with a view to recording enough tracks for a full album, to be released on cd. In January, we began rehearsing 4 new songs. Liam's 'Would You Ever', Dan's 'The Is Not the Gook', My 'Generation Why' and Saul's 'Fish And The Tambourine'. I then bought a Roland VS880, an 8 track digital recorder, and one weekend in March we set off to Mike's to record 'Would You Ever', 'Fish' and 'Gook'.Saul could only make it on the Saturday, so we decided to record all his drum parts first of all, which took till mid afternoon, and then Liam and I added our guitar parts, I put on my vocals, and Mike, having added Liam's straight keyboard part, suggested a bit of wild noodling on his Oscar synth, to end the song. Then, following the instructions to the letter, Mike attempted to save the finished song. The machine instead wiped everything!! We could not believe it, and were naturally distraught.
Mike managed to convince himself he'd made a mistake, and so we resolved to try and record 2 songs on the Sunday, using synthesized drums. We recorded a good version of 'Would..' on the Sunday morning and tried to save it , unbelievably the same thing happened. I was all for jacking it in and going home, but Liam and Dan persuaded me to try again. This time we would record the song straight to DAT. So we again started from scratch and mid-evening on the Sunday recorded the finished song onto DAT. We had no spare time whatsoever, in fact the Oscar synth should have come in sooner than it does, but we were mixing it live, and brought it in a bit late. We wanted to try again, but there was just NO time. We had salvaged something for the weekend, the first song for the new, as yet untitled cd, was complete. Click for video of Liam, Saul and Aiden describing the disaster
Top : Saul recording some ill-fated percussion for 'Would ....'.
Right: Liam explains the keyboard part to Mike.
Liam's Leaving Gig
Then began a frustrating race against the clock, Liam had signed a contract to go to Japan to teach English in June, and we desperately wanted to record again before he left, but all we could do was wait for the machine to come back from Roland who were taking their time repairing it. We had decided to drop 'Generation Why' by this time, but we had lots of other songs waiting. Indeed by May we were working on all the songs that made it to 'Suitcase' except 'Steve', 'Be Still' and 'You Say That You Love Me' which were written later in the year. We had also decided to call the album 'Suitcase'. To stay focussed while we couldn't record I arranged a surprise leaving party for Liam on May 25th, and we all told him it was a (non-existent) gig in Greenwich on a different date that we were rehearsing for. His girlfriend , meanwhile, had told him she was taking him to meet some friends of hers. As a surprise it worked superbly.
We had made the concert a triple bill. We were supported by 'Baron Greenback', and by 'Matt White and the Emulsions', the band of Jimmy White (who, as all good Shorties fans know, is the man who stepped in to replace Dan on bass at our 1996 concert at the Zodiac, Oxford). Midway through the Emulsions' set Liam and his girlfriend arrived, as Liam stepped into the room a huge cheer went up, and finally he realised. The surprise had worked 100%. The only downside to this was that Liam was so stunned, he barely knew which end of a guitar was which, let alone remember how to play it. So, technically, it's fair to say that the concert was not one of our best (the situation wasn't helped by our paid for pa man going awol for our entire set!) But it really was a day when the performance didn't matter. there was a great sense of warmth, people had travelled 100's of miles to wish Liam well, and everyone had a good time.
We were helped, for the last time as it transpired, by Katherine who played keyboards for the second half of the show. She also sang her party piece,Pleasant Valley Sunday. Also of note, the second song Dan proffered for the album made it's only appearance here. 'Bummer Of 78' was a nice little rocker, but when Dan wrote 'Be Still' he decided he wanted it to be his 3rd song on the album, and 'Bummer' was dropped. For the record the set list was: Last Train To Clarksville, No No No, Woodward and Bernstein, The Is Not The Gook, Star Wars Vision, The Great Leveller, Fish And The Tambourine, Teenage Crisis In McDonalds, Bummer Of 78, Suitcase, Auntie Grizelda, I Got A Woman, No Time, Gonna Buy Me A Dog, Would You Ever?, On The Balcony, Pleasant Valley Sunday, For Pete's Sake, Theme, Listen To The Band, I'm A Believer.
For the record, this was the first concert since 1992 in which we didn't wear the red Monkee shirts.
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