Songs: Time Wasters Need Not Apply

notes / gigs / releases

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

This song came through a cynical attempt to write a really good song.

Typing it out loud like that sounds a bit odd. Surely they should all be really good songs shouldn't they? What I mean is that, after having a lovely time playing my first gig with The Artist Formerly Known As Chris T-T, I thought "Wouldn't it be great to have some new songs as good as those old ones? I wonder what it is about them that makes them such BANGERS?"

I had a good old think about it and realised that most of the ones we'd performed had been third-person story songs, and that they tended to revolve around a common incident or possibly phrase that I then looked at in different angles. My BRANE took this THORT and lay it down for later use!

Shortly after that I was thinking about people I used to know years and years ago who were always trying to form bands but never got very far with it because they were obsessed with it being perfect, and didn't realise that the imperfection was what made it all work. This was probably prompted by reading Alan Jenkins' brilliant "How To Be In A Pop Group" book, which had a lot to do with this sort of thing. Alan also used to have a studio in Stayfree, so all of this swirling together made me think of people like that who, as far as I know, are STILL trying to put together the perfect band that will realise their dreams.

With all that stewing away the central pairing of Robin (initially Ronnie, but that's too old a name) and Steve popped into my head. The first couple of verses were easy, but it then took about a week to work out what was going to happen - to start with Steven was going to die, but that all got too complicated, especially for a song that was already pretty long. The tune changed a couple of times too, as I realised that the version I originally had wasn't really good enough.

The best part of the writing of this one was when I first sat down to play the whole song all the way through and WELLED UP massively when I got to the end section. Ooh, that was VERY exciting!