A tune by Shez, which we recorded on our ever first day in a recording studio back in 1991.
I rather regret that the lyrics I wrote were pretty shit, and my multi-tracked guitars at the end are way too overpowering. Neither is it helped by the fact that the engineer managed to mic up the drums to sound like Andy Cope was hitting a wet cardboard box with a fish.
But I still quite like my trademark dirty guitar solo, with the feedback squeak as it goes back into the melody, and Shez’s bassline rocks, especially when he goes into the descending alternate riff at the end.
The guys in the band challenged me to write a vaguely happy song, so this song celebrates a midsummer’s day when I sat at twilight watching a race of about a dozen hot-air balloons fly low overhead, while smoking a spliff with a girl.
Shez plays bass; Nick Sherrard on lead guitar; Andy Cope on drums, Paul Williams on tambourine. bruce on vocals and rhythm guitar; Andy and Shez on backing vocals.
Woh!! Teenage – or rather, early twenties, angst. There was half an hour at the end of a long recording session so we quickly did this – and kept it, sandpaper throat, microphone pops and all, due to our being out of time and money. It was a staple of the live set, the rest of the band nicknaming the song “One for the ladies” due to its popularity with the girls in the audience.
Shez on bass, Bruce on guitar and overdubbed lead guitar, Andy Cope on moral support.
Kitty Fisher was a lover of Charles I. "Kitty Fisher’s Locket" was an old English folk song that I’d heard of (it was a rude song, as locket was slang for vagina). I never found the original words or tune, so wrote my own. Alison Eglinton sings double-tracked vocals, I play double-tracked guitars and a bit of keyboard.
(Here’s the demo version, recorded on a rainy Sunday afternoon as I was writing it, with me on vocals and double-tracked acoustic guitar:
So a mate of mine, Bruce, was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 by Libby Purves the other day, and asked me to burn a CD of the interview. While doing so, I hit upon the idea of splicing up some of the dialogue and making a dance song that had Libby mocking the size of mate’s dick. I don’t usually like dance music (cos it’s piss-easy to make) but I’m rather proud of this!
The tune was written 5 years before the lyrics came together, the title stolen and song inspired by TS Eliot’s La Figlia che Piange. Alison Eglinton sings vocals, I play guitar. It was done in 1 take, except the final 5 bars (which we got wrong), then 1 take for the guitar overdubs.
From Ocean To Sky” was written when I’d been reading a lot on Pythagoras’ discoveries of the mathematics of music and the mathematical foundations of Da Vinci’s paintings. I’ve always wished I could draw or paint. The long outro didn’t work as I’d hoped; the first take had some screaming feedback guitar for the last 45 seconds which the engineer’s son accidentally taped over when he was pissed. Ah well. Vox are Bruce and Alison, quad-tracked harmonies so there’s never a breathing space in the vocal lines; violin by Naomi Cooper. Guitars and keyboards by Bruce.
Found another song lurking on a dusty cassette – that never got recorded in a studio because I never managed full lyrics – " Then you Come Down". It was made on a rainy Sunday; the tune came
into my head, the scratchpad words while working out the chords, and the demo was made in an hour: headphones on, quickly plug a mic into the Fostex 4-track, point mic at guitar and subsequently at mouth, and you’re done.
The analog 4-track is still a great machine; sure, I’ve got 256 audio tracks at 9 gazillion bits/ second sampling rate on the computer, no tape-hiss, but by the time you’ve got everything set up, you’ve forgotten the song.. The Fotex really is plug-and-play.
The Lucies’ first ever attempt at recording. Shez on bass; Andy Cope on drums, me on guitars and vocals. Mark Ponsford guested on piano. I wrote it about getting to know a girlfriend at the time, and spending ages in conversation through most of a summer but somehow not really managing to say what we felt.