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I decided that to assist my songwriting I would need a keyboard, it being a tad difficult to get a distinctive chord sound on a Bass. So I trundled off to Turnkey Soundhouse on the Charing Cross Road and spent an afternoon twiddling, noodling and listening. There were some interesting players but I knew my keyboard skills were not something to brag about I just needed another means of writing. So I eventually settled on the Yamaha PSR GX 76.
I wasn't going to gig with the instrument. It was within my means and gave me the opportunity to practice playing keyboards. So I started off for home with a few ideas of how to get started. It came with the usual book of words but I didn't have the time for learning the tech spec. I wanted to get my fingers and ears working. I ran through a few scales and the usual arpeggio's and triads. Then I took a break came back to it 2 hours later and started with a groove I was familiar with, the swing or shuffle groove. I just set a moderate tempo and started trying differing sounds. There was one that I kept returning to. It was pretty simple but it was enabling me to make some progress. After a few hours I decided that I needed a break and even though it was midnight I'd go for a walk. It appeared to be a balmy summers evening. Well, I opened my front door took two steps and was hit by an overpowering whiff of something that I took to be decidedly toxic. The local factories were pouring their hearts out. I had a decision to make, take a walk in this toxic soup or abandon my walk. The latter was chosen for the good of my health. Little did I know that I would that very night complete the basic harmony and the major part of the melody of what became the title track of Joocypeach's first album. It also became the starting point for a recurring theme, do I walk or do I try and finish at least one song's harmony, structure or melody. And there it was no more walks at midnight for 18 months. Many many songs were written completed enjoyed and then deemed to be not what this album was showing itself to be about. I expected it to be a rather dissonant aggressive affair I think I was the most surprised when it showed its true colours and displayed a decidedly mellow bent. Lots of Jazz chords and Jazzier structures but very soulful conversations between instruments. And there it was Joocypeach's first offering was proving to be a Soul Jazz affair.
I couldn't see my roots in any of the tracks. Where was my childhood growing up listening to Radio Caroline, sneaking into my sisters room to play over and over "Roll Over Beethoven" on the "With The Beatles" album. Where was my all time favourite Steely Dan track's influence, there was no reflection of "Fire in the Hole" here with that decidedly appeallingly odd keyboard opening. No four part , three part harmonies or even Vocals with backing vocals added so that ruled out another Beatles or Beach Boys influence. Certainly Led Zeppelin were nowhere in there. Free played great rootsy blues where was that ? Its closest link was "Big Boy" but did Free ever use odd meter ? Ah, odd meter that must be the Yes fan in me but did they play six four time over four four time in the same song and still get it to feel safe. Where precisely had I come from with these songs, I couldn't hear it. It took a Joocypeach fan to tell me he could hear the traces of Steely Dan. He compared the guitar playing with Bill Frissell and Jan Gabarek. Another fan compared Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto (Hey steady on the Irony old chap ) and even Marvin Gaye's "Here my Dear" so I guess I am just too close to it. I certainly don't think that we play completely unique music, I'd frankly be amazed and so I won't say it. But I did spend a long, long time trying to see where the influences came from and where they showed themselves in our music and it was somewhat startling to get other peoples take and what they heard. My tutors when I was at Musicians Institute said that it may take years before something you've heard and enjoyed comes out in your own playing. Well if the Prokofiev comment is said equally in jest as well as being a tad serious then I must confess I was thirteen when I was last played or listened to his music. My then Music teacher at school I believe played it once and tried to show us where the dots and themusic matched up. Unsuccessfully as I recall, so I wasn't even listening in that serious listening mode I was being expected to conduct an academic exercise with a serious piece of music. So do you hear it, let me know I must once again confess I can't. But hey, I've on the odd occassion heard a Dave Gilmour and a Nat King Cole lick suddenly appear in something Meinrad has played and he wasn't conscious of it it just presented itself as appropriate for that moment in that song on that occassion where he had heard I don't even begin to understand as far as I am aware he does'nt have one single song in his library by Pink Floyd. He's a Bill Evans man !
Hey, whilst I sit here writing this I am reminded of the too numerous to mention times that my computer and by default my studio crashed into oblivion. Three times I had to completely undelete the items that had auto deleted. I have never understood why or how this happened and even when I went to my back up CD R's they showed the correct volume of usage but refused point blank to open. The computer only ever told me that they were just icons even though the memory showed it to be a totally false and inaccurrate tag. I have decided that my machine is essentially human, there are days when you get a feel for the way it is going to behave, give up immediately and go to the pub. Indeed, there is an absolutely stonking solo from our resident guitarist of the title track that was to be considered for the final take, and would have made it I guess given that I can still hear it in my head, It's on the machine but can I get it out, can I relaunch that 600 mb of track, no its just an icon. Perhaps the pollution storm over Erith as Brian so elegantly displayed on the sleeve is not only a real one but one going on inside my computer as well, how's that for surreal.
Even the vocals have had there fair share of this computers temperementality, I invited a friend Anthony Michael (ex Emin8) to come and do the two vocal tracks. On the day he arrived the machine refuse to record. then when it recorded it mixed and matched the Guitar and Bass tracks from entirely differing songs together to the tracks he had had to practise with. After five hours we gave up and he went home and then on tour the following week. When Victoria came round she had practised the one song and just listened to the other, she'd never actually sung to the demo she had and yet she in two and a half hours nailed both tracks and stylishly as well. It was almost as though the computer was getting involved in the personnel selections and arrangement criteria and I had become just an adjunct. So you can imagine my relief and startled surprise when we finally had an album "In the can" completed and done. Stressful, sometimes. Annoying, definitely but ultimately satisfying despite the battle of wills that I have had to conduct with my Apple G3 we got through and we give to you some neat harmonies and simple catchy melodies and some very fine and superbly apt musical performances entirely at home with the songs and their inspiration. Go and enjoy.
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