Saturday, July 03, 2021

Not Even My Closest Friends - sleeve notes – Idol Ferry


It’s got to be Kate Bush 

It’s got to be the Nice 

It’s got to be the Eagles 

And Three Dog Night 

 

It’s got to be Lulu 

It’s got to be the Ramones 

It’s got to be Pierre Schaefer 

And the Rolling Stones 

 

It’s got to be the Beach Boys 

It’s got to be Dick Dale 

It’s got to be Brian Eno 

And John Cale 

 

It’s got to be Organum 

It’s got to be the Seeds 

It’s got to be the Beatles 

Playing with Lou Reed 

 

It’s got to be Iggy 

It’s got to be the Cars 

It’s got to be Stockhausen 

And the Spiders From Mars 

 

It’s got to be the Monkees 

It’s got to be Wings 

It’s got to be Momus 

And his Pretty Things 

 

It’s got to be the Faces 

It’s got to be the Clash 

It’s got to be Stackridge 

And Wishbone Ash 

 

It’s got to be Ian Dury 

It’s got to be the Slade 

It’s got to be Johnny Winter 

Eating Marmalade 

 

It’s got to be Dory Previn 

It’s got to be the Rats 

It’s got to be Beyonce 

And her Stray Cats

 

It’s got to be the Blockaders 

It’s got to be the Skids 

It’s got to be Barry White 

And his Heavy Metal Kids 

 

It’s got to be Amen Corner 

It’s got to be the Fall 

It’s got to be Burt Bacharach 

And Lynsey De Paul 

 

It’s got to be Hot Chocolate 

It’s got to be the Cream 

It’s got to be the Sweet 

And Tangerine Dream 

 

It’s got to be Delia Derbyshire 

It’s got to be Judge Dread 

It’s got to be Adam Ant 

And his Medicine Head 

 

It’s got to be Scott Walker 

It’s got to be UFO 

It’s got to be Magama 

And Status Quo 

 

It’s got to be Marc Bolan 

It’s got to be Mungo Jerry 

It’s got to be Billy Idol 

And Bryan Ferry! 

 

It’s got to be 

It’s got to be

credits

 

Another sequencer delay line pattern this time with the BPM and delay time just offset enough to allow for a scrolling or combing effect. The sing over produced the beginnings of a list song. Having got the first couple of acts in place I sat down with pencil and paper and sketched in the rest. I decided to not try too hard, there are some contrivances such as the deserts verse “It’s got to be Hot Chocolate, It’s got to be the Cream” etc, but generally I left the associations between acts fall pretty much as they came to mind. Most of the names are from the 1960s and 70s canon with the odd noise act such as The Blockaders and Organum. I can’t remember why I left Storm Bugs out, it would have rhymed nicely with the Fugs. Anyways inspiration wise the list song has many antecedents though if there was a model of sorts for this one it is “friends” by Adam Ant.  

 

This is another track I left to mature for more than 36 weeks in a cool cellar before rerecording the vocoder vocal, and adding further instrumentation: a hand clap pattern (“Three six nine, the goose drank wine. The monkey chew tobacco on the street car line”),  drums and in a nod to Kraftwerk’s “Europe Endless” an extra sequencer pattern with romantic strings. 

 

I’m mindful that in including in these sleeve notes the various reference to popular songs I may be overly foregrounding the influences as if they were at the forefront of my mind when putting the tracks together. Whereas it is more the case that having been soaked in popular (and unpopular) music for 60 years they seep out whenever one opens one’s mouth and start to sing over a track

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