A lot of my songs have little 'easter eggs' inside them i.e. hidden meanings or specific parts I'm proud of, plus quite a few laughs in the studio. For those who enjoy my music and wanted to know more, I figured I would try and 'get some of the stories down'. Are you sitting comfortably..? Then let's begin with Just Me's opening track; But I Really Want To.

What a mad song! The original plan was to have it around track 4/5, but it's short, catchy, easy to record and has an initial energy rush... so it became the opener. The "Yeah" is of course me being silly and a reference to Oasis' LiveForever, Dan decided to go one better by adding a vibraslap, pure cheese! 

It was written 1993 ish and the first demo dated back to a 4x track tape machine in 1996 with me struggling to play every instrument. For the re-record on the computer in 2000 I drafted in Dan (bass) and Neil (lead guitar) but the acoustic part is still mine because hey I am a rhythm guitar player by trade and it's my song!

Timing is crucial on this one (it's part of the hook and an awkward swine)! I remember constantly telling Dan to 'do [the bass] again'. 4 hours later he was unimpressed (!) but it was worth it. The opening riff in particular is a swine on bass (but easy on guitar... which I wrote it on), Dan pleaded with me not to loose that take! I directed Dan to do a line with octaves and then a scale higher up the bass, very flashy and really propels the song forward. That large range in sound made it very difficult to mix, I spent hours getting it just right.

My own acoustic guitar part took an hour, Dan had chatted around the time about whether it was better to get an acoustic guitar sound by plugging it in or using a microphone. So I thought why not try both? i.e. record the same performance plugged in and via microphone and then move one to the left speaker the other to the right. After all I wanted a very bright sound to hit you across the head. Took me about 1 hour, but I did cheat... I cut and pasted! This lead to a happy accident because I cut and pasted out of time, it made the guitar feel like it's bounce around a lot. Listen to verse 4 ("I realise that you're so near"...) and you can hear it in effect (that technique appears on album #2... sssssh).

The basic drum pattern is from me, plus a little help from Dan. The big 80's reverb / Phil Collins snare drum sound my idea! I remember 2007 ish mixing the rhythm section together, constantly hitting re-play one Saturday... next thing I looked at the clock and it was 9pm! I had forgotten to get any tea!

The oldest takes are Neil on lead guitar from one night in late 2000, took a total of one hour! As with Dan I direct him in a 'start here' but allowing for creative freedom. The song is silly, so I told him to camp it up as much as possible. The response? "Are you sure? We're talking near YMCA great big handle bar moustaches here!" Well I did say I wanted it over the top... Also pay particuarl attention to the sound of Neil's guitar, Dan had the idea of copying it three times to simlulate a delay effect. Clever! 

What is this song about? God knows! I just looked in the mirror one night, loosely thought of a girl I knew and started singing gibberish. Well the groove felt good! I suppose you could say it's about indecisiveness, But I Really Do / Don't want to ask this girl out. To add emphasis there is an extra beat on the don't; that's my hook. Then there was the line "I went to bed, tossed and turned all night". Oh! Unintentional innuendo! So on stage the introduction is usually:

"This is about liking a girl... yet not liking her.
About wanting to ask her out... yet not wanting to ask her out.
And so, you spank the monkey instead!"

Usually brings a few gasps from the audience! Hey I'm an attention slut!

Vocally I went for an equally over the top Elvis lip curling style... but despite writing the tune, it doesn't naturally suit my voice! I couldn't ask Elvis to sing it, so instead I relied on a little 21st magic called pitch correction, but let's just keep it our little secret eh? Live of course I can't do that, so instead I do a silly jaw movement on the key phrase to divert people's attention, hey everyone needs a gimmick!

And then we have the ending... given the subject matter I decided to make the relaxing groan for a laugh(!) Dan decided to go one better... he's credited as performing an FHM. Why? Well that as my groan dies away you can hear a flicking noise. It's a recording of Dan dropping a copy of the magazine FHM on the floor!!!!! :-)

For the record FHM is a lads magazine with lots of 'artistic pictures of ladies', the issue in question from 08/2006 featuring Gemma Atkinson in a pool and a VERY nice pose. :-) 

Right that's track one down! Hopefully I'll get around to track 2 soon as long as I don't get Lost. Again... (could... not... resist...)