"Nobody Knows Anything..."

I spend a lot of time bumbling around on the internet, me - a touch of bloggery here, a little below the line action there and - of course - this occasional record of my glittering showbiz career, which I occasionally compile into book form. One of the places I tend to hang out online is at The Afterword, which grew out of the compost left over after the untimely demise of The Word Magazine. Colin Harper - journalist, biographer of Bert Jansch (and like me a one time musical employer of Judy Dyble) - is also on the AW blog and recently wrote that he really must get round to reading some of my efforts. I'd really enjoyed his John McLaughlin book and I thought it might be a nice gesture to share mine with him, so I sent him a copy. A short while later he posted this review on The Afterword, and I enjoyed reading it almost as much as I enjoy writing the blogs. In case you don't get over there as often as you might, I've taken the liberty of reproducing his kind words here; 

As of January 2006, Skirky had been playing guitar in bands, some of which had played original music, none of which ‘made it’. As he explains in the Introduction to this warm, witty, unpretentious and entertaining diary of a year-in-the-life of the bar covers band they had become, ‘we couldn’t just knock it all on the head and retire gracefully. Retire from what, for a start?’

As well as being written by a fellow clearly comfortable in his own skin, Skirky (who has, like Dr Watson did with Conan Doyle, employed someone to be his literary agent/name-on-the-cover, in this case one Shane Kirk) has produced a valuable anthropological document. It even helps that we never find out the name of the band (unless I wasn’t paying attention on that page) and only know the members by cunning soubriquets: The Drummer, The Other Guitarist, The Singer, et al. This is thus an ‘Everyband’ memoir – a snapshot of the life and trials of a bunch of music fans who have wound up exchanging the dream of Peel sessions and the right to say ‘Hello, Wembley!’ with feet on monitors for an evening at the Dog & Duck, a few pies and pints, and a regular cache of passing characters.

‘Scratch the surface of a contentedly strumming pub rocker and you’ll surely find the soul of a burned-out singer-songwriter still bitter that they came second in the 1989 ‘Battle of the bands’ competition, and as a result never got the acclaim they so clearly deserved then, and still deserve now.’

Along the way we learn that waterskiing trips can be cancelled because it’s ‘too wet’, that ‘the hog roast man’ is not always available, that ‘the healing power of REO Speedwagon is an underrated one’ that ‘only natural predator’ of the pub-rocker is ‘the Dixieland Jazz Combo’ and that, of Skirky & his mates, ‘folk in Stowmarket still talk in hushed tones of the version of ‘Rubber Bullets’ we attempted on the back of two quick run-throughs at which no more than 60% of the band were present at any one time’.

For the pub-rocker, when push comes to shove, ‘the show-off must go on. And you have to pay for the privilege.’ Then again, ‘the clarion cry of ‘Come on! Earn your money!’ never falls more easily than from the lips of someone who hasn’t paid to get in’.

This is a terrific book – great fun, an easy read, a glimpse into a loveably middle-English world of country pubs and creative dreams that aren’t so much broken as mended and making do, and a talent worn very lightly indeed. I wouldn’t bet against Skirky – whoever that mystery man may be – having a hit song in him. But even with the royalty millions rolling in, I have a feeling he’d still be down at the ‘Dog & Duck’ playing Kenny Rogers, Radiohead and everyone in between. And yes, he *does* do Wings – especially if they’re from KFC.

Length of Read:Medium

Might appeal to people who enjoyed…
Any light-hearted memoir, Rick Wakeman’s anecdotes, Brian Pern mockumentaries, pies, beer, Ipswich…

One thing you’ve learned
That Ipswich is called ‘Ippo’ by its denizens. Who knew?           

"We'd like to do a song that's been very kind to us..."

In the world of Songs from The Blue House, we are preparing for another assault on the hearts and minds of the great listening public by winding up into the release of our version of Blue Oyster Cult's seminal classic "(Don't Fear) The Reaper". At a meeting some time ago with our beloved record company this was to be a combination tie-in vinyl seven inch, CD single and download as well as an upload of our performance of the song at the album launch gig last year to YouTube.

As of now this has been downgraded slightly in that it will certainly be available as a download, but we're still waiting to hear if anyone at the studio has had time to look at the live footage yet, let alone edit it all together into a seamless performance-based file for posting on the web. Reading yesterday about how Jimmy Page had to recreate the ambience of Madison Square Gardens at Shepperton for some of the close ups in The Song Remains The Same, I'm also concerned that the shirt I wore for the gig has lost a couple of buttons since then and so any retakes we need to do present the potential for horrible continuity errors. Possessing the twin virtues of impatience and compulsive worry, as I do, you can probably imagine how I'm feeling at the moment. 

We are hoping to use our forthcoming gig at The High Barn in Great Bardfield (home of OBRC) next month as a launch party. I'm sure everything will come through in time - it usually does, and I then manage to enjoy the sensation that there was really nothing to worry about all along. The second album turned up on the morning of the launch gig for instance, which saved us the ignomy of having a big sold-out gig for which there was no actual tangible product to be presented. Same thing with the download, really, as it is unlikely that folks will be sitting rapt in the audience with their laptops, all ready to simultaneously hit the 'buy' button after a dramatic countdown, possibly involving streamers, party poppers and a big back-projection of a stopwatch, and besides, I understand the wireless coverage out there is awful. 

The genesis of the song's arrival in our repertoire is a tale long and convoluted. I distinctly remember Our Glorious Leader James messing about with the riff in the studio for the 'Too' sessions after a bit of tuning up and remarking that it would be a good thing to try and reinvent, and after we'd done a beer festival for what was then merely our favourite venue and not OBRC, the payment for which was a day's studio time, we thought it would be rather a laugh to have a go at it. 

Anyone familiar with the original album version will note that there is a lengthy middle section involving wailing guitars, and since we are principally an acoustic-based folk/country/bluegrass/blues/pop crossover hybrid (there isn't a genre sub-section on iTunes, we've looked) this was clearly going to be somewhat of a challenge to pull off. As in so many of these situations however, we simply rang Fiddly Richard and told him that he'd have to do something with it, and then contacted then friend of the group, now stalwart associate member and songwriter, Tony 'TT' Turrell with a view to filling in the gaps underneath. 

I had an idea that he could do something like the piano intro to Genesis's 'Firth of Fifth' while Fiddly wailed away over the top of it and since he can pretty much play anything at the drop of a hat (his 'Theme from Roobarb and Custard' is a thing of wonder) he acquiesced, came round to The Blue House, showed us a few things which we applauded warmly and then arranged  to meet us at the studio. The combination in the final version of his rolling piano chords underpinning Fiddly's swooping solo, underpinned by Helen's ghostly counterpointed flute and the cymbal swells really is quite an aural experience. Naturally, that's the bit we've dropped from the single/radio edit version for reasons of time and concentration constraints.... 

It's a lovely barn, The High Barn, and so we determined to record as live as possible in the centre of it, with TT at the grand piano on stage being flanked by Fiddly and the fragrant-and-charming Helen Mulley, who was to add spooky flute, and the rest of us, including two (count 'em) banjo players seated in a circle down on the floor of the barn. Tony 'Ellis' Winn came up with a banjo intro which we all loved, and we settled down to enjoy a day's mucking about in the studio. 

People came and went, bass player Gibbon and Helen improvised some backing harmony vocals, Hel introducing the elusive 'blue' note to proceedings, Pete 'Radar' Pawsey enjoyed his usual studio technique, which involved running the track over several times while he blew, hit, strummed, stroked and stared at various things (the look on producer Chris's face as Radar unpacked what looked like a child's zither and proceeded to hammer on it for a bit while trying to get a level is still one which some members of the band treasure as their favourite moment of the day) and Fiddly improvised and practised until he'd got several takes that we thought we could work with. 

Rough mixes taken away and listened to, Chris very kindly agreed that we may as well do the whole thing properly if we were going to do it at all, and so invited us back to finish off some percussion and do some mixing once everyone's ears had recovered slightly and so we, naturally, turned up with a drummer and the news that we thought it could probably do with a proper rhythm track. Now at this point you may have sensed a slight flaw in our plan - you'd think that the sensible point at which to lay down a drum track in these days of computerised mixing desks, click tracks and digital edits would be at the point we recorded the basic backing for the song, wouldn't you? And you'd be right. 

Paul 'Reado' Read however is a man who is unlikely to shirk a challenge and so having listened carefully to the sound of some musicians sitting in a circle in a barn and playing a song some of them barely knew while trying to monitor a piano some twenty feet away committed the tiny yet significant tempo changes, lapses in concentration and fluffed intros to memory and, incredibly, managed to play along with the whole track as if he'd been there in the room in the first place. His only bone of contention being that there should be significant amounts of cowbell present in the final mix. 

For those of you who have seen the YouTube footage of that sketch featuring Will Ferrell and Christopher Walken, "More cowbell", I can assure you that it is a barely-fictionalised account of what went on that night. Then, of course, those nice people at The Word magazine ran a competition to find a bunch of 'Rock Dads' and since we pretty much fit the bill, we sent them a version of it, and blow me if we didn't win! An experience to treasure, not least for the little things that went unremarked at the time. 

As an example when, having waited for Robert Plant's crew to finish their lengthy soundcheck before we could load our gear on stage Reado then soundchecked his drums and cymbals by playing part of the mid-section of Led Zeppelin's 'Moby Dick', it was probably an in-joke too far for most of the anxious waiting audience. ). Then, when we were putting together the track listing for our latest album 'Tree', James and I kept coming back to the fact that we had this old thing in the bag somewhere and if we didn't drop it somewhere into the mix it'd very probably be lost for ever. 

Patient and with good grace as ever in the face of our ideas, our friend and engineer Simon Allen went delving through the hard driven archives to dig out our performance, dusted off the files, reformatted the mixes, tweaked, tuned and remastered the thing so it sat kindly next to our more recent efforts and probably wondered what else we'd come up with before he could relax and stop doing fourteen hour days for us. 

And so, with a little fanfare heralding our hopes and dreams of a foray into the pop charts, we are nearly ready to thrust ourselves upon the pluggers, producers and publishers of the industry, all because James decided one day to fool around with a half-rembered riff. It could all have been so different. The other thing we used to muck about with was Robyn Hitchcock's 'Brenda's Iron Sledge'. I wonder how things might have turned out if we'd gone with that one....?

You can listen to, buy or make a gift of the album version here: https://songsfromthebluehouse.bandcamp.com/track/dont-fear-the-reaper

p.s. In the great file of "what might have been", I am reminded that Reado stepped up to the plate and offered to get us back on when The Waterboys didn't turn up. One of the great regrets of my life is that we didn't get to do our covers of 'Medecine Bow', 'The Whole of The Moon', 'This Is The Sea' (complete with Sweet Thing' segue)' and 'Fisherman's Blues' and get off before anyone noticed... :-)