11th May 2021
(The first in a series of explorations, attempting to find out what I was doing – through the medium of writing songs)
The Point
Here is the first of the Songs. I am going to go round my “back catalogue” of home recorded albums and select a song, alphabetically, and present them here. They are all going to be remastered a little bit – and then presented - maxed out within their own limitations.
In a characteristically slightly frustrating manner – it turned out that in order for Mixcloud [update September 2024 - I have now transfered all the songs onto a Bandcamp] to host these - they would have to form something resembling a 15 minute radio show – as this is the medium needed for the website. My initial thought was “okay – well I will just repeat the same song 3 times” - but once I began experimenting with putting them into a 15 minute format – with gaps in between - I instantly started re-editing and re-jigging things. SO – what I decided – is that I would remix/VERSION each monthly song – in some way – to present as filling up of the remaining minutes. What I actually like about this is that, to my mind, I have ended up needing to produce a CD SINGLE every month. In other words – an A-side, and some B-sides. I love CD Singles – and have loads of them still. There is something beautifully satisfying in seeing lots of CD Singles by a band you like, all bunched up together. It is funny that the CD Single is absolutely defunct in the world – so it seems appropriate for me to start producing them – but not on CD'S.
SO – here are my non-cd CD singles. Who knows what these will be like – but it gives some sort of variety – and allows me to go back near things that were Finished in the past.
Now -when I say finish – they were, at the time, finished. In writing this – I am now going to have to turn on a particular part of my brain which I have not used for so long – the part that used to involve itself with songwriting...or, mainly...working on an 8-track recorder. It actually feels like digging up some kind of archaeological find (in my mind) – and now re-discovering a kind of process that was going on. Certain concepts which were hitherto unknown to me started arriving within and throughout recording songs into my 8 track. Being simultaneously perceptive of what was going on within that – whilst also going on within that, myself - besides providing a fairly good setup for schizophrenia at the time - does now at least allow me to nestle back into that feeling, and do some reflective writing about it.
I call it '8-track recording work' – as opposed to songwriting – for a reason. During this period of my early twenties – I spent so much of my free time in and out of my Boss-1180 digital 8 track recorder. Even just thinking for a second.....my head now rushes back into its digital airspace – its odd little whirr as it turns on ….it's like jumping back into an old photo album.
Anyway – '8-track recording as opposed to songwriting'........ I could not sing and play guitar at that point. Well- I could; but any melody or vocal rhythm which I performed at the same time always seemed lacklustre to what I thought it should be – overall. Instead – I learnt to build up layers on an 8-track. Now – looking back to a train of thought that I thought I had left at the station long ago – I recall acknowledging at some point that “I learnt to write songs on an 8-track'. The 8 track was more of an instrument to me than anything else...and I would layer my voice into it...multiple layers at a time. I would keep riffing off each track – adding different attempted harmonies; and over a period of hours or days the melody would shift. Vocals would re-write themselves over and over..and songs would pretty much completely change from what the initial idea ever was.
This is how I understand it to be the case:
As soon as something else was added – onto another track – it affected the composition. Once there – it suggests a next step in the process – which very much could end up destroying any number of earlier ones. This could keep going and going; evolving and destroying – until it would end up reaching A Certain Point. I would say that PRETTY MUCH EVERY TIME, it felt like that Certain Point would Never Come– but then – at the point of giving up – it would. I can put it like this: I ALWAYS THOUGHT that it was only at a point when I had pushed myself to the absolute top end of anything I was able to do, that a Song would take shape of itself inside the 8-track. There was a degree of struggle – and of a slight verging on madness. As far as I understand, musing upon this now, I have never known anything different. It verges on Yucky Obsessiveness. It is a yucky line – that is all I know how to describe it. Yes – it keeps you up late at night; and needing to go to the toilet; - and if you go over the line – it is detrimental. But without that yucky zone – I was never happy with any result.
Now – I'm not saying that I think that the results were ever something particularly pretty – or very much even enjoyably listenable to another person – but, still – I would reach a point when I thought “yes – that is how it should be”. It is finished. It is how it should be because I literally cannot put anything else into that. All necessary space, within my capabilities, has been accounted for. I always remained fascinated by reaching that Point.
My skills with the tools I had – have been maximised for use; within the 8-track song thing.
And - here is quite possibly the problem – and the reason why I have never had any particular confidence, or more shall we say, strong inclination, to make into Available Product these songs for - well - anyone really. [May I just add here that, although not Available Product – they were always pushed through to completion; then pushed through to completion within the framework of a coherent album; and then physically pushed to completion - as presented in - CD - With Artwork]. In order for me to Direct something; I had to use what was available to me - my average voice and below average instrumental skills. The other raw material I had were the sometimes muddled emotional states of an early/mid twenties year old boy - which formed the lyrical content and sentiment, the environment I was finding myself in, and all other manner of factors. I was working with average subject matter. I had average equipment. The Boss-BR1180 was very average – but perfectly capable as a bedroom musician piece.
I had a below average microphone.
Very importantly then; for this song that is included - I had an Excellent Musical Friend called Kyle Abram. Between us, we had a very average CB Drumkit – on which was stuck a picture of Cilla Black next to the CB. Our cymbals were terrible - and I used to refer to them as the biscuit tins. That said, I was determined that The Biscuit Tins, The Cilla Black Drumkit, and all that other average stuff - was what we had to work with - and that we should do the best we could with it. I had an above average Excellent Musical Friend – and he had me. The whole thing was a strange setup.
The first song I am presenting here is a song from a band/project he and I attempted together. Aswell as sitting neatly alphabetically at the beginning – it seems also a fairly perfect case in point of nearly everything that had/has been, up to, and after that point. I will very likely pull apart the story of that collaborative project when The Alphabet Game falls again on songs by Avant Garde Drummer Wanted For A Pop Band in the future – but – for now – I'm going to move towards this song; A Lesson In The Pointless Ego Of Mankind; and conclude with The Point that I was alluding to at the beginning of this piece of writing; that being of finishing something.
Firstly – the title. It's weird. However, it very much described a set of ideas I was wrangling with – and ones that sort of explained themselves to me, once the song was finished (in 2007). As it is now being dug out from the grave – it is sort of becoming un-finished again - so much so that I thought of changing the title. Now I'd call it the less clunky 'This Lack Of Thought' – as this is the lyric from the chorus. However – much in the spirit of not going with the current sickening trend of re-writing history so that everything can now be Just The Way We All Want It – I'm gonna stick.
The song was a pain in the arse. Kyle pretty much hated it. He began to despise the chirpy guitar riff which had started it all off. I agreed it was chirpy and somewhat annoying – but at the same time, I liked it. The genesis of the songs from this album were from somewhere different than where they ended up. It is bizarre, actually, the transformation. The original version was called Spangles. It was a breezy nonchalant thing – much in the spirit of what we had always been writing together. Kyle and I were almost inseparable (in terms of creative linkage) as we grew through our teenage years on The Isle Of Wight – and the world we knew consisted around a world that his extraordinary father, Norman Abram, had built up, in the seaside town of Sandown. Norman owned two small stretches of beach on which he put out deckchairs. He also had built a set of 9 beach trampolines. One early summer's day in Year 7 – Kyle invited me to walk to the beach after school. I did this. The MAIN POINT here is how, on that day, Norman Abram asked me if I wanted to pack up some of the deckchairs on the beach for him. I happily agreed, and Norman Abram payed me £2.50. He said “cooome baack toomoroooow” and I did - for something like 13 years.
There is SO much to say about this period of time, and of Norman's famously soft Scarborough accent with elongated words - that really is magical. Hanging around on a beach, on the edge of town – with all its characters, enchanted me from the beginning - and still captures so many of my waking and sleeping thoughts, despite being away from the Island (Isle of Wight people call it The Island) in my day to day living circumstances. I once took a friend from Bristol to visit Sandown for a couple of days, and after his first morning there he said “Sandown really is shit, isn't it”. I agreed with him – if he had meant it in the way I thought he'd meant it. Around about 2017, some cars in Bristol started displaying some charming window stickers – which said “Make Bristol Shit Again”. This was good – as it summed up a certain feeling I hadn't been able to put into words – after having lived in Bristol for 10 years – and watching it succumb in inevitable ways to the Gentrification Burger. My friend, commented at the end of his trip, that Sandown was the 'most unpretentious place' he'd ever seen. He actually felt affectionately for it upon leaving – and this pleased me. I absolutely love Sandown. It is shit, beautiful, and entirely unique. But of course – it is not shit. Long, long, may it stay that way.
SO – Spangles. Kyle and I had always wrote songs – and they were always reflective of our surroundings. I remember thinking how interesting it was that we never wrote Love Songs – despite the fact that I was perpetually in Love. We actually did write one very specific one – and I was very happy to place it at the end of our album called Old Hat – made by, what we called ourselves then, The Gorden Bennet Project. However – actually - they were all Love Songs. They were love songs to my surroundings. I loved them. When it came to now settling on trying to write a bunch of new ones – which came about on what would become my penultimate summer working for Norman on Sandown Beach – again, I remember dipping into what I had always known – my surroundings. So it felt natural to turn that chirrupy little riff into a song about David Spangles – the old metal detector man who used to be around all the time. Some old folk can become so weathered by the elements of their surroundings – they become almost a part of the weather, and the surroundings, themselves. Dave existed like that. He used to sleep out in his tent – at different beaches - which he would cycle around to on his old bike– in order to catch the lowest tides at specific places - to hunt for his treasures and junks. He sold me numerous old fold up bikes for £15 which he had retrieved from skips and Done Up Nice, as he would say. He also told the funniest, strangest stories.
I would love to dedicate a whole chapter to Dave – at some point. He was beautiful – but this is not for now.
ANYWAY.....I wasn't happy with the song. My life no longer reflected Simply Sandown.
Spangles was scrapped – and it moved to something sadder – more melancholic – called David's Mind. Dave became the metaphor – and the song formed part of an 11 track demo that we sketched out together throughout that autumn and into winter. David's Mind is such a sad, sad song. It was completely the opposite to Spangles.
Once we had finished the demo – A Certain Thing Happened– in between when we actually got around to recording the album proper (well, in bedrooms and church halls - but trying to make it more than a demo). In a way, none of the whole thing was particularly planned – but it kept on following the previous step – and ended up forming some kind of pathway. The Certain Thing That Happened was a gap of a couple of months – in which two minorly life altering experiences occurred – for me, at least - in terms of how I viewed the world. But – enough of that already.
David's Mind hung around – annoying the fuck out of Kyle. When we finally went to record what was going to be The Finished Version – the whole thing changed – pretty much completely. Our consistent struggle with finding somewhere to practice and record had led us to our final resting place of a converted church on the cliff top called Winchester House. Eugh – just saying the name makes me feel a bit weird. Not in a bad way – but in that way that I said earlier – like trying to swim back into the atmosphere of old photograph albums. The room itself then had a huge echo in it, and in the same way as Jamming into an 8 Track – riffing off the individual tracks, created consistently different things – so too did he and I jamming in this converted church. The acoustics of the room suggested something different to me – and I think it wound Kyle up even more. He hated playing that riff - and I think, (something which is fair to say with regards the whole album), really had no idea what thing was gonna shift next. So – although we were now recording – it still had an element of jamming. We put down the skeleton of the song - as him playing drums and my playing bass. We asked someone, who only now, after all these years of not remembering her name, I recall in writing this as Holly Bowman– to record some Cello. She did this on 2 other songs too. Nina Plapp – played Cello on 3 others.
In an instant – the chorus to the song wrote itself out of the echo of the church. It kind of changed everything – and suddenly I thought the song had something to it. Mainly - I had been let off of owning any kind of sad little chorus line. The song is sad; or rather was – but actually, this new chorus, which, at last, didn't belong to me – in all its irritation in trying to get out – served as fighting talk for the thing not to get bogged down in its own melancholia. I think Holly may have in fact been patiently witness to these things happening – as she kindly sat through it. Maybe the idea came from her, sitting there. We never saw her again after her playing on those.
When we finished the album – we put 4 songs up on myspace - one of them being A Lesson In The Pointless Ego Of Mankind. As an introductory piece – I did a bit of writing, describing what I thought was 'The Band'. Well – the band was still only ever really us two – and by that point, Kyle had pretty much lost interest in the thing – which, in my heart – I kind of knew. The thing I wrote was less of a blurb about a band - instead being a description at the time of the ridiculous situation I had found myself in with what was once Spangles. I cannot find the writing anywhere – (which is probably quite a good thing) – but I will have a go at capturing the essence of the thing.
It caught itself up in a theme which I really did not understand. I wrote something about 'in the act of expressing oneself – it is not possible to remove the Self from the equation'. This led me to the dilemma of 'nothing that is made without passion – can ever really be of much worth. But – by yucking around in a passionate expression – what ends up is an ego-tistical rant. It is boring – and it is all about 'me'. I could not understand how it was possible to present something so much From The Heart – without it being narcissistic. It had previously always been easy to write Love Songs about my surroundings; but the more I delved into what seemed to actually be going on in my thought processes – the more I realised I was falling out of Love with my surroundings. I was feeling increasingly claustrophobic and lost – but I wanted to make music – and finish something I had started with my friend. SO – the sentiments which came out at first – which had formed the song, were, very, very sad. But the more they produced echos, the more they would not stay rooted in this downbeat, self grudging kind-of- thing. This was not how I lived my outer life – so why was this going on in my inner life?
I would write some words onto sheets of paper – and they were sad. But – when I jammed on them, riffed off them; either within the digital walls of the Boss BR1180 8-Track, or the church walls of Winchester House – they would come back different. The process was labored – and I did not have the ability, the confidence, or the means to fully let it go where it wanted – destroying what had been there previously. It was not fair on Kyle – and, quite possibly, it might have been an idea to just shelve the whole thing. Writing this NOW – I am still not sure whether to shelve THIS. This whole mad claustrophobic scenario bore itself throughout the making of that song. Where, and, how, - can that passionate outpouring go – without it being burdensome?It was just raw – and really the words meant very little. There was something lying behind them – that perhaps I was not comfortable to express. I can almost remember that abstract passage which I wrote down, banging around my 25 year old mind -'HOW is it possible to express something which is so honest - without it being passionate; - and without putting all of your self in to it. Then – having put all of your self in to it – you get a reflection back – and that self really doesn't seem so important. It seems so un-important - and then drawing anyone else's attention to it – just seems a wasting of their time. And – because what I am feeling is a strong sense of sadness – how can I not express that? – when that is what I seem to be living through – every day. BUT – I don't think it is particularly, objectively, important. To me it is the saddest feeling in the world – but to anybody else – it would mean nothing. Why draw them to that? But – then – shouldn't music express emotion – and point to something which can go beynd words in order to end up within that?'
Friends at the time undoubtedly used to tell me, “you think too deeply about things' – which used to confuse me further. What I couldn't really say was “Yeah – I know – but, actually, I'm quite happy with where they end up. Sure – I get caught in the process – and it seems to want to explore every angle of the confusion – but- when it finally rests – it sees the whole thing as not really such a big deal. It is a Case In Point (as they say). The whole thing rests in a tiny point...but that whole struggle fits into it. I'm alright thanks – how are you?”. That really is what the song is about. It's apologetic for having to go through the whole process.
So – yeah – a case in Point. The point really is to do with finishing something – and that sometimes, in finishing something – it makes a little bit of sense of what it was you were trying to say.
To return to the idea from the beginning of this piece – with that of learning things within the very process of 'Writing Songs Using An 8 track'.
I was, and have been, ever since; amazed at how a song knows when it is finished. There is very definitely a Point – and it reveals itself to you. It happens when recording a take – and when some work and some don't. It happens all the time – when something settles. I think it comes out of nowhere; like the chorus of the song which came out of the church walls. That is very interesting to me. There is just a Point when it signs itself off. Some people may just see that as a plain and simple arbitrary process – and I wouldn't disagree with them. What I find interesting, aswell though, is the other side of that thing. It is mysterious.
Right here, right now – having unearthed this song – it feels temporarily alive. Whilst writing this I have kept having weird flashbacks of whole scenarios and images around that time. They could all be unpicked if the moment asked for it. It was finished – very much. But – now it is carrying on a bit.
A quick note now, whilst on the theme – about track 2 on this CD Single #1. It was made by an artist called Fear Of Theydon. We had sent the song to the annual audition option for Island bands to play at Rob Da Bank's Bestival – held at the end of the summer on The Isle of Wight. It did not pass the audition – but a guy who worked for the record label liked the song and asked if he could do a remix of it. He came back with what I think is a beautiful and weird dance song. That year – was the year there was Almost A Hurricane whilst the Bestival was on – and the whole thing was precariously close to disaster. Mud – everywhere. It was a crazy and amazing weekend. My Bloody Valentine – playing in a valley, on the eve of a storm – sending shards of humongous white sound into the atmospheric night. It really was – a time, and space –thing.
Fear Of Theydon (aka Jules) was DJ-ing in The Big Top –on the Saturday– at 1345. He had told us he was going to drop his version of A Lesson In The Pointless Ego Of Mankind into his set. It came about 45 minutes in – to a pretty much empty Big Top tent; rain pouring down outside. Sticky mud forming its dance floor -and a big, booming soundsystem. It could possibly have been the least accessible time for anyone to ever play anything to anyone – especially seeing as it had been torrential rain and wind for the last 24 hours or so – and I think most people were still sheltering in their tents. Still – Kyle and I were in there, dancing around in little circles with enough room to swing an elephant. Jules (aka Fear Of Theydon) mixed the song in – a complete anomaly to everything else he was playing – and there it was; that weird little break down where he put our voices in – shouting out the refrain from within the church at Winchester House – in the middle of this melancholic dance song. The joy I felt – and laughing at the absolute top of my voice – well; actually - the whole thing was worth it. Maybe that moment was actually the whole Point of that song's Journey – from Spangles – to that early Saturday afternoon. The words from the refrain are “been tripping over our selves believing that we've been promised something else”.
