Pok: Wanted to Be a Singer

Wanted to Be a Singer by Pok the Bard is the latest track to be released and added to his forthcoming Anthology album. This beautiful, wistful piece of progressive rock describes the hopes and dreams of many young people, and anyone who has ever tried to play music would easily be able to relate to the sentiment of this song.

Wanted to Be a Singer was one of Pok‘s very first compositions, dating back to early 1983. At this time he was playing in the band Now. Wanted to Be a Singer was a piece that he and George played many times as a duo and in various musical collaborations, such as Fooog Dinboffin and the Release, Now and Laughing Sun. It was one of the first two songs, along with Johnny Wake Up, that Pok and George sang harmonies together on. It never made a lot of progress in any form other than a Pok/George duo, due to its various complexities and definitive vagaries.

Fresh from his previous week’s triumphant Spacegoats reunion performance at Glastonbury Assembly Rooms, Pok described the finalisation and release of this seminal work as “monumental”. We know that this song has a lot of meaning for him. He describes it as his ‘mission statement’, and as such we placed it second on the Anthology album as it stands right now.

We have set this track to ‘pay what you want’, which means you can even download it for free. Of course, any financial support we receive for our creative works helps keep our artists fed and watered and helps keep the lights burning, so we greatly appreciate everyone who has contributed to enabling us to exist for over 33 years now.

Over the course of the weekend, we had some prolonged and highly productive time in the studio with Pok. As well as finishing Wanted to Be a Singer, Pok laid down some new guitar parts for Don’t Let It Pass You By. We also recorded Sven, who laid down the drum track for Crazy Mandy and did a great job of it, as you will be able to hear one day. We reviewed the various new guitars on Distanced Recognition and We Know You Well, which are both progressing very well, and did some critical engineering work to Distanced Recognition.

Between us we decided that it would be a good idea to work towards having everything that Jim Iz will play his keys on ready to go in the near future. There are several songs that are already Jim-ready and three more that remain: Born, The Centre of the Cyclone and Crazy Mandy. We will let you know of all future developments with regard to Pok and his activities with Wud Records in our News service and on Twitter.

During the course of events over the weekend, we were treated to a visit from the amazingly talented and renowned visual artist and raconteur Rex Short. Rex has already done some work with Pok on various projects in the past and when we release the finished physical Anthology album on CD, cassette and vinyl, we hope that some of Rex’s awesome artwork will feature.

If you would like to download or listen to Wanted to Be a Singer by Pok the Bard, please click here.

If you would like to download or hear the entire Anthology album as it stands right now, please click here.