Songs: The Perfect Love Song

notes / gigs / releases

He needed reasons to keep living
She needed someone she could love
He needed something to believe in
She lived on the floor above

He listened to the Sunday Service
Pumping down through the plasterboard
She came to know his taste in music
And recognised the way he snored

All of a sudden nothing happened
Out of the blue they didn't meet
He never came to borrow coffee
She never dropped her shopping round his feet

Theirs could have been the perfect love song
What a shame they never met
He got run over by a milk float
She went to live in Somerset

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

This is another one that was old when I came to record it, and is, I think, the oldest song that I still regularly play. It was written on the BASS when I was in Voon, before I could play the guitar at ALL, with the bass line pretty much following the vocal melody. According to my old notes (which, for all these songs, I wrote for the webpage around the time they were written or recorded) it was old even then, and I very very vaguely remember having to persuade Simon and especially Neil that we should record it. Eventually we did, for the cassette "Interesting". Steve Marmite, named so because he was in The Marmite Sisters, put it out on a compilation called "A Taste Of Tea" for his label Tea Records, along with another song of ours "Found On The Moon". I wonder if that cassette would be WORTH anything these days? It also included a Prolapse song and one by General Havoc, who were Cornershop before they changed their name. As with everything else like that, it was VERY exciting, I was CONVINCED it was going to be my/our big break, and it wasn't. Steve did get a letter (this was before anybody had emails!) from somebody with a line from one of my songs ("Found On The Moon" was the song, "and a dolphin that goes golfing" was the lyric) written on the back, and it did get into The Leicester Mercury, but that was about it.

The only thing I can clearly remember about writing the song was coming up with the verse about "All of a sudden nothing happened" whilst I was in town one day, just near the bus stop for the number 52 bus outside Clark's, opposite the BOOTH near the Clock Tower. I don't know why I remember that so clearly, but I do... I also remember Neil taking great delight in the line "Out of the blue they didn't meet", as there was a band called Out Of The Blue who played the same venues as us and did MUCH better, so NOT meeting them seemed to him like a good thing to sing about. GOLDEN MEMORIES eh?

I always liked this song, so when I decided to try doing some gigs on my own I tried learning this one. It was the first song I ever learnt to do any kind of finger-picking on, and distinctly remember going to stay at my DAD's in Cornwall for a week and learning to play it, sitting out the back on his kitchen step, looking out over the hills at the back of his village, whilst his dog Meg watched me, looking CONCERNED. As I type (December 31st 2004, just after 4pm, CHRONO FANS) I've just recently been to see him for Christmas, and the day after Boxing Day I played this song at our traditional Family Singalong. Meg wasn't there any more to watch me anymore, but her successor, Pip, seemed to quite like it.

So anyway, YES, I learnt to play this one, and played and recorded it regularly. TWO versions of it appear on my first solo cassette, "Free At Last", neither of which are much cop, but ONE of which contains a whole OTHER set of lyrics (which would later be used elsewhere...) to the same tune. I'd always wanted it to have a bit of trumpet on it though, so when we came to record "Say It With Words", featuring quite a bit of Rob playing trumpet, I took the opportunity to re-do it. I love the song and I LOVE the version we came out with, so much so that I used it as a b-side... as mentioned in FUCKING HIPPY, I had an ACTUALLY TRUE idea that you should put your best stuff out wherever you could, especially on b-sides, as you never knew what people would hear, or indeed whether you'd ever get the chance to put something else out. When we decided to do "Hey Hey 16K" as an internet single (the first EVER proper internet single, by the way - I'm CLAIMING that one!) I was DOUBLY determined to put good, EXCLUSIVE, b-sides on it, to make it clear that this was a legitimate entity in its own right. We'd recorded quite a lot of songs for "Say It With Words" by that point, with about half of them being solo or duo efforts, and as I wanted the final album to be mostly full band, it seemed like the logical thing to do to pick this and WE'LL SEE WHAT WE CAN DO as the two songs to pull out for the single. Kev, I recall, was OUTRAGED at this, especially for WE'LL SEE WHAT WE CAN DO as that was one of his favourites, but as things pan out I reckon more people have heard these songs than most of my others. I'm glad about that, as I think they're LOVELY.