Another visit to Bigsqueak and we have Barking Up The Wrong Tree (take 5) complete. We’ve also kept take 6 as I think it may be interesting to do too different versions as has become de rigeur for us (see also Cocoon- no less than three versions available, but also What’s Under The Stairs and A Moment of Clarity). Take 5 was definitely the best performance, but my tuning was ever so slightly off (not for the first time!) and due to recording minus vocals we’d inadvertently added an extra line to one of the verses. Take 6 had more precise tuning but maybe lacked the same verve, plus you can tell we’re knackered as the ending peters out like a clockwork toy winding down. So, we decided Take 5 had the edge; for all its flaws it was the best performance and having to add an extra line and remember to sing it differently seemed like only minor hassle in the cold light of day. Any normal songwriter would have had the verses the same length from the start anyway…

So, we had ¼” tape and we had the DAT. The tape sounds terrific, but as described there are problems with drop-outs and our old friends wow and flutter. For most of the other tracks it’s going to be a case of either DAT or tape, but for this song we decided to try and blend the two. This meant some particularly frenzied mouse clicking from Mr.Barwick as he went through the parallel tracks (already transferred to Cakewalk! How 21st Century) compensating for where the tape moved in and out of synch with the DAT version (making for some decidedly queasy echo effects). Job done, we ended up with an OTT chorus effect, sort of What Goes On-style Lou Reed meets Johnny Marr via Wilko Johnson (for the guitar at least, I’d like to think so, anyway…). Powley’s bass (the toxic green Warwick) sounded FANTASTIC- chunky and twangy, but allowing plenty of space for my relentless strumming and Leo’s equally relentless drumming. Leo used a mixture of Bigsqueak’s Premier  kit and his own Ludwig and KR (??) hardware, although for this song he used my old 50’s Ajax snare that has a very distinctive, old-fashioned marching band-style timbre. Anyway, the whole caboodle sounded ace. Barwick made me sing through a tweed Fender Reverb Twin reissue, which blended nicely and I emulated Leo’s backing part, left back in the mix as I always liked the sound of it bleeding into the other mics when we played it live as he rarely had one of his own (we had to travel light, you see!). The combination of lugubrious baritone vocal and frenzied backing led to the throw-away description of ‘The Smiths on crack’; Gav’s typically droll riposte was: ‘You mean it sounds like Andy Rourke on his own?’ Ho-very-ho. So, it’s as good as done. It’s been suggest that the chorus ‘needs something’ and even that we should add disco strings (!), neither of which I’d rule out, although we may save them for take 6, our alternate/experimental version…

More overdubs shortly!

Unfinished business:

So, another line up broke up in 2007… Leo had a job offer in Manchester he couldn’t refuse and Powley wished to pursue other ventures, so we parted on amicable terms and agreed to reconvene to record what we’d been doing for posterity and lo, in March 2008 it came to pass.

Talking to Matthew Barwick, our Anglo-Latvian producer of choice, we decided to attempt an as-live recording on to ¼” tape. This was not without its pitfalls, as we quickly discovered, using a 40 year-old Revox machine (a dead ringer for the one on the cover of ‘The Basement Tapes’!) and 40 year-old ex-BBC tape, that tended to not only wow and flutter unpredictably, but disintegrate before our very eyes! Mixing live also proved difficult due to the discrepancy between the monitored sound and the recording, so everything was simultaneously recorded onto DAT. This was all a bit experimental, but so far we’re fairly pleased with the results! We had three songs we’d gigged extensively, namely Big River, Barking Up The Wrong Tree and Battery In My Brain. Along with this were two works in progress, played but not gigged, which were The Wrong Kind of Old and Semiotic Rock (the latter developed from an instrumental with the working title Zero-Gravity Cum-Shot). In addition to this, largely instigated by Leo’s insatiable desire to DRUM, were some completely new songs, demoed on cassette in time-honoured fashion and arranged by correspondence. After a swift and arbitrary editing process, these were: The Village Idiot, Invicta and Estuary Song. Also, there were songs from the archives that we’d long intended to record, but that had somehow been overlooked: Force of Nature, Roman Stones, Duncan Down and In Your Head; the latter pair being two of our oldest songs.

We even have a working title.  Initially, I’d been keen on ‘Invicta’, meaning ‘unconquered’, the motto of Kent and the title of one of the (so far) instrumental tracks, but had forgotten, until I was reminded, that in Kent, as far as our target demographic (!)  was concerned, this word was indelibly associated with bad commercial radio…So, bearing in mind the kind of heraldic symbols-meets-Bridget Riley-via-Art Deco artwork I had in mind, I decided something more ambiguous might be good. Although my notebooks are, like any wannabe writer, are 90% horseshit, I nevertheless stumbled upon a promising line which judging by the toddler-like scrawl had been written in the dark in the middle of the night: ‘I See Lights When I Close my Eyes….’

So, the first two days were just me, Leo, Barwick, the tape machine and a stack of guitars… The first day was mainly setting up and tinkering, although we still got a couple of tracks done, including The Village Idiot. Further backing tracks were recorded the next day with varying ease- Estuary Song was nailed in a single take; whilst at the other extreme Force of Nature took ten. The vagaries of our aged technology were manifest at times- The Wrong Kind of Old was beset with persistent flutter- however this gave it a kind of other-worldly quality, like a broadcast from a parallel dimension that was wholly in keeping with what I had in mind, so in that instance at least it was a happy accident. On the Monday, my cold by now in full effect, Powley joined us for ‘the big three’. These went smoothly, although my cold made singing near impossible and rendered objective judgement negligible. Barking Up The Wrong Tree inadvertently ended up a line too long. We did another take, but the ‘wrong’ one was deemed the best, so I may have to add a line and have to remember to sing it differently for the rest of my life… Anyway, everything we hoped for was duly done. I may go back and add a couple of solo songs; the likelihood is we’ll make an album and a companion EP, so now I just have to go back and finish everything and hope the tape hasn’t dissolved any further… oh, the suspense…