Well It Feels Like Something to Me…

So after a clean but restless sleep the routine starts up again. Everyone is grateful for a hot shower and we head out as usual to find a café. Today we find a nice little place run by a clown, still, beggars can’t be choosers – at least the coffee is hot and they have some kind of bacon on their muffins.

Back into the studio, and Dave is running late, it affords us a nice leisurely start to our last day of this session. The mood is one of quiet optimism, creative types are generally (in my experience) the least confident about their efforts, but there is an all round good feeling about what they have done this weekend – we all know that it is a long way off being finished, but the groundwork has been done and everyone is pleased with the way things are going.

As soon as Dave arrives the band crack on with getting the bulk of Misty tidied up, with the pressure off now they relax a little knowing that they have the feel of the song just right. Throughout the day we re-visit the other songs, performing little tweaks, overdubs and changes here and there, making sure that the basics for all six songs recorded this week are as solid as they can be. Future sessions are already being planned in our minds, there are further guitar parts and new layers to be added and lyrics to be finalised and sung. Stuart will be back with Dave next weekend to put vocal tracks down, but we all envisage him returning to them at the end of the process to revise and re-record, it’s just the way that things work round here.

Mid afternoon we take a break and all head out onto the fire escape out the back and take some photos, looking back at the images later I am struck by how relaxed everybody looks. I load up the car and head off, I have a long drive ahead of me but I have that warm, fuzzy glow in my gut that tells me that we have done something good.

Once I am gone the band continue with the studio work, with Sam and Stuart staying until after midnight finishing things off, eventually though a line is drawn and it is left for Dave to start work on the mixing. As I said previously, there is still a lot of work to do on these tracks, but a damn good start has been made.

The next day we get rough mixes from Dave, all instrumentals so that Stuart can work on his lyrics/vocals without any distractions for when he goes back in next weekend. They are all sounding good, it’s the shape of things to come - and I like it.

Just Itching to Let Fly...

…And a pretty unpleasant night it was. As I shuffled through the murk for a 5.00am visit to the bogs I was greeted with a liberally vomit splattered bathroom, it sort of summed up the place in one puke stained act. Departure could not come too soon.

Depart we did, as soon as we were all awake – we had nothing to pack as none of us felt it the sort of place that you would want to leave your belongings hanging around. We soon enough found a café which offered us sustenance and the ever vital caffeine. All positively relieved to have seen out the night we soon turned our thoughts to the studio, what had already been done and what was planed for the day. Even after sleeping on it the band were visibly boosted by what Dave was pulling out of them, and how he was doing it. It was in this frame of mind that we re-assembled in White City and set to work.

The first things to be tackled were last nights run throughs of Silent Kisses, in the cold light of day they held up just as much as they had the night before. The basis for the drums and bass were there, if in need of a little tweaking. Each part was worked through meticulously, Dave has a great ear for both pitch and timing and whereas we might have considered something to be good enough he would keep the boys at it until it was much more than that. As this progressed the lure of Brazilian bacon proved too much to resist, so Stu, Stick and myself wandered up to Harlesden to stock up on supplies for the day. Realising where we were going Dave got all passionate about the Brazilian deli items that Sam had got so excited about yesterday, and the two of them had a verbal love in on the matter. Still, the rest of us are from the north, so we resist culture at every turn.

Getting back I throw myself into finding new digs for tonight, the horrors of Willesden shall not be revisited, the best I end up with is a Travelodge just off the North Circular Road, nothing if not glamorous. Still, we are all relieved to know that we’ll get a good night sleep and have a nice hot shower in the morning, to be fair we are all starting to stink a bit.

As the songs are rotated to keep them fresh we revisit Blink, and 97 Pound Weakling through the afternoon, all goes well until the spectre of While I Played Misty for You starts to loom over everyone. It is perhaps the oldest song to be tackled this weekend, and has been complete in arrangement for the best part of 18 months. It is because of this that the band seem to have had problems with it whenever they have played it recently, it had lost a lot of the fizz and bounce that went along with those first demos from the Gatehouse in Bolton. In short the band were close to losing faith in it. Before they began there was a lot of debate, which was finally and expertly concluded when Stick suggested that they just forget about how they had played it before, forget that they had even written it, just consider it a song by someone else and approach it as though they were doing a cover version in their own inimitable style. So, by the time they went back into the live room at 11-ish they were all back in the right frame of mind. I stood out on the balcony that overlooks the cemetery and watched a fox mooch around the graves, even from out there I could tell that the fizz was back.

Again, a couple of blasts through and then all back into the control room to listen back. It was obvious to all that they had finally managed to drag the song back form wherever it had wandered off to in their collective imaginations, it was fresh and exciting once again, more punchy than it had been for a while, in short a triumph.

The elusive cleanliness of the Travelodge beckoned, but despite driving past it three times on the North Circular the entrance eluded us. Eventually we got booked in and settled into the bar, the news channel was Czechoslovakian for some reason, but Stick was entranced. I turned in only to be kept awake for a good 45 minutes by the noisy sex people in the next room, still they knew that they were beat when they found themselves hammering on that wall at 4.00am to try and get Stu to stop snoring. I tell you, you couldn't make this stuff up.

Sucking Coffee Through the Froth...

After a semi-decent night in Shepherd’s Bush we all gather in the bar downstairs for breakfast, the idiosyncrasies of the toaster confuse us for a while but soon enough it’s strong coffee and hot toast all round. We debate the recent performance by U2 at Glastonbury and quickly come to the conclusion that whilst the rest of the band are still cutting it Bono has slowly transformed into a tractor repair man from the arse end of County Kerry – his rendition of Jerusalem being a specific when it came down to ‘most cringeworthy moments’. Still, that was them and we were us, so it was off out into the city again, we had a cab to flag and songs to record.

In typical London cabbie style, our driver had an ample selection of rock and roll tales to tell, the most recent encounter was of the manager of Metallica who he had just taken to Claridges to pick up the drummer. They were on with four nights at Donnington at a million quid per show. So what? We’d just spent ten minutes staring into a dodgy toaster and swilling cheap instant coffee –and all that after a night in a room full of backpackers who didn’t take lightly to our singer and his snoring. I know where I’d rather be.

On arrival at the studio we are shocked to find that The Cabin Café across the road is closed at weekends. Steve has already befriended the proprietor, Nellie, who he charmed with his northern wit and propensity for multiple bacon butties and he is gutted that his fat intake maybe severely restricted. We try and distract him with music and before long the boys are rushing headlong into Blink [which was called Stuffy this time last week]. It is a thumping, driven song whose rhythm owes more than a nod to certain Canadian influences, and despite it being perhaps the least prepared song, the guide tracks and drums are nailed in no time. After Steve’s sterling work on the drums we decide to wander off and find a café and leave Stick to do some guitar parts on Poster Boy and Blink.

Harlesden High Road is a hot spot for Brazilian fare, as we soon found out. Spotting South American delicacies through the window Sam dragged us in the first place we saw and insisted that this was where we should eat. Fortunately for Steve the staff were very accommodating and we were served up with bacon, sausage and egg butties while Sam joined in with the local cuisine.

A stroll back and there is a lull where we all just sit around and talk – inevitably about music. Key discussion points are based around The Cure and The Chameleons – two bands that have been important to all of us and were both produced by Dave. He gives us some insight into how things worked and the sort of things that went on while both those bands were recording with him. He is a very insightful kind of bloke and it is thrilling to hear these anecdotes – it’s a welcome break form the intensity of recording (and bacon).

Now, onto I Was a 97 Pound Weakling – it is a song that has been demoed but it is a song that has provoked much debate around how it should be arranged. The lyrical sentiments of the song are laced with despair, but should that be reflected in the music or should there be a fight back, a defiance if you like. We have all found ourselves on either side of the fence at any one time, but today the feeling is that the song should fight back and not be brow beaten. It’s a very Decoration attitude and one that works well in this instance, the opening section of the song outlines just how bad things are, whilst the denouement is a great big ‘fuck you’ to everything and everyone who ever trampled all over it.

To end the day the band run through Silent Kisses for Quiet Goodbyes, a few unclicked live takes are done and it is sounding good, it’s upbeat and free and has a nice flowing feel to it. It is testament to Dave’s working structure, where everything is constantly being rotated and moved on, so nothing becomes stale and the band don’t grow bored of certain parts or songs, it just keeps everything fresh and everyone thinks it is a great way to work. Silent Kisses will be worked on in the morning, but for now we have new digs to find - in Willesden.

We find the new hostel, in Willesden, and are immediately horrified. To say the least, it is a shit hole – it was all booked at the last minute due to the possibility that the studio might fall through, so we had little choice – but this place was terrible. I spend a while online trying to find alternative digs, but it is late on a Saturday night in London and there is nothing going. We numb our senses with alcohol and brace ourselves for an unpleasant night.

Tempting Fate with the Commentator's Curse...

So, this is where it all started getting complicated. Rehearsals were over and we were just two weeks from the recording session in London - and that is when a chunk of shit flew within inches of the fan, we knew then that something was wrong. As it turned out the problem was at the studio end of the piece, Dave was in the process of juggling his kit in between studios, and as these things seldom run smoothly he was becoming increasingly aware that his studio would not be fully functional by the time we arrived in the big city. With this in mind he began a search for an appropriate alternative.

Eventually the message came back that we could have the four days in Shambles Studio at White City – the news that it was the former private studio of Joe Strummer not only coated the news with a fair old layer of icing but pretty much put a cherry on the top as well.

Come Friday morning, we headed towards London from all points of the compass. It was a dull and miserable day in the west of Wales and took me three hours to even reach the motorway, but by the time I ambled up Scrubs Lane the sun was cracking the flags and the boys were pretty much all set up. I ran into Steven, Stuart and Sam in the car park, and through the open fire escape door I could hear Steve giving the drums a thorough working over. It seemed to go on forever, but being aware that Dave Allen was the man who had allegedly spent two weeks getting the drum sound right for The Cure we were not overly concerned. After a while however, Dave decided that the kick drum on Steve’s kit just wasn’t up to the part, and so he and I set off on a mad dash around all parts of Kilburn to collect a Gretsch kick drum and a Fender Precision bass for Sam to have a crack at. The band used the time to have a run through of a few of the songs selected for this weekend in the live room.

Incidentally, the songs lined up for recording were: Kay’s Catalogue, Poster Boy [formerly Clanger], Blink [formerly Stuffy], I Was a 97 Pound Weakling [formerly This Kills], Silent Kisses for Quiet Goodbyes, and While I Played Misty for You. It was an ambitious collection, but with a fair wind behind us we should get the rhythm parts complete and some guitar parts down – that was the plan anyway.

The afternoon went well, with Kay’s and Poster Boy being sketched out, a re-write of some of the parts on the latter meant it was a bit time consuming, but well, it’s worth getting it right so the investment is worthwhile.

At the end of the first day we were all really pleased with the way Dave was working, his methods were different to how the band had worked before, but proved productive, entertaining and insightful – the fact that he was the man responsible for moulding the sound of much of the soundtrack to out teens also helped.

We pack up for the day and all six of us squeeze into Dave’s Mondeo, he drops us off at Shepherd’s Bush [where we are staying the first night] and we arrange to meet half an hour later in the Defecting Weld pub. We spend ages wondering what the hell a defecting weld is before we tire of knowledge and get onto drinking. Unfortunately Dave gets refused entry by the over zealous bouncers and we don’t see him again until the morning. After a few drinks I go in search of food, the best I can find is some fried chicken from a place called ‘Bush Chicken’ – I kid you not. It tastes of neither bush, nor chicken, but it’s late and I head for our hostel and turn in.

Shortly after the rest of the band come in and settle for the night, within minutes Stuart is snoring like an asthmatic stag, it goes on relentlessly until through the darkness a continental accent yells ‘oh just shut up, please’. It makes no difference, but it makes me smile…