VPO home   Songs   Recording   Editing

MUSTN'T GRUMBLE 

This CD has now been completed. Eight copies will be made, which includes two spare copies. The final versions of these tracks are being uploaded to this website in alphabetical order as and when. The last uploaded at time of writing was Now and Zen. The only alteration from the provisional version was Fifteen hundred quid, which had a minor change in the mix at around 1 minute 29 seconds.

Now and Zen. Sarcastic song lampooning supposed words of wisdom. It started with the title. It occurred to me that it would be a great title for a song, and it was too good an idea not to do it.

(I hate) that bloody tree. Another one loosely base on a true story. A neighbour did complain about a large tree in my garden that was allegedly blocking all light from her kitchen. This song did have a supposedly impressive introduction that was later dropped and redone using components from the verse.

Cheerful news. Written at an airport, I think Glasgow. The lyrics are more or less a verbatim of what was on the news at the time. The theme of news being depressing has been mentioned elsewhere, and I remember there was a good news programme for a time. A weekly magazine has an "it wasn't all bad" item. But the main news is usually depressingly grim, and I gather victims of depression are sometimes told not to listen to it.

We've got lots of money (and you haven't). A sarcastic swipe at the music industry. Sorry to disappoint anybody, but it isn't actually aimed at any band in particular. I have great difficulty finding any music I like, and the supposed enormous fame and success of bands that are here quickly and gone again almost as quickly tends to bore and irritate me. Re-editing improved this song enormously from the initial version.

Fifteen hundred quid. Sadly based on a real incident. I had a call from my bank one day, left as a message with a name that might have been Matt or Mart or Mark. It didn't sound important so it was a few days before I rang them. To be fair to the bank I did get my money back after about a week. As with a number of my songs it was largely written down as it the incident it was based on actually happened, though I've never had a problem with changing things for the purposes of the songs.

Let's all have a party. Written after hearing some shouting next door late at night. Sadly these parties do tend to feature people swearing violently at each other and playing music very loudly at all hours. I've never understood why this is fun - it doesn't sound as if they are having fun.

I hate Christmas. This was written originally for a family video. It was far too sharply worded for that however, despite its humour, but it was too good to waste. Some people are offended by it (insulting their favourite festival etc).

Not a sales call. I used to get a lot of phone calls from double glazing companies who almost always denied that they were trying to sell anything. This is a send up of the general this-isn't-a-sales-call patter.

Footsteps in the hall. Written very quickly after seeing a musical called Tutti Frutti that was running at the time in Glasgow. I have to say I can't see any connection. I can hear clear signs of Jesus and Mary Chain influence though. As always I have to stress the lyric is fictional - I knew my parents very well. The trigger was a phrase that came into my head for no obvious reason - "I never, never knew them... knew them at all". I think I even heard the same tune with it that I later used. This song has probably been re-orchestrated more extensively than any of the others.

We'll talk to you. This was inspired by a frustrating attempt to contact an airline, but there are a lot of companies with this sort of phone setup.

Be nice to spiders. Most of the lyrics for this were based on a conversation. The girl at the beginning was actually looking at a large rat house at Druscilla's zoo, and funnily enough so was the boy at the end.

120 bricks. Written in Tate Modern after seeing the famous pile of bricks. The 'author' of this 'work' said he wanted to disabuse the public of any notion that he was a conceptual artist or that concept played any role in his work, that is, it was a stack of bricks on the floor for no reason at all(!). I included a brick commentary at the end, reverbed to make it sound as if it was given in the art gallery. The people at the beginning were actually climbing some steps at Hampton Court.

Gas board lament. Several months arguing with an energy company about a safety inspection led to this song. There were choruses in the original lyric but they would have spoiled the mood and probably made the song too long so I left them out. What turned out to be the middle 8 was originally verse 2, although it had two lines at the end of it that were also cut.

My absent mind. This was basically frustration at being absent minded. My dad was, to a degree, my mum always has been to a great degree, it's supposed to be a penalty of middle age, but that doesn't mean we have to like it. For a long time this was my favourite of these songs, and I still have a soft spot for it. [re-recorded version with corrected lyric in verse 2]

Let's stop whinging.
This will make more sense as one of a set of songs than by itself. It later won a highly commended entry award at the 2007 UK Songwriting Contest. The idea of the collection of songs was, this character whinges about anything and everything, including eventually whinging about people whinging. He then dies and whinges about the hereafter. I was going to call this song "the grumble grumble". I also considered calling it "the whinging song", and briefly "whinging twits". As to where the idea came from, I think it was from my (former) boss at work, who once remarked that before he was a manager, whenever he was asked to co-operate with colleagues, they always spent (as he put it) "the first ten minutes moaning".

Goodbye tomorrow. As I remember it, like Now and Zen, this was a lyric that started from the title. The introduction started off as strings, but that sounded too big and dramatic, so I noodled with the settings on P8 to get something that came out sounding more like soft panpipes.

Doom is nigh v2. Featuring the Last Trump and the end of civilisation as we know it. My favourite of these songs. Funnily enough this isn't the last song on the CD.

The end
. Set in the hereafter. Orchestral in tone. Three verses on different patterns in different keys, with no middle eight or choruses, make it a stylistic oddity. The rhymes are going to sound very odd to a lot of people - the first line doesn't rhyme until after two other intervening rhymes. I don't remember this having been done by anybody else.

Back cover (Serif PagePlus SE format) Front cover (Serif PagePlus SE format)
There's also a lyric booklet but that's too large to upload here.

You can get PagePlus SE at the PagePlus website. It won't cost you anything, though they will insist on subscribing you to a mailing list so you may want to use a temporary email identity to obtain the license code. Be aware that the Mustn't grumble covers may not be compatible with other versions of Serif PagePlus. You should also be aware that the back prints upside down so you'll need to put the paper in upside down if you're printing on the back of the same sheet.