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COVERED UP
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In early 1998, when the decision was first taken to form
a new band, I had one basic tenet that I insisted be adhered to : we
don't do covers. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, in my
time with Cannon back in the seventies, we'd spent seven years doing
almost nothing but covers - which, while it was a lot of fun,
was enough for my taste. Now, I wanted to do original material -
not just my own ( in fact the recent band's set-list comprised a
relatively small amount of my own songs, in the end ) but at least
material that had been written within the band. The second reason was
that I knew from experience that in a five-piece band, it's virtually
impossible to agree on one cover - everyone has their own
favourites, and before you know it, you've built five separate covers
into the set - which, as already mentioned, was five too many for my
preference. For these reasons, ( and rightly or wrongly in the eyes
of whoever else ) I absolutely insisted that we stick to our own
songs. It was never the case that I didn't ever want to play a cover
again : it was quite simply that if I'd agreed to do covers, I'd have
ended up playing at least four other songs that I personally had no
particular desire to play. After the band broke up, however, I had
no-one to answer to but myself, so I decided to get all the covers out
of my system in one go - and the result is "Covered Up". This is a
compilation of all the covers that I would have agreed to do if
it hadn't meant opening the flood-gates for who-knew-how-many others.
All of the songs in this compilation are songs that have had some part
in either shaping my musical direction, or simply influencing my
musical tastes.
I mentioned two reasons for resisting the urge to do
covers : perhaps there's a third, and if so it would be that when you
listen to a cover, you invariably compare it with the original - and
the cover almost always comes off second, not altogether
surprisingly. For that reason, if I was going to do this, I wanted
to try and do something a little different with each song, just enough
to distinguish it from the original, but without losing the flavour
of the original - which after all was what attracted me ( and
presumably everyone else ) to the song in the first place. I hope
I've succeeded, and I hope you like the results. In some cases the
differences leap out at you from the beginning - the fact that the
three Police covers have been done totally without guitars, for
example, as has the majority of the material. At the same time,
even when I've changed instrumentation in various cases, I've tried to
keep the essence of the song intact : for example, the drums
in Every Breath You Take and Message In A Bottle have been lovingly
copied beat for beat ( or at least, as near as I can tell ) to
Stewart Copeland's original drumming, and although the piano has been
used instead of the guitar in both cases, I've tried to copy the guitar
part as faithfully as possible in order to preserve the feel of the
original song.
At the time of writing, a number of these songs are
still in various stages of production, hence the status notes beside
each song. In the majority of cases, where the song is incomplete,
it is so for one of two reasons : either I just haven't started work
on it yet, or else the music tracks are done and I need a singer. In
those cases, anyone who's interested is welcome to
e-mail me and volunteer their services. More details of what I'm looking for can
be found on the "Answering
An Ad" page - it's probably best to take a look there before
sending the e-mail!
As you’ll see from checking down the list, the songs at
the present time that I'm happy enough to put on here as completely
finished articles are "Hoedown", "Back Street Luv", “Spooky”,
"Over The Rainbow", “Every Breath You
Take” ( but see the notes with the song ), "Alla Turca"
and "I'll Be There For You". In the
case of "Message In A Bottle", I've done a guide vocal ( listen at
your own peril ) in the absence of a "proper" singer to do the
job. You can hear the song with my vocals on it ( if you're sure you
want to ! ) by clicking on the "play the song as it stands" link.
Each of the other songs has notes in the “status” column which explain
where I’m up to with that particular song at the time of writing.
Please feel free to use the
feedback page to comment on any
of the material on this page, as well as to make any other observations
you may have about the site in general. MP3's for all of these songs
will be uploaded as and when they're completed, which in most cases
means when they have a proper vocal track on them. When the
compilation is complete ( at present, this is estimated to be
somewhere in the region of Christmas 2007 ), and subject to
any copyright issues, I'm hoping to make the whole selection available on CD. Details of cost and how to order will be
posted on this web-page in due course.
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* * *
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STATUS
OF SONG :
Ready
to play.
Play
song - version 1 !
Play
song - version 2 !
Listen to the
original !
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HOEDOWN
Original
artists - Emerson, Lake &
Palmer
Written
by Aaron Copland, arranged by
Emerson, Lake & Palmer |
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Emerson, Lake & Palmer were the
band who were far and away most responsible for shaping my musical
taste and direction, bar none. Everyone has their own musical
heroes, but for me, these three men were to prog rock what the
Beatles were to mainstream pop - that perfect blend of chemistry
that makes the whole infinitely more than just the sum of it's
parts. "Hoedown", from their "Trilogy" album, is in my
opinion one of the best examples of their work, having been
recorded just before what for many E L P fans was the peak of their
careers, the excellent "Brain Salad Surgery" album, which
in turn was
followed by the ground-breaking triple live LP from the tour that
accompanied it. One of E L P's trademarks was their ability to
take a classical piece and re-work it, as was the case with this
tune, one of two that were taken from American composer Aaron
Copland's catalogue ( the other being "Fanfare For The Common
Man", about three years later ). From Copland's "Rodeo"
suite, this adaptation combines the rousing "Big Country" western
feel of the original with the maniacal synthesiser work of Keith
Emerson, rising to a climax that can only be described as an
electro-musical orgasm.
As with some of the other artists
represented in this collection, it was extremely difficult to select a single
track to cover. Ultimately, there were two
reasons for choosing this particular E L P track to best represent
my love of their music. Firstly, of all their
work, this still stands for many as one of the most popular tracks
they ever recorded; and secondly, it was the first E L P
piece that I ever learned, when I first started playing keyboards
back in the early seventies. In those days, that meant recording
the track on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, slowing it down to
half-speed, and picking it out note for note. An educational
experience, to be sure! Some time later, I managed to purchase
the sheet music from Boosey & Hawkes, which served to tidy up some
of the ragged edges from my original effort.
I have to say, though, that since the only sheet music I
could get at that time was for the original, orchestral
version of the piece, trying to extract the relevant
information in order to end up with something that sounded like the
E L P version was something of a challenge, to say the least.
Having chosen which piece to do, the
problem that then confronted me with this
particular E L P track - or would have, for that matter,
with almost any other -
was always going to be the question of how to do it in a way that
E L P themselves had not already done in their thirty-odd years of
playing it live. I wrestled with this long and hard before
finally deciding to do two separate versions of the piece.
Version 1 is, I think it's safe to say, different from
anything the band have ever done with this live.
You may like it or you may not - but you almost
certainly won't have heard it done this way before.
Version 2 is, if you like, the more “traditional” ( in the
E L P sense ) version. As with all
of the other covers in this selection, I wanted to keep as
much of the original flavour of the piece as possible, and
version 1 didn't really allow me to do that. With
this version, however, I've done the same as with
most of the other pieces in this project - tried to
capture as much of the style, sound and feel of the original
as possible whilst at the same time adding to it in a way that,
I hope, will give it an added original slant.
I hope that at least one version or the other will appeal to you
- but as always, please feel free to
e-mail me or
use the feedback form to let me know!
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Featured
on this track :
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Drums |
:
Richard Dellow |
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Keyboards |
:
Mark Dellow |
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STATUS
OF SONG :
Ready
to play.
Play
song !
Listen
to the original !
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BACK
STREET LUV
Original
artists - Curved Air
Written
by Sonja Kristina, Darryl Way,
Ian Eyre |
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Back Street Luv, from Curved Air's
'Second Album', was one of the first songs to seriously get me
listening to electronic music. Even in the early
seventies, when synthesiser technology was still relatively in
it's infancy and true polyphony was still non-existent, electronic
music for me captured emotions and evoked images that no other kind of
music could. Francis Monkman was without doubt one of
the most innovative exponents of electronic music around at the time,
having both great musical skill and an inventive and creative mind.
The angry rasp of the VCS3 was an integral part of the essence of this
track, and in fact when I came to record my version of it,
it took me over a week just to get that sound right, or at least
as near right as humanly possible. From Second Album also came a track called
'Young Mother', at the end of which was a soaring VCS3 solo which
I proceeded to learn, note by note, which - as
with "Hoedown" above - meant recording the piece on a reel-to-reel tape recorder and
slowing it to half-speed, then picking the notes out of
that! It was a long process, but in over thirty
years I never forgot that solo, and in doing Back Street
Luv, I wanted to try to incorporate the Young Mother solo without
actually doing it as a separate track ( which was not an
option, as I could never have hoped to duplicate Darryl Way's
violin virtuosity from the original ). The
solution was to tack the Young Mother solo on to the end of Back Street
Luv, which proved to be a tenuous transition from C minor to D
major. Let me know if you think I got away with it.
As
mentioned above, I wanted to try to add something to the
song ( other than simply tacking the solo on the
end ) whilst keeping it as faithful as possible to the
original. I did this by e-mailing Sonja
Kristina, the singer of Curved Air and co-writer of the song, and
asking her for her input. Sonja was kind enough to
write two additional verses for the song, which I've incorporated
into it in a way which I hope suitably reflects her mood at the time of
writing the verses. To the best of my knowledge these
additional verses are not recorded anywhere else, and I am
indebted to Sonja for this invaluable contribution. My
undying thanks also to Francis, whose invaluable help with
chords, inversions and instrumentation enabled me to get as close
to the feel of the original as possible.
Last but not least, I have to
express my gratitude to Tracy Gilmore, the singer from my last
band, for her vocals on this track. As any
Curved Air enthusiast is aware, there has never been a voice quite
like Sonja's, but even Sonja herself commented on the quality of
Tracy's voice on this track; and indeed,
inasmuch as any singer could have captured the haunted and
haunting quality of Sonja's original vocal, I feel that Tracy did
indeed do a stirling job of it.
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Featured
on this track : |
Vocals |
:
Tracy Gilmore |
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Drums |
:
Richard Dellow |
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Guitar |
:
Lee Brown |
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Bass |
:
Gary Bennett |
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Keyboards |
:
Mark Dellow |
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STATUS
OF SONG :
Ready to play.
Play song!
Listen
to the original !
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| SPOOKY
Original
artist - Dusty Springfield
Written by
H. Middlebrooks, M. Shapiro, B. Bule and
J.B. Cobb |
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So why Spooky? One of the first artists I ever listened to,
and one of the first albums I ever bought, was Dusty Springfield
( the album was Golden Hits, and the year, if I remember
correctly, was 1967 ). To this day, she
remains one of my personal favourite female singers of all time,
and indeed she is generally regarded as one of the best, and
certainly most unique, female singers of the twentieth century.
Although I've been fortunate enough to work with a number of extremely
talented singers and musicians in the recording of this material,
I do feel particularly lucky in having found Lola Edun to sing the
vocals on this track; although, as I'm sure
Lola herself would agree, Dusty's voice is inimitable, I
feel that Lola's rendition of this song more than does it justice.
Although 'Spooky' is not one
of Dusty's best-known songs, it was by chance one of the many
covers that we played in my first serious band, Cannon.
The version we did also gave me one of my first totally-improvised organ
solos with Cannon - the very first solo with Cannon
was Deep Purple's "Highway Star", but that was copied
directly from the original. Once again, in
recording this, I've tried to keep the flavour of Dusty's original
version, but at the same time I've changed the second half of the
song to sound the way I would have wanted it to sound if I'd had this
amount of equipment thirty years ago!
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Featured
on this track : |
Vocals |
:
Lola Edun |
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Drums |
:
Richard Dellow |
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Keyboards |
:
Mark Dellow |
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STATUS
OF SONG :
Ready to play.
Play song!
Listen
to the original !
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OVER THE
RAINBOW
Original
artist - Eva Cassidy
Written
by E. Harburg / Harold Arlen |
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Well, fair play, this
collection is nothing if not eclectic. "Over The
Rainbow" was more or less an accidental addition to the collection,
inasmuch as Tracy Gilmore, ex-singer with the last band, had
helped me out with the vocals on various songs including "Back Street
Luv" as featured on this page and asked if I'd mind recording a song
that was a particular favourite of hers : "Over The Rainbow"
by Eva Cassidy. Before someone points out the fact,
I'm well aware that Eva Cassidy wasn't the original original
artist, by the way, but since it was her version that Tracy
wanted to emulate, I've credited her accordingly here.
In theory, that was the plan.
However, when Tracy came along to record it, she found that
on the day, she just couldn't make the top end of the register
- which was a great shame, because I've heard her sing the
song and she can certainly do it proud when she's taken care of her
voice. We did the best we could, but even after
a lot of editing, neither Tracy nor I were entirely happy with the
finished article, and out of deference to her, I therefore
haven't included it on the website. I know it was
always her intention to come back and fix the bits she had trouble with,
and as far as I know that's still what she intends to do at some point;
but as is so often the way, other things intervened and at least
for the immediate future it proved impossible.
Even though the song was never one of my
own choices for the 'Covered Up' project, having spent
a considerable amount of time and energy on it by this time, it
seemed a shame to waste it : so, I thought of Eve, who'd
done 'I Don't Know You Any More'
( from the 'All My Own Work'
page ) for me. There was never any doubt in my
mind that Eve could nail the song, and sure enough, she came
along and did precisely that; and so, it's Eve's version that
finally made it to the website.
Since this was originally Tracy's project,
and since I know she wanted to emulate the original as much as possible, I copied the guitar part as best I could on the
piano and added some backing strings and woodwind.
Unlike the other material on this page, I had no particular agenda
to try to add anything to the original, so what you hear is as
near as Eve and I could get it to Eva Cassidy's version -
except without the acoustic guitar. Listen and enjoy!
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Featured
on this track : |
Vocals |
:
Eve Robertson |
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Drums |
:
Richard Dellow |
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Keyboards |
:
Mark Dellow |
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STATUS
OF SONG :
This was always going to be an interesting one
to cover, inasmuch as there aren't too many male vocalists
with a voice like Mickey Dolenz circa 1969. In all
honesty, I'll be quite impressed if you can even remember what
Mickey Dolenz sounded like in 1969. In the event
that you can't ( and that probably covers 99% of the people
who will read this ) I would suggest that if you're even
half-interested, you might want to visit the 'Covered
Up' page and play the track first. As you'll
gather, Mr. Dolenz had a register that made Sting sound like
Lee Marvin ( and if you don't remember Lee Marvin either,
ask your parents ). For that reason I would
willingly entertain the idea of a female vocalist.
It being the case that this is so far untried, I'd entertain
any offers : as with all the other tracks, I'll know what I
think is the right voice when I hear it, so if you fancy
giving it a shot, contact me.
At the time of writing, this song hasn't yet been started on,
so none of the music tracks are yet recorded. Due
to other commitments, I know that I'm not going to be able to
get this recorded in the immediate future; hence,
if this one takes your fancy, we'd be looking at at least four
to eight weeks from the date of agreeing to do it.
Listen
to the original !
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ZOR AND
ZAM
Original
artists - The Monkees
Written
by Bill & John Chadwick |
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Did someone say "eclectic" ?
Back in 1967, when I was just
eleven years old, I heard the Monkees play ( or not play,
at least for the first couple of albums ) on TV, and
realised for the first time that I wanted to be a musician.
By the time their third album "Headquarters" was released
( in perfect conjunction with The Beatles' "Sergeant Pepper"
album, which was a hell of an act to follow ), the sales
figures had started to decrease. For me,
however, the release of this album, which saw them playing
their own instruments and writing a lot of their own music for the first
time, marked the beginning of their climb to new and greater
heights. The fourth album, "Pisces,
Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones Ltd.", saw their first foray
into the world of electronic music, and was among the first
commercial albums to feature the then ground-breaking Moog Synthesiser.
If anything was going to put the seal on my love of the band, this
was it.
When I embarked upon the "Covered
Up" project, it was only right and proper that The Monkees
should be represented, but the question ( as with many of
the other artists on this page ) was which track to choose.
Several of the songs from the first two albums - the
better-known and more commercially successful material such as
"Last Train To Clarksville", "I'm A Believer", "Stepping
Stone" - has been comprehensively covered elsewhere,
and I didn't want to just follow suit, so I decided to pick a much
lesser-known track from a much lesser-known album. It
was a toss-up between "Daily Nightly" from the
"Pisces" album, or this, from "The Birds,
The Bees and The Monkees", and ultimately this won the day.
The next challenge was how to actually
treat the song. The Monkees' original rendition of it,
as with virtually all of their material, had a unique sound,
and Mickey Dolenz' voice was always going to be difficult to emulate.
I decided firstly to take the principle of the original,
which builds to a crescendo toward the end of what is essentially quite
a short song, and develop that idea with more instruments and
added drums. Then, since one of the things that
attracted me to this song was the lyrics themselves, I decided to
add some of my own. I hope people will like the new
additions, but my profound apologies to the boys and to Bill
Chadwick and the late John Chadwick if that's not the case.
So this, when it's finished,
will be Zor and Zam for the new Millennium. I hope the
Monkees and messrs. Chadwick would approve, but if anyone should speak to them,
I'd be more than happy to hear what they think first-hand, and as
always, if you want to express an opinion of it,
that's what the feedback page is for.
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Featured
on this track : |
Vocals |
:
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Drums |
:
Richard Dellow |
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Keyboards |
:
Mark Dellow |
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STATUS
OF SONG :
Yet to be recorded. Scheduled for
sometime toward the end of 2007.
Listen
to the original !
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THE
PROMISE ( Theme from "The Piano" )
Original
artist - Michael Nyman
Written
by Michael Nyman |
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This was Richard's bright idea.
Having heard both the original and the version of this that was used for
the advertisements for a certain bank on TV, he then came up with
the idea that we should do this. He's full of good
ideas, my son. Anyway, I got hold of the
sheet music and proceeded to learn it, and this, when it's
finished, will be the result. I hope you like
it; if you do, please let me know, and if you
don't, blame Richard.
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Featured
on this track : |
Drums |
:
Richard Dellow |
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Keyboards |
:
Mark Dellow |
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STATUS
OF SONG :
As you can hear, all the music for this is recorded and ready
to go, and so far, I've had three
singers have a shot at it, one male and two female.
The last of these was Tamiya, whose version of the song is the
one that appears on this page.
Obviously it goes without saying that the song was written for a
male vocalist, and ideally I'm looking for someone who can do
a creditable Sting impression. Having had three
goes at this already, I'm in no hurry to revisit it unless
it's with a singer who comes within one percent either way of being
exactly what I'm looking for ... and since, ideally, I'm
looking for someone who sings the song exactly the way Sting does,
that's likely to be a pretty tall order. If you
think I could close my eyes and you could convince me you were
Sting, give me a call; otherwise, this
probably isn't the song for you.
Play song!
Listen
to the original !
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| EVERY
BREATH YOU TAKE
Original
artists - The Police
Written
by Sting
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Having remarked elsewhere on this page
that there have been several instances where it's been difficult to
choose a single song to represent a particular band or artist who I
revere, the discerning reader will have noticed that there are no
less than three Police covers in this compilation. This is because in
my humble opinion, The Police were the most consistently great
pop band of their time ( notwithstanding the overlap with
Emerson, Lake & Palmer, who with the best
will in the world were anything but a pop act ! ), and to
choose just one of their songs to cover proved to be too difficult a
task. In the end I narrowed it down to three
- and even that wasn't easy ! - and it was
really a foregone conclusion that one of those three had to be the
anthemic Every Breath You Take. Sting himself has
often told the story that Every Breath You Take, contrary to
popular belief, is actually quite a dark lyric, rather than
the love song that most people perceive it to be
( "Every step you take, I'll be watching
you" ... think about it ! ), and that's one of
the things that attracts me to the song - the ability to
take a lyric about what is essentially a stalker and make it into what
is not only a prime example of mainstream pop, but indeed a song
which to this day makes regular appearances in the top ten of those
innumerable "list" shows that appear so often on
TV. In my opinion, and apparently in the opinion
of countless others, "Every Breath You Take"
remains still one of the best songs of the latter half of the twentieth
century. It would have been a travesty not to
have included it!
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Featured on this track
:
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Keyboards / Drums /
Backing vocals
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: Mark Dellow
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Lead vocals
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:
Tamiya Johnston
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Backing vocals |
:
Alex Wenman
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STATUS
OF SONG :
This
is another one that hasn't been started on yet, and therefore
would not be ready for vocals for anywhere from four to eight weeks
from the date of agreeing to do the song. As with
the rest of the covers, in an ideal world I'd like a singer
that was as close as possible to Russ Ballard, who sang the
song with Argent originally. As with the rest of
the covers, I'm well aware that the chances of finding a male
vocalist with this register aren't great. Although
I'd prefer a male vocalist, if possible, I'd be
quite willing to entertain the idea of a female singer -
if it was a female singer with a strong enough voice.
Listen
to the original !
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| HOLD
YOUR HEAD UP
Original
artists - Argent
Written
by Rod Argent, Russ Ballard,
Jim Rodford, Bob Henrit
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Way
back when God was a boy ( well, 1972, to be
accurate ), Argent released 'Hold Your Head
Up'. Keyboard-led songs were still very much in the
minority in mainstream pop, and extended solos in chart-aimed
songs were unheard of ( and remain largely so to this
day ), which is why the version of this song that made
it to the public ear was considerably abridged from the album track from
which it was drawn. Although the chart version was in
itself a refreshing oasis in the burgeoning sea of glam-rock and disco
music that was to dominate the pop charts in the early- and mid- seventies,
the album version was better still, Rod Argent's organ solo
distinguishing him as one of the leading keyboard players of the Prog
Rock phenomenon that was still very much in it's formative years at that
time. Anyone who saw the Melody Maker Poll Winners'
concert at The Oval, Kennington, in 1972, will
remember Argent being lined up alongside Genesis, Wishbone
Ash, Focus and Emerson, Lake & Palmer in
what was one of the most memorable concerts of the first half of the
decade. Unlike their contemporaries ( for
whom, may I say, I also have the greatest respect ),
Argent didn't come onstage dressed as flowers, yodelling, or
firing twin cannon mounted on giant Tarkus dragons.
They just came onstage and played one of the best sets of the
day. By this time I had already fallen in love with
electronic keyboards, and Hold Your Head Up was one of the first
songs I ever played on a stage - specifically, the
stage of my high school when the headmaster gave us permission to play
the song, along with Stairway To Heaven, in assembly one
morning. "Us" was myself, an
excellent young guitarist named John Blackwell, and our friend
Colin Freeman on bass and vocals. It was the first
serious step ( well - serious to me,
anyway ) on a musical path on which this compilation is the
latest development.
Featured
on this track :
Keyboards
: Mark Dellow.
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STATUS
OF SONG :
Ready
to play.
Play
song !
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ALLA
TURCA
Written
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart |
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Emerson,
Lake & Palmer had a number of trademarks : one of them
was to take a classical piece of music and do a prog-rock cover of
it. I can't say this was something that I felt a great
compulsion to emulate on a grand scale, but one track that I
always thought would lend itself really well to this treatment was
Mozart's Rondo Alla Turca from his Sonata in A. In fact, I
was surprised that they never beat me to it, but since they
didn't, I thought I'd give it a shot, and this is the
result. Although the arrangement may not be quite what
Wolfgang originally had in mind, I've stayed musically true to the
original score, the only difference being an additional
"chorus", which, though based on the
original, was my own invention. Other than
that, as Francis Monkman remarked when he heard this for the first
time, "it does exactly what it says on the tin".
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Featured
on this track :
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Keyboards
/ Drums |
:
Mark Dellow |
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Guitar |
:
Lee Brown |
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STATUS
OF SONG :
This almost falls into the same category as 'Every Breath You
Take' inasmuch as the song is recorded and has vocals on it.
The difference between this and 'Every Breath' is that
in this case, for the sake of getting it finished, the
vocals in question are mine - which means that it still
needs a proper singer. However, as with all
of the Police covers, I'm holding out for someone who sounds
enough like Sting to fool his own mother. So,
as far as this song is concerned, only male Sting soundalikes
- and good Sting soundalikes at that - need
apply.
Play
the song as it stands
Listen
to the original !
|
|
| MESSAGE
IN A BOTTLE
Original
artists - The Police
Written
by Sting
|
 |
|
The
second of the three Police covers in this compilation. As
mentioned above, trying to narrow it down to three was not
easy : one of the reasons I chose this particular song
was because I saw the potential to add something new to the song whilst
still retaining the spirit and flavour of the original (
hopefully ). As with Every Breath You Take,
in doing the keyboard part, there was obviously a conversion
process from the original song, inasmuch as both songs were
originally guitar-driven. I hope that that process has not detracted too much from the feel of the original,
and by way of trying to retain the best of the original without simply
creating a carbon-copy, I've tried to duplicate the drum part in
as near exact detail as possible. Obviously the new
segment of the song is all my own - I think it works,
and I hope the listener will too.
|
Featured
on this track :
|
Keyboards
/ Drums / Vocals |
:
Mark Dellow. |
|
Additional
vocals |
:
Andy Titmas / Ken Oldfield |
|
|
|
|
STATUS
OF SONG :
As regards the singer for this song, if you've
read the information on the two Police covers above, you'll
know by now that I either need Sting himself to sing on this one,
or at least someone who sounds enough like him that you'd need a
voiceprint to tell the difference. The only thing
about this song that's different from the other two is that this one
doesn't have the music tracks recorded yet, and as mentioned
above, prior commitments are such that it would be anywhere
from four to eight weeks before I was ready to record a vocal track.
Listen
to the original !
|
|
|
EVERY
LITTLE THING SHE DOES IS MAGIC
Original
artists - The Police
Written
by Sting
|
 |
|
There
isn't much to add to the comments from the previous two Police
songs, except to say that the reason for choosing this as
the third Police track is that it does have a certain sentimental
value for me. Also, the fact that unlike
"Every Breath You Take" and "Message In A Bottle",
this song was piano-based from the beginning, and so made a
fairly obvious third choice as a cover.
Featured
on this track :
Keyboards
: Mark Dellow. |
|
|
|
STATUS
OF SONG :
Ready
to play.
Play song !
Listen
to the original !
|
|
|
I'LL
BE THERE FOR YOU ( Theme
from "Friends" )
Original
artists - The Rembrandts
Written
by Michael Skloff, Alee Willis |
 |
|
Apart
from a deep and abiding love of the show, the theme from Friends
has a particular meaning for me in that when my son Richard was learning
the drums, he took part in a talent competition at school,
with me accompanying him on keyboards. We'd both
jammed to this song long and often at home, and it seemed the
obvious choice for the contest. Although, in the band, we
played together numerous times after that, this was the first and
to date the only time that he and I have ever played together on stage
without any other musicians. I seem to remember at the
time that we stuck a twelve-bar in A in there somewhere for
padding, but as Basil Fawlty said about having mentioned the
war, "I think we got away with it". We
were on stage for less than ten minutes all told, but in some
thirty-five years of having played in public, it remains to this
day one of the
most memorable and enjoyable times I've ever spent on a stage.
As with the other songs in this
compilation, I wanted to do something extra with the song,
and the part I've added just seemed to fall perfectly into place for
what was always intended to be the final song in the "Covered Up"
list. When Richard and I performed it, it was in
front of a crowd of about five or six hundred. I'd
estimate this lot at between five and ten thousand.
Enjoy ... !
|
Featured
on this track : |
Drums |
:
Richard Dellow |
|
|
Keyboards |
:
Mark Dellow |
|
Vocals |
: Liz Wagener |
|
|