The Contract

..
have them still. So there’s a lot of stuff that’s going to have
to be painstakingly transcribed from vinyl to digital, so belatedly the songs
are getting the love and attention they possibly deserve, even if it’s
of the frustratingly nit-picking kind.
It’s been interesting reacquainting myself with some of the recordings,
particularly from the Warts Up Your Nose album. Warts was
the product of another epiphany – well, the band, The Indelible Murtceps
was devised as a response to the reality that Spectrum, the concert entity,
would be unable to sustain itself in the pub environment which had suddenly
sprung up as the major employer of bands.
Prior to that Spectrum had skipped between Berties, Sebastians, The Thumpin’
Tum and the TF Much Ballroom and played their trippy fare to hippies and fellow
travellers who were happy to sit on the floor, close their eyes and shake their
heads in time to the music in some kind of patchouli-induced reverie, but beer
and beer barns changed everything. Hippies were out, drunken rowdies were in.
So we had to change, and The Indelible Murtceps was the almost brilliant solution
– same band, less gear (no organ) and a different repertoire of snappier,
almost danceable songs. Warts up Your Nose embodies this change, but
with a couple of embellishments that only the studio could provide.
I wasn’t there when the horns were added to Stay Another Day
and the notorious Excuse Me Just One Moment, but I was absolutely delighted
when I heard the finished result. (There again, maybe I was there,
because I seem to remember a horn player saying to me how much he enjoyed the
session and that he’d really liked the songs).
Anyway, the album benefitted from the extra aural dimension the horns provided
as well as the actual lines of course, evoking as they did arrangements of the
thirties and forties. Incidentally, those two songs highlight the two opposing
tendencies in my writing, one being sentimentality and the other sensationalist
lapses of taste and decorum. Hard to say if the tastelessness worked for or
against me though in hindsight – I get requested to play ‘the song
with the spew at the end’ probably more than any other apart from Confessions
of a Psychopathic Cowpoke which is even more execrable in tone if anything.
So, here I am, looking at the imminent release of all my recorded material in
the brave, new digital world. Probably just in time for the next major technical
revolution, but better late than never. Vincent is pestering me for a number
of things, amongst them some new material. Somebody cares! Maybe that’s
exactly what I need to get me back on track.

I suppose I should update you as to where I’m at with the hearing aids’
saga. I’ve been equipped with a pair of bottom-of-the-line (or ‘entry’)
hearing aids in a distinguished silver finish which sit behind my ears with
a clear polythene tube trailing into each earhole. My left earhole is actually
slightly problematic as it’s what they call a ‘surfers’ ear
with a convoluted entrance to the eardrum which necessitates a slightly smaller
speaker and some persistence to persuade it to slip in satisfactorily. The tubes
‘memorise‘ the shape of the ear and so are fitted quite easily after
the first few times.
The hearing aids are prone to whistling or feeding back when you’re putting
them on, betraying that they’re tuned to boost those top frequencies that
have been gradually whittled away from my audio receptors over years of rocking
and rolling. One surprising result is that the tinnitus in my naff right ear
has actually diminished somewhat. My audiologist predicted as much but I’m
still surprised. And pleased.
It’s too early to say definitively whether they’re much of an advantage
overall. They’re helping a bit with my TV viewing and generally about
the house interacting with my long-suffering companion, but the jury’s
still out when being deployed in chatty crowd situations. However, so far they’ve
not made anything worse so I remain hopeful.