Song Number 45: Centre Of The World

No offence intended, of course, but this bit of fluff is dedicated to teenagers, people who have teenage kids, and everybody who ever was a teenager (especially me).

Words came first, then chords, then a beat, then I moved the beat around to make it more interesting, then changed the chords, then scrapped the words completely and wrote new ones, then simplified the beat because it was dragging (the original is still there, processed to buggery and just about audible in the intro/first verse)

If I had a pic of me as a sulky teen I'd have used it.
This isn't far off, though.  Except I wasn't even cool enough
to wear a backwards baseball cap.

The inspiration for the final lyric came from a conversation I had with a teacher friend of mine about her having to hand-hold so many of her students (I don't have that problem, of course - all my pupils are lovely!), and our realisation that we were probably just as much of a pain in the arse at that age, as much as we'd like to forget it.  The footage, by the way, is from The Educated Fish, Directed by Dave Fleischer in 1937. 

45 down, so that's my original, scrawny weakling target met - just seven more to go and I'll be at the full-fat, gold-plated, big hairy bollock of a target!

Song Number 41: Scene

From out of the frozen tundra it came...

Wrote and recorded this in my father's studio on Sunday afternoon while we were visiting them up North. 

Dad's studio, like mine, is what is politely termed a "project studio", which is a polite euphemism for saying no bugger else can get the thing to work, so I belted this out pretty sharpish to avoid prolonged arguments over the relative merits of Cubase and Logic. 

There are some really lovely mics and pre-amps up there, and I'm very pleased with the sound of the (one take!) drums.  If I'd had more time I could have (should have) spent longer on the bass and vocal sounds, but there you go.  BVs were done sat in front of the computer with a hand-held SM57 for speed.

As far as the writing goes, I like the "across the ocean floor" line, but the mid 8 bored me so much I chopped a bunch of bars out of the middle of it and skipped to the end of an improvised rant about being sick of the sound of my own voice.

The video's taken from Little Annie Rooney, from the wonderful Fleischer Studios.

Song 42 coming as soon as possible, I promise.  Thanks for all your donations and comments so far.  Please keep them coming  - these last few weeks are going to be really really tough!