Written in 1989 and 1991 / Re-arranged and Recorded in 2000
This piece was supposed to be the Part Two of a long composition called Secret Jewellery Box, a re-working of my old stuff under the same title that I had written in 1991. The re-working never completed and this piece was left in this way before the entire scheme was abandoned.
Following relatively aggressive and Prog-oriented Part One, this tune was designed to enhance more Blues / Hard Rock-oriented side. Additionally, while the main riff was taken from the original tune from 1991, the bridging mellow piece was taken from another old thing from mine called Ain't No Mercy Blues, written in 1989.
This instrumental tune was initially written as a sequel to my another work called Dance to Me. Soon after I made the first demo recording of this sequel, I expanded the idea to write further sequels to make a dance-themed conceptual work consists of these individual sequels, which were later labelled as Variations in the scheme. Some of these variations were well written and some others were not, and when I completed writing and recording all of these variations, I decided to abandon the scheme for various reasons.
Despite it was not a suitable stuff for a band like us to play, I brought this tune to be recorded by Culotte - my band at that time - in the studio. The result is what you can listen to in this video. The piano outro was meant to be a brief section for bridging this piece and the next variation.
This catchy pop tune was originally written as a song that accommodated a lyric addressed to a girl, who has been always exposed to anxiety towards things belong to uncertainty that could be only described with using words like 'if' and things belong to the future, in other words, 'tomorrow'.
Initially, I added the closing jam section to my personal demo recording less than a minute. When it was brought to my band called Culotte, the drummer had a determination to extend the section far longer than the main song section of the tune and we ended up to establish a habit to play the whole tune longer than seven minutes in total, usually.
This video version consists of only the song section and a bit of jam section; with voice parts removed, i. e., instrumental remix. The audio track was recorded in studio as one of our earliest attempts of self-engineered demo recording.
Written in 1991 and 1993 / Recorded in 1993 and 1994
Basically, as far as the music concerns, my conceptual work titled Music for a Story-Telling is a collection of re-workings of my past compositions written in 1991; either works I wrote for a band that couldn't exist long enough to perform it, and/or works for a students’ theatrical project called Zone. This tune is based on a short theme for piano originally written for the latter occasion.
The original piano piece was the intro for a tune called Baby, I Love You, which was performed in Zone featuring myself on vocal. While the entire tune was converted to Music for a Story-Telling as a part of Operetta: The Grand Meeting, I wrote this variation developed from the intro piece to introduce a character called Imayya, the General Stuff, who are to be featured in both tunes. In the story line, this tune is all about establishing the character as a passionate and committed General, who accidentally discovers Kelp, the intruder, during his routine patrol and straightforwardly orders his ranks and files to arrest him. For Imayya, anything unusual for his task of maintaining the order has no room to be considered as anything else but intolerable evil, because it means 'disorder'.
In making this video, I tried to combine my personal demo recording and a studio recording done with my band called Culotte.
The main Idea for this tune spontaneously emerged while I was trying out an unusual guitar tuning. Later, I recorded other versions of this tune with adding the rhythm machine, only to realise it's the less layer of instruments the more powerful and raw.
The title of this track was not supposed to mean anything at all. It was more about a kinda word-play. 'Pow!', alternating the word 'I' was taken from a scene in the film version of Quadrophenia, where Jimmy, the main character, tries to catch attention of Steph while she is working at a supermarket till. Using of 'thy' for alternating 'your' inspired by some of Syd Barrett's compositions, most notably Scream Thy Last Scream. The lyric consists of actually a couple of lines; a mere repetition of the song title and a quote from another Syd Barrett song, Waving My Arms in the Air.
Written in 1991 and 1993 / Recorded in 1993 and 1995
Basically, as far as the music concerns, my conceptual work titled Music for a Story-Telling is a collection of re-workings of my past compositions written in 1991; either works I wrote for a band that couldn't exist long enough to perform it, and/or works for a students’ theatrical project called Zone. This tune consists of ideas taken from the works I wrote for both occasions.
As I have already explained in the annotation entry for Overture to Part One, I divided the entire work in three parts and decided to write an overture per each part. Each of them was supposed to consist of musical motifs assigned to each respective part and everything went quite well in this Overture to Part Two.
Following a suit of the counterpart for Part One, I chose to write this for a couple of guitars and bass guitar only, so that it could be easily converted for my band called Culotte to play. However, unlike its counterpart, this overture was played by Culotte for only a handful of times, none of them was played well, before the band broke up effectively by mid 1995. Therefore, I chose the original demo version for the audio track of this video, except for the very ending, where I had added an extra feature for the guitar in a studio recording done as Culotte. As for the picture, I tried to synchronise live footage of Culotte, playing the same stuff to the audio.
Additionally, also unlike its counterpart, this track is meant to contribute as genuinely musical function. Therefore, this only signifies the opening of Part Two with no reference to the story line.
I wrote this sophisticated 12-bar-blues for a trio band I led called Flowers, probably in between late May and early July 1987 - assumption can be made from the fact that when Flowers first played live in August 1987, this tune was already included in the set list. In those days, we simply called it The Original Blues in G or stuff like that. Though the band didn't last long but broke up by March next year, we played and rehearsed the tune for countless times and some of them were recorded in various ways.
As soon as I bought some necessary equipment that made the home recording available for the first time, this tune was duly picked up, along with some other pre-written materials, to be recorded as my solo work. It was simply a joy to play the lead guitar part for finishing the demo recording to far richer accompaniment featuring a layer of instruments such as second guitar and piano, than Flowers' low skilled bass and drums. When the recording was done, I thought this tune would be one of my trademark blues compositions for the rest of my life to be played for many more times in the future but, except for Flowers' a-few-day-reunion a few months later, ironically this was the last time for me to play this tune.
Basically, as far as the music concerns, my conceptual work titled Music for a Story-Telling is a collection of re-workings of my past compositions written in 1991; either works I wrote for a band that couldn't exist long enough to perform it, and/or works for a students’ theatrical project called Zone. This tune consists of ideas taken from the works I wrote for both occasions.
When I first planned to write this conceptual work, the basic story line was already there and so were the musical motifs. I had a strong wish to start off the entire work with an overture, which should be written formally, at the same time, I thought the amount of source motifs were too vast for constituting only one overture. So, I decided to divide the entire work in three parts and to write an overture per each part. As a result, this Overture to Part One consists of musical motifs taken from every individual tune included in Part One, except for a piano piece called The Brainwasher.
The idea of a conceptual work to deliver a story won a support from my band mates, especially from the drummer, and it didn't take long before we launched to record featured tracks of the work as a band Culotte. As the band was heavily influenced by The Who, I thought it would be acceptable for us to write and play something like quasi-Tommy things like this. In addition, the tune became one of our favourite repertoires and was played live in many occasions.
In the story this opening track is also designed to introduce the background information to be told. It features a Narrator in its later section but in this video version, I also inserted further written accounts in a bit funny way.
When I first bought a multi-track-recorder and a rhythm machine, in summer 1988, it didn't take long before I became to be enchanted with attractions associated with the home recording. I could enjoy the recording process of each and every material, without caring about its consequence because it was not about the quality of each work but all about learning from experiments and experience. In some cases, I forced myself to make up a provisional composition in order to conduct some recording experiments. This tune was one of such attempts.
The main purpose of this recording was an attempt to reconstruct the psychedelic atmosphere presented in Are You Experienced? by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. In doing so, I thought it would be effective to combine the guitar solo with reverse tape effects and programmed rhythm pattern of marching drum beat. Other proceeding parts to the guitar solo were written with little considerations; keyboard piece for the intro was most likely improvised during the recording, and the bridging quiet piece with singing 'la la la' sounds quite similar to one of my favourite Steve Winwood songs at that time, Back in the High Life Again. Overall, I think this composition was a failure in terms of its quality and coherence as a whole, but I decided to pick up some good pieces from the original recording as a remnant of my personal recording experiments.
Basically, as far as the music concerns, my conceptual work titled Music for a Story-Telling is a collection of re-workings of my past compositions written in 1991; either works I wrote for a band that couldn't exist long enough to perform it, and/or works for a students’ theatrical project called Zone. This tune is solely based on a theme tune originally written for the latter occasion.
When the tune was initially written, it was meant to be Poet's Theme for the said theatrical project. At that stage, the project was yet ongoing but the director, who was one of my close friends in those days, had given me a rough outline of the story to be performed and I thought it would be beneficial to write a theme for every main character that included the Poet. Despite I wrote this theme for the character's entrance (intro) and main body for his performance -probably a poetry reading - the director rejected to use this tune and alternated with a demo recording of his own original track for the former, and another original tune from mine for the latter, which was written almost spontaneously while we were rehearsing in the studio.
Three years later, when the tune was converted to Music for a Story-Telling, I thought this tune can be used without making any change for introducing Suetrea the Poet in its Part Two. Nonetheless, when I brought it to my band called Culotte for recording purpose, the drummer exercised his creative side and managed to change the impression of the tune dramatically.
In this video, I tried to present both versions as naturally as possible, especially focusing on preserving the slightly jazzy atmosphere in the original intro and the difference made by the drummer in Culotte's version.
In the story line, this tune is effectively the opening track of the Part Two, following its Overture, which is instrumental. It features Narrator, who introduces a new character Suetrea to present his case as a captive poet, who would be enticed by his inmate Kelp the Intruder for the Departure.
This tune was written largely under the influence of some mystical thoughts. Because of this reason, I didn't pay much attention in terms of music, or I might have used some specific knowledge relating to numbers. mysticism or stuff like that for writing such unusual chord progressions. Originally, it had a couple of voice parts reading things I wrote referring to 666 and other elements taken from The Book of Revelation and things related to alchemy. But basic notion of that written account came from an expectation for moving forward to the Age of Aquarius, which may coincide with theosophical human evolution from the sphere of Earth to the sphere Jupiter.
Now, as an older man who learned a bit more than who I was in the time of writing this piece of music at the age of 27, I am not able to fully understand what I was trying to mean, especially in the words associated to this work. Therefore, for making this video, I made the audio track remixed with removing the voice parts in order to make a room for each viewer's imagination.
The original idea for writing this conceptual work divided in three parts came from my personal experience of a day in early November, 1990. In the initial stage of composing, the work was supposed to be divided in four parts and this Part iii was assigned to represent actual deeds that took place on that day. Despite all four parts were composed and demo recorded in the first few months of 1991, I soon recognised some failures within the conceptual work as a whole.
When I gave another try for re-organising the entire work three years later, I decided to change the theme of the concept and to make it divided in three parts. Though the second attempt of the entire work didn't go well, the new concept coined at that stage contributed for making a series of videos to showcase the work titled Literary Works.
Under the new concept, the 'actual deeds took place on that day' has been converted to legendary acts and deeds attributed to ancient heroes and heroines, which should be depicted in the style of epic. Musically, I have to admit this piece heavily owes to inspirations absorbed from Thick as a Brick by Jethro Tull and Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield. In addition, the quality of first few minutes of this audio track is lower than the rest, due to damages caused to the original master tape.
Written in 1985 and 1989 / Recorded in 1989, 1990 and 2012
This tune was one of my earliest attempts for writing a composition. It started off with the intro, probably began as a certain mistake of the positioning of my fingers while I was practising on the guitar, and the main body of the tune soon followed to be written somewhere in 1985. At that time, I was not much accustomed to music theory and that enabled me to write a thing in such a way, ironically. Nonetheless, at that time, I didn't think the tune was completed and didn't make any attempt to record it.
After I got used to home recording, by making use of a cheap multi-track-recorder, I decided to make demos of some earlier works I have written but never recorded yet by then. A series of such recording was conducted before or during the summer of 1989, including this tune. At this point, I added a lyric of asking a girl to have a cuppa coffee with me, from which the title was taken.
Shortly before I made this video version, I found another similar home-recorded demo of this tune, which must have been done probably within the first quarter of the following year, 1990. The finding of this lost demo recording encouraged me to make the video of this tune, which also features the intro, newly played live in front of the webcam in 2012.
One day in spring or summer of 1993, I was standing in a train carriage packed with other commuters in the morning rush hour, looking outside of the window with reluctantly wearing suit on. The weather was fine and I saw someone walking a dog in a typical residential area along the railway track. At that moment, I simply envied that someone's freedom, which was visible for me but was out of reach. Within a few days or weeks, I wrote this dull and a bit pessimistic piece of music and wrote a lyric to go with it, reflecting the envy I felt on that day.
About a year later, the audio track of this video was recorded with my band called Culotte, where I played every instrument except for bass and drums. In the original recording, this piece was followed by extended jam part, which was based on the ending bit featured in my personal demo version recorded at the time of writing the song.
Unlike other videos from mine, I didn't dare to remove my voice parts for a couple of reasons; (1) I noticed that backing track without voice parts sounds a bit more clumsy, and (2) I remember the lyric of this song actually impressed a girl a bit younger than me, when I made her listen to this recording, back in those days. Therefore, it would make sense to write down the lyric with its English translation below:
(verse)
I happened to have dropped my time
into an endless repetition
As I noticed, the Sun's already set,
and tomorrow will taste the same
(chorus)
Guiltless scenery,
flat rituals
(bridge)
Having left in a
room too vast
Having lost life
at a tiny grain of sand
