This song is on the last studio album that original singer Fish recorded with neo-prog rock band Marillion, "Clutching at Straws" (1987). It is one of my desert island discs – I'll never get sick of listening to this album or stop being amazed at Fish's lyrics.
It's not my fave song on the album. In fact, if there were a song I like least, this would be a runner-up, not that there is a song I like least on the album. No, the reason I chose this song to record was that the chords were easy enough to figure out on guitar, and the song itself was short and concise, which is what I was going for on this collection of songs.
I also fancied doing a full-on cover, rather than just acoustic covers of songs I liked, since I hadn't done that since I first owned my first 4-track tape recorder and recorded covers to learn the process of 4-track recording.
The funnest part was coming up with a bass part that was my own. I did away with copying the guitar hook on the original track because I would've sucked trying to do that, and instead incorporated elements of that hook in the bass line.
The bass is the Riverhead run through a Boss Super Phaser and Bass EQ. All the other parts are pro forma, just doing what I could figure out to do. I even changed the meter in the verses from 7 to an even 8, more because it fit the bass line I wanted to play and not that I couldn't play in 7, mind you, but it did make recording the song track-by-track easier.
Aside from the bass, there's an acoustic rhythm guitar track, electronic drumset on the Phil Collins sound, two vocal tracks and I'm pretty sure the solo is recorded with the Peavey electric and not my acoustic run through distortion. Hehe, me playing a "solo". It just sounds funny (and it does sound funny, the first notes of the solo remind me of a baby deer trying to get its legs).
The lyrics, of course, I found very relevant, dealing with alcoholism and derangement. Fish's line "It's only when I'm out of it I make sense of this" probably refers to only being able to make sense when drunk, but in my mind, "out of it" meant out of life, and I sang a future tense "I'll".
Fish obviously uses a pseudonym (you might too if your given name was Derek William Dick), as arguably do I. But I don't consider my name a pseudonym. It's the difference between my "real" name and my "legal" name, and as I consider it my real name, it can't be a pseudonym. But, no, it's not my legal name, which I hold in disdain. Look, I rhymed!
Where he says, "When you say I got a problem, that's a certainty", that resonated for me because in my first collection of songs, I had an opening line, "I guess you got a problem if you're only happy hurting yourself/But who am I to say it's a problem, after all, you're happy". Always people telling us we got a problem.
And of course the classic alcoholic response, "Just for the record, I can stop any day". No, really, I can.
(D. Dick/S. Rothery/M. Kelly/P. Trewavas/I. Mosley)
Many's the time I've been thinking about changing my ways
But when it gets right down to it it's the same drunken haze
I'm serving a sentence to write life sentences
It's only when I'm out of it I make sense of this
Just for the record, I'm gonna put it down
Just for the record, I'm gonna change my life around
Just a revolutionary with a pseudonym
Just a barroom dancer on my final fling
Just another writer paying off my dues
Just finding an inspiration, well, that's my excuse
Just for the record, I'm gonna put it down
Just for the record, I'm gonna change my life around
Just another empty gesture with an empty glass
Just a comic actor behind a tragic mask
But I got no discipline, got no self-control
Just a little less painful here where my back's against the wall
It's too late, I found it's too hard
I'm in two minds, both of them are out of it at the bar
When you say I got a problem, that's a certainty
But I can put it all down to eccentricity
It's just for the record, it's just a passing phase
Just for the record, I can stop any day
And if I haven't geeked out enough, to go full-on maximus geekus, the whole album is full of quotes that resonate for me, including the closing verse of the album:
And if you ever come across us, don't give us your sympathy
You can buy us a drink, and just shake our hands
And you'll recognize by the reflection in our eyes
That deep down inside, we're all one and the same:
We're clutching at straws, we're still drowning
Clutching at straws, we're still drowning
- The Last Straw
And just for the record, I'm so not impressed by Windows 7 as an improvement over XP.
And just for the record, I'm so not impressed by Windows 7 as an improvement over XP.
