Tuesday, January 03, 2023

Dancing to Architecture.


So, new year, new project. I am moved to do some recording under the nom de guerre of This Much Talent - an all-encompassing auspice which first made its appearance on a fundraising compilation in 1989, the purpose of which was to raise awareness on behalf of the Venue for Ipswich Campaign. Veterans of the VIC wars still talk fondly of the infamous Caribbean dressing room wrecking exploits of (probably) Noel Gallagher, and in hushed tones of the Carter USM expedition with which certain members of the support band still, to this day, bore their partners rigid whenever ‘Sheriff Fatman’ crops up on re-runs of Top of the Pops. Well, a certain member. 

In fact, one of the songs I’m (re)doing is on that very compilation, albeit with a bum chord which I’m finally going to eliminate, and which dates from so much earlier in my so-called career in that I distinctly remember being inspired by a Bob Dylan quote that someone had pinned up on the wall of our sixth form common room, which dates its writing to about forty years ago. As is the way of these things, I should point out that forty years before that, people were coming up things like Al Martino’s ‘Here in My Heart’, but it remains to be seen how far we’ve come in the meantime. It has certainly been an education in revisiting the thoughts and prayers of a fledging songwriter* with the benefit of four decades of cynicism and disappointment and without barely having to change a word - maybe a tense or two.


We’ve already put down some preliminary demos** and I have attempted to secure some of the finest musicians in their price range to flesh out the bones of my work including, I am overly pleased to report, some people who were on that compilation with me, albeit in various and at the time competitive guises - not least my de-facto co-producer and recording mastermind, who probably rarely has thoughts of re-recording the seminal oeuvre of his band at the time, Edible Vomit. Few who purchased the bargain £3.50 twenty-six track cassette look back from a distance with anything but fondness, I’m sure, on the haunting refrain of ‘Chunder Violently’.

News as we have it. 


*Me, not Dylan.


**Fun fact - ‘Sketch’ from Linx’s real name is ‘Preliminary Demo’