Recently in Diary Category

I can't remember why I decided to do a cover of this one. The original guitar and bass parts must have been recorded over three years ago when I was living back in Essex. So much has happened since, that I have vague recollections of why. I think I just got hooked on the song. Of course, it is Sandy Denny's voice that carries the original and I always remember my nan telling me the sad story of what happened to her. The great thing about my great, late nan was that she knew a lot of stuff about a lot of different things and looking back, I wouldn't have had her down as a Sandy Denny fan, but she must have been because she told me about her.

Anyway, later on I remembered the name found the original song and just loved the sentiment of it, mainly because I am the polar opposite of the song. I fear time, I am scared of it running through my fingers and I worry about the day when I won't be around to care for and annoy my loved ones. So maybe that's why I did this?

But I was going through my server and I discovered that I'd done a version of this - it was just bass guitar and rhythm guitar, so tonight I set to work adding electric guitar, drums and vocals. It's nice. It has a warm feel to it. I just wish I could sing a bit better and do it justice. The vocal is a bit wobbly because I am not really a vocalist and I keep tackling female vocals for some reason, but I like everything else, even the drums which are all mine too. Just stick your fingers in my ears when I start warbling...

And here's the original:

As some of you might be aware, I sometimes post comments on the Guardian website under my alter-ego "deadrockstar" and invariably the level of my criticism usually results in me touching a nerve and being pilloried for my opinions.

I made a fairly short assessment of the supremely awful Nick Cave-fuelled "Grinderman" release Super Heathen Child on their website and I was somewhat surprised to see it picked up and noted in the diary of Robert Fripp. My critique was short and to the point because the quality of the music dictated the amount of energy I should expend in order to warn people of how much of a turkey this thing was. I kept it short:

"What a load of old bollocks. The wailings of Fripp save it from being a complete musical turd."

Unfortunately, this isn't the correct way to review music and I have been correctly castigated by Mr Fripp by this suitably verbose rebuttal:

So, what are these posters, given these clearly expressed attitudes?

It continues to surprise me; even having been for 43 years close to publicly declared unkindness, nastiness, resentment & hostility towards those who have the presumption to play music in front of others; that anyone would seek to wander out in the full view of public gaze and show their fundamental lacking in courtesy & grace, by presenting an opinion that is not even sufficiently developed to quite qualify as an opinion. These are reactions. They demonstrate an inability to manage & direct the personal energy-ecology, in this case of the feelings. It is quite possible to present a reasoned critique / review of Grinderman's (and anyone else's) work, but this would take intention, reflection & consideration. If our response is negative, we have the additional challenge of presenting the negative in a positive fashion. It is more difficult to be critical than supportive, noting that impartial criticism is about as supportive as it gets.

The main problem musicians have these days (apart from whinging about how terrible their life is being ripped off by record companies and those naughty downloaders on that there Internet thingy) is that they are in direct connection with those people who hear, digest and, most importantly, buy their music. In the past, critcism and critique such as I've displayed above would be limited to pub talk or chatter amongst friends:

Discerning Music Fan One: Have you heard the new {insert band name here} album?
Discerning Music Fan Two: Yes, it's a load of old cobblers...

Such off-the-cuff remarks would have never reached the ears of the artiste. Such barbed comments would have been limited to your circle of friends and so the fragile ego of the musician would have been preserved for a brief moment of time until a proper music journalist did a hatchet job on them in the music press and really affected their sales. Because again, most of those music fans in the past would have bought the albums and paid their money before expressing such sentiment.

Nowadays, we have been liberated by the net, because not only can we express our thoughts in the most forthright way and make indirect contact with our idols, we can actually hear the music for free and form our opinions without shelling out our hard-earned cash and being really disappointed by the crud these musicians release as music. The game is up and these chancers who managed to learn four chords on the guitar don't like it that we can pass criticism in a heartbeat. To qualify out opinion we need to quantify it with love, consideration and energy. OK - I'll give it a try in the interest of fairness.

Of course, I read Fripp's reaction and I thought to myself for a moment: "Hey, perhaps I am wrong? Perhaps Old Man Fripp is right. This reaction is hardly an opinion is it? I should go back and listen to this track again and again and again until I find something that I like in it".

Fripp is right my posting is a reaction - all opinion is based on reaction, on previous experiences and that invisible sliding scale in our brains that dictates what we like and don't Iike. Of course, if you hold someone prisoner and beat them enough, they soon learn to love their captor, so perhaps I need to play this song over and over until I form the musical equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome? As someone who immediately got into "Larks' Tongues in Aspic" from King Crimson on the first listen, I am used to engaging with difficult and ugly music.

But now I find myself become facetious and moving away from the task at hand. Let's go back to the Grinderman B-Side and see if there's anything I like about it. When the track starts the guitar noises interest me, but this is stuff I've heard before, most of the music that is presented seems to be familiar and familiar is OK, but the chugging drum and bass motif is satisfying and then Nick Cave starts singing. Now I have no issue with Nick Cave and his music, I am ambivalent towards him, he exists in a stylistic realm that is of no interest to me, but what I am hearing here sounds like someone who is trying too hard.

How can I explain that? It sounds like he's faking it, like he's written these words down and he's trying to force an emotional reaction from himself - at points he sounds as if he's trying to do a bad Elvis impression - and the lyrics appear to me to be utterly meaningless and throw away as if he just wrote down a few lines to sketch out the theme of the song and then riffed over this and improvised until the pot was empty.

I think I was a bit unfair before as I listened to this a third time, I tried to disengage the lyrics from the music and to listen to this as a purely instrumental endeavour and I can see this being a very cinematic piece, and Fripp's guitar work (as I said in my original estimation) really saves this from being a study in monotony. It is classic Fripp stuff and the type of guitar playing that still makes it alright for Fripp to tell me off and for me to take my punishment.

The more you take away the vocals, the more atmospheric the music becomes, but the lyric and vocal performance just turns it into a bit of a comedy show because Nick Cave doesn't put in a convincing performance to me - the energy levels appear to be a bit flat. I get the feeling that Nick Cave wants to channel the vocal stylings of Captain Beefheart or Howlin' Wolf but it just ain't working for me.

But yeah, on my sixth listen, I love it. Sign me up for 20 copies of this song!!! (But I only really love it for the Fripp solo)

When I hear this song it reminds me of two things: the first is seeing Edwyn Collins appear on a music show performing this track and at the end he throws his guitar up in the air to catch it, but drops it, leaving the guitar to smash into pieces on the floor to the visible shock of Mr Collins.

The second is our first proper holiday away together back in 1995 and the day we were due to fly back the weather was appalling and we were rained out, so we headed to the airport early with nothing to do and waited for our flight, which was the very last flight of the day. Spending time waiting in the airport wasn't an issue, it was nice to have a sit down and relax reading the Sunday newspapers but the radio in the airport kept playing this song over and over until I was ready to murder Edwyn Collins.

Thankfully, this murderous rage has subsided over the years and I was moved by Mr Collins' illness and battle back to health and have sent him good vibes on a number of occasions. I think it is that fear that all guitarists (and musicians in general have) that one day they won't be able to pick up their instrument and play due to illness or age or whatever. But Edwyn Collins has proved that the show is never over.

So here is my version of his hit, but I didn't manage to nail the guitar solo as I don't have a proper wah-wah pedal to hand and couldn't find my volume pedal in my numerous boxes of crap that litter my room.

And here's the original:

So the reason I am covering this song is that it is essential for the theme of the proposed sleeve for "Bad Cover Version". But also, a long time ago an actor I knew via the web called Malcolm Xerxes (god rest his troubled soul) praised my guitar tone on one of my tracks called "Edge of Tomorrow" and said that "it featured the best guitar tone since Fripp did Bowie's Heroes". Well that was my intention and so I was very pleased with Malcolm's assessment.

And so I thought I'd do my best to recreate that song sonically and here it is. It is the single edit because I thought the six minute version would be too much to sit through...

And here's a link to the original...

The only reason I am covering this is that this is the only song I've ever sung at Karaoke - a boozy Friday night at the ex-Red Lion on Westminster Bridge Road at the height of my powers - and if I remember through the fug of smoke and alcoholic wash of Newcastle Brown Ale I'd been imbibing - I actually got a round of applause. OK - it wasn't the X Factor but at least I went home happy that night after emptying my bladder on Lambeth North tube station. I do apologise and still feel guilty for my actions - I was very drunk and I had been before I left the pub, but the cool night air caused a reaction with my bladder, which when consuming alcohol takes on similar properties to the TARDIS - only in converse - in that it is smaller on the inside than the outside, in this case resembling something the size of walnut.

With that preamble out of the way (in fact it was almost a "pramble" that's when an anecdote is more of an amble than a premable), I usher forth my magnificent vocal destruction of the Verve's "Lucky Man". You hear the instrumental last week and now I finally gargled my way to the mic and laid the foundation to my "Bad Cover Version" album.

I am truly sorry for my crimes against music - I mean that most sincerely, folks!

And here's a link to the original...

The thing is that I do like a good pop song, especially when there are less than five chords involved. "Lucky Man" by The Verve is a good example of an anthemic song that's built on very little, but I like the sentiment and the vista the original inspires. (Also the two versions of the video that accompany the single release also play on the "widescreen" nature of the production).

I recorded this last night. I cheated a bit by finding a MIDI of the song and stripping all the instrumentation out bar the drum track. But everything else here is my own. When there's a suitable moment, I'll be gargling over the top of this and reducing it to the level of my previous efforts.

Enjoy this for a rousing Sunday morning!

And here's a link to the original...

Music from the likes of Tubeway Army and Gary Numan places me at a very specific point at time: my schooldays. When the original was released in 1979 and so was Gary Numan's unofficial follow-up "Cars". Both of these songs were played to death but because they were so unique, so different I remember myself and my peers being quite electrified by them, especially "Cars" and the video that accompanied it. I've always liked the song and Numan's weird vocal delivery.

This isn't the first version of my Bad Cover Version of this tune. Old recording chum Andrew Osborne sent me his guitar-only version a few years back, which I tarted up and gargled my lungs over. But seeing as Andrew hasn't been in contact in a while and I didn't want to steal his arrangement, I thought it be best if I do my own take on the tune.