After yesterday’s short piece on Liam Bradley, today I will proceed down the alphabet of Angels In Drag co-conspirators to the voice of the Magical Mystery Girl… D. Cheung – backing vocals on Magical Mystery Girl and Angels In Drag.
D. posseses a superb Scottish voice that you can hear the smile in, a truly unique quality. It was only proper that she become the voice of the Magical Mystery Girl (more on that track soon) and sing the most important line on the whole album – ‘Let your North Star be love’ in Angels In Drag. She sang them beautifully, so praise be to that funky Chinese Scottish Chick!!
Ages ago there was an extended section in Magical Mystery Girl where she went off on one about the four secrets of life – Grace, courage, compassion and desire. I was leaving London to fly to Belfast, and had hoped that D. would be able to read the lyrics into my little dictating machine to mix into a drum and bass section, but as usual, we ran out of time.
Or so I thought… When I got on the plane, I pulled the machine out and pressed play to see what I had on the tape (it got a fair amount of use on the album) and there she was. She had got up at some excruciating hour of the morning and done it! I decided in the end not to use it, as the track had changed shape. The little sad face was too much, so I sculpted a plan to get her back on the record… like I say, you can hear her smile as she sings, and it just adds a certain inexplicable air of sunshine to the tracks she’s on.
I was thinking about the recording process, and decided to mention something else. I don’t know if you know this, but most records these days are made with a piece of machinery/software called ‘AutoTune’ – if you don’t believe me, just click on the AutoTune link in the extras box to be shown once and for all that all the tuneless popstar donkeys of the day make it to record ONLY because of this suspect technology. I decided from the outset to make an AutoTune Free record. A bit like the old days, when variations in pitch and notes not quite on the mark sometimes made much more of an impression than clinically accurate ones. Like most of ‘Astral Weeks’ by Van Morrison – a beautiful and totally loose record…
…The way I see it is this. As long as Marvin Gaye has records available, you can forget about being the best singer there ever was. And as long as Bob Dylan has records out, you can forget about being the worst. So all of us, from Kylie Minogue to George Michael to Sting to you to me are somewhere in the middle. All you have to do is find YOUR OWN VOICE!! Thats what Dylan did and thats why I LOVE some of his stuff. Even Mark Knopfler managed to find some little niche of uninterested-sounding vocals and Dire Straits were HUGE. He’s another great inspiration vocally, for the reasons I’m talking about.
Zen Guitar. Don’t be put off by the title if you aren’t a guitar player, or for that matter even a musician… just go and see what this guy has to say. I picked the book up in Wildcard’s house a long time ago and it changed something about the way I see and feel music now…
The first extra is a QuickTime Virtual Reality of Waverley Graveyard. Might sound grim, but its a beautiful place just along the coast towards Bronte Beach, and along with Pere La Chaise in Paris, has to be one of the most excellent final resting places in the world. I run through it on most of my training routes. I just put it up because its part of life here. You’ll need QuickTime to view it.
Not much else to report. I went over to The Sandringham Hotel tonight to hear Brooke McClymont, the awesome singer who supported RK on the Australian tour last year. She’s mad as a bag of sand, but could sing the phone book and blow your mind. Walking into the hotel downstairs was the all-too-familiar Aussie bar scene… pokey machines (gambling machines), pool tables, betting TV screens and a sense of dinginess matched by stale beer. Forlorn, I thought my railing against the Sydney music scene was about to scale new heights, but no – there was an upstairs bit – candles, red velvet, nice. And there was Brooke, belting it out. She really can sing. Its a great inspiration to hear good singers, because I am NOT one of their number.
Goodnight.