Volume IX Side A

Volume IX Side A of the Band of Georges.

These are songs composed by George between May 1987 and . Some were recorded in his flat at 19 Haldon Road, Exeter, in 1987. Some were recorded in his next flat at 96 Union Road, Exeter in 1987 and 1988. Others were recorded at 32 Elm Road, Plymouth, and more in the garage at 63 King Edward Street, Exeter.

We did not wish to fiddle with these recordings too much. The audio was lifted straight from cassette and simply normalised to 0 dB. We even left the clicks at the beginning, where there were some.

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 IX 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 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.”

Secret Subsociety

Oh my. Yes, I can remember this one clearly. It took a long time to record. Years! Between writing and producing Secret Subsociety, I became an unexpected doorstep Dad to the most wonderful guy a Dad could ever help bring into the world. We’ve had so many great times over the years and his Mum is like a sister to me.

Fatherhood, and everything that entailed, delayed things a bit, and changed everything. Really, everything. And while a number of doors closed to me due to new responsibilities, different ones that I had never imagined even existed opened instead, and life continued in a new direction.

There is a lot of story behind this song. The beginning is a bit like method acting where I say that I’d had a touch of writers’ block, and then it was like the cork got pulled out along with a lot of words and music. This might have the most lyrics of anything I ever wrote? Perhaps?

Trying to produce this demonstrated to me that I’d probably outgrown the old cassette four-track. It’s a pretty ambitious production and lost quite a lot in the bounces, in order to fit all of the voices in.

So there is a lot of compromise in the mix, which features far too much reverb. There’s a track of two rhythm guitars and a bass, with a quantity of reverb that is ok for the guitars but not for the bass.

There was a pre-bounce mix of those specific three tracks which didn’t survive the passing years and is completely mangled. Which is a shame. The first few bars of this mix are a bit mangled as well, but the cassette sorts itself out after about ten seconds or so and the sound is reasonable, I suppose.

I must have mixed this down at 32 Elm Road in Plymouth, where Al and Steve and Mike from the Watershed also lived and all their gear was stored. Dave had his Fender Rhodes down in the cellar and came round to practice most days. It was almost certainly mixed down on the headphones I had. Most of these mixes were done that way. They weren’t great headphones either.

I wonder whose reverb it was? It might have been part of the Watershed PA rig. It might have belonged to Zaphod, who had been through some troubles and I used to visit him every week to see how he was recovering in a safehouse of sorts. And it might have belonged to Paul, who worked at Daylight and produced the Rough Terrain demos. Anyhow, I had a new toy and was determined to use it… to the max! To my contemporary regret.

There was no compression on anything in the mix. Just the knobs and faders. So the mix is a bit shabby in places and tends to favour the vocals, which are far too loud on the whole.

This must have been mixed in Plymouth because I remember playing this, along with the next three songs, on the cassette machine in Pete’s big old van when he came to pick me up from Plymouth. He hated the first three songs, although he talked non-stop over the music so I doubt he heard much of any of them! His profuse outburst of verbiage was starting to lose a little momentum by the time the fourth song came on, and he said he liked that one.

I was moving back to Exeter for the summer months to be with my boy before going off to Salford University to read a B.A. (Hons) degree in Band Musicianship and Recording. It was the only course of its kind in Europe – and probably the world – in 1991, and there were only about 30 places. I’d been lucky enough to be invited and was offered a scolarship and bursary. They really wanted me to go, haha! However, life turned out differently and I have no regrets over the decision I took – which is another story for another day.

You know, I do really like this song. It’s long, and it needs to be exactly the length that it is. There’s some wonderful moments here. The guitar harmonies, the vocal harmonies. I like most of the lyrics too – “There’s been some double crossing, double dealing, blood on the hands of those who talk in whispers.” That’s not bad. The blood itself belonged to some farm animals, which were sacrificed for some kind of bizarre magical ritual by some properly strange and unsavoury weirdos.

The lyrics mostly speak of my intense and prolonged frustration – and irritation – with the scene I was a part of and wanted so desperately to leave, and never could due to various commitments.

There is also a section about the difficult relationship I had with my mother – “Unlikely enemies sitting alone behind closed doors.” Your own mother is not supposed to be your enemy, right? She’s supposed to be on your side. Huh. It was never like that for me.

There is a fair bit of paranoia on display here. Some of it at least was probably justifiable in retrospect. A wise man once said “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re NOT out to get you!” Happily, all of that nonsense is long in the past, and I’ve probably forgotten most of it completely by now.

Secret Subsociety is in F# minor and the drum machine is the Boss DR 220A. With this new drum machine, it was possible to chain together two songs of up to 128 bars. Secret Subsociety is longer than 256 bars, so I had to record the first ten minutes or so of the drums, including a couple of flams which were added manually whilst the tape was rolling. Then I had to reprogram a few of the patterns and write a new sequence for the last 50 or 80, or however many bars, and they had to be overdubbed onto another track towards the end of the song.

A couple of the bars at the very end of the first 256-bar sequence were duplicated at the very beginning of the next sequence, to match the tracks up. I didn’t quite hit the start button at precisely the right moment the first couple of times, which produced an interesting flanging effect. Unfortunately, on a cassette four-track, editing is destructive. What is done is done, and you just have to go with it. So that remains nothing but a memory.

Leaving Home

That little guitar part near the start is where the Dark Company song Terminal Road grew from! There are some beautiful moments in this, that simple little lead guitar motif is a favourite. Wonderful.

These lyrics describe the scene in the room in real time. I was still awake, my girlfriend was asleep in bed, nearly everything was packed and ready to go. I was tired but couldn’t sleep and wanted to write a last song about moving out of my parents’ place.

So yes, I was indeed trying to write this song without a sound. I was playing Nicodemus unplugged, very softly, and only when absolutely necessary as the words started to come. I could barely see by the light of the streetlights through the window, so lit a candle to write it by. There wasn’t much candle left so I had to try to finish the song before the candle was used up! It was a race!

And then all the memories came. I really like the lyrics in that whole section. “All that’s made me late or hate” is a good line I think. Some of them elsewhere are a bit contrived, or cheesy, but encapsulate the feeling of what it was all like. It was indeed the next day we did the move.

I remember programming the Boss DR 220A a few months later and it took ages. It finally got done and put on the 4-track whilst we were living at 5 Topsham Road in 1989, along with the rhythm guitar and the bass, which was tuned to a drop-D. I played the 4-track version of Leaving Home to Pok one day, before the other things were subsequently recorded, and he said: “It bored me.”

Nevertheless, I was not discouraged, and eventually managed to record the rest of the parts. The harmonies are pretty good and the voices, a bit too loud, are quite interesting. “Listen to your heart” is a good message. The EDP Wasp is there with its little melodies intertwining with the guitar and the spot effects. There is again, much like Secret Subsociety, far too much reverb on most things.

Yes, I like this. It’s a pretty good song and it sounds reasonable for a demo. Wow.

The coda is just a bonus track, a bit of guitar noodling that happened once the take had been recorded and the tape was still running. It’s like a final goodbye. The very end. It was.

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

Ocean And

Ah, a sugary pukesome piece of pointless pop. Not so keen on this. Even the title is pretentious and stupid. Pete dissed it as well, when it was playing on the cassette machine in his van on the way from Plymouth to Exeter on that day when I moved.

When I wrote this I used the bass, plugged in to a delay pedal. It was unusual because I wrote very few songs on bass, nearly everything was on guitar.

The intention was that I wanted to try to keep this song minimal and simple, perhaps make it sound a bit commercial for 1987. U2 and Def Leppard were both pretty massive on the charts at that time. I’d started a day job in Our Price Records, and Rough Terrain were making a good name for themselves.

This was a song for my girlfriend, who I’d been through a lot with over the previous few months. Now we finally had a place of our own to relax in, and a brief respite from all the crazies that went before. And a lot of new ones were about to begin…

Run

That vocal sounds borderline hilarious! I wonder why I recorded it slow? Couldn’t hit the note?

This was a song that surprised me a bit. It turned out to be better than I thought it was. I quite like the guitars and must have worked pretty hard at the drum machine. It always took ages to program that thing. When Pete moved me from Plymouth back to Exeter, this was the only song of the four on the tape he liked.

The lyrics are something of a mystery. Clearly somebody had cheesed me off, but I wonder who it was? No idea now. I’m guessing the protagonist was male. Summer of 1987. Nope, no idea.

I Pass You By

I find this song rather boring, to be honest. It’s fairly pleasant, the guitar sounds are sweet, there’s an Intercity 125 recorded from an open window by the railway line and it must have taken a lot of work to program the drum machine. But ultimately, it’s quite boring. Background music.

In the summer of 1987 I had a job for a while at a record shop called Our Price. Their price was a bit higher than all the other record shops they were in competition with. They ran an 87% markup on what they paid for their goods.

This song was inspired by the train journey from Exeter down to Torquay. As beautiful train journeys go, this one is right up there. It’s truly one of the most stunning on the whole planet. The train runs right next to the sea, and when there’s a storm, the sea sometimes washes the railway line away and it has to be rebuilt. If you don’t know this journey, look for some photos. It really is spectacular.

Frustration Song

Oh yes, I like this! Cool reggae vibes. Drum machine is decent, lyrics are decent as well on the whole, harmonies and guitars are good too. One of the voices was clearly recorded with the tape speed slowed down, probably for effect.

The bassline, which is way too quiet, was something Jerry from Rough Terrain composed. Andy had made some lyrics, something like “Oh de blue de blue, just me and you,” but it never went far. I can’t remember now how Jerry’s bassline ended up here, but here it is.

The background to this song was that I had a girlfriend who liked me to sit around and do nothing. I’ve no idea why, but it was the case. And I do mean nothing, absolutely nothing, not even reading a book or snuggling. Maybe it was a control thing, trying to test my boundaries. It didn’t end well.

As somebody who was always on the go, I found it highly challenging to do nothing for more than a minute or two, and doing nothing for hours to keep her happy was incredibly hard for me. It still is to be honest, I haven’t been bored for decades. Frustrated sometimes, but never bored. There’s always so much to do.

That ends Volume IX Side A of the Band of Georges.