Category: Music

TL:DR – Notes on writing my latest song, which you can stream or download here.

I had a little chord progression that got me thinking…nothing complicated just some interesting inversions on BM7, FM7 Gm7 and C7 that came up on a social media site. Sounded nice, but I ditched the BM7 and the C7 and just oscillated between the other two to sing an ad lib lyric…and then to break away into a chorus based on Dm7 Am, and Gm7.

Thing is, I thought I came up with something neat lyrically, a kind of riposte to The Beatles’ song She’s Leaving Home, whereby we find the protagonist returning to her childhood home after her parents have died, there always was the implication of a less than happy childhood for her, but what if it had been worse, what if it were a miserable childhood, one in which one or both parents were abusive in some way? That was my train of thought when I came up with this little lot…

Ticking Clocks

The key turns in the lock, she shoves the door wide open with her suitcase
It’s a shock, to find herself back here once again.

CHORUS
She locked her secret deep inside
Unanswered prayers her woe betide
Now silent screams, the sound that mocks
Those echoes drowned by ticking clocks

INSTRUMENTAL BREAK

No need to knock, she clutches letters from the floor
She’s taking stock. Of secrets she holds, no time to worry more

CHORUS

She winds the clocks That stopped the day she stepped away
From darning socks and all the hazards that entailed

Finding keys and picking locks. She didn’t need to hurry
There’s always time to worry

CHORUS to fade…

Of course, I couldn’t leave it there, especially seeing as I haven’t even started thinking about recording the actual song, so I thought I’d give ChatGPT a chance to review and revise my lyrics. I prompted the bot by telling it that it is a “world-renowned singer-songwriter with a string of grammy-award winning songs” and asking it to redraft my lyrics to make them award-winning too. This is what it came up with:

She turns the key and pushes open the door
With a suitcase in hand, she’s back once more.
It’s a surprise, to find herself in this place,
Memories flood in, as she sees her old space.

CHORUS:
She locked her emotions deep inside,
Unanswered prayers and broken ties.
Now, silent screams echo in her mind,
As she tries to leave the past behind.

No need to knock, she picks up letters from the ground,
Sifting through the words, that once brought her down.
She takes stock of all the secrets she holds,
No time to dwell, on the stories she’s told.

CHORUS

BRIDGE
She winds the clocks, that stopped the day she left
Leaving behind the mundanity, with no regret.
Finding keys and picking locks, she takes her time,
To leave behind the memories, that once were her crime.

CHORUS

OUTRO
With a new sense of freedom, she steps out the door,
No more looking back, as she’s ready to soar.
She’s finally free from the past and all its weight,
And can embrace a brighter future, with no more hate.

Of course, I won’t use the ChatGPT output as my lyric, but I might redraft my own once more before I record to see if I can make them more evocative…

TL:DR – How consumers are duped into upgrading, again and again.

We were quite content with vinyl. Indeed, aside from the occasional warped record and friends who didn’t hold them properly by the edges, we loved our US import 45s, our double gatefold sleeve live rock albums and our picture discs. We put up with the crackles and pops and built our bedroom collections. We lent our vinyl to friends, despite their not understanding about sleeve liner orientation and they lent us theirs. We recorded them on to cassette when we couldn’t the latest and greatest and we made mixtapes, the playlisting of a Generation X. They even tried to stop us by telling us that “Home taping is killing music”…we replied vehemently that “Home taping is skill in music”!

It was all going so well, but they wanted more of our hard-earned cash. More than that, they wanted us to pay again for what we already had and so was born the CD. This little disc apparently couldn’t be scratched, it was pure digital sound, there was no warping…and for many no warmth. Although at the time we were yet to recognise this limitation. So, we bought the new-fangled CD players and collected, at much greater expense, all the CDs of the albums we already had on vinyl, filling already full shelves with yet more bejewelled plastic discs.

This would be it. The ultimate Hi-Fi. The last word in sound quality. Of course, it wasn’t. There were more jobs to be done and it was Jobs who did us! If we could be re-sold the digital version then we could almost certainly be resold a virtual version too and perhaps even just access rather than possession of that digital copy in the form of streaming. For the companies yet another financial bonanza, despite Napster and Kazaa and Bit Torrents, and so we thought we wouldn’t get fooled again, but we most certainly were.

But, where is the love, where is the warmth? The ease of endless streams of over-saturated, over-compressed sound files was, like a much-loved mixtape from the 1970s beginning to wear thin. We hankered after the warmth of the old analog world. We may have grown into digital men and women, but at heart we were always analog kids…and so we went hunting as we once did back in digital pre-history, seeking out black discs of PVC, polyvinyl chloride, VINYL! We wouldn’t be islands in their streaming river, we’d be 20th century boys and girls and proud of it.

It’s only rock and roll, but I like it, again and again, and again, deeper and down…

Part Two: Let there be light! How we were resold the warmth of the incandescent bulb by way of the fluorescent tube, the halogen bulb, the compact fluorescent tube, the LED lamp, and back to the squirrel-cage!

Earlier this year, our choir got invited to sing (again) with The London Community Gospel Choir, you know, the choir led by the Reverend Bazil Meade that are on the original Tender by Blur and have also worked with Justin Timberlake, Madonna, Gorillaz, and Kylie Minogue. Amazing, yes? What an opportunity. Big crowd too as we would see.

Anyway, there was a powercut during soundcheck, so we didn’t get as much of a chance to run through our supporting set before the show as we’d hoped. No matter. It would be fun, we’d have to wing it, and the crowd were there for the LCGC not us. We also had to run through the two songs we’d be singing with the choir itself during their set – a gospel classic and a Meade original.

The members of the choir, all very friendly, pulled us into their fold, told us to huddle among the numerous stage mics, to not be shy, to sing out loud, sing out proud, sing out strong. One of the soloists, a guy who towered over me by at least a foot and a half, nudge me forward during the soundcheck, basically pushed the mic into my face, “This is you, go for it!” So, I did…like I do…

Well, all rolled off stage, and headed to the “green room” as it was, realised it was all too hot and sweaty in there and wended our way on to the lawned area behind the venue. It was not quite the 2022 heatwave at this point, but that was fast approaching. It was well above 30 degrees on stage when we ran our support set…which went down well. We do an ironic mashup of Blur’s Tender with the Oasis song Champagne Supernova, arranged by our pianist, the inimitable Tim Lihoreau. Meade but on a good show of being impressed, even if it was his song and the Blue-Oasis tension may well have passed him by at the time anyway.

So far, so good. Always enjoy applause and plaudits even if there was one negative comment about the red flower in my black felt hat for the Harry Styles number we did.

Okay, so proper showtime…we’re in the audience at this point, enjoying the LCGC show proper. We’ll get a nod to head backstage towards the end to join them for Oh, Happy Day and then the Meade song as finale. Fun AND games.

We shuffle on, trying to look impressive, but paling into insignificance among the mighty LCGC. I take my place, but Mr Tall Guy isn’t giving any leeway on that mic, it’s up to his head height and I’m down below. Ah, well. It’s his show, just meant I had to sing louder, which I did. I’m not in a choir called bigMouth for nothing, after all.

A little bit of pseudo-Americana about a hobo with delusions of grandeur hopping from town to town, state to state, narrowly avoiding being grabbed by the railroad bulls. It’s the Great Depression of the 1930s. He panders to his addictions and his dependencies, gambling, drinking, partaking of them unholy angels, until he comes to the end of the line.

You can listen to the piano-led piece on SoundCloud or BandCamp as usual, it’s the 8th addition to my Lifelines mini-album there.

The artwork is somewhat incongrous, it’s a modern, but old-style windpump at Wicken Fen. It’s not dissimilar to the windpumps you might have seen in Western movies set in New Mexico, Texas, and Kansas, the heartlands of the dustbowl. It’s the kind that would spin and creak as the stranger finally leaves town. The photo treatment is also incongruous, a faked daguerrotype that was popular 100 years before the dustbowl of the 1930s.

Originally, I’d thought of writing a song about the old hobos on the railroads and then bringing it up to date with reference to the derailed railways now being tourist hiking trails. I came up with the basicss with no tune to hand and then once again worked with @LillBirdToldMe to hone the lyrics to something apparently meaningful and stronger than what I started with by a country mile. I then pieced together a piano arrangement over which I could lay my vocal.

Just for the record, I’ve travelled in 23 of the 50 US states, worked in West Virginia, and although I’ve never hopped a freight train, I’ve driven along dusty blue highways, I know they’re roads and not railroads. It’s poetic licence…or should that be license?

Dustbowl

Kicking up the railroad dirt, I ride these metal wheels
There’s plenty of times those dozy bulls come snapping at my heels
They’ve got to let it go when I hop that old freight train
Never going to mess with me in this old town again

Some unholy angel going to fix me up alright
Heading for the county line making good time tonight
I’m riding high in the lowdown, you know I’m on a roll?
’cause kicking back is easy on the blue highways of the dustbowl

Nickel and dime the journeys you can ride from stay to stay
Cross that bridge when it gets here, just hopping on that plate
The rolling stock’s for rolling as the years turn by and by
No tears are shed for the lonely who find no place to die

Nickel and dime the journeys you can ride from state to state
Cross that bridge when it gets here, just hopping off that plate
The rolling stock’s for rolling as the years turn by and by
No tears are shared for the lonely who find a  place to die

The times they ain’t for changing, my fortune’s on the wind
Can’t make no money doing nothing, for that’d be a sin
I’m rattled by the railroad track from dusk to break of day
I’ve no Bible, just a bottle to ease my soul away

Riding high in the lowdown, know I’m on a roll!
’cause kicking back is easy on the blue highways
out of the dustbowl, of the dustbowl

Nickel and dime the journeys you can ride from stay to stay
Cross that bridge when it gets here, just hopping off that plate
The rolling stock’s for rolling as the years turn by and by
No tears are shared for the lonely. The final place to die

Nickel and dime the journeys you can ride from stay to stay
Cross that bridge when it gets here, just hopping on that plate
The rolling stock’s for rolling as the years turn by and by
No tears are shed for the lonely who find no place to die

Nickel and dime the journeys you can ride from stay to stay
Cross that bridge when it gets here, just hopping off that plate
The rolling stock’s for rolling as the years turn by and by
No tears are shared for the lonely who find a place to die

You may have noticed I wrote and recorded yet another song – it was originally entitled Footprints in the Sand. It was angst-ridden and full of random allusions and imagery, as is my wont. I added the word “No” to the title having used a photo of  beach on which there were no footprints and I thought that would make it even more angst ridden, suggesting that the song’s protagonists were hankering after the beach but unable to be there for whatever reason.

As I mentioned earlier, the song started off in my usual way, simple chord progression over which I ad libbed a few words…I tightened the words up after I laid down a quick demo so I wouldn’t forget the tune I’d come up with. It started out as being about coping with grief following the death of a loved one. But, it somehow morphed into thinking about the kind of grief that migrants suffer in leaving their homeland in search of a better, safer life. Their attempts to reach foreign shores and to land on beaches from flimsy boats. There is also a kind of allusion to regrets migrants might feel in reaching that foreign shore.

Anyway, let me spell out what I think I thought I meant in the song, I’m reverse engineering it really, as many of the words arose spontaneously and from my subconscious.

The days are colder and the nights drawn in
No barricades of comfort, now the aching will begin

After the clocks go back in October, my mother would often remark on how quickly it seemed “the nights are drawing in”. I made the phrase a finite point, the nights are “drawn in”, in perpetuity, you might say, it’s always going to be dark from now on. The warmth of the summer, a kind of psychological barricade definitely long gone and the pain of the cold, dark days now starting.

I'm running down an unlit corridor
The pain can chase me, but I head out through an open door

This was a nightmare image of the fear of death, I think, and the possibility of somehow getting away from that pain and emerging into the light.

And you won't find a clearer path today
If you turn your back on the future, try to run away

Basically, don’t dwell on the past, try to look to the future, but also live in the present, which brings us to the next couplet

And, there are times when you can plan your day
But the tide will turn and wash your wishes away

Moving through grief it seems very hard to think of getting on with normal stuff, but you have to, but it’s worth remembering that your romantic dreams written with sticks and stones on the memory of a beach are always washed away by the rising tide.

But I can see the warning signs ahead
They don't deter me, they draw me on instead

This sounds like being well aware of the psychological damage that might occur in the wake of trauma but being pulled along by it instead of finding a safe haven.

And I should say that we can choose a tougher path
The path of least resistance was never going to last

I think this line in the pre-chorus is where the notion of it being about my grief morphed into something broader about migrants and people escaping. Always easier to stick to the well-worn track, but even they don’t offer an escape a tougher route has to be forged in some circumstances.

Now, we’re at the chorus:

Walk with me, I'll take you by the hand
Can't promise anything like a promised land
But, I’ll give you love, though nothing's planned
Walk with me, leave just our footprints in the sand

Offering a helping hand, partnership, promising something but not necessarily the dream, maybe just a chance to walk in the sand, which would be a bit of a dream at the moment, to be honest.

The summer comes around and the days are long
I thought I'd moved on but something feels so wrong

What if time isn’t a healer, what if there’s still pain long after the dark winter days when the summer clicks into view again? That was me worrying for my future self, I think.

And there you're kneeling with your head in your hands
Still can't believe we found ourselves in this foreign land

An allusion to the despair felt by those hoping for a better life reaching that new world, but struggling when the reality is not what they thought they had promised themselves.

Like I said, angst-ridden and grim. But, else would you expect, I’ve written and recorded dozens of songs over the last few years and they’re almost always a bit depressing lyrically even if the tunes sometimes get a bit funky. Any questions? No? Good. I’ll let you have a listen to the song (also on Bandcamp) and you can comment at me on Twitter.

Incidentally, it struck me after recording that at least two of those lyrics are half-borrowed from a couple of other songs. “I can feel the warning signs” is in Half the World Away by Oasis, while “eyes cast down on the path of least resistance” is in A Farewell to Kings by Rush. You can check out this page for a very incomplete list of what I’d call my musical influences.

No Footprints in the sand

The days are colder and the nights drawn in
No barricades of comfort, now the aching will begin
I’m running down an unlit corridor
Pain can chase me, but I head out through an open door

And you won’t find a clearer path today
If you turn your back on the future, try to run away
And, there are times when you can plan your day
But the tide will turn and wash your wishes away

But I can see the warning signs ahead
They don’t deter me, they draw me on instead
And I should say that we can choose a tougher path
The path of least resistance was never going to last

Walk with me, I’ll take you by the hand
Can’t promise anything like a promised land
But, I’ll give you love, though nothing’s planned
Walk with me, leave just our footprints in the sand

The summer comes around and the days are long
I thought I’d moved on but something feels so wrong
And there you’re kneeling with your head in your hands
Still can’t believe we found ourselves in this foreign land

Though I could see the warning signs ahead
They didn’t stir me to turn away instead
And though I said that we should choose a tougher path
The path of least resistance was never at our backs

As usual, words, music, and production by David Bradley
Vocals, guitars, bass, keyboard, percussion mixing dB/

Available on Soundcloud to stream and on Bandcamp to stream or download

Started off in the usual way, simple chord progression over which I ad libbed a few words…the words tightened up and something that was originally perhaps about getting through grief but maybe not getting through it came out the other side as an allusion to migrant regrets…I think.

Listen on BandCamp and SoundCloud

Having put together a song for Mrs Sciencebase that was about some of our shared experiences and made some kind of lyrical sense – The people we can be – I thought I’d go back to my usual unintelligible, stream-of-consciousness approach to lyric writing for my next song.

Basically, start a tune in demo form, ad lib some lyrics, burble a few of them incomprehensibly, write them down as best I can and then edit into a useable form for a proper recording. The only difference with this one is that I had a go at recording it using a Wikiloops instrumental backing track called Easy Come, Easy Go and the chorus morphed because of that to use that phrase rather than my allusion to repairing my head. In the end, I didn’t use the Wikiloops track and started from scratch with electric rather than acoustic guitar and built percussion and bass and then acoustic on top of my demo.

The title’s a bit of a cliche, but a little bit more understandable than the original and provides a stronger hook than what I’d thought of originally.

It’s on BandCamp and SoundCloud as usual.

Easy come, easy go

There’s a tension in the air
Always someone being so unkind
Never found the right time to make that repair
To my confounded state of mind

Didn’t see you out and about
You couldn’t bear to breathe the air
You’re clued up there is no doubt
But you missed your cue ’cause you just don’t care

And, I feel
That something is missing
The lonely aren’t kissing anyone
Just before the dawn, I will know
If it’s easy come, then it’s easy go

Did I mention it today?
They’re always looking for a fight?
Never found the peaceful way
To resolve the wrong from the right

And I feelThat someone is blessing
those second guessing everyone
Before the sunrise I will know
If it’s easy come, then it’s easy go

But, I feel
That we’re all missing
That we’re lonely and we’re messing with our heads
To think we really ought to know
That if it’s easy come, then it’s easy go

NB It was originally to be tacked on to my After the Lockdown album, but I’ve changed my mind about the three songs I’ve written since my mother’s death and they’re now part of a newly released Lifelines EP.

As usual, words and music by yours truly. Vocals, acoustic, electric, and bass guitars, percussion, production, mixing, and artwork too.