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Post by peluche on May 8, 2005 8:09:18 GMT 1
One of my favourite tracks of all time, by the mighty Blue Oyster Cult.
Now, having just played all the soundbytes on the SFtBH web site - I can't imagine for the life of me why you chose to cover this - it seems, mmm, a completely 'different' sound for you??
Is this a personal favourite of most of the band ??
How much have you changed it from the original (apart from the additional instruments, banjo, flute, etc) ??
Lood forward to the feedback ...
Cheers, Chris
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Post by Mix on May 8, 2005 13:36:03 GMT 1
Chris, you just have to hear SftBH's version of this!!!!! I am a huge fan of the original, but this one just completely blows me away  I don't know if I can adequately put it into words.... but I'm going to try: The addition of the instruments you mention, give the track an...earthy yet etheral quality. The vocals are clear, the harmonising is exquisite... Sorry, I did my best, but you really have to hear it. It is currently permanently on top of the CD pile, ang gets played every day as a sort of 'getting into the mood' track, often more than once. It really blows me away, I really hope it is on the list for The Steamboat Mic ;D |
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Post by Tash on May 8, 2005 14:07:47 GMT 1
I particularly love the middle part with the Guitar flute Piano and Violin- very Slavic!
;D
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Post by Tash on May 8, 2005 14:08:35 GMT 1
Why am I suddenly a guest?  |
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Post by Mix on May 8, 2005 14:18:38 GMT 1
Might be because you haven't got an A on the end of Tash maybe  Mic |
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Post by Slim Shaney on May 8, 2005 15:19:37 GMT 1
One of my favourite tracks of all time, by the mighty Blue Oyster Cult. Now, having just played all the soundbytes on the SFtBH web site - I can't imagine for the life of me why you chose to cover this - it seems, mmm, a completely 'different' sound for you?? Is this a personal favourite of most of the band ?? How much have you changed it from the original (apart from the additional instruments, banjo, flute, etc) ?? Lood forward to the feedback ... Cheers, Chris I'll try and keep this brief (mind you, my definition of 'brief' is, well...). While were recording 'Too' James would occasionally muck about with the intro riff to 'Reaper' - it being one of those songs that is always fun to muck about with on guitar (I was doing mostly 'Kayleigh' and 'Song Within A Song' ;D) and conversation got around to how 'reinventing' classic rock tracks has often got exposure for bands who people may not have previously thought of investigating (cf The Scissor Sisters most recently) and also how the janglyness of Reaper would probably work quite well within the framework of the music we were playing - other things we've mucked about with live have included Queen's 'Fat Bottomed Girls', for instance - and might even get us on the radio, even if only out of curiosity value. After all, Reaper is one of those things that everyone can vaguely hum without ever really knowing why. Personally, I happen to like 'Agents of Fortune', but then since I used to work in a record shop I never had to go through the inconvenience of having to buy it, since I could listen to it whenever I wanted anyway. Happy days. Having done a beer festival at High Barn in Essex in return for bartered free studio time we were faced with the prospect of a day's recording and rather than rework something we already had, we decided that it might be fun to have a go at the thing we'd been chatting about some months previously. We gave Fiddly a copy of the original and told him to learn the lead guitar part but otherwise avoided slavishly learning it as we wanted to be able to express ourselves within the confines of the song (pseuds corner ahoy!  ). We decided to not alter the structure of the song at all, but the middle bit was clearly going to be a bit tricky, however since we'd got chummy with one Tony Turrell, keyboard player of this parish, we thought he might be able to do something with it, and I asked him if he'd be prepared to do a "Firth of Fifthy sort of thing" in the middle. After one rehearsal in James' shed, during which he not only played 'Firth of Fifth' but also (to James's delight) snatches of ELP and the theme from Roobarb and Custard (and 'Kayleigh' properly - after all, it is his day job...), it turned out that he could, and very kindly agreed to spend a morning in the middle of Essex an hour's drive away from home, for free. On the actual day of recording Tony Winn on banjo came up with a new intro-intro riff which James doubled up on and we had a start which fulfilled the plan of making people think "What's this?....Oooh, it's THIS...". As the day went on, various people joined in with their ideas, including Helen's idea of doubling the middle bit riff with some spooky flute, and some more of James's incidental flourishes, and Pete Pawsey dropped some harmonica and zither weirdness all over it (most of which we had to drop out in the mixing of what was already a very busy song, instrumentally). Finally Tony Winn dropped in an astonishing bit of banjo picking at the end which James and I immediately fell in love with. Gibbon doubled some harmonies with Hel and I, er made some tea. We clearly weren't finished, but Lord Bullen of High Barn kindly agreed to give us a couple of evenings to finish off, during one of which our friend and drummer Paul Read came in to shake things, hit things (including his own thighs, leading to a surreal discussion about which part of his legs sounded best), crescendo some cymbals and finally just went for it and sat down behind a convenient drum kit and played along with the whole thing as his last action. Engineer Chris was astonished, having never seen it done that way round before, and took his number ;D The net effect of this was that now, of course, it sounded much more like the original than when we'd started out, and than we intended. With so much going on it then took another couple of nights of earache to mix, including some tricky decisions about what to leave in and what to drop out, and some handy cut n' pasting of slurred notes (mainly mine) and judicious use of some corrective technology to help with some of Fiddly's more outre moments in the middle. I think it's a darned fine-sounding curate's egg, which is why we decided to put it out as a stand-alone single and fill it up with old bits and bobs of James' and Mine that we think provide sort of roadsigns to our current location. And, no, it hasn't got us on the radio  Cheers Shane ps James, Gib and I knew it, I don't think anyone else apart from TT and Reado had a clue who it was by, but then that's the Folk wing of the band for you...... |
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Post by James SftBH on May 8, 2005 15:33:43 GMT 1
One of my favourite tracks of all time, by the mighty Blue Oyster Cult. Now, having just played all the soundbytes on the SFtBH web site - I can't imagine for the life of me why you chose to cover this - it seems, mmm, a completely 'different' sound for you?? Is this a personal favourite of most of the band ?? How much have you changed it from the original (apart from the additional instruments, banjo, flute, etc) ?? Lood forward to the feedback ... Cheers, Chris What Shane said... James |
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Post by peluche on May 9, 2005 7:26:08 GMT 1
I'll try and keep this brief (mind you, my definition of 'brief' is, well...). Cheers Shane ... excellent (brief !!) response ;D |
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Post by Slim Shaney on May 22, 2005 15:02:28 GMT 1
Further steps in the SftBH programme of world domination as we despatch copies of the single to New Zealand!
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). We decided to not alter the structure of the song at all, but the middle bit was clearly going to be a bit tricky, however since we'd got chummy with one Tony Turrell, keyboard player of this parish, we thought he might be able to do something with it, and I asked him if he'd be prepared to do a "Firth of Fifthy sort of thing" in the middle. After one rehearsal in James' shed, during which he not only played 'Firth of Fifth' but also (to James's delight) snatches of ELP and the theme from Roobarb and Custard (and 'Kayleigh' properly - after all, it is his day job...), it turned out that he could, and very kindly agreed to spend a morning in the middle of Essex an hour's drive away from home, for free. On the actual day of recording Tony Winn on banjo came up with a new intro-intro riff which James doubled up on and we had a start which fulfilled the plan of making people think "What's this?....Oooh, it's THIS...". As the day went on, various people joined in with their ideas, including Helen's idea of doubling the middle bit riff with some spooky flute, and some more of James's incidental flourishes, and Pete Pawsey dropped some harmonica and zither weirdness all over it (most of which we had to drop out in the mixing of what was already a very busy song, instrumentally). Finally Tony Winn dropped in an astonishing bit of banjo picking at the end which James and I immediately fell in love with. Gibbon doubled some harmonies with Hel and I, er made some tea.
