Volume V Side B

Volume V Side B of the Band of Georges.

These are songs composed by George between May and July 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 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 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.”

Silence

Goodness. This was quite a piece, I remember it straight away after hearing those first notes. This was something I wrote following a long-awaited and messy breakup. I was trying to rebuild myself, find myself again as it were, and in the middle of it all had a short-lived… liaison… with another lady who had a certain… reputation… and turned out to be as mad as a jack-in-a-box. She is the one described near the end of the song, in typically 1980s male language, ahem.

Anyhow, musically speaking at least, there’s quite a lot I rather like in this song to be honest. All the different moods. It was certainly an ambitious composition, although not deliberately so, it just came out that way. Each section has its own charm.

In 1986 I tried to put a three-piece together with Marc and Graham and we called it The Masters of Drone. That was Simon’s name. I wanted to perform this, and a few other songs I’d written by then that had never been performed on stage.

It was a foolish venture and never went far. Marc and Graham lost interest and made a two-piece mercenary bass-and-drum rhythm section, and hired themselves out as gunslingers. They called themselves Atom Hat.

And then I got into this whole recording business and ended up joining The Addled Eggs, which became The Subterraineans. So Silence never was performed live.

Silence was written when Wud was growing. I don’t think I even offered it to the band. We were trying to integrate the new people and establish a set with them, with all the songs that Ken and I had already nailed, rather than learning even more songs. Especially quite complex ones like this.

Unfortunately, many musicians are amateurs, no matter what they tell you. They have a terrible attitude, and they are impatient. They are often frustrated soloists and egomaniacs, not team players. They rarely share the Grand Vision. A lot of musicians are flaky, and that’s why they become musicians in the first place, to find an outlet for their flakiness. So it’s a hazardous business at best.

Take It or Leave It

Ah. I never really liked this one a whole lot, to be honest. It seemed too… cheesy. Yet for some reason, other people seemed to like it. Especially my female friends. Weird, huh? It was one of those often-requested campfire songs.

I sort-of like the way the words takes a reverse journey through existence, starting with death, then life, then birth. I taught Take It or Leave It to Ken very soon after composing it, and we ended up doing it in Wud. It was Ken who came up with that little melody on the guitar right at the very end.

Take It or Leave It is a song I wrote for a dear friend. I had such a crush on her for ages. It was written in the early morning, so chances are it was after a night on the town doing teenage crazy stuff. She was a sweet hippy girl, I’d known her since the start of college and she’d had the same boyfriend for all the years we’d known each other. I doubt she ever heard this song or knew I wrote a song for her, or how I felt. It wouldn’t have been cool at that time.

No Release

This is a pretty ordinary song and it could be at least five or six minutes shorter. That prolonged section of solo lead guitar was to represent a change of scenery, or the passage of time. Or was it? Not sure any more. Anyhow, it’s largely unnecessary and seems like pure bloat.

I think I didn’t quite know where to put the D on the bass. It needs to go on the one! Yes, it’s not particularly good is this one.

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

What’s Going On

This song is ok. It’s a bit light. Not something I’d want to listen to really, but some people seemed to like it. We did it in Wud.

I wrote What’s Going On for a very exotic older lady. I still remember her room and how she would stay up all night and day, for days at a stretch, and drink lots of strong coffee. Many years later it turned out we both lived in the same hotel in Prague when we were teaching there. She was there a couple of years before me.

At One

According to the list, At One is song #100. Wow! We used to play this in Rough Terrain. It was something of a marathon and it had its own subset of passionate fans, led by Andreas. Musical marmite I suppose.

Hearing it again, I find the lyrics a bit… glib. Some of the music is decent. The wonderful Electric Mistress, with the crayon marks for commonly used settings. This used the green crayon markings, Planets used the red crayon, and Change and Julia both used the yellow crayon. I still like that groovy guitar part in the verses, and the intro is good as well with its changes of key. The chorus is also good, and so is the five-time section that follows.

There are parts that I’m not so keen on – a lot of the instrumental section isn’t actually that great, the 13-time riff is just weird and the end is musically unsatisfying and contrived, that transition to the E-flat. But there we are, it was what it was.

I remember the very first Rough Terrain show at Vines. It went very well, and when we started playing At One, Ken came right to the front of the crowd and watched intensely. I think he was waiting for us to mess it up, but we didn’t, and in the end he laughed in amazement and applauded.

With some editing this song could be ok. It took a while to put all of it together when I was writing it. Marc came up with some of the riffs in the long instrumental section, which also featured Andy’s funny Scottish dance during Rough Terrain performances. It became a feature of the set.

This is a song about the mysteries of LSD, which I tried a few times and then decided to leave be. It was both thrilling and terrifying, and in the end I decided life was better – and safer – without it. I knew a few acid casualties from the exeter scene – Long Gone John, Paul, Adrian, then later Richard – and had no desire to become one of them.

For the Summer Solstice of 1985, which was Richard’s 21st birthday, Richard and Marc and me went camping on Dartmoor near Chagford. There is a long thin island in the river Teign near Scorhill Circle. As we were putting the tents up, it started raining. It did not stop raining until sometime after we left, three days later. Leaving the island was somewhat harder than arriving, because the stepping stones we had used were two feet underwater and the river was raging! But we made it, dried out and lived to tell the tale.

Some of At One came to me when we were cooped up in the tents. I had borrowed my Dad’s hard acoustic case and my sister’s nylon-string for the expedition, and the case was absolutely soaked through and ruined, which caused a certain amount of parental disgruntlement. Dad thought I’d ruined it deliberately by floating it down the river as a boat or something! As if. He had some weird ideas, bless him.

The journey to the island, from the place of parking. The path crosses a stone bridge. The island lies about half a mile south west of Scorhill Stone Circle and about seven miles due east of Chagford.

The journey to the island, from the place of parking. The path crosses a stone bridge. The island lies about half a mile south west of Scorhill Stone Circle and about seven miles due east of Chagford. Photo screenshotted from Google Maps.

The island where some of At One was composed.

The island where some of At One was composed. Photo screenshotted from Google Maps.

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