“…If everything could ever be this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again
The only thing I’ll ever ask of you
You’ve got to promise not to stop when I say when…”

© David E. Grohl, 1997 from the album “The Colour And The Shape”

Well… its been a long, long time. I havent updated this blog since like, forever. Thats not to say that there haven’t been things happening. There absolutely have been, I can promise you that, LOLZ.

Thank you for coming back and returning to this long, long old journey with me. I’m sorry I’ve kept you waiting for so long.

…but there has been an awful lot of Real Life Getting In The Way, which I guess is something that happens a lot to creatives, whether they be professionals or not. Whilst I have been pushing on with the two KOAS EP’s (and boy has that progress been millimetric at times), I have not been writing for a while. Most of the creative efforts have been around slowly but surely inching the two KOAS EP’s closer and closer to the finish line.

And they are indeed, almost there.

Well, to be specific, one of them is. Monochrome is at a very advanced stage and is due to be finished within the next 4 weeks. Mondegreen, on the other hand has faced some challenges along the way and as a result is going to slip until probably the autumn of this year when I will do my best to finish it.

More of Monochrome later on.

Mondegreen, on the other hand…. While I was quite content with the tracks as they’d been built, no matter how much I tried to bash Hate into shape and to bring the lyrics into it which I had written, they just wouldnt fit. No matter what. That was kinda disappointing because in and of themselves, as components, they were good. They just wouldnt play nicely together and it quickly became obvious that it had to be at least temporarily parked while I got on with the rest of the project.

So, something told me that I had to put that song to one side and come back to it some other time. It could be that the music and the lyrics will be parted out and end up coming back to life in other compositions that are wildly different from what I conceived for them, its too early to tell.

In its place came Love Me Or Leave Me Alone, which has had a sniff at Real Life already, thanks to my long time collaborator David Barnes, (or David Bjorn as he is now known). It is pretty much in the form that I envisaged that it would be, with the exception of the Nutini-style vocals which I heard in my minds ear when I first wrote the words.

In terms of it being a good enough track to be included on the Mondegreen EP and for it to be thematically correct to be on it, it definitely ticks those boxes. There are going to be three covers that are on that EP (I cant remember if I said what they would be or not, so just in case I didnt, I’m going to be open about it now). They are three tracks that have had a profound effect on me over the years and ones that I had been confident (at some point) that I would have been able to do some sort of justice to. They were originally meant to be just piano and voice, but I would be kidding myself if I were to stand there with my chest puffed out thinking that I had strong enough piano chops or indeed a strong enough voice to be able to really pull these tracks off in their simplest form.

So, I had to think somewhat laterally and I think the best way of putting it is that I should capitalise on the bits that I can really do properly and then leverage the other things at my disposal to make these versions all that they could be.

….Which is a euphemism for tuning software and EZKeys, LOLZ.

I have no shame in admitting it. Those who really know me know that I have no problem in leaning on technology. I dont lean on technology like a drunk does to a lamp-post, but I do try and make as much of it as I need to in order to achieve my objective (ahem).

These songs are important to me and its important that I do them justice.

Anyway, stop beating around the bush, Steve I hear you say. What are the three songs that are being covered?

Well, the first one is Faith Healer by The Big Dish, from the album Creeping Up On Jesus. I first heard this song in Cyprus in 1987 when it was released and it truly changed my life. I love Steven Lindsay’s work and as a vocalist and as a writer, he has been a huge huge influence on me as his work is honest, methodical and sincere. I did contemplate as to whether it should have been Miss America or Across The Provinces from the later Satellites album instead, but no, Faith Healer was a seminal track for me.

The second one is A Wing & A Prayer by The Mission from the album Children, produced by John Paul Jones. I’ve long been a huge fan of Wayne Hussey as a guitar player and as a writer for decades and I strongly believe that in both capacities he is sadly under-recognised. I cant explain why, but while A Wing & A Prayer is mainly wordplay, there is something about it that I always thought would make a good piano and vocal track, to let the lyrics and the vocal performance really, really shine. Its the one that secretly I hope that someone eventually does on The Voice, LOLZ. Am I the one to be able to do that? Well, I gave it my best shot.

The third one and arguably the most ambitious of all, is Advice For The Young At Heart by Tears For Fears, the closing track of side 1 of the Seeds Of Love album. Roland Orzabal is one of the writers that I have respected very deeply and been heavily inspired by for many, many years now and this track written by him and Nicky Holland is…. well…. musically, its not that tricky, but vocally it is particularly challenging considering Curt Smith spent most of the pre-chorus deep in his falsetto range.

And, despite Roland’s undisputed vocal virtuosity, listening to the demos that he cut at the Townhouse back in 1988/89, it didnt suit him. The final cut had to be done by Curt. It is really challenging to try and do it properly and I’ve had to make some comprimises in how I approached it, so while I have done my best to honour the song, it is a little different to what you might expect.

The song itself, and its lyrical content, has meant so much to me for so many years, especially the lines

“… Love is a promise, love is a souvenir
Once given, never forgotten
Never let it disappear
This could be our last chance
When we gonna make it work?…”

I find it poignant, I find it relevant to what I think and to my “lived experience” as the kids call it these days, to how I feel and believe and I wanted to have a go at it.

So, the three covers tracks for Mondegreen are thus. Hence the concept of a Mondegreen being something you think you’ve heard before, but not in the way you think you have. I think I’ve met that particular threshold, LOLZ.

… but that is going to take some time to finish yet. There is still quite a bit more polishing to do on that EP and I dont really have the time available at the moment to do so.

I am due to retire from the IT industry in less than two months time and also am going to be moving house, so my studio space is going to be very very different to what it has been for the last decade and a half since I started writing. So, I have to concentrate on Monochrome at the moment and push the target completion date out to the autumn at least so that I can at least start that mixing and mastering stage for Mondegreen with a clean slate. That is likely to happen on new equipment as well and will definitely be done in a different recording and mixing space in Warwick instead of in Rugby where I have been since 2017.

Monochrome, as I say, is in quite an advanced state and I am spending a good amount of time during the evenings whenever possible polishing and mixing and eq’ing and compressing and balancing… I’m at the stage now where I’ve completed the stem mixes and the final mixes arent that far off. I’m due to move, as I say, in early August and I am setting a target of the middle of July for Monochrome to be completed and released. So, by that point it has to be as good as I can get it.

In the meantime… I have also become an organic gardener, growing my own produce (which is another equally addictive creative past-time that I never expected to pick up) and I have also become involved with a motion picture/musical project through the US family which I have been doing some recent character/voice acting readings… which may or may not go somewhere.

I hope to have proven myself worthy of a place on this particular project, but that is the decision of the Executive Producer and her team, so we’ll see what happens there; I am also, as I have noted before, coming to the tail end of my 42 year long IT industry career which I am hoping not to have to go back to at any point; we are not going to be under any kind of financial pressure to go back into the workplace, so I am hoping to spend the majority of my retirement as a writer and producer and maybe a voice artist, but time will tell.

In the meantime, my existing flat has to be de-cluttered, I have to work out what I’m taking and what is being junked, I have to hand over my professional responsibilities to my successor at work… there is an awful lot going on and I am at probably one of the busiest points in my life and am likely to remain in that heightened state until probably October.

And I’m going to be 60 in less than 2 months.

I know I’ve not said a lot for quite a while.

…but it doesnt mean I havent been doing anything. Absolutely not, I’ve been as busy as hell.

And hopefully, I will get to keep this blog up to date a lot more than what I have been doing.

I’m back….. Back For Good? I hope so……