Heavy Metal Ballad

Week 15 of the grand mp3 download extravaganza.

We’re coming towards the end of this run of free downloadable goodies. Whilst there is more Deserters music in the archives, it’s not yet in a form suitable for the web. I’ve probably got enough for another two weeks, so enjoy it while it lasts.

This week we have a song which has a title which is a bit of a misnomer – ‘Heavy Metal Ballad’ – as it is neither heavy metal, nor a ballad. It has a similar feel to ‘One Night in the Back of a Fire Engine’, but deals with the teen angst of spots, dental hygiene and body odour. Simple and upbeat, with a bit of a nasty streak. Lyrics by Lee Newe, once again, with music by yours truly.

Click here to download.

The Complete 1978 Song

Week 14 of the grand mp3 download extravaganza.

This song has a similar feel to ‘The Woman In Red’, however this is certainly no love story, but a very sparsely arranged murder ballad, inspired by the story of Lizzie Borden. Music and Lyrics are by Lee Newe on this one, which has a bit of a strange history.

It started life as a heavy metal celebration of biker life; “Motorbike, Motorbike, Do what you like. I’m gonna pull a chick on Saturday Night.” The original lyrics by Lee were put to music by yours truly, but never recorded. Probably just as well. I do still have a backing track for it somewhere, but the final song was a definite improvement on the original.

Click here to download.

Drevulon Poseiden

Week 12 of the grand mp3 download extravaganza.

Another track featuring the Newe/Bordet – lyrics/music writing combination, this track deals with urban alienation and the suppression of the man in the street. Guest stars Andy on guitar – a pretty nice solo – and features yours truly on vocals for a change.

That’s us caught back up with schedule, so back to normal next week, hopefully.

Click here to download.

Brain Drain Rap

Week 9 of the grand mp3 download extravaganza.

OK, I missed a couple of weeks. Here’s a concerted effort to fill the gap…

This song was written by Lee, and deals with the general user-unfriendliness of computers. This was written in a time before Windows, when the Sinclair empire was still king (in the UK, at least), hard disks cost about the same as a small car and held less data than a mobile phone does today. Things have improved since then. Or have they?

The song is written as a kind of cheesy rap, totally programmed into the computer with only a short acoustic (mandolin) part at the end, and represents an ongoing battle against the computerised world. The part of the computer is played by a ZX Spectrum speech synthesiser – cutting edge stuff in its day!

Click here to download.

The Woman In Red

Week 4 of the grand mp3 download extravaganza.

Both Lee and I have written ‘Mysterious Woman in Colour X’ songs for some reason. Mine was called ‘White Silk’, and may make its way here eventually. Lee’s song was called ‘The Woman In Red’ and is probably just about the slowest and most ballad-like song the Deserters recorded. It was recorded in a single shot with just Lee and myself featured, though I later went back and recorded some extra keyboard backing to fill out the sound a little more.

Click here to download.

Track of the Week

One Night in the Back of a Fire Engine

The aim is to make a song available every week until the well runs dry, and try and provide some insight to the track here. I’ve started off with a classic Deserters song, as featured in ‘The Songwriters Guild’ compilation mentioned previously.

The song was written by Lee Newe many years before it was recorded. Jennifer Leigh features on lead vocals, with the Porter Girls on backing vocals. The ‘NeeNaw’ sound is provided by George the Bedford Fire Engine.

Click here to download.

Go to the Deserters website and look on the ‘Tuneography’ page for more details and other songs.

Enjoy!

Having said that, there are some little gems in there which I’m going to revisit shortly. Which leads me on to the subject in hand… Dunoon

I don’t recall consciously writing so many songs about Dunoon, but it clearly made a significant impact on my psyche. A quick bit of highly condensed history; the town of Dunoon was a traditional seaside resort in the West of Scotland, which has a unique character compared to others as it is more accessible by boat than train or bus, and is still regularly visited by the steamer Waverley. After seaside resorts lost their charm, Dunoon benefitted (or suffered, depending on your point of view) from the nearby US naval installation at the Holy Loch, and had an economic boost from the many servicemen who stayed in the town.

Lee and I both have spent time in Dunoon, as our families had many ties to the area, with many fond memories. However, as youths we were quite disparaging about the town, mainly because it had passed its glory days, and seemed to be trying to hold on to the past too hard, as well as the fact that it had little to offer the younger generation.

In all I found four songs related to the town in some way. Kirn Beach is an instrumental inspired by the walk from Dunoon to Kirn and beyond, whilst Jim Crow is an upbeat look at the things that have passed around Kirn’s local landmark (a large glacial erratic painted with a black face). The Man in the Boat is a sad tale about the figure on the road to Dunoon who sits in a boat in the middle of a field, and … And the Rest is short song about the trek up the Rest and Be Thankful (a saddle between two glens marking the top of a long steep climb for travellers).

Add these to the already recorded Rage in Dunoon, and there’s nearly half an album’s worth of material. Jeez – a concept album about Dunoon, what next?

One of the self-built instruments used by the Deserters in our earlier days was an electronic gadget called the Slydee. It grew from a physics project about transistors where we had to make a circuit to flick between two bulbs. Lee (Newe) and I figured that if we linked this to a speaker instead of a bulb we would get a tone, and we were right. I then added a fader rescued from some old music system or something similar (Tandy, perhaps?) to give a very basic and almost totally uncontrollable keyboardless synth with a character all of its own.

I was wondering about the possibility of rebuilding it some time ago, as I’ve no idea what became of it, when I heard a radio programme about the theremin. After a bit of research I came to the conclusion that I deeply want one. No, need one!

Theremins (therema?) are controlled without touch. You move your right hand near its pitch aerial and left hand near the volume aerial to control the sound. It at worst it sounds just like a Slydee – at best it sounds almost like a human voice. Some folk use it for special effects, whilst others like Peter Pringle have gained sufficient mastery of this awkward littlecritter to make some wonderful music. I aim to be somewhere in between.