THAT'S ODD
This project was completed and uploaded on March
17th 2013. It was subsequently discovered to have been removed
from LastFM and was therefore re-uploaded to this server 13th May 2017.
This project started as a deliberate attempt to write material that was
as far away from mainstream as possible. It was written in parallel
with Mortality.
This means of
course, just to be
clear about this, that the lyrics for it were mostly written the year
before the lyrics for Abstracts,
so if there is any fleeting reference to my personal life then (like Mortality)
it will be to an
earlier time, when the relationship with Oona was still running. Ellen
arrived on the scene around the time editing started. I
don't think the lyrics do in fact say anything about my personal life,
and some of you may have great difficulty figuring out what they are
about.
I've always liked odd song titles, as I find them easier to write
lyrics to than ordinary conventional titles. I was also told some time
ago, around the end of the Midlife
project, that I was ideosynchratic,
that some people wouldn't like what I did but that I shouldn't worry
about this. The logic of putting the two together seems so obvious now,
that I'm not sure quite why it took me so long to work around to it.
I started work on the lyrics for what would eventually become That's odd in 2008. That is,
while I was working on Introspection.
During an amazing run in the first half of 2009, I rattled off no less
than ten of them, including five in a period of ten days, and remember
that at the time I was also writing lyrics for Mortality. There was then a pause,
as of course at that point I was working on Abstracts. After that I came back
to That's odd, albeit in a
sporadic way, and wrote the rest of the lyrics.
Orchestration started in mid-March 2012. The first two, Voices and Arabian circles, were certainly
odd, and give a feeling now of what That's
odd might have become. However I was uncomfortable with this as
an approach, as I wasn't sure that I really wanted to listen to a whole
CD of this kind of stuff. At the time I was listening to Rubber soul by the Beatles, and
liked the hypnotic repetition of it. I decided that this was more the
sort of approach I wanted - I was after something that would be easy to
listen to. Hence the next track I orchestrated, What it feels like, comes across as
much catchier and at any rate musically less weird. I continued in this
sort of vein, almost by successive approximations, trying to get the
kind of going round and round in the head feeling I was after.
Somewhere towards the end of May I think I started feeling that it
wasn't coming out weird enough, so there was a change of tack, and the
next two (Contemplating the void
and The elephant) came out
weirder. Normal service was then resumed until early July by which time
I had orchestrated all the songs. I then started work on instrumentals,
finishing in late September with what became the very pop-orientated
(and even rocky) Pondering.
Editing what by now was a monster of 75+ minutes took some five months.
Even after it had nominally finished, right to the bitter end I was
still tweaking bits here and there. The files were finally uploaded on
17th March 2013, although at time of writing Last FM (where I upload
them) seems to be having technical problems. I also therefore uploaded
the whole lot to NOM, though of course it won't be staying there.
1.
Interlude
(instrumental) - Orchestrated:
25th June - 5th July 2012. Edited: 4th November 2012, 13th December
2012, 8th January 2013.
An interlude of course comes in the middle, like an interval, so in a
determined attempt to be odd I put it at the beginning. It's another
attempt to start a CD as if it were a piece of classical music. The
announcer at the beginning might sound like something off Sergeant
Pepper, but is actually much more likely to be a parody of a presenter
of the Promenade concerts, which I'd seen one of (Yeoman of the Guard)
and/or a radio 3 presenter.
2. The
$15m duck - Lyric
written: 28th June 2009. Orchestrated: 20th-25th May 2012. Vocals
recorded: 3rd June 2012 (while a lot of other people were celebrating
the Queen's diamond jubilee) from around 11am until a little before
1:30pm. Edited: 26th October 2012, 15th November 2012, 13th December
2012.
The title (which was originally going to be the $5m duck) came from a
phrase which I thought had been used in connection with homeopathy. In
point of fact I appear to have misheard or someone who mentioned it to
me appears to have misremembered. The actual reference appears to have
been to the 17th February 1997 issue of US News & World Report,
which reportedly noted that one homeopathic product intended for colds
and flu could be made for a whole year from one duck, which it dubbed
"the $20m duck" (on account of the sales figures). I idly
started
wondering if there was a real duck, and what might have happened to it.
I didn't of course know, so it turned into an almost psychadelic stream
of consciousness. I've never really been impressed with this kind of
medicine, so the character waxing lyrical about some unnamed cure-all
is probably a send up of my mother, although Jo did also have a
tendency to spend a lot on boxes of tablets.
3. Arabian
circles
- [R] Lyric written: 16th
June 2009, though with minor modifications as it was being
orchestrated, and a further minor tweak during the recording session.
Orchestrated: 25th-29th March 2012. Edited: 3rd October 2012, 15th
November 2012, 13th December 2012
I was driving somewhere, when out of nowhere a thought came into my
head - "In an Arabian circle, some things can never arise". I had no
idea what an Arabian circle was, but immediately started wondering what
sort of things couldn't arise in one. Religious faith I gather is very
common in the middle East, hence the last line.
4. Answers
on a postcard
- Lyric written: 25th-26th April
2009 with some hacking around as usual when the lyric was added to the
orchestration to try and improve the stressing. Orchestrated: 16th-19th
May 2012. Vocal recorded: 26th May 2012, between around 11am and 2pm
though this included a lot of vocal editing, especially removing
annoying spikes from the main vocal. First bounced / uploaded: 26th May
2012. Edited: 15th November 2012.
As you'll notice, a lot of the lyric consists of associating things
that aren't really associated (such as "Humpty Dumpty's bouncing ball"
and "Jack the Ripper's pogo stick"). This is a variant on what seems to
be a known dodge of making lyrics sound profound by associating
opposites (such as on Come undone
by Robbie Williams). The sideways dig at someone taking the floor and
showing everyone he's a total twit appears to be directed at someone at
work who appears to be convinced that everything in the entire world is
controlled by a global conspiracy led by Dick Cheney and financed by
the American banks (don't get me started on that one).
5. Voices
(synthesised vocals only)
- Orchestrated 17th-22nd
March 2012. Edited: 27th September 2012, 2nd October 2012, 19th
December 2012, 10th January 2013.
This early track was an idea I'd had for some time to make a complete
track from pre-recorded vocals i.e. vocal loops. I was also
determinedly trying to be as odd as possible. Much of the
(pre-recorded) lyric is Bollywood. I have no idea what it means so I'd
be interested in a translation if there are any budding linguists out
there. The sounds at the end are intended to be a choir jumping into a
swimming pool (how's that for odd?).
6. Englebert
Humperdinck (or not) - [R] Lyric written: 11th June 2009.
Orchestrated: 9th-12th June 2012. Vocals recorded: 23rd June 2012, from
about 11 to about 1pm. I got the lead vocal quite quickly, but spent
quite a long time tinkering with the backing vocal. Edited: 27 October
2012
This was an attempt to write a lyric called "The Englebert
Humperdinckness of it all" which I thought was a good title. The idea
was to try and get his name into every line of the song. However having
written it, I realised that unfortunately there was a better title for
it. The originally intended title wasn't used until later (for
something else).
7. Trellis
(synthesised vocals only) - Orchestrated:
19th Aug - 16th September
2012. Edited: 11th, 18th November 2012
I was in what us oldies might still call a record shop when I happened
across a Thomas Tallis CD. I'd heard of him, and heard snatches of him,
and it wasn't expensive, so I bought it. His masterwork Spem In Alium
was obviously beyond
me, but some of the earlier stuff did sound achievable, so I had a go
(as you do) at doing something vaguely in that sort of style. Oddly
writing it complicated wasn't entirely successful, and it seemed to
sound more convincing when I basically used the same notes for all the
parts and staggered them.
8. Stick
insect blues
- Lyric written: 9th October
2011 (with some amendments as the lyric was being added to the
orchestration). Orchestrated: 23rd April - 3rd May 2012. Vocals
recorded: 6th May 2012, from somewhere just before 11am until I think
somewhere after 2pm
Edited: 14th, 19th, 20th October 2012; 18th November 2012, 19th
December 2012, 10th January 2013, 12th March 2013.
As I remember it, I was in bed one night, thinking vaguely about music,
and remembering that I'd written a few blues format lyrics. I wondered
whether I might write another, and I thought vaguely that if I did it
wouldn't be about someone whose woman had left him, it would be about
something odder, like (oh I don't know, I thought) someone whose pet
stick insect died. There was a pause, and then I thought, wait a
minute. After that it was easy. ("Did you really have a stick insect?"
asked Ellen innocently.) Although there are British stick insects, they
seem to have originally come from New Zealand, apparently somewhere
around 1909. There are no native British stick insects - technically
they are all naturalised rather than native. The longest British stick
insect reportedly measures up to 125mm long. Mostly they only live
three to four months, and die in the winter (in the first frost). They
have few real interests and tend not to go very far or do much, until
the weather turns colder when they seek shelter. Altogether there are
over 3,000 species of stick insect, of which nearly 300 have been bred
in captivity. They do get kept as pets, and are apparently easy to look
after. Most of these pets are in fact Indian stick insects. In some
parts of the world stick insects are regarded as pests, and can
apparently ravage trees in a way vaguely reminiscent of locusts. The
idea of anyone having great times with a stick insect is frankly
bizarre. I can only imagine that the owner in the song is eccentric and
extremely wealthy and that his preacher in view of this felt obliged to
hold a funeral for his deceased stick insect. I'm afraid there was
rather more of the sermon than I used in the finished track. It was
written during the recording session (scribbled in a note book). I
suspect that it was probably influenced by the Neil Diamond song Brother Love's travelling
salvation show.
9. Bananas
- Lyric written:
20th June 2008. Orchestrated: 6th-8th May 2012. Vocals recorded:
13th May 2012, between about 11am and 1:45pm.. Edited: 20th October
2012, 18th November 2012
This was an early lyric that had been bouncing around in my head for
nearly four years by the time I orchestrated it. I did alter bits of it
to
stay within my dynamic range, and also made some parts longer in order
to make the structure more logical and consistent. The extended parts
have backing vocals of I'm afraid a rather cheeky and mickey-taking
sort. You may be wondering who they're supposed to be. I'm told the
accent is a southern (American) drawl and definitely nothing like Clint
Eastwood - the smart money seems to be that it's a caricatured version
of John Wayne. The original idea of the lyric was to write a song
called "All I ever wanted
was a banana" which I thought would be a good title (i.e. an extremely
weird one). In terms of genre it clearly owes something to the likes of
George Formby (who once sang a little song called I like bananas,
which by his
standards was very innocent) and Professor Jimmy Edwards (who sang I've never seen a
straight banana
in 1960, although that seems to have been a cover version as it had
previously been sung by Fred Douglas in 1927 having been written by Ted
Waite the previous year). In my song, all the fruity references do
fairly clearly appear to be allegorical - 36 years for example was the
length of time my parents were married, and you'll have noticed that
the backing vocalist keeps addressing his son.
10. Cinematic
transitions (instrumental)
- Orchestrated: 14th-23rd
July 2012. Edited: 5th, 22nd November 2012
The original idea, which I'd had for a while, was to use some cinematic
orchestration clips I had in order to assemble a sort of vaguely film
music montage. The title came from the name used for several of them in
the sound library. It turned out to be not quite as straightforward as
I'd imagined, as a transition changes from one thing to something else,
which means that there has to be a period on either side of something
definite. This meant that I did rather more orchestrating than I'd
imagined. The opening section (until the trumpets) was a clip called
Medal ceremony that came as a sound clip, though I can't now remember
which collection it was in.
11. The
elephant
- [R] Lyric written: 18th
June 2009, though hacked around quite a lot during orchestration to
improve the stressing. Orchestrated: 3rd-7th June 2012. Vocals
recorded: 16th June 2012, starting a bit late, possibly around 11:20am;
finished about 1:30pm. Edited: 27th October 2012
I'm sure you must have heard someone refer to the elephant in the room,
meaning a very obvious subject that was being carefully avoided.
Various forms of this phrase have been around since the 19th century.
The modern form of the phrase may date from a New York Times article
published in 1959. I must have heard it used and started thinking
vaguely about elephants being in rooms. As you'll note I was making a
deliberate attempt to write as oddly as possible.
12. Walking
the frog (instrumental) -
Orchestrated: 6th-11th July
2012. Edited: 5th, 19th November 2012, 19th December 2012
As this uses three beat bars, I started wondering what sort of creature
could march to three beat bars. I wondered if maybe a frog might. The
title was a cheeky adaption of the Rufus Thomas song Walking the dog
(1963), although
musically it has nothing to do with it, and neither is there any
connection with the poem Walking the
frog written by Alan
Draper (which I hadn't been aware of
until I later googled it). I was extremely proud of this track when I'd
written it - I thought it was the best instrumental I'd ever written,
and to me it does feel to have let's say echoes of Beethoven about it.
I can imagine Beethoven having written it, albeit possibly only as a
training exercise for one of his pupils.
13. Pondering
(instrumental) - Orchestrated:
17th-21st September 2012. Edited: 11th November 2012, 21st February
2013, 4th March 2013, 9th March 2013
This was the last one to get written for this project, and it appeared
to have overtones of edging away from it and towards something else
(which convinced me not to try and squeak one more track onto it). It's
a fairly straightforward use of chord sequences and guitar loops, but I
liked it, although I did have some trouble with one of them due to bass
tones in the original sound loop that I didn't particularly like.
14. Er
- Lyric written: 30th May
2009, though with a number of edits while it was being orchestrated
(basically to improve the stressing and rhythm of it). Orchestrated:
11th-20th April 2012 . Vocals recorded: 22nd April 2012, between about
11am and 1:30pm. I spent a lot of time on backing vocals. Edited: 14th
October 2012
Originally this was going to have an orchestral backing. I'd written
about 23 bars of this backing but had an uneasy feeling that it was
going to be too samey and too sombre. At this point I stopped and
watched Elvis: That's the way it is. After this I went back to Er and
wrote the rest of it. I think the Presley influence on the remainder of
it is quite clear. The lyrics were written as oddly as possible, though
a few coherent thoughts did slip through. The dinosaurs were a late
change - it was originally going to be pidgeons being eaten, but I
didn't like the stressing.
15. Funny
- Lyric written: 7th
April
2012. Orchestrated: 7th - 11th April 2012. Vocals recorded: 15th April
2012, between about 11am and 2:15pm. Edited: 14th October 2012,
(slightly) 15th March 2013
Someone at work used to be an amateur comedy compere and told frequent
jokes. Fortunately he's further away and normally out of earshot now
(unless he starts shouting in annoyance). I'm afraid I didn't find
these jokes funny. Neither do I find endless sitcoms funny. I remember
once sitting down to watch someone's favourite episode of their
favourite sitcom, the one that they thought was the most hilariously
funny piece of television they'd ever seen. 'The big joke' came and
went and neither of us laughed - in fact neither of us laughed at all,
all the way through it. For a few years (with Oona) I used to go to the
Edinburgh fringe, and though we never went to any, there were endless
shows by up and coming and supposedly oh-so-funny comedians. One night
I watched the fastest selling comedy video of all time (which was
broadcast on television), and though I could see where it was supposed
to be funny, I'm afraid it wasn't. I was getting annoyed about this
nothing being funny thing, so the idea was to write a series of jokes
that sounded as if they were going to be funny but then fell horribly
flat on the last line. (I did consider composite jokes, with the first
line of one joke, the second line of a completely different joke, and
so on, but decided that this would be too convoluted.) You'll notice
that the verses are actually in limerick format. (I also considered
starting with "I say, I say, I say" but decided that this would be the
wrong era, harking back to music hall days.) One of the verses (about
the hedgehog) was a limerick I started writing at primary school, but
couldn't think of a last line for. It's taken 38 years, but I got there
in the end. Incidentally, it was going to be a wicked old witch, but it
got changed for stressing reasons. Oh, the boring bloke that the dull
joke was being told to at the beginning of the song would have been me
of course.
16. One
over (instrumental)
- Orchestrated: 4th-18th
August 2012. Edited: 8th November 2012
This was written with five beat bars to give me more room to play with
rhythms. As it was five beats per bar and not four, it was therefore
'one over'. It's fairly obviously based on a series of piano chords.
It's scored for piano, cellos and violins - by this time rather than
score a string section as such, I'd got into the habit of contrasting
the tones of cellos and violins as separate instruments.
17. What
it feels like - [R]
Lyric written: 12th June 2009 [at Rouen] though with quite a bit of
rewriting between orchestration and recording. Orchestrated: 30th March
- 3rd April 2012. Vocals recorded: Friday, 6th April 2012 (Good Friday)
between about 11:15am and 1:45pm, although only about the first hour
was actual recording of the main vocal. Edited: 11th, 13th, 17th, 26th
October 2012; 11th, 19th November 2012, 19th December 2012, 1st, 3rd
January 2013, 15th March 2013.
I'd heard someone (or of someone) when asked what he'd
witnessed reply something like, "I didn't see nuffink". If he didn't
see nothing, then in theory he saw something (since something is not
nothing) but I knew that wasn't what he meant. He thought that by using
a double negative he was adding emphasis, and presumably had it
occurred to him he could have added even more by saying "I didn't never
see nuffink". I started wondering what language would be like if it was
full of double and treble negatives, and whether it would be possible
to write something so contorted that it would be impossible to tell
what it was supposed to mean (hence the backing vocals). The funny
thing was that when I was recording it, I did think I knew more or less
what it meant. I liked the guitar going into the chorus, but I spent a
lot of time playing around with it to try and find the right effects
and the right sound. In the end (after struggling with it for ages) I
decided that it wasn't central to the
song, so hopefully it's just there rather than dominant. You'll notice
that the backing keeps changing tack - I just didn't feel like cranking
the same thing round and round.
18. Yoghurt
as meditation
- Lyric written: 2nd March
2009. Orchestrated: 5th-16th June 2011.
Vocals recorded: 18th June 2011
Edited:
20th November 2011; 31st
January 2012; 11th, 13th February 2012.
This was another song that started with a title. I was trying to think
of daft titles and this one just came to me. It would appear that this
phrase hasn't been used before, although one recipe was introduced
under an article title that did include both the words yoghurt and
meditation. When I was thinking
about how to make the title work, I was imagining parallels being drawn
between yoghurt and life. There did seem to be enough, so it got
written. The ommm was of course him meditating on his yoghurt. You'll
notice another (apparently evangalistic) preacher cropping up in this
one. He was going to talk
about the sacred way of the yoghurt, but I thought that this might
upset my
many American fans so it became the blessed way of the yoghurt instead.
19. Read
the manual
- [R] Lyric written: 14th
June 2009 (though extensively rewritten on 30th June 2012 while it was
being orchestrated) Orchestrated: 29th-30th June 2012 (apart from
adding the lyric to it). Vocals recorded: 14th July 2012, from around
11:30am to around 3:20pm. Edited: 4th-5th October 2012, 5th December
2012, 8th January 2013, 15th/16th March 2013
In this song the narrator describes how some item or other stopped
working, without ever saying what it is. I deliberately tried to keep
this obscure as I wanted people to have fun puzzling over it. I had
some problems in the middle section getting the guitar loud enough. The
backing vocal voices are all me - some of them had the pitch bumped in
an attempt to alter the apparent gender. I suspect the argument isn't
my parents - it sounds more like characters from the BBC television
series Last of the summer wine. In case you're wondering, the original
jiggerypoke was actually a ventilation fan in a cottage in France
(which really didn't work, although I didn't break it).
20. Every
minute
- Lyric written: 3rd May
2008. Orchestrated: 9th-14th May 2012. Vocals recorded: 19th May 2012,
from around 11am to around 2:45pm. Edited: 20th October 2012, 5th
December 2012, 8th January 2013
I was driving somewhere when for no reason a phrase
popped into my head
- "live every minute twice". My immediate reaction was, what on earth
does that mean?? It would appear that this is another phrase that has
never been used before (though there is a riddle about something that
occurs once in every minute, twice in every moment but never in a
thousand years... think about it). I suspect that it owed something to
the John Barry / Leslie Bricusse song "You only live twice" (from the
Bond film of the same name of course).
21. Contemplating
the void
- Lyric written: 6th June
2009. Orchestrated: 26th May - 2nd June 2012. Vocals recorded: 9th June
2012, from just after 11am until 2pm. Edited: 27th October 2012, 6th
December 2012
You've probably had someone who was distracted say to you, "sorry, I
was miles away". I started wondering one day, when people are miles
away, where are they exactly? or, if they are staring into space,
obviously not looking at anything particularly, what are they looking
at? The answer I came up with was that they were looking into The Void,
or on the other hand Contemplating The Void. This in turn made me
wonder what the void was exactly, and what their relation with it was.
It may sound obscure, but some of it at any rate is quite precise - for
example "you always live your life inside" meaning that you think and
feel things about your life, and that your experience of your life is
in the end a mental thing - that is, your life is inside you. I won't
say that I was disappointed with this song exactly, but I somehow
expected that it would turn out to be a lot more than it actually was.
The cackling at the end is actually a baby laughing, with effects
added. At one point that was going to be how the CD ended.
22. Sleepy
(instrumental) - Orchestrated:
26th July - 3rd August 2012. Edited: 6th-7th November 2012
This is the sort of thing I can come up with without too much actual
effort. I worked on it for around three evenings, very late when I
should have been in bed (hence, sleepy). The dobro took a fair amount
of work as it kept making odd noises and had to be twiddled to remove
them. I seem to recall not being sure about the choir.
23. The
Englebert
Humperdinckness of it all - Lyric
written: 13th-14th March 2009. Orchestrated: 16th-19th June 2012.
Vocals recorded: 29th June 2012, from around 11am to around 2pm, a lot
of that time spent on backing vocals. Yes, that was a Friday - I was on
leave that day, waiting in just in case the council came round. Edited:
27th October 2012
This is yet another lyric that came from a title. This was the second
attempt at this title. This time I came at it a different way, and
tried to think of the title as a punchline, which meant that the
narrator must have been musing about something and then added that
thought to it. This meant I had to come up with some musings, which I
was able to do. In point of fact the musings had started from the first
line, originally as a completely separate song, which meant that all I
needed to do was to put the two together. The second verse got hacked
around very heavily during editing (which isn't unusual) but this time
it got much better as a result. The worried character was actually me,
recorded lower pitch and then bumped. I liked the repeating guitar loop
- it was only after a time that I realised that it was helping the
track quite considerably and needed to be emphasised.
24. One
day you'll understand - Lyric
written: 5th June 2008 (with some
alterations for stressing reasons while adding the lyric to the
orchestation). Orchestrated: 23rd-24th June 2012 (very minor mix
alteration 25th June). Vocals recorded: 8th July 2012, between about
11am and 2pm. Edited: 27th October 2012, 8th January 2013 (added crowd
and announcer).
For some time I considered this the best lyric I'd ever written, but
strangely it was kept hanging around for some while before being used.
It was even touch and go whether it appeared in this collection at all.
The problem was, I didn't think it was particularly odd. I imagined a
collection of utter weirdness, culminating of course in the statement
that "One day you'll understand". I did have other odd lyrics I could
have used - I'm not usually short of them - so I did um and er about
whether to go with this one. I think in the end I felt that if I didn't
use
it here, it might not get used at all. As you'll notice I have cheated
a wee bit on the rhyming, and as usual it did get hacked around during
orchestration. I remember while recording it that I'd done eight takes
and knew
I had it, but I loved it as a song, I really relished singing it, and I
was very aware that after the recording session I'd never sing it
again, which seemed a terrible pity. I thought, heck let's just do it
one last time, just for me, just for the heck of it, and the resulting
take (take 9) was mostly what I used in the finished version.
The five lyrics labelled
[R] were written during the Rouen
(Normandy)
holiday from 10th-20th June 2009. Another five were written earlier
that year. One was written later that year. Three were written the
previous year (2008). One was written in 2011, and one in 2012.
The cover is in CD cover format. It may be uploaded and linked from
here later.