You are allowed to enjoy this…

Every so often, for varying reasons, I find myself wading in the digital depths of my archive. Usually it is because I’m moving one set of recordings I’ve made in the past into the latest software I’m using so that I don’t encounter any digital redundancy further down the line.

Recently, I’ve been stuck in the year 2000 and the recordings I made that year that ended up on a set called “Touched by the King”. The notable thing about these recordings is that half of the master tracks were lost when a CD-R I used to back them up failed and so I can never modernise half the album. This saddens me somewhat but also teaches me a lesson not to trust any kind of media and to keep backups: many backups.

As there’s currently a publishing promotion on at CDBABY, I thought it would be nice to create a nice clean finalised copy of these recordings as I have done recently for “Now Here” and “It’s About Time” and publish them via that service.

This has been “fun” in only that I get the chance to balk at those recordings and wonder “why did I do that?” and “how did I get that to work?”. For one of the tracks, the main file was lost and I spent a morning constructing a lead guitar line out of its component parts (as I’d obviously and unusually recorded the solo in sections, rather than in my usual one take) and so it ended up being a bit like stitching together a digital audio patchwork quilt. It gave me a headache! And then there’s the alternate takes to contend with. Was it the first bass take or the second? Why didn’t I use these wah-wah guitar parts? Why did I put that other section? Oh well, I suppose it keeps me off the streets.

Then there was the matter of the artwork. At the time, I created a piece of digital artwork from the visualiser of a digital audio player called WinAMP. It was a little digital splash and I copied it and flipped it to turn that splash into a star. I also collated some other digital shapes created by the WinAMP music visualiser (which was making these shapes from the actual audio of the album – how meta!) for use on the back and inside covers.

However, whether it was by design or a more deliberate guiding hand, the artwork ending up mimicking or parodying the album sleeve “The ConstruKction of Light” by King Crimson. I don’t remember how I got there, but I definitely know I was inspired more by the WinAMP visualiser and its pretty shapes and patterns than me directly trying to copy the sleeve – if that makes any sense. Memories are hazy, but ever since the bullying and sabotaging of that band and its management, I’ve wanted to distance myself from the imagery and so today, I dumped that artwork for a new image, taking the tarot as inspiration.

Lazy and simple – just like me!

I went arse over tit while out walking Hannah this morning. It was a beatific Sunday morning, full of sunshine and blue skies and white fluffy clouds, and it was a stupid thing to happen. On a grassy bit, I was looking at the ground anyway because there are many potholes and divots on the open spaces of our locale, when my right foot decided to slip into said divot and my ankle ricked. I felt the crunch and I went down. However, due to my superior athletic ability and cobra-like senses, I managed to roll into the fall and roll out on my left shoulder. No harm done, other than my right ankle smarting somewhat. And there I am looking forward to a nice long walk in the morning to the doctors…I think this time, it might be a hobble.

One of the benefits of the diabetes eating away my nerve endings is that pain isn’t the pain I used to feel. It is deadened somewhat, there’s no edge to it. So there’s always a silver lining!

It was three years ago to the day that I completed the remixing of a proposed 10th anniversary edition of EchoNET and the 70 minutes of extra material from those sessions that I dubbed NetECHO. S’funny because I was only thinking of releasing that stuff today. I did it and put in the folder and forgot about it. I doubt anyone would be interested anyway. But do I release NetECHO separately and make it its own alternative version of EchoNET or do I do the rejiggered EchoNET with all the offcuts as a bonus disc? I think that quandary was what stalled my decision making process three years ago… 🤔

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!