You always know when a song is bad when even you can't play it again.
When you change the lyrics every time you sing it because you're so embarrassed about the last a lot that you sang.
I think I felt that way with "mountainous task". There is no doubting the herculean job required to turn that into a song, it was just much easier to give up music. There was one line in it which I absolutely loved singing yet the annoying part was it took a minute and a half to get to the good line by which time we'd emptied the stage never mind the auditorium.
Some bands know when times up long before their audience. We were definitely one of them. We'd been in audiences and left gigs, now it was our turn to leave the stage.
Our drummers were always giving up on us, but then they did have the worst of views.
I feel that way with the Camino Can'cerre treatment timeline. As I start week 10 I'm left listening to my tinnitus, something I get loads of time to do as I'm too tired to leave the house and get some exercise. I'm lying on my bed, listening to my tinnitus, it's like being in that audience or standing on that stage wondering why I was still singing "out of sight, out of mind". To be fair, by then I was singing Out of time, out of tune" which made me smile. I eventually started writing it on the set list, it was a lovely way to eject songs without being too confrontational.
If there's one thing I've enjoyed this week it's french toast. In trying to increase my calories I'd resorted to the 5 feeds a day, so when I discovered by accident that french toast worked for me that was that. I'd made some for Jackie thinking I could try a piece and it was fine. She likes it quite dry while I'm more a fan of a tortilla/souffle type.
After discovering she liked the brown bread cardboard and I liked the sliced stale rolls we had a solution. After a week of it she'd had enough so this morning I used all the mix on just four thick slices of a roll. The results were astonishing.
The roll is more like a mould to hold the omelette in a shape. The absolute joy is in the eating. As you'd imagine chewing through lamb and chicken tikka kebabs last night was not my idea of fun. I slide it into small bits and no matter how much bread and yoghurt sauce I put on, it nips the roof of my mouth as the spices find the blisters like they know their way to the pain. I did this with the knowledge it would be over in 90 minutes. A meal like that is like watching Hibs being dismantled by St Mirren, uncomfortable at best and annoying...etc etc....at worst.
The french toast on the other hand is an absolute joy. I'm getting two eggs, butter, milk, a roll and one of my high calorie drinks to wash it down along with water. It's snack size, minimal chewing and delicious. It's day 9 of french toast and to be fair it's not as tedious as the tinnitus, and nowhere near as monotonous as "mountainous task". Yes "Monotonous Task" got written on the set list a few times before it was retired.
The song was written about the time of band aid and Live aid. I was trying to get a concert together in Hunters Bog, a natural amphitheatre that I thought would be a superb venue. I clearly put the cart before the horse. I'd got some headlining bands who said yes without checking any of the logistics. During my many walks I've revisited the site and that moment in 1985 when I first thought it was a great idea to put a big stage up in a swamp. I hadn't given too much thought to people scaling the crags or Karen Peat our neighbour who fell and broke her leg when we were all kids. I just pictured this huge arena being a superb place, just not how they would go to the toilet when it was busy. In my defence there is a drainage ditch although with 150,000 there wanting to use the facilities even my skills in irrigation would be found wanting.
What I find amazing is I was 22 and honestly thought I could pull this all off. Deadbeat would suffer as these mad dreams and schemes would develop. This whole thing imploded in due course when I got a job. I never appreciated how much time writing songs, going to watch bands or do interviews occupied. I never appreciated how printing and distribution took me so much time as I worked around it all without thinking, drinking, not thinking. I'd often come back from a gig and start up the machine and print 2000 sheets which would be pages 4/17 on one side and they'd be able to dry waiting for pages 3/18 which might be a week later. The cover and back page was always last to get printed. The advert on the back page we tried to make as real time as possible. When I started working it wasnt as easy to get through to Glasgow, Perth or Dundee and it was an era where fax machines were still in their infancy. Mobiles were things you put above cots in a bairns room. E mail was a job you did at Christmas for a bit of exercise and cash for drugs.
Yes, logistics would change so quickly for so many things in the world of the fanzine and yet "plus ca change, c'est la memechose" springs to mind for me on this cancer Camino. It really is like living all your yesterdays. In my case getting the diagnosis back in May/June feels as recently as Imagination released, "just an illusion". When I relive "monotonous task", I just think of July, getting the tonsils and teeth out and then going walking every day to make sure I didn't lie down too much. When I think of September I think of the Camino Norte interspersed with visits to the western and in my head Paris during the 80"s and 90's.
When I think of November I think, yes, we're still doing this and if anyone tells me I'm so strong one more time I'm going to punch them and ask how strong I am. If you want to feel my pain, join in, I'm happy to share.
Did I tell you about my new song. It can be a bit of a rant at times, but it's all done with a beautiful smile.
"So happy to share"
What do I care , watdoicare...boom boom
So happy to share
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