Songs: Full Power To The Forward Thrusters

notes / gigs / releases

Phaser banks are reconfigured
Tachyon particles are aligned
Warp Nacelles are fully functional
Gravometrics are on-line
Tractor beams are stabilising
Flux capacitors are ionised
Chronaton particles are releasing
Photon torpedoes are primed

Full power to the forward thrusters
Full power to the forward thrusters

Come let us exchange greetings
In the name of interstellar peace
We will respect your customs
And then we may have to leave
This planet has strange traditions
These creatures are not like us
New worlds new emotions
What is this thing called love?

Full power to the forward thrusters
Full power to the forward thrusters

I'm from the future
A parallel universe
I'm from the future
But this ... this is Earth

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

I spent a couple of happy years trying, and failing, to write songs for ADVERTS. You'd always get a vague BRIEF saying what an advert will look like AND/OR a rough video of it, along with some ideas about what the song should be like. There were some very definite TRENDS to these requests, as all advertising agencies would ask for something LIKE, but not as EXPENSIVE as, whoever was the current Fashionable Artiste in marketing at that point. When I first started doing it EVERYONE wanted "Badly Drawn Boy", which was fine by me as, in to me that meant acoustic guitars, xylophone and the ukelele. After a while though this changed and everybody started asking for THE KILLERS or KINGS OF LEON. This made things a bit more difficult for me as a) I didn't have much idea what they sounded like b) what idea i DID have I didn't like and c) I had no way to REPLICATE it at home anyway.

HOWEVER, so many of these briefs came in that I thought I might as well have a GO. One brief in particular not only wanted a song that was SIMILAR to "Sex On Fire", but also wanted something at exactly the same TEMPO to fit an already made advert (for which, I assume, they had under-budgeted for music). They had wanted it within 24 hours, because advertising agencies are idiots, which meant I didn't have time to put something together, but used that particular brief as INSPIRATION and spent a couple of weeks putting "Full Power To The Forward Thrusters" together for FUN. It IS exactly the same tempo, and features MUCHO MUCHO RIFFAGE. I couldn't quite bring myself to do an American Accent so ended up TREATING my vocals to make them sound FUTURISTIC - nearly all these briefs ask for words about Going Forward and NewNess, so I did THOSE to fit too.

I feel I ought to claim it was KNOWINGLY CYNICAL but actually i had LOADS of fun doing it, especially reading Star Trek websites to get the lyrics! I don't think it sounds ANYTHING like The Killers OR Kings Of Leon though!