“Courage of Thought”

This is probably the saddest song I’ve recorded for the sessions! Everything about the song is sad, from the music, to the words, to the time when the song was written. I wrote the song one night when everyone whom I had organised to hang with, cancelled on me to do something else. Pretty much everyone told me they going kiss their girlfriend/boyfriends or whatever they had. I rang up Jurgen, the old reliable, to do something, I asked him did he want to jam, and he was up for it! I was to go down to meet him after work that night.

I went down to Jurgen’s workplace and went upstairs to wait for Jurgen to finish up. I’ve probably mentioned this before but when I was living in LA I used go up on top of the roof of where we lived in the middle of the night to write songs, whilst everyone was sleeping, I gazed upon the whole of Hollywood and strummed away until the Sun peaked his head from up over the hills. That nite I meet Jurgen I went onto the roof of this particular building, via the fire escape and started to strum away like the old days and this song pretty much wrote itself from the first chord I played. When Jurgen finished work we went back to his place and played Pixies songs till we couldn’t stay awake anymore, and during this time Jurgen’s infectious “Jolliness” passed onto me and I was all good again! Thanks man!

Anyways, I forgot about the song, until my friend Podge was at me to let him sing on something I was recording. I taught his voice would be perfect for this song; as I’ve been listening to him sing me Damien Rice songs at 3.30 in the morning while walking home after the pub! I initially wanted to be just a simple piano song and vocals but when I jammed along with Simon playing keyboards, it was obvious that it sounded better with Simon “plinking” along with me on the Spanish guitar. (Cheers to Andrew for letting borrow your guitar!)
I typed out the lyrics for Simon on my Typewriter, I was meaning to get it photocopied, but forgot, so he re-typed them out and we made note on what he was gonna do for the song on this, the most professional and high-tech devices are available to you when you record with Pallus Sinfony, as you can see here!!:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2078/1410/1600/pLINK.jpg
I was really happy with Simon’s keyboards on this, they are so pretty and it adds a depth to the song, merci muchly Simon!!

There are pretty much only a couple chords in the song, but I play the exact same notes for the song, it quite easy to hit the wrong string and when I was recording the guitar tracks, I had to give up because I was getting quite frustrated! When I went back to it the next day, instead of concentrating on each note I played, I just closed my eyes and zoned out and taught about The Tempest. When I “returned” to reality, I had nailed the song in one take! The next day my friend Sham was telling me about “letting the music control you” when playing it, that he was gonna touch on this subject for his Psychology Thesis. I was “ahhhh!” More on Shams Thesis in the near future!!

Next up was Podge for vocals. He was at me for ages asking me when we are going to record something, and I hadn’t recorded anything that I think would suit him, I write and record songs and afterwards who would be suitable for the song. When I recorded this I know Podge would be perfect for it!! The only time I heard him sing before was when he sings Damien Rice songs at 3.30 in the morning awhile I carry him home after the pub! I picked him up, he bought a pack of biccies in the shop and we went back to my “studio”. By “studio” I mean the spare room, and by spare room, I mean the room where all the shit that isn’t wanted goes! Ha!

I gave a copy of the lyrics to Podge, and started to playback what I had recorded to him over headphones, while I made tea. From my studio (ha!) I could hear Podge sing the words and the song was being played back. All I could hear was squawking and hollering and he sang back over the song. “Its gonna be a long recording session!” I said to myself. Suddenly, he cleared his throat, and beautiful singing began! And in 20 minutes the song was completed.

I really like how this song turned out, everyone who contributed to the song executed exactly what was needed to add to the emotional scope of the song that I was going for. Nearly everyone that listened to the song couldn’t listen to the song the whole way thru because of the “theme” and they just handed me back the headphones. I didn’t mind, I have recorded it the way I wanted to.