Thank you for all your track suggestions, and really interesting they are too
This week we will mostly be posting 1 demo and 3 b-sides, one of which was only released on vinyl. Theme….Tube trains, Maps and the English Countryside
Cut and Cover
Written by Paul
This is another master from our demo sessions for Island while we were actually getting dropped.
I have already explained how miserable we were and pretty angry and you can hear this in the piano section in the instrumental. I was kinda improvising a half written piece and by the end of it was venting my frustrations with the whole affair and lost the plot and just started banging the keys as it was crescendo-ing to the end. Paul had suggested I do an Aladdin Sane type of solo so it was partly inspired by the Lad Insane
The song is about a drunken party on the circle line and looking out for whether that person you fancy got off at another stop. Paul is fascinated by the London underground you see, the maps (more of that later in fly in a sheet…) are the most easy to understand out of all the subway systems in the world, it was a pioneer in underground systems etc etc….if you're a train spotter this is really interesting stuff, anyway…
Parts of the Baseline in Madonna's 'Sorry' are remarkably similar to the Cut and Cover Baseline...
Fave lyric…Didn't anybody tell you that you oughtta keep your nose clean , it's a smelling machine
Fly in a Sheet of Winter
This is a b-side off the 7" version of the single 'I Want You'
Written by Paul at his folk's house on acoustic guitar. Inspired by the Parisian Metro Maps which light up with your route in colour when you press buttons for your departure and destination points. The Departure button would normally say 'You Are Here'
Paul says he was pleased with these lyrics as they evocatively describe a psychedelic journey round a town and its surrounding fields
His vision was of a town where around every corner you could find a map on which you could then press a button which would either light up the fields in brown or the pubs in green or the banks in blue for instance, so instead of just a map in the metro, your actual surroundings light up so you can see where to go.
Fave lyric…the maps are shining all around the town / good morning angel of the sky
Rip goes Love and Lust
Written by Rob
B-side off Granite Statue (Disc 2)
As was usual with Rob songs they were very cryptic and I have no idea what this is actually about….I do remember him mentioning something about seeing a girl on the tube passionately ripping up a newspaper. Paul did an impression of Chris Isaak on slide guitar for the solo. It was recorded in a studio in West Hampstead which now belongs to Edwyn Collins apparently, with the Producer who originally took a chance with us and let us record the Kent EP with him for free (points only) in his then studio in Kings Cross. Graeme Holdaway, great guy. Used to be in and produce for Curved Air which is where things link up nicely when we did a version of their song 'back street luv' for the Childline Charity Album
Fave lyric…God on fire
Kiss My Love
The A-side that never was
This song was a thorn in our side for a while
When we toured with Blur in 1994??? it was part of our set and the Blur boys kept on at us that this was the one that would make us.
So we tried to record it several times but never felt that we captured its live ballsy intensity.
The first recording was with Elastica Producer Phil Vinyl, but for some reason we changed the title of the song to Sugarous. I think we thought that the title 'Kiss my love' was too poppy and we were trying to be all underground and cool, to our detriment I now feel. Nothing wrong with Pop these days even the most undergroundest of bands have pop sensibilities, Anyway that version didn't make it onto any recording and we don't even have a copy of it ourselves, does anyone out there have a bootleg???
Then Mark Freegard (Drink Me Producer) recorded the version that went on the B-side of Drink the Elixir.
What's it about? A dream that never was, almost there, Rupert the Bear