Flashback E.P.

Flashback E.P. by the Band of Georges.

The Flashback E.P. is a new compilation of old recordings by the Band of Georges. These three songs were never actually all put together on one collection before. The Wud Records team decided it might be a cool thing to do. So here is a brand new Flashback E.P.

These recordings were made in 1986 after George had bought a Tascam 244 cassette portastudio and set about, with some determination, recording all of the many songs he had written. The Flashbacks were three of them.

For the Band of Georges songs we release, we asked George to make a comment on each one. In these he describes how he feels about the songs now, having recorded them almost 40 years ago, and having written them more than 40 years ago. Here is what he said about each of the three Flashbacks on the Flashback E.P.

Flashback: Ahhh… yes, Flashback. This has a lot of history. It was performed by many bands. Technically speaking, this song is actually Flashback Part 1, although it was always called simply Flashback. Flashback Part 2 was called Hard Times and I wrote that a couple of months later. Flashback and Hard Times were both performed live by bands, although Flashback Part 3 never was. The lyrics for Flashback Part 1 were rewritten by Simon. I felt my lyrics didn’t quite express what I wanted them to, so I invited him to rewrite them for me, much as I had with Oh previously, and what a splendid job he did. Yet the original lyrics had some kind of merit and in the end I used them to make Flashback Part 3 with some new music. I only changed one of Simon’s words – he wrote ‘Judas’ and I changed it to ‘Manda’. Then when I was about 24, after Rough Terrain was long since no more, I started regretting that change, and have always used Judas ever since. Judas is so much more timeless and universal. Yes, it does all seem a bit complicated doesn’t it, but what do you do? Anyhow, I got to know this weirdo called Richard who played the flute. I had always thought a flute would be pleasant on the intro for this. I asked him to write a part and he did. For this recording, I played the part on the old EDP Wasp synth, and it sounds absolutely nothing like a flute! I tried to make it flutey for ages, and in the end gave up in exasperation and just went with a sound that seemed to work. Sort of. Simon wrote that beautiful guitar part at the start of the solo before the dirt kicks in. It was a moment of pure inspiration that we were lucky enough to capture on tape. It was during the days of Fooog Dinboffin and the Release and the part became instantly definitive. Maybe we can find and release that version someday? Then Wud did Flashback, and Hard Times, and recorded Flashback for the Daylight Demo. It took a long time with all the tempo changes and so on. After that, Rough Terrain played Flashback live many, many times.

Hard Times (Flashback Part 2): In my mind this had such a big sound. I remember playing this with Marc the first time and his bass suddenly gave this such kick, I was blown away and it gave the song a new dimension. When we played this with Wud it ended our set. Before Graham joined the band, we had this drummer who didn’t rehearse with us much, he missed the final rehearsal because I turned up about three minutes late from having to arrange an improbably amount of things. It was very frustrating. When we played the show with him the next day, he simply didn’t get this song at all and just sat like a dummy on his drumstool looking embarrassed. We sacked him shortly after the show and never saw him again. Poor chap. I remember as well, in our last rehearsal my Dad was there in the room and and about to leave. I had my hands full of things and the guitar started feeding back loudly, making our conversation difficult. I told my Dad he should just touch the strings on my guitar to still them and stop the feedback, but what he did he do? Try various other things that were never going to work, he could never listen to anyone. So with a loud sigh of exasperation I put everything down and touched the strings of the guitar and it stopped feeding back at once, of course. That change of feel after the first verse is Dmaj7 and Fmaj7 and the little noodly bass melodies come from what Marc played that first time. Richard helped out with some words that I didn’t like, but by now I don’t think his are so great either, haha! I quite like the way the lyrics end after all these rather heavy, doomy, troublesome ponderings, “…shall I wear my hat?” which was actually a trivial rhetorical question, although some people might fret over such a question a lot before going out. I can no longer remember why exactly this is Part 2 of Flashback, but it is.

Flashback Part 3: An artistic fade in! This song is made from the original lyrics for Flashback, the Part 1 version, that Simon wrote new words for. There was something about the lyrics I still liked in 1983, so in the end I came up with new music for them. The music actually came about after a long road trip listening to Sky. All those funny voices made using the varispeed knob! I think the shouting might have been an influence from the Kings of the Wild Frontier album by Adam and the Ants, which I was rather fond of back in the day. For the guitar that’s more to the left, I tried to play the strings as close to the bridge as possible on the Ice Maiden to get that bright, trebly sound. It’s not too bad this, it certainly isn’t the worst song amongst these [Volume III Side A – Ed.]. Although I set the bar pretty low, haha!

More at the Wud Records website:
* https://www.wudrecords.co.uk/miscellaneous/band-of-georges/volume-i-side-b/
* https://www.wudrecords.co.uk/miscellaneous/band-of-georges/volume-iii-side-a/

More at SoundCloud:
* https://soundcloud.com/wud-records/sets/band-of-georges-flashback-ep
* https://soundcloud.com/wud-records/sets/band-of-georges-volume-i-side-b
* https://soundcloud.com/wud-records/sets/band-of-georges-volume-iii-side-a