A Hundred and Twenty Pound - AndyR Original

[Ferryman]

Cheery little bugger, isn't it?

Wow, it's pretty intense. And very relevant for these times. Nice work sir.

My hearing is really bad so I can't make out most lyrics, so I only picked up on some of what this song was about. Having the whole lyrical content in front of me gives it even more depth. Glad you decided not to jump in btw.

Cheers,

Nigel

[AndyR]

Just been reading back through the thread...

Flash Harry - the bass is a Stagg EDB. As far as I can make out it's about the cheapest you can get, but it beats some of it's more expensive "budget" competitors. It needed a bit of fettling - so far I've stuffed a sponge between the strings below the bridge (the piezos picked them up quite a bit) and filed the nut slots down. Apparently, if you can find a double-bass luthier prepared to work on an electric stick, then it could seriously benefit from a re-profiling of the fingerboard. I understand that it's got the traditional curvature but it hasn't got the sag in the board that a real bass would have on the bass side. Word is that fixing this (and re-profiling is a standard job on real instruments) would make it a lot easier to play. Right at the moment though I'm not really having many problems, so I've not chased this.

Apparently some of the early ones had battery-life problems, but mine seems ok. I'm on the second battery since buying it. The first was the one that was shipped in the box, and I've played it to death anyway. I absolutely love playing it.

Sound-wise, it's capable of sounding a lot more "acoustic" than this track shows - I ended up moving it away from the acoustic sound to satisfy the rock aspects of the song/mix.

Anyway, hours and hours of fun are to be had.... watch lampshades and doorposts when you're moving it about the house though!! At least I've finally got an instrument that makes my Gibson Explorer seem small...


About the song, though... interesting the other musical references getting mentioned.

A big interest in Jethro Tull, and then finally sitting through Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, got me into Genesis sometime in the 90s. I wasn't aware of the connection when writing this one back then - it was definitely "put the Ian Anderson hat on" - but when I was recording it it very much made me think of Gabriel-era Genesis. Even down to level of realising that I could write a little story to go on the album sleeve to paint the extra pictures that are in my mind...

eg, for reference, over the weeks while recording this, me and the missus watched the recent Dorian Grey and the recent Sherlock Holmes movies, both at my request because that's the mood I was in after a day's recording. Dark damp alleys, deserted river or canal sides, echo-ey arches under bridges... that sort of thing.

And The Who and Tommy reference is relevant as well - I finally got into them in the late 90s, after writing this, but I discovered that my own take on the kind of stuff that Jethro Tull and Genesis do is a LOT closer to what Pete Townsend does.

[Bluesberry]

...this also has a bit of old Genesis, Peter Gabriel era, to it.  You could put white powder on your face, dress up as a purple bulgy mushroom, and jump around your living room while playing this.

hahaha, great image...I can see it now...........purple bulgy mushroom.........hahaha........I love oldschool prog.....

[Kevin Mammoth]

Hey AndyR, at the risk of repetition, magnificent track.  Very impressed with the drum programming, you really nailed them here - I haven't been game to tangle with the 1600 drums. 

Everything is top notch - powerful, beautifully recorded vocals, crystal clear guitars, killer bass (upright no less) - yep, another winner here.  The "rock opera" references ring true for me - JC Superstar, Tommy - this would be right at home in either!

[hardlock]

Don't know how I missed this - and as everyone agrees, and epic piece of work in all regards!

[Tony W]

AndyR You never disappoint. Outstanding!

[Glenn Mitchell]

An impressive production. Excellent engineering and performing. I can only dream of this.

[AndyR]

Thanks folks

I've recently joined alonetone.com for hosting my mp3s. I've decided I'm going to use it to lighten the load on 64's servers .

I've therefore removed the mp3 from the songcrafters server and used the singlemp3 widget in the OP of this thread.

This means that over the next few days this and other songs are going to be disappearing from my "Play all my songs" link above my avatar. You can get to a similar thing for all my songs by clicking the Alonetone button in my signature below (you might even leave comments there as a guest - it helps my stats! ).

And Glenn - why?! Dream higher and harder

[64Guitars]

I've recently joined alonetone.com for hosting my mp3s. I've decided I'm going to use it to lighten the load on 64's servers .

It's Flash Harry's server really since he pays for it. But thanks for this. Our attachments directory currently has about 8,000 files totalling just over 20GB. So anything we can do to reduce the number of additional attachments added will help.

I hadn't looked very closely at alonetone before, but I just had a look now and it seems quite good. They don't seem to limit bitrate or file size, so you can post very high quality MP3s. And they don't hide the URL of the MP3, so you can link to it here with our [singlemp3] tags. The bitrate and file size isn't a problem for us if the file is offsite, so you can use as high of a bitrate as you like.

This means that over the next few days this and other songs are going to be disappearing from my "Play all my songs" link above my avatar.

Sorry about that. I hope to someday have a way for members to edit their jukeboxes and add songs that are stored offsite. In the meantime, I think the benefits of using alonetone (no filesize or bitrate limits, create playlists, track listener info, get comments from listeners, etc.) out-weigh the disadvantage of not having alonetone-hosted song posts in your Play All My Songs jukebox here at Songcrafters. So maybe some other members will follow your good example and start hosting their songs at alonetone instead of attaching them to their messages here.

[AndyR]

Glad you like the idea 64

Yes, I looked at alonetone the other day and nearly everything about it said "Come to me Andrew... you know you struggle with Soundclick..."

It hasn't got the interraction and support-group type of community we have here (their forum seems to have suffered a "punch-up" a few months back and hasn't recovered yet) - but I get all that side of things on here

But what it has got (and the fact I can almost seamlessly use them as host for what I want to do here) far outweighed any downside I could see. I'd also recommend folks from here to go and have a look/listen - there are some stunning artists over there, and some of us as well!

I'm personally not too worried about the "Play all my songs" not doing the job any more - there's the button in my sig if someone wants to listen to or download something. (Although it did cross my mind that for a cheap get-round you might be able to add a "Play all me songs" URL field in our profiles - if we leave it empty we get the songcrafters juke-box, if we supply a URL you link to that instead. Is that a possibility? No worries at all if not. I suspect it would break the original idea of everyone's avatar having a button with a consistent look-and-feel juke-box on it)

I'm gradually moving everything across. All that will be left will be the various challenges I got involved with a year or two ago...