The original Wheelies "Shite Album" was a collection of some of the worst audio recordings known to mankind, captured on 4 tracks and portable cassette recorders between 1993 and 1998. The Herculean task of compiling this 3-disc collection of the band's "finest" moments fell to Aliwheelie who worked patiently over the course of many weeks transferring as much as he could ont0 4 CD copies, each of which eventually was given to the four founding band members.
So terrible was this original "Shite Album" that it was probably the defining cause in Smallywheelies purchasing a £60 second hand guitar and endeavouring to somehow produce a less shameful legacy for The Wheelies. Between March of 2006 and May of 2007, with a little help from various Wheelies and other friends, he recorded 5 full-length albums - "Oh Happiness" (2006), "Wake Me Up When It's Over" (2006), "Cosmonaut" (2006), "Respun" (2007), and "Strange Kid In A Daydream" (2007). Although it remains to be seen whether he managed to salvage some iota of diginity, he felt that he should celebrate the fact that he even tried in the first place by re-inventing "The Shite Album" pulling together his favourite songs from the 5 records and releasing it to the unsuspecting listening world on his own makeshift record label - DAYDREAM GENERATION RECORDS.
In the vague possibility that there might be somebody, somewhere who is even remotely interested in all this idiocy, Smally talks candidly to himself about the songs that make up a chapter-closing and possibly final installment of Fifeclub's shitest musical exports. He hopes that in some way you might - if not appreciate it - then hopefully understand why he did what he did and sang what he sung.
1 Keep Moving
A planet/A sun/You're fucked in the head/You're stuck in the bed but keep moving/Keep moving
This was the opening song on the "Cosmonaut" album, originally intended as a solo album for the failed Cozy Home box-set "The Troof Above Your Head" - where I'd deliberately instigated a challenge to my fellow Cozy Homers to write and record a full-length album so that all of them could be simultaneously released on Christmas Morning 2006. At this point I was spending a lot of time looking after my two year old son and sometimes I'd play him really simple childlike melodies on the keyboard so as we could dance around the living room. So originally "Keep Moving" was an instrumental joke song until one afternoon while dancing around with the little guy on my shoulders I started to sing "A finger, a thumb, an arm, a leg, a nod of the head keep moving" along with the music. I guess this itself is a by-product of watching a lot of kid's television that winter. The idea of "Cosmonaut" was that it was going to be a concept record around Alexander Trocchi's idea of "the cosmonaut of inner space", so I twisted the lyrics to suit. At a primitive level it's about moving through this inner space in circles based on Nietschze's concept that "All life is a circle therefore it is the going there not the getting there that counts" and the feeling of being trapped in your own head, thus the repetition of the images and lines and the contrast between being stationary while still moving. It's probably one of my favourite Wheelies songs in spite of the crudeness of the keyboard sounds and the fact that at this stage I still didn't even know I could pan sounds on the recording software I was using. It's also one of the rare occasions when the Spiritualized influence of building layers of melodies and sounds has actually worked for me.
2 Everybody Dreams About Something
Everybody dreams about something/All I do is dream about you/Everybody dreams about something/Baby I just dream about you/Without you I'd be dreaming bout nothing/Girl you know that it's true/If everybody dreams about something/Ever since you've been around/All I do is dream about/I don't know what I'd be without you/If everybodys got to be someone/Baby then I want to be you/If evrerybodys got to be someone/Baby then I want to be you/Lately I've been feeling like no-one/Baby why can't you see/If everybodys got to be someone/Oh why do I have to be/Does anybody want to be/I don't know why I have to be me/If everybodys got to be somewhere/Then I want to be somewhere with you/Without you baby I would be nowhere/So I'm sticking like glue/I want to hide out in your shadow/So you've nowhere to go/If everybody's got to go somewhere/Then I want to go with someone I/Someone that I really like/Someone I would like to know
This is probably the nearest thing to a perfect Wheelies "pop" song. If you were going to force these songs into a box then they would be somewhere between low-fi pop, low-fi folk, or low-fi psych. At times I get madly possessed with the idea of writing "one truly great song" even though I know that a copious amount of luck is required when you start with mediocre songwriting skills and brutal musicianship, so a lot of what I write is geared towards that. Late at night when everyone is in bed, quietly strumming chords and murmuring melodies in search of something. When I'm in a writing phase I'll record at least 3 sketchy ideas on a portable MP3 player with either the guitar or piano. Then, when I'm ready to record I'll go back through the hundreds of ideas cutting out the rubbish and leaving only the garbage. During the recording of an album I continue to write at night and sometimes if an idea is good enough it'll be recorded straight away. "Everybody Dreams..." is one of those songs. I seem to remember having a melody in my head and being hunched with the guitar over the MP3 on the living room floor at 2am virtually whispering it out. I recorded it in one go the following day. Out of part-laziness and also the technological inability, I usually settle for the first and occasionally the second mixdown of a song. It tends to be weeks later that I really notice all the blemishes - the horrible sounding keyboard towards the end, the fact that I miscalculated the lyrics and had to improvise the third verse, the way the vocals go out of sync in the final verse. Actually I'm as sloppy lyrically as I am technically - time (or lack of) plays a massive part in these songs. Usually songs are written and recorded on the run via stolen minutes, and a lot of the time I find myself scrawling Kerouacian "first thought, best thought" words on the back of envelopes and scrap paper just to have something to sing.
3 The Day That I Played God
Strange stuff happens when your back is turned/ When you're off your toes your fingers burn/ And when they burn well all you touch it seems to catch on fire/ And I know it sounds strange but I swear it's true/ Let's try and keep this between me and you/ I was sitting at the window sad and blue like my brain was held up with wires/ A lightbulb farted/ I fell face down on the floor/ Kept hearing all these voices that I tried to ignore/ After a few minutes well I couldn't take no more/ I said "I'll give it everything I've got"/ On the day that I played God/ Things were about to get a lot worse/ My tongue was tied and my eyes were cursed/ Kept seeing all these people pouring into church a-weeping on their knees/ Saying "Smally! Smally! Help me please! Give me something to feel at ease..."/ I tried to help but I think I sneezed and started a third world war/ They were looting and a-robbing up and down my street/ I tried to stand up but I found I had no feet/ After a few minutes I'd forgotten how to speak/ I guess I wouldn't have said a lot/ On the day that I played God/ Hallelujah! Baby I've had a brain wave/ I'm gonna crumble up everything into a paper ball/ Throw it at the bin and maybe try and start on over/ And then turn my attention to building us a beautiful world/ So I crumpled up the universe in my hand/ It fell away like dust and sand/ I woke to the sound of a marching band going past me on the beach/ The Devil was blowing an old conch shell/ Saying "Roll up everybody! This way to Hell..."/ I had nothing to do so I thought alright I guess I might as well/ I joined a line that ran for miles/ Patiently waited in a sea of smiles/ I was full of good intentions at least for a little while/ But I never done a lot/ On the day that I played God/ Oh Hallelujah! Baby I'm glad it's over/ Well I tried my best but you know that's never good enough/ And though I don't believe in God well I hope that he enjoyed his day off/ From the impossible dream of building us a beautiful world
I guess there are two dimensions to this one. On one hand its a blatantly obvious pisstake of religion (if I had to say I was something I'd say I was Buddhist-Atheist or Atheist-Buddhist even though both can be the same thing). But at a more subconscious level it indirectly hints at my involvement and orchestrating role in The Daydream Generation (www.daydreamgeneration.com). Like "Everybody Dreams...", this track is taken from the album "Strange Kid In A Daydream" written in the weeks immediately following the first ever Daydream Generation compilation between March and May of 2007. That first compilation was a chaotic process and I was struggling to get my head around the idea of being responsible for promoting all these great bands that kindly gave their songs away in exchange for some promotion. It was one thing to put the compilation together, but a much tougher challenge to do justice to the music and switch people onto what we'd done. Hence lines like "Smally, Smally help me please/Give me something to feel at ease/I tried to help but I think I sneezed and started a third world war". On the subject of lyrics my favourite lines from this one are "I woke to the sound of a marching band going past me on the beach/The Devil was blowing an old conch shell..." - I think this is somehow related to me being wasted many years ago on Silversands beach in the middle of summer and there was a Salvation Army band playing, looking and sounding completely out of context. From time to time I go through phases of writing "story-songs", usually surreal, dreamlike, unplanned and "The Day That I Played God" probably epitomises that style. It's also probably worth mentioning the percussion element of this song and in particular the crappy little toy drum that I borrowed from Smally Jr for "Strange Kid...". To go with the baby maracas, toy harmonica, and kid's tambourine. Weirdest percussion I've ever used? Probably a shaving brush on a plastic tennis racket.
4 The Sometimes Song
People get broken hearts/ Sometimes that's just the way it goes/ People always fall apart/ Sometimes that's just the way it goes/ I'll say I'm sorry but you know that I don't mean it/ I guess I must be growing old/ Sometimes that's just the way it goes/ People get bent out of shape/ Sometimes that's just the way we grow/ Keep making the same mistakes/ Sometimes that's just the way we grow/ She packed my life away in a little plastic case and kicked me out in the cold/ Sometimes that's just the way it goes/ Wind is always on my face/ Sometimes that's just the way it blows/ Keep missing every dream I chase/ Sometimes that's just the way it flows/ I always thought I'd be sorted by this age but I'm still working for the minimum wage/ Sometimes that's just the way goes
So you know that "one truly great song" I've been trying to write? Well I never wrote it, but I think this is going to be as close as I'm ever going to get (particularly from other people's reactions to it). Is it my favourite Wheelies song? Probably. I wrote it for "Cosmonaut" and with the self-imposed pressure of getting a record written and recorded in 6 weeks, the songs were pouring out of me. I wrote "The Sometimes Song" late one evening sitting on the couch, the melody took five minutes and the words took another five, seemed to fall out of me as if the song was already written and just waiting to be discovered. The recording itself is pretty grim and not helped by the fact that I was missing a string on the guitar and too broke to buy a new one through the duration of "Cosmonaut" - probably why a lot of that record is very heavy on the keys. I always feel like when I record a song that it's not in it's true form - I mean, I hate singing, and playing music, but I love songwriting, so I usually end up preferring to hear cover versions of Wheelies tracks. I'm still waiting to hear someone cover this but hopefully sometime. The song itself is broken into three sections, the first deals with the fragility of being and the body, the second is about getting dumped, and the third is about being poor. I like to try and find and then write about positives hidden in dark situations, the fear of things, the memory of how I stumbled through depression and came out on the other side. "Sometimes that's just the way it goes..." I guess is the logical answer to the impossible question that is "Why?"
5 I've Got A Good Feeling
Nothing comes from nothing so this must mean something/ I was hanging from your fingers after fucking jumping/ I changed my mind just in time and then I turned around/ Grabbing hold of anything at all baby you caught me/ I looked into your soul and said "please don't drop me"/ I don't wanna die/ I changed my mind/ I wasn't thinking straight/ I've got a good feeling/ In my blood/ In my bones/ I've got a good feeling/ Pull me up and take me home/ Back to where you grew up maybe meet your mother/ You could tie me to your bed and baby we could be lovers all night long/ I'd write a song about how you saved my soul/ You said "I wasn't meant to be here I was only passing, I'm looking for a love that is everlasting, something real I just don't feel that this is somehow right"/ I've got a good feeling/ In my bones/ In my brain/ I've got a good feeling/ Promise I won't jump again/ Got to say I was surprised when you let me go/ Went tumbling to earth headfirst in a hole that went on and on/ On and on/ Baby on and on/ Now you'll never belive it but baby I'm still falling/ Never will forget that I could hear you calling "I changed my mind - I never meant to let you go"/ I've got a good feeling/ In my bones/ In my brain/ I've got a good feeling/ Promise I won't jump again
Another one from "Cosmonaut". Like I said, when I started out on that record I had it in mind to very loosely tie it around the idea of "the cosmonaut of inner space", but halfway through the idea of The 17th Floor began to appear through several of the songs. In that sense "I've Got A Good Feeling" is a suicide song - a guy climbs up onto the 17th floor of a building and jumps out of a window. In this instance as he jumps he sees a girl behind him and she in turn sees him and there is an explosion of connectivity between them, like they have always been fated to meet. And yet, at the point when they do he's halfway out of the window plummeting to his death, and the entire song (at an overly long six minutes plus) is framed within those few seconds of realisation. I guess it's black comedy, him dangling from her fingers changing his mind about wanting to die, then her letting go and changing her mind about it as he falls away. Ah, there's really so much in this one that I could sit here all day writing... The song itself is so full of technical fuck-ups that it's not funny. Ropey vocals, badly played improvised keys (Ray Manzarek I am not), levels all over the place. It's one of those songs that I'm almost embarassed to play to people, and yet there's something I like about the descending main vocal line that makes it bearable for me to listen to it.
6 Oh Happiness
Well I'm happy struggling to get by/ Sitting on my ass remembering the past/ And the future is a mystery to me/ I've never really known like other people know/ Oh happiness/ Well I'm sorry it's so hard to make ends meet/ But if you're feeling beat you can take a seat beside me/ My shoulder was made for you/ So love the path you choose it's all that you can do/ Oh happiness/ Just as long as there is rhythm in your bones/ Just as long as there's a place to call your own/ I know it drags but blink and it is gone (gone gone)/ Oh happiness
Perhaps more than any other this song defines the year in my life that these were all recorded in. It was written over the course of a sunny May day, initially sitting in the garden with the guitar while Linz and Dylan buzzed around me, then later playing it in the living room and Linz put her head around the door and sang the repeat line of the chorus for a laugh. It made the song for me, so I forced her at psychological gunpoint that weekend to record it. On the original version it ended with us laughing as she pointed out that it sounds like I am singing "Oh a penis!" and me going "Aw no! Fuck!" with the realisation she was write. This is the only track from the album of the same name that I've chosen for inclusion, for a number of reasons. The first is simply that "Oh Happiness" is technically a shambles: I'm thinking about The crap £60 guitar, no panning of sounds, and the very audible fuck-ups that litter it. At the time it was a one-off record - I hadn't written or recorded anything for 9 years after "Simple Songs For Complicated People", and so I wasn't taking it very seriously. After so long away from writing songs it was more of an explosion of ideas than anything else, and there was no sign of songwriter's block or struggling to find melodies. In that context it was probably the most enjoyable of all The Wheelies albums to record irrespective of how bad it sounds, and at the centre of it all "Oh Happiness" reflects pretty accurately how I was feeling, both about the music, and about my life.
7 The 17th Floor
I resolved to jump from the 17th floor/ I couldn't live with myself no more/ And as I fell the world began to shine and it echoed in my mind blowing out from far inside and I saw that I'd been shining all my life/ I closed my eyes and ceased to be/ While my body landed in a tree/ Tangled up in branches leafed with broken dreams that I dreamt when I was young in the belly of a sun and I saw I'd been hung up there all along/ In a while an ambulance arrived/ Came with the sound of ice cream chimes/ They quickly fixed my head but they couldn't find my mind/ It was shining in the sky with the ghosts I left behind standing smiling in a neverending line
As mentioned previously, "The 17th Floor" was a recurring theme on the "Cosmonaut" album. Originally this started as a guitar song, then I added the piano, and later cut the guitar out, which is why the vocals sound too loud (I never went back and fixed it). Like "I've Got A Good Feeling" it's another suicide song, this time the protagonist jumping and landing in a tree where he survives in a physical sense, but dies a spiritual death that leaves his mind "shining in the sky with the ghosts I left behind standing smiling in a neverending line". I like to think of this as a positive outcome. Actually one of my favourite Wheelies cover versions is "The 17th Floor" as performed by Fig Mints (Of Your Imagination). I was trying to record some of these songs live on the guitar and when I played this one it sounded very like a Figs song, so I asked Bobby if he wanted to cover it, which he did, and the results were pretty special. Well worth checking out if you can find it. Initially I hated the lines about the ambulance sirens sounding like ice-cream van chimes, but I've grown to quite like them over time.
8 The World Is Fucked
I think the world is fucked little baby/ I think the world is fucked little baby/ The strings of everything are so tangled today they can never be untied/ And if the world is fucked little baby/ And we've been running on luck little baby/ Let's blow up like roman candles blazing right across the sky/ I hope I'm wrong and this song is sorry and mistaken/ I try to keep it in but my heart just won't stop breaking/ Hope it don't detract from the fact that we should keep making love/ Even if the world is fucked/ Stumble on into infinity just like dinosaurs left strung out in a dream/ Or photographs spinning in the breeze blow into the 22nd century/ Yesterday the sun was out and everyone was shining/ Now I'm caked in sun cream and I'm thinking about climate change and all that other stuff I'm finding really hard to ignore/ And here comes the next world war/ I think my head might be fucked little baby/ I think my head might be fucked little baby/ All the strings holding me up are so frayed that I'm ready to unwind/ And if my head is fucked little baby/ And you're about to give up on me baby/ Please won't you take a little time to detonate me before you say goodbye/ Oh my God I'm so fucked I think my mind's on fire/ I'd dance it out my bones but I'm feeling far too tired/ I've been running round while an imaginary choir sings "This is the end of everything"/ On and on floating up the stream someday I'm going to work out what it means from photographs spinning in the breeze leave my skin in a sad bundle at my feet/ Don't you know tomorrow all these words will lose their meaning/ In the end and again there's just no relief from being who you are and what you are and everything that you dream of/ And I think that's why the world is fucked
I was doing a lot of what we now call "mining" - surfing the Internet in search of bands and individuals that might fit with the Daydream Generation project, and this song was a response to the desperation I felt doing it. The thing was, that it felt like most of the MySpace pages I visited belonged to EMO kids, each one trying to outdo the other with their narcissistic woes and attempts to shock from a safe distance. Not only did it make feel like a old 31, but it didn't exactly fill me with confidence about the future. And so I wrote "The World Is Fucked". The verse melodies (seriously out of vocal reach to a point where it sounds hopelessly garbled) were lifted from another Wheelies song "Love It", which in turn was taken from the bridge section on "Anybody's Guess". It's a tune that I love but for some reason can't seem to do justice, so hopefully someday someone will sing it as it was supposed to be sung. So yeah, in the spectrum of Wheelies songs, this one is a philosophical monster where humans are neurotic dinosaur puppets taking photographs.
9 Strange Kid In A Daydream
Strange kid in a daydream rolling dice and recording combinations in a notebook filled with smiles and codes/ Tried to grow a pumpkin but it never stood a chance/ It was a pointless competition/ You ought to have known/ Waiting at the window in a whirlpool of moonbeams just watching the cobwebs grow/ Some things seemed so simple like rainclouds in transition shedding tears made of people who flow/ From the edges of your head to the centre of the world/ So shine/ Someday you'll fall into the gaps in your mind/ And see that the world rarely cares much for your kind at all/ You were born with your back to the wall/ Strange kid in a daydream
This is the title-track from the last of the 5 albums I put out during that year. The drum loop I stole from a free loop site, and I took out the main guitar to help it sound more chaotic and different. Essentially it's about my teenage years, coming last in the waster pumpkin growing competition (though I never wore the winning pumpkin on my head as promised) - mine grew mouldy on the window sill or rolling dice like I did when I was a kid playing imaginary football games that I invented to escape the real world. It's one of those attempted wisdom songs, trying to sing to others like me, but it probably only sounds wanky and bullshit. Nice tune though I think.
10 When The Morning Comes
This song originally appeared on "Cosmonaut" but the inevitable by-product of rushing writing and recording and mixing is that sometimes you end up with a song that doesn't quite live up to it's potential, so this version was re-recorded for "Strange Kid...". It probably developed from me playing the piano (keyboard) and getting the chorus and then realising that it fitted in with the original verses (I always hated the original's chorus which seemed completely removed from what I was actually singing about). Round about this time I was listening to a lot of External World and one of the things I loved about it was the mad percussion sounds, so for this I dug out every pot and pan and rhythm making instrument I could find in the house and put them all on the living carpet in a big line, worked my way round them as the song played. It probably didn't work that well. The song itself is simply a sweet hymn to being relatively useless.
11 Beautiful Bones
At the turn of the year (06/07) I was asked via The Cozy Home to write a song about a for a student's art project where they intended to make a vinyl record featuring several bands singing about dinosaurs. I don;t think that record ever materialised, but if it did then it didn't feature "Beautiful Bones". My choice of dinosaur was the Supersaurus, and I wrote this throwaway song about a cartoon paranoid dinosaur called Danny. I don't know where or why I got the idea to somehow frame it in a mock-live setting (possibly regret that I can't play live - you'd need to put me in a binbag and force me to play at gunpoint, so intense is my nervous disposition in front of crowds of people). Anyway, the mock-live thing didn't sound half as good in reality as it sounded in my head and the canned laughter is erm, excruitiatingly bad. For a while I considered and re-considered keeping the line "He thought he had bum cancer" in, especially as Linz was telling me she hated that line. But if you can't laugh in the face of tragedy, then what can you do? So I kept it in.
12 Go
We got blasted/ Drifted far out/ On an ice-rink in the stars/ We got interwoven/ The ice got broken/ I carried you right from the start/ Now finally I know I can't carry you no more/ You always let it down and so I've got to let it go/ I woke this morning beneath a black sun and I noticed it was gone/ And I was older, still none the wiser/ So I wrote another unfinished song/ Now finally I know I can't carry you no more/ You always let it down and so I've got to let it go/ You flow your way and I'll flow my way/ You've got your dreams and I've got mine/ We'll be laughing/ Lit up like lanterns caught in moments lost in time/ Now finally I know I can't carry you no more/ You always let it down and so I've got to let it go/ And I hope you know you'll never really know
One of only two songs to make it onto this from the second album "Wake Me Up When It's Over", "Go" is a pretty personal song about something I won't go into here. "Wake Me Up..." was really a reaction to the interest show by Cozy Home after "Oh Happiness" - I bought a keyboard to compliment the crap £60 acoustic guitar, and miraculously managed to persuade two of the original Wheelies (Thomas and Martin) to head over to my house by the sea for a day to help out with the songs. I was a bit paranoid about this song sounding too "soft" when I wrote it, but I guess at the end, that's just me. There are a lot of mistimed instruments on this song, and its the only time the toy harmonica features on The Shite Album - considering I can only play one tune on the moothie, you're not missing much. There is also a much more psychedelic cover version of "Go" on The Real Burnouts "A Lull In Void" available to download for free at www.cozyhomerecords.com - that record is one of my personal favourites so to have somehow helped with it is a real priveledge.
13 Morning Star 07
Recorded for the "Respun" album in January 2007, "Morning Star" originally appeared on "Simple Songs For Complicated People" back in 1997, when I locked myself in a room for 20 something blazing hot summer days to write and record a full-length Wheelies record. By the time I reached "Respun" I was probably reaching a point of songwriter's burn-out for the first time since I'd picked up the guitar in March of the previous year. It kicked off in the weeks after "Cosmonaut" when I felt like I was still on a writing high and had more songs in me, but the brain ran out of gas pretty quickly. Stuck for something to sing, I picked a few old tracks from a decade previous that I figured I could do better, and "Morning Star" was one of them (hence the "07"). This song actually is the soundtrack to one of the most unique experiences in my life - see Glencoe , September 1997, 4 friends, a pan of psychedelic sausages and a multi-coloured boabey. I'll not bore you with the details, but let's just say I had some kind of religious epiphany. The updated version on here perhaps has lost some of the original magic (somehow feeding an electric accordian backwards through a distortion box didn't quite seem to work this time), but it's an important song nevertheless and features some interesting backwards scratch drums. Actually a simple Casio keyboard beat going backwards.
14 So Long
Ladies and gentlemen on behalf of The Wheelies I'd like to thank you for tuning in when you could have tuned off/ I'd love to say it was a pleasure but I'm not going to lie to you/ Just when this stuff is inside of you better let it out/ Singing la la la la la la la la if this is the last of us so long, so long
I've written a lot of "last songs" in my time. Much the same as I've smoked a lot of "last cigarettes". It's a concious decision, like leaving a farewell message (or well done) message for anyone who makes it through an entire Wheelies album intact. "So Long" is probably as close as I can get to the perfect Wheelies goodbye, in particular the line "when this stuff is inside of you better get it out". In actual fact there is no real reason why you should like these songs since they are simply an excorcism of something inside of me, an urge to create that has to go somewhere. Soon enough it won't be channelled into music, but something else instead. At the time when I was recording this for "Wake Me Up..." I intended it to be like a "Her Majesty" at the end of the record, only I left a couple of minutes with the words "Take it away Slight" for him to play one of his legendary laserbeam guitar solos on, but for one reason or another he never got round to doing it, so I cut the line and faded it out. So not only is it a fitting end to The Wheelies, but it is also a pretty great reflection of why it ended, and probably why it should have ended a lot sooner than it did. And actually it dawns on me as I'm writing this, that this really is The End. It's been a long, comical, magical, and excrutiatingly painful journey. Thanks to everyone who has supported the band, and laterally me, thanks for downloading the records, and for the kind words of support. Sook the bools.