Cassettes

I have several enormous stashes of cassettes that flat around the house in wobbly piles that invite themselves to be knocked over.

I actually had a listening session last week, because curiosity got the better of me. There were rehearsal tapes, which I only gave a cursory listen to. There was a cassette of trombone parts (sometimes I used to sing the separate parts on to cassettes and give them to the Horns to learn). There were two cassettes with children's musicals, one for the ILEA Youth Theatre, which had a huge cast of probably thirty children. we actually sat in the orchestra pit for that one: me, Tom (Lester Square), the twins Nick and Simon Smith, John Parratt on drums and a French Horn and Oboe player from the ILEA children's orchestra. Anotehr one was from when I was the PRS Composer in Residence at a group of South London feeder Primary Schools and Sedgehill Secondary: a Pop Nativity conceived by their head of music. the funding ran out halfway through and I ended up programming the orchestrations and sending them to the schools. Funnily enough, the naughtiest children were the best singers; it was their playground shouting voices tuned to jolly songs with melodies and lyrics that were easy to remember. It was so interesting doing these projects, and they were a reminder that there are many different ways to be a teacher, and many different ways to be a child, too.

What else? 

I have a tape labelled 'Shriekback', because I was invited by David Allen (who died recently, which was very sad to hear because he was such a nice person) to sing over one of their backing tracks. I went to the little EMI basement studio in Denmark Street, but singing over a flat groove was very difficult to do at the time. I'd thought my vocal was on the tape but it's just the instrumental. I may sing the original melody over it at some time. Also there was a tape from when Alannah Currie asked me to sing/rap an Edith Sitwell poem over one of the tracks. She'd heard an item (ahem) on BBC Radio 4 about a drawing I'd done for an exhibition called Famous Women Eating Breakfast. Mine was Edith Sitwell eating a canary. But again, the tape is only of me reciting the poem, not the complete thing. My friend Rocker suggested putting the Sitwell poem on the Shriekback track. I wonder if that would work? I do know that Debbie Harry was involved in the Sitwell project, but I don't think it ever saw the light of day.

What else?

Dr Devito at The Venue in Victoria, a rumble tumble of a recording if ever there was one. The Monochrome Set were asked to play there for some reason but were not permitted to say it was them. So the band dressed in choir habits from Lester Square's dad's church (he was the Vicar of Fulham), and Bid sang the Holy Bible, or as much of it as he could fit into the allotted time. My job was to play the fiddle, which I'd been given as a birthday present by the girls in the shared house in Willesden about a week before. I'd managed to work out how to play Oh Susannah!, despite all the cats in the house coming into my bedsit and pleading with me not to. Every so often the thundering music stops, and the squeaky strains of the violin can be heard before it all starts off again. A fiddle-playing friend, Simon Walker, picked it up one day and said 'Some of these cheap violins can sound really good...', he played it for a couple of seconds, '... but this one doesn't!'.

Oh, and there's a tape of The Chefs playing in Basildon. I mostly remember chips in newsprint-printed waxed paper cones from that one. the one below is from when me and Carl went to Wales and recorded in a country cottage with friends of our agent, on a Portastudio. I had to programme the Roland Drumatix. My friend Mike said it sounds like someone throwing a drumkit downstairs, and it does. But Pioneer Town became a Helen and the Horns song which was later covered by an acapella choir in San Francisco. The adventures of a song!

A bunch of party tapes went into the bin, and a bunch of compilations went to the local Oxfam shop, which is managed by a music buff. He might enjoy them.

There are millions more: demos, Peel session copies, God only knows what else. I have nothing in the coffers, no swimming pool, no music awards or gold discs, but I have had a bloody interesting musical life, and I continue to do so!