Volume II Side A

Volume II Side A of the Band of Georges.

These are songs composed by George between November 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 II Side A 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.”

Slark Lywilsbie: This was a fun tune! It appeared at the same time as two other instrumentals – J.K.A. and Frog. Rough Terrain played this one a lot and Laney made up a ridiculous dance for it. Rough Terrain even recorded it at Daylight Studios and it’s on the Exit Stage Deaf compilation. There was never anything very serious about this tune. It sounds like the theme tune for a children’s TV programme.

Frog: Another fun instrumental! This was adopted by Rough Terrain as well, and was a live number many, many times. Marc had the idea for the frog noises to start. We all found it tremendously funny and kept it. They could have been shorter, perhaps. The “Mmmmm, thanks!” was when Pete Rippin rolled a cigarette and passed it to Mark Drower in the new school music rooms. We were jamming this and the tape machine was recording, and right in the middle of a three-beat rest, Mark uttered his immortal line. Not sure why it was placed right at the end though. How odd.

Falling Leaves: Oh… this is an odd song. I rather like the bass and the chord sequences! Dean’s Ibanez 12-string again. I seem to remember that these lyrics were just some meaningless twaddle I wrote to try to fit the chords, although they seem to have some kind of post-apocalyptic dystopian dreamlike vibe somehow. I believe in reality it was just some hastily scrawled meaningless waffle. Perhaps that’s why I altered some in 1985. Ha!

Teel: A Mistaken Identity: We did this live in Rough Terrain many, many times. Now played it as well. In Now we may have run this together with Take Her Away as they are both in E minor and a similar tempo. Was always rather fond of this song! So… a few days before writing this, we’d been to a school disco. Strictly speaking, I wasn’t allowed in. I’d left school and started college, but just acted like there was nothing going on and nobody on the door seemed to realise. There was this girl there called Kate, who Simon rather fancied. As the cider, consumed down by the Green Light, had taken hold, I wanted to… help. So I went in search of Kate and sure enough, found her. I took her by the hand and whispered in her ear “Come with me!”, and with a cheeky grin, led her from the balcony to under the overhang of the front of the stage where Simon was. That was when I plonked poor Kate on his knee. It was hard to say who of the two of them was more surprised! I left them to it, and some time later Simon found me, without Kate. “That was the wrong Kate!” he laughed. I had no idea! This might well have been the occasion when we first met Marc and had our sleep plans ruined by the farmer filling the Dutch barn to the very roof, then sneaking guiltily into a teacher’s camper van, which he had left unlocked, to try to sleep and disturbing some of his… special papers. There might be the story in the Now pages. (It’s here: https://www.wudrecords.co.uk/artists/now/now-biography/ – see “Ten Purple Aardvarks” – Ed.) Anyhow, this incident definitely deserved a song. ‘Teel’ was formed from the last two letters of Kate and the first two letters of her surname. I used to use altered names like that a lot, such as in Kiestevsanval Lady. I can’t remember where the name Groff came from, but Lert I remember. I was in the drama group and it was the last night of whatever show we were putting on. Several of us were backstage, I clearly remember Dave Wareham being one of them as it was he who made Lert. Most of the cast and crew had signed a ‘thank you’ card for the producer and head of music, Mr Brace, and it looked a bit empty. We decided to fill it up a bit more by adding additional thanks, greetings and names of fictitious people, disguising our handwriting as best we could. One of them looked like it said “Love, Lert.” – and Dave was: “Who the hell is Lert?!” – and this was, of course, hilarious. That pedal is a Hohner HFX Instant Funk, a kind of auto-wah. Great little pedal, wish I still had it. All of the guitar parts were composed, not improvised.

In The Snow: I remember liking this song somewhat more than was anticipated when it was being recorded. It grew. I wonder where the idea for all those voices came from? Quite interesting. The guitar is sweet too, the way it changes, finger style. That dirty guitar really is as filthy as can be, it was the Boss HM2 through the HH 5-Channel PA. Helen was in the year below me at school. Beautiful! She probably has grandchildren by now, haha!

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

Too Late: Ha! I was feeling pretty grumpy when I wrote this, and probably felt somewhat better afterwards. There was this girl who was driving me crazy and I became completely exasperated with her and decided to move on. It’s a sort of hard rock or blues rock number in E. We played this live with Now at Sidbury Colleseum. We only played three or four songs before being booed off the stage, we were so bad! Not to mention somewhat hammered. I wonder what the other songs were?

Wishful Thinkingcrime: What an odd song. Actually it’s not as bad as I thought it was. Bad, but not unbearably so. I wrote this for Mark’s 1984 play, which he was planning to put on late in 1983. The odd thing about this one was that Simon wrote a song on the same day with the same chord sequence. I phoned him up from my parents’ bedroom, which was risky as our parents used to be grumpy about us running up the phone bill. I played him my song, this one, and he played me his – Johnny Wake Up. The latter we performed many times, including on Sidmouth seafront, when Westcountry TV filmed us for their programme. After they finished filming, Ken and Simon Knagg came over and introduced themselves and that was the start of a whole new thing. Mark never put the 1984 play on after all and this song was never performed live at all.

Julia: There’s something about this I rather like. The guitars and the chords are quite good, and that Electric Mistress was just the business. Best flanger ever. It has a touch of Burning for You by Blue Oyster Cult about it perhaps, don’t you think? A lot of the lead guitar was composed and definitive. We did this in Wud and the Lemmings did an acoustic version. The first time Laney came to my house we were all rather drunk and I had just been working on this. It was cued up on the Tascam so I played it for her and Senga in the headphones. That was a wild old night… This was another song I wrote for Mark’s 1984 play.

Fading: Ken described this as an anthem! We did it in Wud and later with the Addled Eggs. I think the lyrics came to me from an uncomfortable dream, and some of them came from a dream that Simon had. I woke up on his bedroom floor and he said that he’d dreamed about seeing a movie called “Non-man Man”. “Or something,” he added. I thought it was a curious name for a film. This is quite a long song and a lot of the lead guitar is absolutely definitive, as well as the rhythm parts. It’s a bit doomy but I kinda like this. Still. D minor, C, B flat, A. Classic.

One Thing You’ll Never Know: This song is one that I quite liked but most other people didn’t really. It starts out with that chord riff in A minor. It has a bit of a Santana vibe, I thought, hence the addition of the fur drum. It was as close to congas and bongos and the full Monty as I could manage back in the day. Then, suddenly, the song speeds up and the key goes up three semitones to C minor, the guitars become dirty and then the singing starts. I wanted to create an effect like somebody speeding up the record or the tape, but playing the change rather than using technology. C minor is a wonderful key. I remember feeling quite chuffed to be able to play all of those chords as barre chords, so that the entire musical statement is exactly the same in C minor as it was in A minor. That lead guitar break between each verse was always the same as well. What was it about? Well, there were a couple of girls at college who told one of their friends that I’d said some bad things about her, which was absolute nonsense. It just didn’t happen. But the friend in question believed what she’d been told and that was the end of that. Life is too short. Who knows why people do these things, but there we are.

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