- The essential stories behind the tunes -
(in among all the non-essential nonsense)
(From EP 4)
Here's a taster of the tune...
(Click HERE to listen to the full song)
As someone who was obsessed with records as a little boy, this song represents a very proud milestone for me when it was released on 8" vinyl by local label Love Thy Neighbour Records.
The young me spinning
some discs.
The record - a 3 song limited edition split single with 2 other local bands.
Only 20 copies were made which sold for £20 each. This means there are people in the world who paid £6.67 for one of my songs.
Although I'm happy with the tune, I can't say it's worth anyone paying that much for the pleasure of listening to it.
On the other hand, it sounds pretty good played at 33rpm:
(Maybe not the vocals)
The Song's Beginnings
I remembered the the song starting out life as a gentle sci-fi themed country song, but listening back to the early demo now it doesn't sound particularly gentle, or much like country music either.
I'd obviously not got very far with lyrics at that point.
It's not a great listen is it? I found it so disappointingly different to how I thought it sounded, I decided to have a go at recording another version to do the gentle country idea more justice. I therefore now proudly present:
- An All New/Old Version Of The Tune -
(It later found it's way on to my 5th EP)
(a.k.a. cobbling bits & bobs together)
The reason the song turned out how it did rather than something like the cod-country above was because one evening, after watching some live footage of James Brown on the telly, I decided to have a go at making up a funky riff of my own.
After all, you never know - there's always an outside chance a mild-mannered balding banjo plunker from the leafy suburbs of southern England might also possess similar amounts of The Funk to The Godfather of Soul.
What I came up with sounded promising, so I did what I usually do when coming up with something new on the banjo - rather than going to all the bother of trying to make up a new melody and lyrics, I just went through all my old half-finished songs to see whether I could somehow force any of them to fit in with it in some way.
Space Dust seemed workable, and after a bit of noodling around with chords, beats and some home made spacey sounds - Hey Presto! The tune in it's current form was born.
The Words
Although I've never had any particular interest in science fiction, I decided one day I'd attempt some science fiction story lyrics.
This is the plot I came up with:
Loads of sparkly dust falls down to Earth from outer space
No-one knows what it's effects are
There's so much of it around, there's nothing else we can do other than just live alongside it and hope for the best
- THE END -
You'd be hard pressed to get a novel out of that, but it was enough to scrape together some lyrics for the tune:
Drifts from the sky - neon dust some say comes from near Mars.
An endless supply, lands off-shore then floats in on the ocean.
Dries out on sand, advances like an illuminated breeze.
Blows deep in land, smothers every street and all your houses.
It's gotten in the water. Find it in your food.
The full ramifications, still not understood.
See it on your children's skin, embedded in your clothes.
It's now in the fabric of our lives and what that means, nobody knows.
OK - that's your lot. Thanks for reading!
