Volume V Side A

Volume V Side A of the Band of Georges.

These are songs composed by George during April and May 1985. 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 V 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.”

Песня За (Piestnia Za): Ah, the epic. I still like parts one and four, but parts two and three… no. Part two is so intense, it’s a tough listen and one I can’t manage again without having to hide in a small cupboard. Too much soul. The lyrics and vocal performance are both way too close to the bone. I remember trying to play this with Ken at Matridge Festival and I just couldn’t do it and stopped. Not like me at all, but there we are. Later somebody said, “You must have felt like that for a long time,” and it was true. Part three is just… padding? There are a couple of nice riffs in there but it’s mostly just a lot of notes and noise. This whole thing would be far better if there were no vocals and the third part were to be edited drastically. That very first chord is the one that suddenly came to me in Indian Summer. I quite like the version of Песня За played by just Marc and me when we were in Wud. There are no vocals! The EDP Wasp is not really the right sound, perhaps the same city as the ballpark is in, but no closer. At least the thing plays the right part. Mostly!

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

Losing Your Grip: Hmmm… you know, I like this! I like it more now than I did back in the day. This really has something about it. The quirky intro and that chorus is good. And here’s a very rare thing – I quite like my vocal in this! What’s it a about? Well, each verse was for a different person. One was for Ken, who sang this song when we played it in Wud, which amused me a little. I don’t think he knew. You see, some of my friends back in those days could be a bit exasperating at times. I’m sure I was just as nurgulated as they all were as well. We were just a bunch of freaks and weirdos at society’s ragged edge, and that was probably what drew us to each other. There were times it felt like I was some sort of beacon for people with no specific agenda. Some of those people didn’t have a particularly strong grip on reality or their sanity at times, which is why I called this song Losing Your Grip. I hope they all found inner peace in the end. Some of this is in 4/4 and some is in 6/8 and I decided to go with the common time parts for the old Boss Dr Rhythm. There’s some weirdness with the Electric Mistress as well. I never liked effects that go ‘click’ when you turn them on or off in recordings and I needed the Mistress to be on only in particular places. So I put it through the effects channel on the Tascam, which is a stereo channel. I left it on the whole time to avoid clickage and then just turned the knob up when it was needed. Being a mono effect, the Mistress is only one one side.

Planet Earth: This was fun. And serious. So it starts with a warning from an alien race, although unfortunately their translation machine was faulty so all that can be heard is some blapping. Then it’s into that riff on the harmonics. The Electric Mistress provides the spaced out guitar tone. Zaphod wrote the words after I decided my original attempt was not very good. When Rough Terrain were playing bigger shows with a proper stage and lighting and so on, Planet Earth was their set opener. We had recorded a backing tape to be played as we went onstage with all the blapping and so on and we’d start on the harmonics. In about 1987 the department of transport in england decided to move the A30, one of the busiest roads in england, and have it run right through the wood where we would go camping. Richard and me made a version of Planet Earth for the Habitats Under Threat environmental campaigning group. It was to no avail, the road was built and there is a big deep cutting through the hilltop now with the remains of our wood either side. The clearing we camped in is still there though, so hooray for that at least. Planet Earth is a song about protecting our planet. Are things any better now than they were in 1985 when this was written? I very much doubt it. The message still stands.

Write to You: Here’s another one I rather like. That chord sequence is good and the bass is fun. My vocal isn’t too appalling either, which makes a pleasant change. So this was written on the 19th May? I decided to send a couple of letters to my old friends who had moved away. I missed them, you know, and of course, hadn’t seen them in a long time. One of these was my muse, who had been abruptly moved to Leicestershire, much to her dismay. After doing the best detective work I could, bearing in mind that it was 1985 – the internet and mobile phones and so on didn’t exist – I sent her a letter with a tape of what Ken and me had been doing in Wud. Snail mail was the way we used to roll back then. Write to You was written around the same time that Ken and me made the Daylight Demo, and just before the others joined the band. I wanted the package to arrive on May 23rd, as that is a cosmic date according to the Rule of Fives. So Write to You would have been written whilst I was getting all of that together. I don’t know if my letters were received. No replies came back, but there were no ‘return to sender’ incidents either, so perhaps they arrived. Perhaps the recievers didn’t like them, so ignored my efforts to get in touch, who knows. Anyway, at least this is not such a dreadful song to listen to forty years on.

White Noise: This was just a bit of fun, there’s nothing sensible or serious here at all! I tried to come up with the most horrible riffs and then did some shouting. One person shouted ‘White noise!’ whilst the other shouted ‘Hot knives!’, which we had a lot of at the original Wud HQ. The band Wud performed White Noise. I think Ken quite liked the oddness of the bizarre riff. It was strictly for fun.

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