
That don’t make much sense
I don’t make much sense

I don’t remember how it got this way
I don’t even know how I make it through the day
There’s no escape
You know it’s true
There’s nothing else when I’ve nothing to do

Nothing to do
Nowhere to go
No-one to meet
No-one to phone
No reason to sleep
No reason to wake
Nothing to give
Nothing to take
No reason to laugh
No reason to cry
No reason to live
No reason to die

I must not give up hope
Give me one reason why I must not give up hope
Give me one reason why I must not give up hope
Give me one reason why I must not give up hope
Give me one reason why
Give me one reason why
Just one reason why

I get easily distracted…what was it I was going to say? Anyway, sometimes I am doing one thing and then I end up going off on a tangent and doing something completely off-piste. For example, I am trying to write some more material for “L” but then I got to thinking about “Americana” – a concept album I did awhile back and some of the vocals for that I was never happy with. For example, the track “The Long Goodbye” was meant to have the devil singing to the lead character. It was the big finale, but I was never happy with the way it turned out. It wasn’t demonic enough. I should have gone with my gut instinct and used a pitch shifter on my voice to make it more like the horny red fellow from the movies Fantasia or Legend in an auditory sense, rather than me gurning my voice.

So off went to the digital Lock archive to dig out the master files and I’ve been plinking and plonking away, trying to make this last track sound more like the image in my head. And here we go, here is that track remixed and made more “demonic” that its original counterpart.

And to think, it’s only another two years until the ten-year anniversary of that collection and maybe its about time I finished the follow-up “Whatever Happened to Eddie Pilgrim?”

Anyway, here’s the rejiggered track for your enjoyment!

I am obsessed with virtual drum kits and whenever Toontrack have one of their weekend deals, I invariably end up splashing the cash for yet another fancy virtual drum kit for their Superior Drummer 3 plugin, which has been my go-to drum plugin for over a decade now.

This weekend was no exception as I bought their Classic SDX kit and so I used this kit as the basis of this track. My process is simple and streamlined these days. In Logic Pro X, I use the Drummer strip to lay down some grooves, I often double up here and have two loops playing off each other and then I use the Superior Drummer Plugin to add colour via the various kits I own in that plugin.

Sometimes, recording is a bit more formal, like when you are trying to record an actual song to lyrics or you have a specific idea. But there is also the “jam” process, where I lay down a rhythm track and just jam over it. I keep the chords and sequences pretty simple (but then my most of music is pretty simple, I’m a simple guy) and then keep jamming over the top of that stuff. Wait a minute, that’s how I record a lot of my stuff. This is often a starting-out point and sometimes ideas are developed from these jams. Sometimes the jams are clean enough to exist on their own as a song with minimal editing and fiddling with.

This is the jam I recorded in the early hours. It is pretty light and airy and almost captures the sap rising. Very spring-like and so while writing this paragraph, I have titled it “Spring Forwards”. So there you go…