It’s the song, not the singer
At one time or another, a lot of us have been in bands. And we’d probably rather forget some of first musical foot-steps. Luckily, for most people that isn’t too difficult especially all you really did was just goof off in your mate’s garage.
Some of us, though, have documentary evidence that comes back to haunt us. I was going through some old tapes a little while ago, converting them to mp3, when I came across some gems (?) from my youth. Listening to them again, I was reminded how bad they really are but I can finally listen to them without too much embarrassment.
I don’t remember quite how it came about, but back in ‘85 (when I’d just left secondary school) a friend and I got together and started to do covers of Dire Straits tunes. As a guitarist, Ian was much influenced by Mark Knopfler and the year before he’d got me into the group. So when he said he was looking for a singer, I said I’d have a go.
I don’t know why I volunteered, but I suppose it’s that thing that makes all those complete no-hopes on X Factor think that they can be the next Kylie or Robbie or Elvis. We’d get together at weekends and run through stuff in Ian’s lounge (where he had the largest set of speakers I’d ever seen for a home stereo), practicising - supposedly - for some fabled time when we’d get up in a school concert and do a couple of numbers.
In the summer holidays, the music teacher from the school that we’d just left suggested that we use the recording equipment at the school to “lay down some tracks”. By this stage, it was clear that for one reason or another the intended public performance was never going to happen so the three of us (me, Ian and our producer - the music teacher who’d suggested it) got together and recorded two tracks - Sultans of Swing and Expresso Love - as a document of what we’d been trying to do.
Listening back to them as I write this, it’s a good thing we never got the chance to perform publicly - I was really paralysed by nerves just singing in front of two people and it made my voice even worse that was before, and Ian’s guitar playing was probably not as good as he’d have liked it to have been. But it was a fun thing to do and I’m actually glad that I’ve got those two tracks to remember that time by.
If you really feel that you want to put yourself through the torture, you can listen to Sultans of Swing - but I take no responsibility!
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