| Curriculum Vitae Bendy-Straight is made up of songs (mostly) written during my undergraduate years at Birmingham University. Back in those days I still had the time to sit and strum the guitar, still had the motivation to make things happen, and was still wide-eyed enough to find a lot to write songs about. There was an early tape I made for myself, largely to remember the songs (Bendy-The Practice Sessions), but this got lost somewhere along the road. It was a shame as some of the recordings featured friends of mine. I later found some of these and they appear on 'The 3 'R's". These songs were recorded in one drunken night while the 4-track tape recorder from recording the Trolley tracks was hanging around at my house. My cat, "Cat", was present, and can be detected. Some of the lyrics can be found here. |
) ) ) |
CD Graphics Front: Shows a Fladbury party. Inside: Track list. Back: A view down Cannon Hill Road, Balsall Heath, Birmngham. Click on the images for large versions. |
| MP3s Available for Download: | |
| Daydream Tripper | One of my favourites. This song was written at home during a university holiday in my second year. I couldn't get to sleep, so I went downstairs for toast and milk, and it just popped out. only later did I realise that virtually none of the lines ryhme. |
| Sunrise Morning | Mmmm. If only life could really be this good. The frst time I recorded this song was with a guy called Hywell who's guitar took it to a new dimension (it was full of blunders, but the concept was great). That version got lost but was later recovered and appears as a rough recording on "The 3 R's". |
| Easy to Cross Mountains | It was only when I picked up a guitar that I really understood the philosophy of the simple feel-good song, rather than trying to find new chord patterns and discarding the familiar. With this song I was trying to get to a new level of happy, carefree songwriting. |
| Last Night's Romance | I don't remember how or when I wrote this comic piece. I was already quite drunk when I get to recording it, and no I don't have 4 hands. I am overdubbed playing the piano twice. |
| Sweet Heartbreak | A more refined comic song. I was always very pleased with my jazz(ish) guitar playing on this. Again, this is a reproduction of an early, rough recording in which I (of course) played much better. |
| Sally Knows | One of my best songs ever. Borrowing heavily from the concepts of Lou Reed's "Berlin" , this is a simply played song of optimistic despair, if that makes any sense. It's the third time I used this chord sequence (the first in my musical, and the second with ASB), and also the best, although the others (redundant in the face of this) aren't at all bad. |
| Glastonbury Sunset | This was my attempt at an epic laid-back festival song, written with one ear thinking about "Damaged" by Primal Scream. The execution doesn't quite match the dream, but I think it could have with a little more time spent on getting a good recording. |