This Precious Moment - Brief Song Descriptions
Alright with me
An upbeat nihilistic chant to start with - mainly accoustic guitar
Highway
This kind of grew from bits and pieces… a simple guitar riff , a heartbeat and some thunder (and some gently shaken acacia seedpods from the shores of Lake Victoria) … a new age section… I think it originally started life in Wyoming..
You know me
Finger-picked so it started with the guitar part… a year or so on from Vinyl Anniversary…ah…
Spend my life with you
All very C&W – but the sunrise was actually on the Serengetti… guitars/vocals ‘live’; the pedal steel is a heavily abused sample but the fiddles were carefully scored on Cubase
Dust on the lens
Very allegorical and all too true… the slide guitar’s a bit flat in places but I think that just adds authenticity…
This precious moment
The cover track started life on the guitar but I had the album cover very much in mind as I wrote it
Paradise jam(bo)
The downside of an East African beach break…Written specifically and with deep feeling - if any one says jambo or akuna matata to me again I won’t be held responsible for my actions.
Sweet Marie
I have really no idea why this (music and lyrics) popped into my head driving around in a jeep through the Corbett National Park in the foothills of the Himalayas looking for tigers… but there you go
I am the eggman
My Beatles tribute – how fitting that the European postings had Beatles album cover 64p stamps on them. The Maharishi’s decaying ashram at Rishikesh was a hoot and yes, his bathroom was a beautiful blue (apart from the cowpats on the floor). I loved all the giant egg meditation cells, too, and strangely enough egg-shaped water towers, too).
No dead fish
Only dead fish go with the flow…OK I nicked that strap-line off of a free postcard…but I quite agree in general
I don’t believe you
Another folky fingerpicked number…. apart from the mad harpsichord…. and the charanga… and the final stirring strings section…
There is a diamond in the sky
Lying looking upwards at the starfield from the roof of Mud Fort deep in the Gangetic plain. There were four bright stars in a diamond pattern with a dark heart…very deep and meaningful… oh yes…
Looking down on the world
…just plain silly by comparison.. from the high Andes… I might have been drinking Coca tea at the time…and you have to end on something jolly, don’t you…