What I was alive for

04: Try

Recorded December 2001, Smallwood Studios, Redditch, Worcs
Performers Rob Harris (lead vocal, guitar), Paul Roach (guitar), Richard Banner (bass), Chris Green (drums), Pete Green (backing vocal, tambourine)
Producer Mat Webster
Released Effortless cd album January 2004

Download: mp3, 5.5mb
(right click and select 'save target as' or 'save link as')


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence


When I fell in love with pop music 20 years ago it was because Morrissey was explaining what I was feeling. First of all, he quite clearly ascertained the precise contents of my soul using some sort of spooky witchcraft mojo. And then he transcribed it all – again, quite obviously using some kind of supernatural powers to choose exactly the words and phrases that would stop my heart for a moment, drain the colour from my cheeks and leave me gasping for breath in the shock of recognition, the deep, deep, visceral shock that there was at least one other person among the billions in the world, despite all impressions to the contrary, who Knew How I Felt.


Then Morrissey started writing about East End gangsters and whining hypocritically about immigration so I found something better to listen to. But songs like 'You Just Haven't Earned it Yet, Baby' left me with an enduring love for those lyrics in the second person, where the narrator is seemingly addressing some troubled teenage type who feels the whole world is against them, who has a great deal of love if they can only bestow it, who yearns for independence and freedom and is very often trying to escape from the rubbish small town where they live, and all of that. It's a form that maybe has its roots in things like Billy Liar, and outlives Morrissey (come on, he's effectively been dead for years) in songwriters like Stuart Murdoch.

'Try' was my attempt at contributing to this venerable genre of lyrics. I hope that hasn't ruined it for you, because it's not quite as calculated as all that, and the section that rhymes 'anachronistic' and 'masochistic' (ha!) isn't just showing off. It derives from the feeling I sometimes get that the notion of actually giving a shit about anything seems to many people a little quaint in the ironic, post-ideological, Channel 4 culture of the Anglo-American 21st century. That said, it's always hard to tell whether, despite lots of things in the world being better now than they were when I first listened to The Smiths, things are getting worse in some other ways – or indeed whether nothing ever changes very much at all and one simply becomes a mardy old bastard.

Either way, and far more importantly, 'Try' is a cracking tune which sounds as irresistible and fresh to me now as when Rob 'Chopper' Harris wrote it in 1999.

There were a few different ways The Regulars would write songs. Sometimes I'd do the whole thing and present it at practice as a finished article. Sometimes Rob (or, very occasionally, Paul) would write a guitar part and I'd make up a melody and words while he played through it in the practice room. And at other times, Rob would write a guitar part and a melody with placeholder lyrics and record them on a tape to give to me, and my only contribution would be to write new words and then sing them. The latter was mostly the case with 'Try', which Rob working-titled 'The Cradle Song' before I came up with the lyrics.


I did end up writing the call and response vocal melodies in the chorus as well, but I was too rubbish even to sing the lead vocal here – somehow I just couldn't get my voice round Rob's melody – so all I'm doing on this recording is the backing vocal in the chorus and a bit of tambourine. Rob put me hugely to shame here by not only singing lead but, when we played it live, doing a fiddly bit of lead guitar at the same time. As those of you who are musicians will know, this is not an easy trick to pull off.

Where I didn't write much on a Regulars song, though, I would often put in a bit of work on the arrangement and structure. And blow me, there was a lot of work done on this. From what I can piece together out of the old website, there were at least three distinct arrangements of this song. Go to the links section below, then download and play the earlier live version: there's not just totally different instrumentation and arrangement but an entirely rewritten chorus.

Then listen to the intro on the full band version – hear the way Paul's guitar plays on its own for two bars, then Rob, Chris and Rich come in for two bars, then it's Paul on his own for two bars, then the full band again. I didn't write any of the music here, but it was my idea to arrange it that way. This feels as satisfying now as it felt exciting then. When we played it live, at those moments when the full band kicked in I would start to whirl and wheel across the stage bashing my tambourine, and I felt thrilled and electrified and, after the long, dark weeks of lonely work between popshows, alive at last.

(If you've got an mp3 handy of 'Don't Stop' by Pocketbooks, incidentally, listen to what the instruments do when the vocals kick in at 0:21 – it's the same two-bars-in two-bars-out pattern, and it's quite lovely to dance to. If you haven't got an mp3 handy of 'Don't Stop' by Pocketbooks, what are you doing with your life?)

Also, wrap your ears round the middle eight (it starts at 2:43) and cast your mind back to the other week when I was talking about 'October We Take it Back' and the way music makes me think of a picture sometimes (is that a sort of musical synaesthesia, or am I just endearingly quirky?). When we were working up 'Try' in the practice room I used to call this part "the toy factory bit" because that's what it gave me a mental image of. Chris's cowbell – which developed a small cult following in its own right and followed him to The Motive – is probably much of the cause. Again, I didn't write any of it, but I did suggest where everyone should come in and drop out, gesticulating to each member of the band as they all played through the toy factory bit, like I was conducting the Dudley Road Symphony Orchestra, using a tambourine instead of a baton.


The middle eight is really a middle 16, because everything in this song takes twice as long as it would in a conventional quick indiepop or punk track. There are songs that compress a whole verse-chorus-verse-chorus-middle eight-chorus structure into less than two minutes; 'Try' does the opposite, expanding the same conventional structure over nearly five. Maybe I'm biased, but it somehow seems to keep the feel of a three-minute song, despite the longest fade-out in the history of indiepop, and, miraculously, doesn't get boring. If you agree then I'll take a bit of credit for the arrangement, but an awful lot should go to the rest of the band for writing and playing parts that are fresh and bright and inventive, and sound as full of hope as the unworldly 'you' character in the lyrics.

But, while it's not a dispassionate song, I sometimes wonder if it wasn't a little cynical of me to have just identified a lyrical genre and said, "hmmm, I reckon I'll have a go at that next" – as if the whole thing were some sort of exercise in songwriting – rather than just writing what I was feeling. This would be a harsh conclusion, though; it's not like we had a plugger paying DJs to playlist it on Radio 1 or anything – I know; it's unbelievable, isn't it – and if the 'you' of the lyrics wasn't based on anyone specific who I knew at the time from the Birmingham indie scene, I've always been drawn to and inspired by people like the one in the song; and maybe the lyrics, ultimately, are informed by the memory of teenage Smiths fan Pete, moping in his dingy Grimsby bedroom every night instead of sitting in the park getting trashed on cider like any normal 1980s adolescent, so that effectively perhaps I'm singing back in time, to an earlier, sillier, terribly fragile version of myself who'd have been glad to know that things all turned out OK.



Linky
Lyric sheet (pdf)
Earlier arrangement on a live version of the song (mp3, 3.3mb)
A news report thing from the Regulars website about the rearrangement
'Don't Stop' by Pocketbooks on last.fm

posted by Pete Green @ 21:30