Rabbits on the verge...

Music of the Day
David Binney – Balance
Jellyfish – Bellybutton
Local Rabbits – This Is It Here We Go
Echo and the Bunnymen - Avalanche

Disappointingly, no CDs have arrived yet re my latest flurry of e-bay activity...

Forgot to say yesterday that me old mucker, James Jamieson, called wondering if I might be interested in going along to the Queen’s Hall tonight to see Echo and the Bunnymen (hence my listening to yesterday of their last “best of” CD)...



My answer was in the affirmative and so we met up at the Pear Tree Pub around 8pm, after I’d dropped Anne off in at the West End of Princes St to meet up with her best chum, Lynn...

Jamie and I sat outside in the evening sun and each described to each other, various song ideas – I gave him the outline story on the four I wrote at the weekend, singing the melodies to him....

I seem to have adopted JJ’s writing methods, which is to find a melody for a chord sequence before working on lyrics..

Many years ago I used to write lyrics all the time and, whenever I wrote a new piece, I would refer to this stockpile in order to find suitable words...

These days, the method is to firstly formulate the chord sequences which seem to go best together and, from there, work out the structure of the song....

Then I record a basic guitar track and hum along various melodies to the song, recording these also.....

Once I am happy with the melody, I work out the rhythm the words ought to have...

Then I write the lyrics very, very quickly, often without any real idea of what the subject matter might turn out to be - I find lyrics will, more often than not, turn out worse, where I specifically set out to write about a particular subject...

Then I sing the just written lyrics along to the melody and, hey presto, I have a song....

Over the next few days of listening and singing, it will gradually dawn on me, what the song might be about and I will then make, sometimes subtle, sometimes wholesale, changes to the lyric...

I seldom write a straight ahead song – there will usually be some kind of twist, which makes it more interesting for me to sing and, I would hope, more interesting for the listener...

For example, my new song, “Starting to Worry”’s first four lines seem like a perfectly normal love song – and I was conscious of that when I looked at what I’d written at that point. From there the narrative takes on a whole new turn...

But you’ll need to listen closely to the song (once it’s released, or when I sing it live) to find out what that is...

Another new song, "Rabbits on the Verge", is not particularly about rabbits...

Anyway, back to Echo and the Bunnymen, we arrived at the hall around nine and Jamie went to the front of the stage while I chose a more sedate area of the audience from which to spectate....

A young (well younger than me anyway) bald headed chap approached me asking for confirmation he had my name correct, to which I said indeed he had. His name was Nick Franklin and he remembered me from our childhood in Loanhead....

He advised his mum still lived there and, rather bizarrely, that he was a huge fan of the Loanhead Gala Day, had a big book about it, and new that my sister, Pam, had been Gala Day Queen in 1975...

He seemed a very nice chap, very likeable, notwithstanding his love of a small town summer celebration of the academic progess of its Primary School pupils...

The Bunnymen were quite excellent and I knew every single song they played (in the early 80’s, I used to buy their albums upon release)...

After three encores, including a great version of the Velvet Underground’s “Waiting For The Man” (the first cover I ever learned to play – though not as well as Echo and the Bunnymen), I miraculously met up with Jamie...

On our way out I picked up a CD from the floor which turned out to be an Echo and the Bunnymen album, "Avalanche"and so we listened to it in the car as we went to meet up with Anne and Lynn...



[If you bought and lost this CD at the gig, get in touch with me telling me where I would have picked it up from, and I'll get it back to you - can't say fairer than that...]

We had a quick drink and then I took everyone home, Jamie and I agreeing to go to Out of the Bedroom tomorrow night...

Hmm, when I started this post I thought it’d be fairly short – but at least you now have an insight into how a CBQ song makes its way into the world...

Highlight of the Day : Rediscovering Echo and the Bunnymen