Volume I Side B

Volume I Side B of the Band of Georges.

These are songs composed by George between July 1982 and December 1982. They were recorded in his bedroom at 31 Cowick Lane, Exeter, in 1986.

We did not wish to fiddle with these recordings too much. The audio was lifted straight from cassette and simply normalised to 0 dB.

Having written these songs more than four decades ago, and having not heard these recordings for at least the last three, we asked George to make a comment on each of the songs.

Here is what he had to say regarding Volume I Side B of the Band of Georges.

“We used to listen to a lot of music on vinyl albums at this time. A whole vinyl album would – nearly always – fit onto a single side of a 90-minute cassette. When you were recording it, you’d flip the record over at the end of Side 1 then carry on with Side 2. I always thought of these cassettes I made as being like one whole album per side, rather than being a double album. The first half or so of the tape would be Side 1 of the LP, so that would begin right here.”

Oh: This was a chord progression I came up with and rather liked. I tried to write some words about a lover I had lost because she moved away, but they weren’t very good so I asked Simon to write some for me. He wrote these and I liked them a lot better! There’s even a verse in French. I felt that what he wrote expressed how I felt far better than what I had attempted to write. There’s a little phrase on the lead guitar at the end of the chord sequence just before the first verse starts which is rather definitive. Not altogether sure about this one.

Amanda: Oh no, not this. I can’t be listening to this, please turn it off. I simply don’t like the idea of ‘owning’ another person, it’s just wrong and it doesn’t work like that in reality. It’s poorly expressed and I don’t like it. I wrote this under self-inflicted emotional duress as the girl I loved had been removed from my life by her parents, who moved hundred of miles away very unexpectedly. It was horrible. We managed to get in touch years later and she had been devastated by the move as well. I quite like that bass riff though, and the guitars have a quaint charm all of their own. Would have been much better if someone else had written some better words, like Simon did with Oh.

Dreams of a Hot Day in an Old Dusty Windmill: Ha! I’d completely forgotten this and had no idea what it was until the guitar kicked in! That’s my Dad’s old Hokada classical, in a drop-D tuning. It’s not quite in tune. Never mind. That C+11 chord is a real handful of notes I seem to remember. Some strange noises on the EDP Wasp. I think for the start I wanted something very tranquil like birdsong and a tinkly stream, interupted by a pneumatic drill. There are a few glissando guitar scrapings with the long-shafted screwdriver, probably, and I wailed into the Aria mic and added the Electric Mistress. Quite fun really. Maybe something for Flicker someday?

Glitter: Oh my. This was quite an epic. I seem to remember rather liking the vocal harmonies I did, they might be sixths. Something I defintely do NOT like is that banal blathering I do at the start, like rappers who go “Yeah… yeah… shit man… yeah…” and so on at the start of the song. It’s just… why? What point does it serve? What is the musical function of this? It’s really not necessary. I had a set of four pedals that I used for the rhythm guitar part, Hohner I think they were. Instant Funk, Valve Overdrive, Chorus/Flanger and Phase Shifter and the power unit. Maybe you can find a photo? WIsh I still had them, especially that funky Instant Funk auto-wah!

A couple of weeks after writing this, I tried to make a multi-track recording of it, and maybe three other songs. No idea what the other ones were now. I recorded as many parts as possible at the same time into a cassette machine. The mix of that was played back from the cassette machine, which sounded completely ghastly, whilst I played more parts and recorded the whole mix into another cassette machine. The final sound was awful, the degradation was dreadful, but eventually it was done. I packed the tape into an envelope and posted the songs to Caireen. Because it wasn’t very good, a couple of months later, when I’d practiced the guitar a bit more and was slightly better, I did the exact same thing again. Poor Caireen! The last time I saw her was at Sidmouth Folk Festival in 1994, I was playing some guitar near the promenade and my girlfriend Faye was doing colourful hair wraps for people. She asked me to play Glitter for her, but her boyfriend hurriedly whisked her away.

“This would end Side 1 of the vinyl LP Volume I Side B of the Band of Georges, and Side 2 would begin from here.”

Take Her Away: I quite like the chord progressions in this. I think Now might have done it? Nobody else though. The lyrics are weak, too vague and horribly cliched, so perhaps that’s why. There’s something here that’s pretty good though. Not too horrible.

I Don’t Know You: I forgot this one as well! It was written after an Everyone performance at Exeter Cathedral, or maybe the dress rehearsal. I was enjoying the company of one of the cast in a quiet corner and the lights suddenly went down and her pupils grew huge. It was completely captivating for a sixteen-year-old boy full of hormones. It sounds like I recorded the vocal for this with the tape sped up a little because my voice sounds weird, a bit lower and drawlsome somehow. No idea why by now, maybe to differentiate it from the ‘black fire’ voice? That screech could have used some compression. Quite an odd song and not too awful. No band ever played it. Curious chords, and a 12-string acoustic! That must have been Dean’s Ibanez. I quite like the groove, a bit soft but not bad. E – F#m, A – Bm for the intro, Amaj9 – Bm9 – Dsus in the verses, A – E – F#m E D in the chorus, resolving back to the F# groove. Some blorty fuzz guitar to end. Goes on a bit but then I was very keen to do the ‘full’ versions of things for the record, and why not.

Baby Mine: This was one of those songs I wrote to draw the poison from my aching soul. It was never played by a band. There’s not much to it, really. Dean’s 12-string again. Using the wrong mode for the lead guitar, yikes. I always rather liked the harmonies in this one, they’re rather splendid, even if I do say so myself.

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.

That ends Volume I Side B of the Band of Georges. Volume II Side A is next.