Do I Belong Here?

Disclaimer: this post was written in December 2023, and scheduled for future posting. Its contents may no longer be accurate or appropriate.

It's a little over a year since bass player, backing vocalist and setlist compiler Melanie Howard left The Wedding Present for reasons as yet unknown. Mel's husband Nick Wellauer, the band's then-drummer, left too. Reading between those lines, it is easy and perhaps tempting to surmise that it wasn't an entirely amicable or positive separation. In her statement at the time, Mel talked of refocusing on her solo career as Such Small Hands in the future. Let's hope so, because she is such a talent.

Take today's track, for example. It's an acoustic rendition of Do I Belong Here? from the 2021 Raw Home Sessions version of Carousel. Mel herself described it thus:

Each song is just my voice and my guitar, recorded down one microphone across two afternoons in March, while my cat snoozed next to me in my living room.

I attempted to do everything in one take and keep it as ‘live’ and unedited as possible (with the exception of an odd couple of harmonies and extra parts) - as if the listener was there in the room with me - and so I have intentionally left in any little imperfections because I felt it was more authentic.

To which I will only add, it's beautiful. Sublime, even.

More than a year later, I remain gutted that Mel left The Wedding Present, because she really added to it, giving lie to the old joke that the band is simply "Gedge & three other people". Still, she lasted about five and a half years, which is more than most people do at the Gedge of the sea. Don't keep us waiting too long for new solo material please, Mel.

And it's so far...

Disclaimer: this post was written in December 2023, and scheduled for future posting. Its contents may no longer be accurate or appropriate.

It's easy to look up lyrics these days - a mouse-click or two and it's done. Not so easy 40 years ago, of course, particularly for the sorts of songs that weren't having their lyrics printed in Smash Hits.

Here's one such - Letter Never Sent, by REM. Back then, Stipe's lyrics were wilfully obscure and to sing along the 80s indie boy would often have to content himself with just making the right basic noises - all vowel sounds, mumbling and onomatopoeia.

Here are the lyrics, if you're interested after 40 years. Potentially more interesting: have you ever written a letter and then not sent it? Why not? And who was it to?

Mistaken identities

Disclaimer: this post was written in December 2023, and scheduled for future posting. Its contents may no longer be accurate or appropriate.

You know when you can hear a radio on somewhere in the distance, close enough to just about hear but not close enough to really make out?

I heard a radio from afar last night, and although it was really beyond the range of my age-afflicted, gig-damaged hearing, I could make out enough of the rhythm and chord changes of what I took to be the first verse or two to be able to identify it as She's A Star by James ... or so I thought.

So there I was, happily la-la-lahing along (in my head, naturally), until the distant FM fuzz got to what sounded like the middle eight, and I realised it wasn't Tim Booth I was lah-ing along with. So I had to go and track down the radio to see what had such a fundamental similarity. And this is what I found.

Okay, half-close your ears, imagine you can only hear the rhythm section chug and basic chords, and tell me Float On by Modest Mouse doesn't sound like the verses of the James track? Or is it just me?

It's just me, isn't it? It ususally is.

Of course it wouldn't be so bad if this was a unique occurrence. However, not so long ago I could just make out enough percussion from a distant radio to think I was half-hearing the intro to Close To Me by The Cure. Reader, I regret to inform you it was Footloose by Kenny Loggins... time for a hearing aid?

Blue Friday: Bluer Than Midnight

Disclaimer: this post was written in December 2023, and scheduled for future posting. Its contents may no longer be accurate or appropriate.

You might think, on first listen, that this is an upbeat song. Those piano chord progressions sound quite positive, don't they. But the lyrics ... oh, the lyrics.

Save me, save me, save me
Save me, save me, save me

The candles are lit, the curtains are drawn
There's still no sign of rain nor dawn
Our lips touch, our limbs entwine
But the ghosts that haunt me won't leave my mind

Save me, save me, save me
Save me, save me, from myself

One sin leads to another one
Oh, the harder I try
I can never, never, never find peace in this life
I ask myself where does lust come from
Is it something to yield to or be overcome
I ask myself
Why love can never touch my heart like fear does
Why can't love ever touch my heart like fear does?

Blue Friday: Myth

Disclaimer: this post was written in December 2023, and scheduled for future posting. Its contents may no longer be accurate or appropriate.

There's a hypnotic quality to Myth by Beach House that feels somehow perfect for autumn - music to watch leaves fall by, perhaps?

Liberty at a loss

A new hope

A sabbatical breaking post, but important given what's going on across the pond today.

This poster from artist Shepard Fairey isn't quite as striking as the now-iconic Hope poster he created for Obama's 2008 campaign. That said, it is, like Kamala Harris, the best we have.

Fingers crossed for today. Let's hope the orange man-baby retires from all walks of public life after this. Maybe leave politics and world affairs to the grown-ups, eh Don?

A triple whammy from Uncle Bill

Disclaimer: this post was written in December 2023, and scheduled for future posting. Its contents may no longer be accurate or appropriate.

On this day in 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first ever living creature into space. Laika the dog (or "an experimental animal", as Moscow Radio described her at the time) was projected into orbit from the Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard the satellite Sputnik II, inside a hermetically-sealed container with oxygen and food supplies. The date of the launch was chosen to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution, and whilst sending a living creature into space was certainly a propaganda coup, animal welfare organisations were not impressed. The Soviet authorities said Laika died painlessly after a week in orbit but in 2002 new evidence revealed the dog died from over-heating and panic just a few hours after take-off. For Laika, briefly the most famous dog in the world, the space race was most definitely over.

On this day in 1975, the late Queen formally opened the UK's first North Sea oil pipeline, serving the Forties oilfield. Far from donning a hardhat and turning a giant wheel to do this, Liz simply had to press a gold-plated button. BP were opening up the North Sea with the help of a £370 million loan from the government - that's the best part of three billion in today's money. And all so that we could chase the dream of energy independence. How'd that work out, anybody know?

On this day in 2004, George W Bush won a second term in office as US president. At the time we thought him beyond satire, and couldn't conceive of a worse candidate for leader of the free world. Meanwhile, Orange Don was making notes and probably thinking, "Hold my beer. It's a great beer, the greatest beer ever. You don't even like other beer, that's fake news and the mainstream media." God help us.