Writing Weird Decibels 1, part 2 the tricky middle bit.

Its now late 2010 early 2011 we’ve played and recorded our album ‘Live! Tonight! (Not Completely) Sold Out! On this live album is four of the tracks that would appear on Weird Decibels 1, they would never be heard in the public domain for another two years. The band lock themselves in the practice room and throw away the keys…

So we had Speak, Forward, Pay and Crown four tunes we were pleased with but with album projects it is difficult to keep the standard high and its telling the next phase of writing had the songs that were left off the album. To be fair we didn’t know what was going to be omitted until the end!

I had a riff rolling about my head for a while, that guitar lick would become Joker however we titled it ‘Hiding’ as this was a lyric that I sang over and over whilst trying to nail a melody and lyrics. Stu, Derek and Greg, as with all of WdB 1 had so much more input into this record and Joker is no different. Here is the early demo

This Hiding demo has different title and differs from final album version, it is similar to how we play it live though! (albeit tighter!)

A lot of the lyrics are in place on this version but its a bit slower than it ended up. Pleased at how this song was turning out we added it to our set and moved on to writing more. At this time however it was proving difficult to get together as a band. I had changed hours, Greg was working long shifts and Derek was struggling with the pub. It was a frustrating time but we kept it together and we always seemed to arrive with new ideas.

Three songs were left out of WdB1 Bullet, Buddy and Rusted. In their own way good songs but in the end they did not fit into the album. Bullet tells the story of a young couple who have to escape their town and never knowing when the ‘bullet’ is coming. Buddy was stronger lyrically but weaker musically apart from the sublime solo Stu plays at the end of the finished version of the song (hear it on the secret track on the WdB1 CD). Buddy recalls a lover with another man’s wife and as he stares out of the window he sees the riots play out below him. Sometimes I wish I could take these lyrics to another song. Rusted is push against being called Thatchers Children which you are labelled if you fall into the 3o’s age bracket. However Rusted, (known as Decibels at this early stage) despite being Greg’s favourite song of the sessions, Is too similar to a lot of work we had done before.

Rusted or Decibels as it was known then, has all the old hallmarks of our old music and was sadly left out of WdB1

The tricky middle bit then… Wait for it!

We hunkered down through the years harsh winter knowing we wanted this album out late 2011 (that didn’t happen then!!). During these middle sessions Wait! and Industry arrived to save the day. Wait is simply a balls out jam with next to no lyrics, it pays homage to Territorial Pissings on Nirvana’s Nevermind. Industry has Alice in Chians all over it. Based on my simple E riff, Stu built the chorus and Derek along with Greg knitted the song to an sinister beauty we’ve never touched on.  Industry is less in the way of a story and more psychological… ‘You get inside my head, and dig it with a spoon, lay it on the bed and rummage through’ These tracks reminded us how simple it could be to write decent tunes that different from our earlier output.

Wait demo from March 2011

I started to look for lodges that would be our remote home for a week while we would record the album. At this point the plan was to do as we did with the Acts and record the whole album in a week. This would change given the scope of WdB 1. We needed some more tracks. We had to finish writing the album in style.

I’ll tell you about Psalm, Power, Deliverance, Steel and of course… Wonder in the next blog.