Free Music Downloads
If I’m known at all it’s for writing
about
music, not
actually writing the stuff - but it’s never stopped me
trying. I’m very lucky indeed to have lots of friends - both
bona fide professionals and fellow hobby musicians with amazing
vocal or instrumental talent - who’ve always been up for
helping out on recording projects. I learnt a long time ago that
I’ve no charisma or great reliability as a performing
musician, but the controlled environment of a studio can be a
wonderful asset!
Here, then, are a few pieces of music from the past few years -
polished up by the latest remastering software courtesy of the very
obliging Cormac O’Kane - which all share the distinction of
being ‘previously unreleased’ in any meaningful sense -
though a couple came close…
‘Against
The World’ (Harper)
Janet
Holmes (vocal), Colin Harper (acoustic/electric guitars), Colin
Henry (dobro), Ali MacKenzie (bass), Liam Bradley (drums/backing
vocal)
Recorded in 2001 at Amberville Studios, Cullybackey, during
sessions for Janet Holmes album
The Road To The West, but
unused.
‘The
Fields Of July’ (Harper)
Conor
Shields (vocal), Brian Connor (piano), Ali Mackenzie (bass), Liam
Bradley (drums)
Recorded in 2001 at Amberville Studios, Cullybackey, at the end of
sessions for Janet Holmes album
The Road To The West, Conor - who
contributed guitar and percussion to other tracks on the session -
wanted to have a go at this song which had earlier that day been
recorded by Janet, in a bigger band arrangement, for the album. I
think we were all knocked out by this completely improvised,
unrehearsed performance from all concerned. It’s the only
song I’ve written about ‘the troubles’ in NI and
Conor shares my view of such matters, namely this: all extremists
of all persuasions are a blight on society and all our politicians
are a (obscenely remunerated) waste of space. Conor has
subsequently been involved in organising the East Belfast national
election candidature of ‘Rainbow’ George Weiss and his
‘Vote For Yourself’ party. Me, I voted for him (or
‘myself’, depending how pedantic we want to be on the
matter).
‘Be The
One’ (Harper/Archer/Monro)
Janet
Holmes (vocal, backing vocal), Tina McSherry/Gillian Pollock/Helen
McGurk (backing vocal), Colin Harper (electric guitar), Gary Aiken
(piano, keys, programming)
Co-written (words) with one-time Sweet Mary Jane vocalist Rick
Monro - currently web-designer, for Janet Holmes and the
Wildlife
Albums project among
others - and with singer/songwriter/guitarist Iain Archer (music),
this song was recorded live in garage band style with a cast of
several at Green Dolphin Studios, Belfast, in late 1995. Cutting a
long story short Gary Aiken at Novatech Studios, Belfast, remixed
it over Christmas leading to the version now available on The
Wildlife Album (2004), but he also went a stage further in
rebuilding it - with none of the original elements left - as this
90s pop kind of thing. It was quite exciting to be involved in at
the time, I must admit - seeing something develop towards the
tantalising potential commercial success: a novelty for me! I roped
in all my great-women-singer pals, including for the first time
Janet Holmes - someone I only knew from having seen SOS gigs in the
80s and who was at that stage living in Comber and not doing much
music as far as I could see. She was up for it and did a great job
- though I don’t think she was wild about the resulting pop
production of the track. Me, I did something approximating a
Richard Thompson style guitar solo and Gary made some kind of sense
of a few different takes in the editing. It wound up on the 1997
100-only cassette-album
Nothing Is Easy, credited to
The Legends Of Tomorrow. Something I really needed to get out of my
system at the time, but was too coy to put my name to!
(Nevertheless… this wasn’t quite the end of the song
and its many guises though: former Adventures
songwriter/guitarist/production whiz Pat Gribben had a bash at
remixing/editing the Janet version a couple of years later, adding
a key change and guitar solo of his own, cutting a verse or two,
sticking a harmony vocal section at the front… Not that I
ever did anything with it. Really, we just don’t know when to
give up, do we?)
‘Letting
Go’ (Harper)
Helen
McGurk (vocal), Martin Hayes (violin), Cara (flute), Steve
‘G:Raff’ Jones (guitars, bass, keyboards,
programming)
Recorded during 1995 at Novatech Studios, Belfast, and with
Martin’s amazing violining generously recorded at Matt
Purcell’s studio in Ennis, County Clare, during a day off in
a tour, this is another of those reworked-at-Gary’s tales.
Originally a rather Waterboys-ish acoustic based thing, local
production/multi-instrumental prodigy Steve Jones heard the rough
mix - which wasn’t quite happening - and offered to
mix/fix/remix it himself. Keeping Helen’s lead vocal and
sampling phrases from Martin’s original violin performance -
doubled on flute by his pal Cara, to add texture - he rebuilt the
track from the base up. It was a master class in the art, and
certainly indicative of his current career as musician/producer to
the stars. Again, this has only ever appeared on the
Nothing Is Easy cassette
compilation - although the full Martin Hayes violin performance
(too good to languish!) and my original acoustic guitar part were
subsequently resurrected as the basis for the Janet Holmes
recording of the song, available on her album
The Road To The West (2004). Good job
there’d been a click track…
‘Letting
Go’ (Harper)
Tina
McSherry (vocal), Colin Harper (acoustic guitar), James Devlin
(electric guitar), Keith Law (bass), Cormac O’Cathain
(keyboards), Feargal O’Cathain
(drums)
A supergroup! This is another one recorded, pretty much live, at
Green Dolphin Studios, Belfast, for the insane Nothing Is Easy
project. It featured members of hot local rock bands of the era
(1995) the New Brontes and Devlin Law and the peerless Tina
McSherry of happening trad band Tamalin. As I recall, Tina arrived
late for the session (an approach she retains to this day, I have
to say!), hadn’t bothered listening to the demo, learnt the
song from me on the stairs while everyone else was set up and
raring to go… and effortlessly delivered a brilliant
performance minutes later. Amazing. Everyone else delivered the
goods too - Cormac twice in fact, as the engineer’s assistant
managed, a few days later, to accidentally erase his original
keyboard track. I’m honoured to say that while I later fell
out of touch, for a year or two here and there, with all concerned,
I’ve re-established contact in recent times and remain
friends with all of them - every one of them a terrific songwriter
in his/her own right. Feargal and Keith are now involved in TV
production, Cormac is a studio wizard, TV composer and follower of
dreams (rather like myself) - including his own ongoing recording
project with the great Helen McGurk - while James Devlin, having
taken three or four years out of music, is just now, at the time of
writing (May 2006) coming back to live performance and remains as
captivating as ever.
‘Can’t
Chase The Devil’ (Duffy Power)
Terry
Sharpe (vocal), Colin Harper (guitars), Mark McCluney (harmonica),
Ali MacKenzie (bass), Conor Shields
(bass)
Recorded as an ‘arrangement demo’ at Novatech Studios
and at Peter ‘Duke Special’ Wilson’s Lingerie
Studios, Belfast, circa 2000, this is a bit of an oddity. Having
achieved a couple of successes in adding instrumentation to new
guitar/vocal tracks sent over by British blues legend Duffy Power,
things were becoming more difficult - in terms of interpreting
exactly what Duffy was hoping for with each track.
‘Can’t Chase The Devil’ was a manic (and
compelling as it stood) delta blues composition in its
composer’s original form. I had an idea to reduce a couple of
the chords to aggressive arpeggios and give it a more structured
blues/rock framework. Ex-Adventures vocalist Terry Sharpe came
along to Peter Wilson’s studio once the basics had been
recorded earlier at Novatech and gave a great vocal performance,
coming up with the Cream-like harmony parts as well. I added a
rather bonkers ‘60s pseudo-Cream guitar solo - entirely live,
even down to the brief pause in the middle where I’m clearly
thinking ‘What the hell am I doing, and what do I do
next?!‘ - and Mark McCluney wailed a bit on harmonica -
despite not having one in the right key! In fact, Duffy I’m
afraid thought the whole thing was in the wrong key and
didn’t really care for the approach. I was a little
disappointed - I did think we had something worth pursuing - but
not offended: after all, Duffy has worked with the very best
musicians there are in British blues/jazz/rock and it doesn’t
take a genius to work out that I/we are not among them. But we did
our best.
