After the success of our 7 year anniversary gig, we set to work finishing* our debut album We recorded in 3 sessions during April and May 1998 at Mark's house. This page looks at the April 98 session and all pics on this page are from that weekend unless otherwise stated. *For information on the 3 tunes recorded in '97 click here..
On Friday April 3rd, Mal and I, taking more equipment than we could carry ( a taxi and then a trolley were needed), caught a train out of noisy smelly London, and into the heart of the countryside, in lovely Morton-In-The Marsh, where Mark lives.
He owns a huge farmhouse in the middle of the village, and our eyes popped open as he showed us round.
The place has about 20 rooms. He'd given Me, Saul and Mal (Dan wasn't staying overnight) a lovely room in the huge attic. You looked through the windows up to the sky.
I'm jumping ahead but when the 3 of us lay there it reminded me of The Monkees Pad.
Anyway, Saul's old Morris Minor arrived at 11.45pm the same evening, and on the Saturday morning Dan arrived.
Above left: Saul demonstrates his painstaking practice regime that's made him the drummer he is. Altogether: Lift mug, sip slowly, sigh contentedly. Note how we have to keep him caged up to prevent thousands of screaming girls attacking him. Above Right: Mark on the keyboards
This was our first recording session without Mike, so we had to engineer ourselves. It took us a fair bit of time to figure out what we were doing, but eventually we got going, and recorded 3 tracks: On The Balcony, Star Wars Vision and Suitcase.
In keeping with our 'Headquarters' attitude to music, we recorded as much stuff live as we could and only overdubbed what we had to.
Suitcase, easily the longest song, lasts 4 mins 20, and on Take 4 we were really in a groove, 3 minutes in, when one of Mark's friends arrived, banged on the door and yelled:
"You're not recording are you?"
AAARRGGHH
Eventually we got the 3 songs down, and finished off with a totally live version of Steppin' Stone, which didn't really work but was fun.
More on that later.
Anyway by mid-Sunday, we were halfway through mixing, and it was time to go.
So we had to save the songs before turning the machine off. Later that month, our long time collaborator Mike Ulrich mixed down the 3 tracks.Star Wars Vision (Liam Simington):
Personnel:
Wah-Wah'd Guitar: Mal Normal Guitar/Vocals: Aiden Drums and tambourine: Saul Keyboards: Mark Bass: Dan
Notes: This was one of the first songs written for the album. We rehearsed it a lot with Liam before he went to Japan, and if the recording machine hadn't been broken might have recorded it before he left. This was before Mark joined the band, so originally there was no keyboard part and Liam played a harmonica bit. We even played it that way live in May 97 at Liam's farewell gig.
We considered having Liam add a harmonica part when he came back this summer, but he loved what Mark had done on the keyboards, and felt to add anything else would be overkill. I'm inclined to agree.
L to R: Aiden lays it down, With no Mike to guide us, we all chipped in on production duties, Mark and Saul pose for the press!! On The Balcony (Liam Simington) Personnel:
Vocals/Guitar: Aiden
Guitar: Mal
Keyboard: Mark
Bass: Dan
Drums/Percussion: Saul
Notes:
The song originally had 8 verses. Liam wrote it about his year in Egypt where, he had a lot of stress related problems and got quite ill and shaved all his hair off.
He began to turn things around one night when he had a bit of a snog with a British girl he met at a party. It wasn't too significant in itself, she didn't dig the same things as him, but it was a sign of hope.
Anyway, the 8 verses covered all kinds of stuff and were quite personal (as well as too long), so I suggested he cut a bit out, and he stripped it RIGHT down to the bare bones. I love the lyrics now, I feel not a word is wasted.
I did the vocals in one take, and , as well as singing "cool" instead of "early" at one point, I felt i hadn't really got it. The other guys thought it was fine, though, and time was really tight.
After 2 aborted takes, Mark spent 15 minutes telling us he'd never get his keyboards right, and then got it perfect the next take :)
Finally, Liam loved what we'd we'd done with this, he said we gave it a very Velvet Underground feel, which is groovy.
Dan does so hate being the centre of attention!!
Suitcase by Saul Penfold (lyrics) and Liam Simington & Daniel Auty (music)
Personnel:
Saul: Vocals and Drums
Dan: Guitar
Aiden: Guitar
Mal: Bass
Notes:
This one was worked out in a jam session during a rehearsal shortly before Liam left for Japan (maybe April 97), Saul indicated the feel he wanted, and Dan and Liam came up with the musical ideas we ended up using.
We played it live at Liam's farewell do (May 97) and it was probably our worst ever performance. The bl**dy song has only two chords, but for some unknown reason I played the wrong 2 chords throughout the song (the sound system was so bad I couldn't hear anything so even my ears couldn't tell me of my error!)
Over the year we rehearsed it, Saul developed his ad-libs and the thing took on a smoky jazz club feel, so we decided to add the match being struck at the beginning as a gag, which works well, though we had a few difficulties getting through that bit!
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