Songs: One Last Party

notes / gigs / releases

Like an Ornithocheirus
When the weather's warmer
And it calls him away to breed
There's only one thing for us
When we hear last orders
And as one everybody leaves

As he crosses the Atlantic
We cross the main road
When he reaches his beach
We all know

We'll go to one more nightclub
we'll have one more dance
We'll give it one more song
Then we'll go
We'll go to one last party
Give it one last chance
We'll have one last drink
And go home


Why do I do it?
Every Saturday night
I dash down to the corner shop
Get out the same set of numbers
As I did the first time
If I don't I know they'll all come up

You said "You could have saved three hundred quid
I said "I know!"
"I'll give it in next week"
"Just give me one last go"

I'll go to one more nightclub
I'll have more last dance
I'll give it one more song
Then I'll go
I'll go to one last party
Give it one last chance
I'll have one last drink
And go home

I see The Fall have got
Another album out
You bought it home on the very first day
And now it sits beside
The other twenty five
Waiting for a second play

But you'll labour on
Since you're got all the rest
Another Kurious Oranj
Could be coming next

You'll go to one more nightclub
You'll have more last dance
You'll give it one more song
Then you'll go
You'll go to one last party
Give it one last chance
You'll have one last drink
And go home

And when you finally decide
To give the whole thing up
You'll win ten quid on the Lottery
On your front door step
There's an enormous egg
And Mark E Smith sings, melodiously

That this is not the answer
This is not the end
Every indoor dancer
Gets to try again

We'll go to one more nightclub
we'll have one more dance
We'll give it one more song
Then we'll go
We'll go to one last party
Give it one last chance
We'll have one last drink
And go home

Home
Go home
Don't you want to go home, sweet home?
This Is Not A Library

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

Astoundingly, this song is based on Things I Used To Talk About In The Pub. It is also ABOUT pubs, about people going off in seperate directions, includes some SHOWING OFF in the lyrics, and the recording was an exercise in Driving Kev To Distraction with a succession of GRATE IDEAS I thought of walking down King Richard's Road. It's thus pretty much the perfect last song for this record, and that's why it's there.

I wrote it ages ago, at a time when Dr Neil Brown and I were going drinking in Leicester City Centre and had started going to a bar that was free to get in AND was open late - this must have been a REALLY long time ago, as these days in Leicester everyone has at least three all night drinkeries in their back garden - before debating whether or not we should go to some party or other off the Narborough Road (see FACTMAP). We'd invariably decide that we should go just for a quick one, just in case The Love(s) Of Our Lives had turned up. I was also playing the same numbers on the National Lottery every week, watching "Walking With Dinosaurs", and continuing to buy Paul McCartney records, and all these things seemed to come together in a theme of unflagging HOPE that something good would come along. When I wrote the words, however, I changed Paul McCartney to The Fall because I know a lot more people who buy every single Fall Record EVER (and am DOOMED to be in bands with such people unto eternity) than I do who buy Paul McCartney records, and to be honest quite fancied coming up with a rhyme for Kurious Oranj. In this way the lyrics gradually unwound themselves.

The original idea for the recording was for it to be a pretty bombastic Standard Indie Anthem i.e. starting off with just one guitar, building to two or three with fuzz pedals and dead loud drums, but goodness knows that'd been done enough times before. It was only recently that Rob had mentioned how much he'd liked the arrangements on my solo tapes, and so one morning, walking down King Richard's Road to work (see FACTMAP), I set to thinking about how I could do this song differently to make it WORK.

HOLA! Suddenly, as I turned onto the shortcut to Narborough Road, I realised that the BEAT of my FEET held the answer, and as if from hiding the whole ARRANGEMENT leapt out at me. Later that day I got a piece of paper, wrote out the lyrics, draw BLOCKS around them, and wrote down the arrangement over the top. Nobody believed me when I told them what I was thinking of doing, or maybe they didn't really see what I was on about, as this was one of the first cases of me using my patented Arm Waving And Looking Boggle Eyed method of song description, and so a few weeks later I went into the studio to LAY DOWN the Basic Track. We recorded a drum machine, I played guitar and sang over the top, and then READ OUT the arrangement as we went along - you can hear what THAT sounds like in the Additional Tracks.

This was right at the very start of the SESSIONS, so I did think about getting other people in, especially The Chemistry Experiment, but when they couldn't make it my RESOLVE was SET, and never another person but the Validators crossed the threshold over the years to come. The song was thus pieced together EXTREMELY gradually, with me having to repeatedly reassure everyone that, when everything was put in place, it would work, honest. This culminated in a BRILLIANT evening when ALL VALIDATORS were in attendance in order to finally finish it off.

It was probably my favourite night of ALL the recordings. As usual when I went in Kev asked what we were going to be doing, and I said "We want to record our feet!" He looked AGHAST, then a minute later emerged from his CUPBOARD OF TRICKS weilding a slab of marble. "This is what i usually use..." he said. HOORAH! Four of us double tracked STOMPING whilst, around the corner, Tim flailed about with CYMBALS. Then we recorded the backing vocals. First we did General Singing (in the choruses, and at the end), followed by The Army - Tim stood near the microphone with Rob and Tom BUTCHING UP behind. Next I had to physically restrain Mr Patterson as Mrs Patterson took over, with Rob and Tom out Bowie-ing themselves with their gender flexibility behind her. Just when Kev thought it was over we brought out the RECORDERS, and beauty shone around.

Mixing, unsurprisingly, took quite a while, and when it was finished I couldn't believe what we'd done - every time I listened to it at home I would laugh out LOUD with happiness to know that I lived in a world where such things were possible, and the realisation that we COULD record anything we wanted is probably what made the rest of the sessions take such a very long time, but I think it was worth it.

Like all the songs, this was FANTASTIC fun to record, and even if nobody ever buys the record it'll have been worth doing. It made us happy to make this album ... and surely that's what it's all about?