Track 1: Take It Away
The bandleader’s wife and their little boy
Listening to the wireless set in the lounge, when she says ‘Son…
You’re six years old and your Father and I
Think it’s time you learned music like him. Won’t that be fun.’
But when the child sees the new piano
He turns round and he starts to run. (He says…)
Take it away. Take it away. Take it away.
Mummy no. Mummy please, Mummy, take it away.
Take it away. Take it away. Take it away.
Mummy no. Mummy please, Mummy, take it away.
Twelve years’ hard work later he’s in music college,
And he’s got a strange look behind his eyes.
But in the big competition,
He play that Second Tchaikovsky Concerto so well, he win the prize.
But as they’re handing him the silver trophy,
He jumps up and suddenly cries…
‘Take it away. Take it away. Take it away.
I can’t stand any more, won’t you take it away.
Take it away. Take it away. Take it away.
Mummy no. Mummy please, Mummy, take it away.’
So they send him down to the Tavistock Clinic
Where they try to find out the cause of his attack.
And his friends all tell him ‘You’ve been given a wonderful gift,
And if you think about that, things won’t seem so black’.
But he says ‘It’s not much of a gift
If they won’t let you send the thing back.
‘Take it away. Take it away. Take it away.
I can’t stand any more, won’t you take it away.
Take it away. Take it away. Take it away.
Mummy no. Mummy please, Mummy, take it away.’
‘If a man were permitted to make all the ballads of a nation, he need not care who should make the laws’.
Andrew Fletcher, 1703
‘It is the best of all trades to make songs, and the second best to sing them.’
Hilaire Belloc, 1909.
‘Rock’n’roll you wrecked my life. You’re a beautiful mistress, but a pig of a wife.’
Judge Smith, 1978.
You should see him now, he’s got a contract with Sony
And a Garage album in the charts. He’s really grand.
He’s got a six piece group and an Entourage,
But his girlfriend says he’s really hard to understand.
She should listen to the words he whispers
Each time he strikes up the band.
‘Take it away. Take it away. Take it away.
I can’t stand any more, won’t you take it away.
Take it away. Take it away. Take it away.
Mummy no. Mummy please, Mummy, take it away.’
Judge Says:-
The first and last tracks on ‘The Full English’ have music as their subject. Music may be beautiful and uplifting, but the decades of dedication and discipline that it takes for a musician to achieve excellence, can be surprisingly destructive. Many fine musicians seem to lead less than happy lives. These days I’m a happy bunny, but then I’ve never been a fine musician. What I do seems to be something else entirely.
I love period sounds of all kinds, and it was great fun putting together the opening snatch of ‘Workers Playtime’ dance music. My old friend, the actor and Flamenco musician David Shaw-Parker, who played the stunning acoustic Guitar passages on ‘Curly’s Airships’ makes a guest appearance here on Banjolele.
The quotations about music, spoken during the central section of the song, include one from Hilaire Belloc, perhaps my favourite poet, and a quote from my own chamber opera ‘The Book Of Hours’ (which was directed by Mel Smith in a production at the Young Vic theatre in 1978, but which will probably never see the light of day on record).
The clicky-clack sound is René playing the Reque, a heavy Tambourine from Egypt.
For non-UK listeners
The Tavistock Clinic is a famous hospital for the treatment of mental illness, in North London.
Track 2: Carpet Tiles
The redundancy scheme
Was linked to his salary;
A good few bob
A chance to set upon his own.
And they’d make a good team,
Raymond and Valerie.
He’d do the job,
She’d do the books and man the phone.
They made wonderful plans.
Took a lock-up garage,
Filled it to the doors
With bankrupt stock they bought at auction.
They had a nice Luton van.
On each side written quite large,
It said ‘RayVal Floors.
You’ve seen the rest, but we’re the best…
For Carpet Tiles.
Estimates free for our Carpet Tiles,
Hard-wearing Wiltons in several styles.
No VAT on our Carpet Tiles.
Ten pounds a metre.’
He’s a nice little chap
And he’s doing his best,
Working late each night
But orders just aren’t coming through.
Val sits on his lap
She says ‘Don’t get depressed,
It will be all right,
‘Cos I believe in you…
And in those Carpet Tiles;
People will always need Carpet Tiles.’
Now look at him go; he’s all teeth and smiles.
He’s going to sell you some Carpet Tiles,
Eight pounds a metre.
He jokes about sales staying on the floor
But the house is security
On the loan;
The ‘Caring Bank’ took care of that..
And when he asks them for more
They demand a fresh guarantee.
What else do you own?
Then they wonder what he’s laughing at.
He says ‘Carpet Tiles
All I’ve got left is the Carpet Tiles.
Take some of them, I’ve got miles and miles;
Carpet the whole bleeding British Isles
At five pounds a metre.’
He thinks of Val’s face
And he gets out the file,
The one on insurance.
He reads through the Policy,
Three o’clock in the morning,
He gets in the van.
He drives to the lock-up,
He takes out the matches…
Messrs Jobson and Lock
Licensed Valuers and Auctioneers,
Suggest our sale
For business opportunities.
We have fire damaged stock
Just perfect for new careers.
You couldn’t fail
With Lot 13 for instance which is…
Carpet Tiles,
Two metric tons of new Carpet Tiles
Early inspection would be worthwhile;
Executive quality Carpet Tiles
Worth twelve pounds a metre.
Carpet Tiles,
Simple to lay and so versatile
Featuring guaranteed flame-proof pile.
What am I bid for these Carpet Tiles?
Two pounds a metre?
Judge Says:-
This song was first recorded on my CD ‘Dome Of Discovery’ in 1993, and seems to have become such a favourite with people that I make no apologies for giving it another outing, this time in a totally different arrangement led by the wonderful, Balkan-style accordion of Michael Ward-Bergeman.
This song was written in response to the collapse of so many small businesses in the inevitable economic dive that followed the Thatcherite boom years of the ’80s, but Ray and Val’s story seems equally familiar today. Not much seems to have changed over the last fifteen years. But then, not much ever does.
For non-UK listeners
Carpet tiles are a form of flooring almost unknown in certain, more civilized, parts of Europe. They are half-metre squares of carpeting with rubber backing, often used in offices and kitchens when there is little money to spend. The effect is not very pleasing.
A ‘Luton Van’ is the type of truck where the storage space projects over the top of the driver’s cab.
A ‘Wilton’ is a type of carpet with a close velvet pile of cut loops (it says here).
‘VAT’ is the UK purchase tax.
Track 3: I Want Some Of It
Some people have the gift, I swear
Of making money from thin air.
It’s not as if they need it,
They just like to breed it,
They like having it there.
I suppose it wasn’t tactful
I asked for one small sack-full
But they don’t like to share.
(And I said)
I want some of it. I want some of it.
I want some of it. I want some of it.
I want some of it. I want some of it.
If it’s all the same to you.
I want some of it. I want some of it.
I want some of it. I want some of it.
I want some of it. I want some of it
Too.
They called their private club ‘G8’
They had the whole world on a plate,
And when they lost their tempers
The poor non-members
Just had to wait.
And when they had their meetings,
They ignored the bleatings
From outside the gate.
(And they said…)
We want some of it. We want some of it.
We want some of it. We want some of it.
We want some of it. We want some of it.
If it’s all the same to you.
We want some of it. We want some of it.
We want some of it. We want some of it.
We want some of it. We want some of it
Too.
Ten thousand fields of standing wheat
That people would be glad to eat,
Just an over-production blunder
So they ploughed it all back under
Their feet.
But as the wind was shifting,
Angry sounds came drifting
Up from the street.
(‘Cause…)
They want some of it. They want some of it.
They want some of it. They want some of it.
They want some of it. They want some of it
If it’s all the same to you.
They want some of it. They want some of it.
They want some of it. They want some of it.
They want some of it. They want some of it.
Too. (They want some of it too.)
We want some of it. We want some of it.
We want some of it. We want some of it.
We want some of it. We want some of it.
If it’s all the same to you.
We want some of it. We want some of it.
We want some of it too.
Judge Says:
A rabble-rouser about economics and anti-globalisation demonstrations, which eventually involves eighteen Judges in the sing-along chorus and subsequent disturbances.
Whatever they tell you, there’s no world shortage of food; there’s no world shortage of power. There’s no world shortage of anything, except Money. And Money isn’t real. A very little of it exists in the form of grubby scraps of paper, but most of the Money in the world only exists as figures on a VDU screen. It is brought into existence, or destroyed, by the tap of a finger. Come on, people, tap that finger. We want some of it!
Track 4: Chris Does It Better
I went to see the Sphinx
By her pyramid,
And did I wonder what see thinks?
Well of course I did.
Enigmas turn me on
I like to be nonplussed.
But when I got up close, I said ‘Come on…
This girl is just so obvious.’
And Chris does it better…
You haven’t seen Christine.
Yes Chris does it better…
You haven’t seen Christine.
Reticence is a noble art,
That’s what I believe,
And I don’t care to wear my heart
On my record sleeve.
But when it comes to keeping shtum,
Being silent and serene,
She’d make a Trappist nun
Sound like a PR Consultant on benzedrine…
And Chris does it better…
You haven’t seen Christine.
Yes Chris does it better…
You haven’t seen Christine.
I went to see the show
With that superstar.
Black fishnets torn just so,
And a leather bra.
She did her sexy stuff
Rolling round the floor.
I’d soon had quite enough,
But as I left, they asked what for.
And Chris does it better…
You haven’t seen Christine.
Yes Chris does it better…
You haven’t seen Christine.
Judge Says:-
A song written, but never previously recorded, when I was going out with a lady called Chris. My parents named me ‘Christopher John Judge Smith’, and before this relationship, about half my friends still used my first ‘given’ name, and called me ‘Chris’. I had never liked the name (for myself), and since, in the mid ’70s, people had spontaneously taken to calling me ‘Judge’ instead, I was gradually trying to drop it.
Among the many nice things about this relationship was the fact that two ‘Chris’s’ together were too much to deal with for most people.
The high point of this track for me is the fabulously eclectic guitar solo from John Ellis; visiting several different musical worlds within sixteen bars.
For non-UK listeners
To ‘keep shtum’ is Cockney slang (from Yiddish), meaning to keep quiet, or to say nothing.
Track 5: Not Drowning But Waving
She says she can’t sleep on her own.
She means that she can’t leave men alone.
So Des and Den and Nige and Bri
All spend her money and make her cry.
Her lovers come and go too fast,
Each more unsuitable than the last.
Her friends think she is all at sea.
They speak of rescue and tragedy.
Don’t they understand
She don’t need saving.
She’s not far from land
Not drowning but waving.
George couldn’t cope with being adult
And so he joined a religious cult.
He knows the guru’s always right
And he only sleeps for four hours a night.
He sells the pamphlets, eats the rice,
A happy certainty in his eyes.
His mother’s hired a special man
And they’ll deprogram him if they can.
Hey, Ma…Though your boy’s jumped ship
He don’t need saving.
Just taking a dip,
Not drowning but waving…
They don’t need saving…
Not drowning but waving…
Scotch whiskey was the thing for Jim.
He said it thoroughly suited him.
He found it kept the world away
So he drank a pint-and-a-half each day.
We all grew worried for his health.
We said “You must not destroy yourself.”
But when he hears that kind of thing
He jumps on the table, raises his glass,
And then he starts to sing.
And he says…
Please don’t man the boat,
I don’t need saving.
I keep well afloat,
Not drowning but waving.
Don’t they understand,
I say we don’t need saving.
We’re not far from land,
We’re not drowning but waving.
Judge Says:-
This is a song about the way we all would like other people to behave in a way that we find normal and sensible. We are forever interfering in people’s lives ‘for their own good’, but usually we do harm instead. As a very wise man once wrote “Till you are aware of yourself, you have no right to interfere with anyone else or with the world.” (Anthony De Mello: ‘Awareness’ 1990). So leave us weirdos alone.
Originally, this track had no Bass Guitar, because I was worried about making it sound too much like a Reggae number. (Elderly white Englishmen are ill-advised to attempt to mek rockas inna ragga stylee.) However, once we had mixed the track it became clear that this diffidence had been an error on my part, and, at the last minute, my old friend Ian Fordham, who first played Bass on my stuff in 1975 with The Imperial Storm Band, came in to help me out.
For non-UK listeners
I do not know how well-known the writer Stevie Smith is outside the UK, but the phrase ‘not drowning but waving’ is a reversal of a line from a famous poem by this most English of poets: ‘I was much further out than you thought/ And not waving but drowning’.
Track 6: Seemed Such A Nice Boy
She had some good O levels
And she was seventeen
And he sold double-glazing
Always looked neat and clean.
Each night he’d come around to take her out
And in his mother’s spare-room showed her
Just what life was all about.
No one was too surprised
To learn a child was on its way.
They chose a ring together
Named an early wedding-day.
The church was full when there arrived the telegram that read
‘I’ve gone abroad. Stop. The wedding’s off. Stop’
That’s when her mother said…
Seemed such a nice boy
Seemed like a real nice kind of boy
Seemed such a nice boy at the time
Seemed such a nice boy
Seemed like a real nice kind of boy
Seemed such a nice boy at the time
George made a pile in textiles
His hair was silver-grey
Collected Meissen china
And was discretely gay.
He met a young man who’d been sleeping rough
Said he didn’t want his money
Said his friendship was enough.
The boy moved in and made
The great big house a happy home.
George went to work each morning
Left the lad there on his own.
Came back one night to find the front door open
And all the lights turned on
And the boy, twelve hundred pounds
And all his precious porcelain gone (and he said…)
Seemed such a nice boy
Seemed like a real nice kind of boy
Seemed such a nice boy at the time
Seemed such a nice boy
Seemed like a real nice kind of boy
Seemed such a nice boy at the time
Oh the heartache when we realise
Charming people have told charming lies.
We’re sadder now but does that make us wise?
He spoke to us on TV
In words we’d understand.
Made other politicians
Look cheap and underhand.
He looked so young and yet so unafraid.
The country voted in a landslide
Now we’d see some changes made.
We didn’t understand his reasons
For the foreign war
And when the kids protested
He brought in martial law.
Though six black years have passed we still ask why
And from behind the wire and searchlights
Comes the terrible reply…
Seemed such a nice boy
Seemed like a real nice kind of boy
Seemed such a nice boy at the time
Seemed such a nice boy
Seemed like a real nice kind of boy
Seemed such a nice boy at the time
Judge Says:-
There’s not too much more I can tell you about this song, except to say that it was written before the Prime Minister decided that it might be a nice idea to invade Iraq.
For non-UK listeners
‘O levels’ were, or still are for all I know (I have no children), the basic level of the UK General Certificate of Education.
Sadly, telegrams seem now to have fallen out of use, in this country at any rate, but one endearing oddity of the system was that the ‘message format’ did not support punctuation, so that any stops or commas had to be spelt out.
Track 7: Advance The Spark
Advance the spark
Put pedal to the metal
The gale blows, but let’s hoist all the sails.
Advance the spark
Tie down the governor
This rocket-sled has left the rails.
Advance the spark
Burn rubber on the speedway
The aircraft shakes, full-throttle in the shallow dive.
Advance the spark
Tie down the governor
And no one’s coming out alive.
I should have known, once I was moving
I should have known I’d get the taste
I should have known I’d soon be living
For the wind in my face.
I should have known I’d fall in love
I should have known I’d do it fast
I should have known there’d be a problem
You’re built for speed, I’m built to last.
Advance the spark
But I can’t hold her, Captain
Warp 9.5, the core is going to blow.
Advance the spark
Tie down the governor
Let’s see how fast this thing will go.
Advance the spark
The Cresta run is waiting
And Houston’s Go for main stage engine start.
Advance the spark
And throw the stopwatch away
There’s nothing faster than the heart.
I should have known, once I was moving
I should have known I’d get the taste
I should have known I’d soon be living
For that look on your face.
I should have known I’d fall in love
I should have known I’d do it fast
I should have known there’d be a problem
You’re built for speed, I’m built to last.
Advance the spark
Your spark comes back to meet me
The petrol washes all around the floor.
Advance the spark
The kiss, the conflagration
And nothing matters any more.
Judge Says:-
A song about speed and sex (that’s ‘speed’ as in velocity, by the way, not amphetamine) that was inspired, in part, by the bizarre, and distinctly rude, movie ‘Crash’. The lyrics feature a couple of rather archaic expressions which younger people might not have come across before: ‘Advance the spark’ dates from a time when petrol engines, particularly on motorbikes, had a control for adjusting the timing of the ignition. The rider could ‘advance’ or ‘retard’ the spark to get the maximum power out of the engine.
‘Tie down the governor’ is even more ancient, dating back to the age of steam. Steam engines were fitted with a safety-valve in the form of a revolving pair of weights driven by the engine. The spinning weights would be thrown outwards by centrifugal force, and at a certain speed would start progressively opening a valve to release the steam, thus keeping the pressure at a safe maximum. This device was called ‘the governor’, and it acted like a ‘cruise-control’. However, if the operator wanted to get extra speed or power from the machine at the expense of safety, he could literally tie ‘the governor’ down, so that it wouldn’t open, however high the pressure rose.
The first verse has a reference to the 1950s, American experiments with rocket-powered sleds running on rails. At the time, they were the fastest vehicles on earth.
For non-UK listeners
The third verse is full of references to ‘Star Trek’ (how sad is that?), but I mention this because I understand that the ‘Star Trek’ mythos is by no means universally known outside the English speaking world.
The Cresta run, in verse four, is a toboggan (a type of bobsleigh) course in St Moritz, Switzerland, well-known in Britain as a rite of passage for a certain type of wealthy, privileged young Englishmen. They slide down it at high speed, and bash their silly heads in with pleasing regularity.
Track 8: Like A Rock
I can’t believe that I could have been so foolish
So very wrong about important things
When somebody upstairs sent me an Angel
All I could do was pull the feathers from her wings.
I can’t believe that I might have been unfaithful
I need someone else the way I need a comb.
Why should I want a swig of Coca-Cola
When I’ve got Bollinger champagne on ice at home?
And so I try to love you like a rock
And so I try to love you like a stone
‘Cause rocks and stones don’t take positions
And don’t impose conditions of their own.
All I can do is love you like a rock
Or something made of glass and stainless-steel
Something transparent and unending
That’s not always depending
On what you do, or how I feel.
I can’t explain why we should be still together
The omens weren’t too good, you must agree.
You’re not my type, you’re just a bit too clever,
And heaven only knows what you can see in me.
I don’t exude an attractive air of mystery
Don’t have the beauty and the power that go with youth.
The days when those were mine are ancient history,
And I never was that beautiful to tell the truth.
But I can always love you like a rock
But I can always love you like a stone
‘Cause rocks and stones don’t take positions
And don’t impose conditions of their own.
All I can do is love you like a rock
Or something made of glass and stainless-steel
Something transparent and unending
That’s not always depending
On what you do, or how I feel.
Judge Says:-
I don’t write many love songs, but I sing this Tango for my girlfriend, Fiona, who once told me, after a row, that I had pulled the feathers from her wings. (They soon grew back.) Michael has a real understanding of Tango, and has made something quite wonderful out of my simple song. He plays an old, café-style Accordion on this track.
Track 9: Tell Me You Love Me
And though
We know
Exactly what we want to say.
The words
When they emerge
Don’t quite come out that way.
The language circuit doesn’t work too good,
No wonder we all think that we’re misunderstood.
So tell me you love me
But tell me again in French,
Now in a Welsh accent.
Say it in Maggie Smith’s voice
Then say it like Judi Dench,
Tell me you love me.
And then
Just when
Our message should have hit the mark,
I fear
It’s all too clear
We’ve left them in the dark
The thing that’s said is not the thing that’s heard,
That’s the trouble with the spoken word.
So tell me you love me
But tell me again in Dutch,
Shout it in Swedish,
Whisper it in Norwegian,
I like that one very much,
Tell me you love me.
Plug in your Modem,
Select your transmit mode,
Give us a handshake.
Tell me in Fortran, tell me in Basic,
Tell me in Binary Code,
Tell me you love me.
And on
The words have gone
All meaning long since lost.
Yes Squire,
We’ve got our wires
Spectacularly crossed.
It read ‘Send reinforcements, we’re going to advance’.
You said ‘Send three-and-fourpence, we’re going to a dance’.
So tell me you love me
But tell me again in Dutch,
Shout it in Swedish,
Whisper it in Norwegian,
I like that one very much,
Tell me you love me.
Plug in your Modem,
Select your transmit mode,
Give us a handshake.
Tell me in Fortran, tell me in Basic,
Tell me in Binary Code,
Tell me you love me.
Judge Says:-
A song about communication, its joys and its extreme difficulty. This is the second rather Eastern European flavoured song from ‘Dome Of Discovery’ which gets another outing on this album, so that Michael can turn his wild accordion loose on it.
A few references may be worth elucidating: Demotiki is modern spoken Greek, while Katharevousa is the literary form of the language. Xhosa is a South African language which is famous for the clicking sounds it uses. Heliograph was a (mainly military) method of signalling using flashes of sunlight from mirrors. ‘Flagging’ a signal refers to the system of naval signalling which uses (guess what) flags.
For non-UK listeners
Maggie Smith and Judi Dench are famous, and rather wonderful, British actresses, both noted for having very distinctive voices. In the last verse, ‘three-and-fourpence’ is a sum (three shillings and four pennies) in British ‘old money’, as used before decimalization in 1971. (This is a very old joke, by the way.)
Track 10: We’ll Always Have Paris
Are you packed? Have you got everything?
I don’t want to find little bits of you
Hidden all around the place.
No little bottle in the bathroom with the Active Lipizomes
And finding one of your ratty sports-bra’s
Under the sofa in six months time
Would be too much for me to deal with.
Don’t go. I know, I know we’ve been all through this
But when push comes to shove it’s bloody hard letting go of you.
This isn’t light and controlled, like we said it would be,
I’m holding on to you so tight that when the taxi comes
We’re gonna have to cut my hands off at the wrist.
Who knows, you husband may have fallen under a bus…
Ok, I’m sorry. I’m sure he must be a good chap.
But it seems to me that living your life
Entirely for other people
Is as bad and wrong as living your life
Entirely for yourself…
Yes, you’re right, no letters
No cards, no phone calls either
This thing must end here…
But suppose he runs off with his blonde twenty-two-year-old secretary
You know what to do, just jump on the plane and come back to me.
Bring the kids, bring that cats, bring the whole damn shooting-match
Your dear old, silver-haired, Lithuanian granny as well.
You’ll know where I’ll be.
What’s he say in the film?
‘We’ll always have Paris’.
Don’t cry. You never cry, you told me.
Now is that the same one where she says
‘Don’t reach for the moon, we have the stars’?
You’re right, that was Bette Davis…
Oh Christ, the taxi’s here…
Judge Says:-
This is a significant song for me. I wrote it just before starting work on ‘Curly’s Airships’ to test a new writing technique which I wanted to use on the big piece. Basically, this is a straightforward song, with a repeating sequence of chords, but each verse has a different tune. I wrote the lyrics first, without using any rhymes, and the extended melody was written to fit the words. I’m sure this is not an original technique, but it was new for me. I think it worked very well on ‘Curly’s Airships’, and it makes it a lot easier for me to tell stories with words and music. That is the art of ‘songstory’, and ‘songstory’ is what I do best of all.
The words ‘We’ll always have Paris’, are said by Humphrey Bogart in ‘Casablanca’ (1942), while the Bette Davis line, ‘Don’t reach for the moon, we have the stars’, comes from the movie ‘Now Voyager’ (also 1942, a great year for weepies). Or rather it doesn’t. The correct quote is apparently, ‘Don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars’, but I don’t think I’ll be losing any sleep over it.
For non-UK listeners
On British TV, ‘Active Lipizomes’ were a special ingredient in one of those commercials for cosmetics that feature scientists in white coats.
Track 11: It’s The Silence That Kills You
We were Service, d’you see?
Follow orders; don’t make waves
Keep your eyes on your duty
We survived the War
And now we’re hopelessly, helplessly, hideously brave.
Anything else would be letting the side down
Anything else was never discussed
Anything else was the unspeakable thing
The final taboo…
It’s the silence that kills you
Don’t break the silence.
It’s the silence that kills you
Don’t break the silence.
Don’t break the silence.
We were Service, don’t y’know?
Stick together; don’t tell tails.
But we were haunted by heroes.
Why are we still here?
And so we’re fearlessly, foolishly, effortlessly bold.
Anything else would be letting the side down
Anything else was never discussed
Anything else was the unspeakable thing
The final taboo…
It’s the silence that kills you
Don’t break the silence.
It’s the silence that kills you
Don’t break the silence.
It’s the silence that kills you
Don’t break the silence.
Don’t break the silence.
Don’t break…
Judge Says:-
This song started life as a tiny part of ‘Curly’s Airships’. An airman, killed in the 1930, R101 airship crash, tries to explain the obsession with taking suicidal risks, while keeping a ‘stiff upper lip’, that afflicted the survivors of the Great War; a state of mind that made the R101 disaster almost inevitable. For this version I wrote an additional verse of lyrics.
I improvised the falsetto Oo-ee-oo’s once at a live gig, and my girlfriend insisted I keep them in thereafter.
For non-UK listeners
The first line to each verse, ‘We were Service’, is a very old-fashioned phrase. To be Service meant being in the Army, Navy or Air force, the Diplomatic Corps or the Colonial Service; (as opposed to being ‘in service’, which meant working as someone’s servant). What a bizarre language we have!
Track 12: But Is It Art?
Sampled drum loops like this are referred to as ‘beats’
And you can use them straight out of the box.
This fake stuff often sounds lifeless and dull,
But just occasionally it rocks
And originally, someone must have hit those drums
Maybe ten, maybe twenty years back,
Some anonymous, hard-working session player
In a cheap Los Angeles twenty-four track.
Perhaps the technology brings things together,
Or perhaps the technology splits them apart,
But I swear I can hear that drummer laughing. He says
‘It’s clever, but is it art?’
It’s clever, but is it art?
But the rest of the drumming on this record
Comes from a human pair of hands,
René Van Commenée, who recorded his tracks
In Utrecht, in the Netherlands.
And Michael keeps his organs and accordions and so forth
More than fifty miles away,
So he’s recorded all his stuff over there.
It’s how a lot of music’s done today.
I don’t have some post-modern structural agenda.
I’m not having a bit of conceptual fun,
It’s just that given the time, and given the budget
This is just how things came to be done. (But it made me think…)
So did this technology bring us together,
Or did this technology keep us apart?
The devil sat on my shoulder and whispered
‘It’s clever, but is it art?’
It’s clever, but is it art?
Only Fury’s here in the studio with me,
Two grumpy old men rocking-out.
But look! He’s still playing the bass, but now he’s got his guitar.
I mean… Jesus! What’s that all about?
All music’s done with smoke and mirrors,
It’s truths always come with a dash of deceit.
Mozart’s got more tricks than a barrel of monkeys
Even Bach and Beethoven cheat.
But do the smoke and mirrors bring the music together,
Or do the monkey tricks blow the music apart?
And the music critics in their powdered wigs said
‘It’s clever, but is it art?’
It’s clever, but is it art?
Is it effortless trash, or honest endeavour?
Is it one off the wrist, or one from the heart?
These are serious, pertinent questions,
But you just know some fool’s gonna start with
‘It’s clever, but is it art?’
My studio computer was built in Korea,
The OS comes from the USA
While my software is splendidly German
In a ‘Vorsprung durch Technic’ kind of way.
And whether we can bring the whole world together,
Or we finally manage to crack it apart,
In a thousand years, they’ll define us
By the fragments of what we call art,
The clever stuff that we call art.
Judge Says:-
The CD was more than half recorded when I woke in the middle of the night with some odd lyrics going through my head, and had to get-up to write them down. I had been thinking about the way the album was being recorded, with musicians recording their parts at different locations, and how the illusion of an ensemble was created, and the lyrics seem to be part of that train of thought.
Since this is the most recent composition, it’s my favourite track on the album. This is the first time I’ve ever worked with sampled break-beats, as I have the feeling that rapping, like singing Reggae, is something that’s probably best avoided by old, white geezers. It was fun though.
All the musicians get a chance to strut their funky stuff: René plays a Bendir, a sort of giant Tambourine with rattling strings from Morocco (as well as thumping an enormous Tam-tam gong at the end), Michael has a blistering Hammond Organ solo, and John (who has been known as ‘Fury’ for many years), gets to play his beloved electric Guitar for the only time on this album, and gives us a solo to remember.
The slogan ‘Vorsprung durch Technic’, made famous by a series of TV commercials, means ‘progress through technology’.
The ‘Voice of the Drummer’ in the first verse is that of Steven Defoe, from avant-garde music-terrorists, the Larry Mondello Band. Steve lives in America and sent me his contribution by post. He’s been a close friend for more than a decade, but we’ve only actually met twice. In our case, the technology does bring things together.
For non-UK listeners
‘One off the wrist’ is a very rude expression, and really has no place in a piece of quality family entertainment!
