Notes on the 5 unreleased songs/versions
“Nice and easy does it” was part of the original Bridging the silence sessions which I was running parallel with the “Songs from the Margin” project. The latter LP was completed but never released, whilst the Bridging project faltered and came to a halt. The Koch CD of the same name, released in 1993 and now deleted, was in fact a selection from both projects.
A miscellaneous collection of these songs and others was remixed during 1996-1997 at Heartbeat Sound by Michael Klein, when it became apparent that the multi-track tape was degenerating rapidly and therefore the remixing happened not a moment too soon.
“Nice and easy does it” originates from May 1978. An original mix of this song
exists, but I felt it was too keyboard dominant. Michael and I remixed and stripped it of some of its keyboards to re-establish my guitar at the core of the song.
“Nothing to say” was written in 1984 and refers to the Iranian embassy siege at the time. The opening verse refers to my journey by taxi to Steve Hall’s Hallmark Studios off Regent Street in London on that very morning of the shooting of W.P.C. Fletcher outside the embassy. It was only later in the day that the reason for the traffic jam became apparent. I already had my guitar riff and during one of the following sessions the song was recorded. Listening to these lyrics now, I feel they are just as relevant today, maybe more so in the light of recent events.
“We don’t understand” was written in June 1984 and picks upon similar musings, whilst “There wasn’t time” dates from December 1983 and is part of the “Songs from the Margin” project which may yet see the light of day.
The reworked “Post mortem blues” was an attempt to update the original as I felt that was a bit hurried and primitive. After all these years however, I now quite like the earlier version.
