NEW YORK MEMORIES

I’m back in London after a whirlwind trip to the States. My first gigs with the band since 2019. My first NYC solo show for as long as I can remember. It was vital to reconnect with friends and Enemies alike. Despite the absence of genius guitarist, Riley McMahon, the band sounded better than ever. They even let me play some of my recent ditties: two or three in New York, seven or eight for the double set in DC.

Miraculously, on the very morning of our last New York rehearsal Riley texted us the news that Natalie was heading to the hospital to give birth. The next day as John, Tim, Kevin and I drove down to DC we received the even better news: Annabel Gray McMahon! Mazel tov!!

The turn-out for all the shows was heartwarming. The reception for the band at Rockwood was so enthusiastic it felt like we could have played Humpty Dumpy seven times and we’d still have been called for an encore. Big thanks to Ken, Matt, Dan, Stephen and all the staff at that wonderful club for inviting us back and providing the context for a beautiful reunion. And thanks to all our friends and fans who came out to support.

Enemy #1 (John Young) ready to rehearse in DUMBO

The show at the deej in Washington DC was equally encouraging. Dan and Maria throw the best house party on the East Coast. This was the first for them since the pandemic. No sign at all they were out of practice. Everyone was ready to hear live music and be amongst friends. Big thanks to Chris Watling and Peter Fox for sitting in (at the last minute) on sax and keyboards respectively. It was also lovely to have Victoria Villalobos join us us for a few songs fresh from her second kidney transplant. Victoria shared many a wonderful night with the band back in the Fez days in the early 2000s and was also part of the gospel choir on our Building A Road album.

Dan and Maria, hosts of the deej in Washington DC

A few hours after the double set I was on a plane to visit my eldest brother Nigel in Minnesota. Nigel suffered a bad stroke several years back. It was great to see him.

My eldest brother Nigel and his wife Connie

So much to process. So good to play music with friends and Enemies alike. Thanks to everyone for the fellowship and the encouragement. Thanks to Peter and Sophia for the NYC hospitality and to Dan and Maria for the same in Washington DC. Most of all, thanks to John Young, Tim Vaill, Candace DeBartolo, Kevin Cordt and Tony Lauria for the resumption of hostilities.

Farewell Manhattan

TILL MY DYING DAY

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY! Here's the next in my series of recording reminiscences...

The compliment I like receiving most is that my music is honest. I like to think this honesty is a kind of articulated ambivalence, a recognition that we can feel many conflicting emotions at the same time, that things keep changing. But the chorus of TILL MY DYING DAY (see video HERE) doesn’t seem to jive with that philosophy:

If I’m ever gonna love you
Then you know I’m gonna love you
Till my dying day

Okay, there is a conditional there. The singer may be hedging his bets, but it doesn’t sound like it to me in the context of the song.  Or am I just remembering what the lyrics were originally? When I first wrote the song the chorus was:

I’m never gonna love you
You know I’m gonna love you
Till my dying day

Truly. I had to be cryptic. I couldn’t bring myself to make a promise for a lifetime. Even in a song. Even though so many of my favorite songs by other artists do make such promises. It’s one thing to hear it from someone else, another to write it. Perhaps I should dwell longer on this point since it’s probably the most interesting cul de sac of this particular blog post but I’ll keep moving forward.

After several years of singing the awkward original chorus I began singing the song as it is on this recording from English Dream. 

Why? 

It just felt right.

I saw you there
In London town
Changing colors
Red to brown
As the sun went down

You’re an old lady
You’re a little girl
Caught you smiling
A string of pearls
As the sun went down

If I’m ever gonna love you
Then you know I’m gonna love you
Till my dying day

Someone on the radio
Is calling your name
You’re under the ground
On a Bakerloo train
Quarter to five

I bought me a ticket
Chelsea Arsenal
My team wasn’t winning
I thought of you
As the sun went down

If I’m ever gonna love you
Then you know I’m gonna love you
Till my dying day

THE RECORDING

There are rock songs with classic arrangements that can sound just as good stripped down to the minimum. This is the opposite. The song is nothing! It may sound like a perfectly respectable singer-songwriter number to be sung in the background at an acoustic cafe but it’s too slight even for that. It’s ALL ABOUT THE TEXTURE - the echo of the guitars, the sustain of John Young’s bass, the plinkety plink of Tony’s right hand on the piano, the plate reverb on the vocals and, most of all, Tim Vaill’s brushwork. Add Candace & Kevin’s weaving horns at the end plus Riley McMahon’s sumptuous mix and voila: one of my favorite Enemies recordings. 

So much so that it’s the opening track on ENGLISH DREAM. And an easy choice at that. We could easily have cut the intro down by a third but the vocal is exponentially more effective when it enters on the 25th bar rather than the 17th. Yes, I’m counting.

THE VIDEO

Once again we didn’t use the footage shot of the band at St. John’s Lutheran Church. As with Clear Your Mind we had dressed in 40s clothes and we (as in the royal WEE) looked ridiculous. And once again the archive British Council footage that Clare Elliott had edited for the background projection was simply too good. 

Luckily, Clare had also shot some video of the band recording the basic tracks at the Bunker Studio. So we very occasionally dissolve in and out of the black and out world like colorful ghosts. There wasn’t any footage of Kevin from the Bunker session because the horns overdubbed their parts later but, if you pay close attention, you’ll see him make a brief appearance near the end in a waistcoat and with his hair slicked back - the only remnant of the St. John’s footage for this song.

Still, the stars of the video are two British actors from the 1940s. Who are they? They’re not even credited in the archive footage. They are now ghosts as well. They both starred in a short 1944 propaganda film called London Terminus. It’s about a postal worker taking a woman for an evening date in the wartime capital.

We’re so used to postmodern appropriation that we no longer question the morality of using people’s images for our own purposes. Legally, there’s no problem - the film is public domain and the British Council granted us permission. But is it right to slap my song on top of their faces and share it with the world? The question is already old-fashioned.

It was only recently I realized how much the video reminds me of my mother and father. They also met in London in the 1940s, just a few years after the war. My father had dark curly hair. My mother was a glamorous American. They got married at St. Martin-In-The-Fields Church off Trafalgar Square in 1950. The marriage lasted 64 years until my father’s dying day in February 2014.

This is my Valentine to them. I love you, Mum and Dad.