How to lose twenty years

I'm revamping another old song. I gotta stop this. This one, entitled Happy at Work was written retospectively about about a crush that a work-colleague had on me in my early-20s - twenty or so years ago. It was written around '95 and just after my band back then, 67, found itself without a deal again.

67's music was pretty heavy in a US hardcore kind of way. We caught the 'grunge' wave of the early 90s. We had always been rocky but as our musical attention turned to the wave of US lo-fi, grunge and hardcore bands of the period, so our sound began to gain in dynamic, angst and feedback. I began to push my voice too, inspired by Black Francis and Kurt Cobain and the like. However, I always retained the English accent - a cross between Hugh Cornwell and David Gedge, they would say. You can hear some of it on the player attached to my social network site.
By 94/95 British bands were making a resurgence. The likes of Blur, Suede, Oasis and Supergrass. We realised we had to change to survive. We changed the band's name to the more English-sounding Tea and drafted in another musician to stir things up a bit. He happened to be a saxophonist but he could have played the accordian - we didn't know what it was we wanted, we just wanted someone else. The sax worked well though, adding a touch of Roxy to our guitar noise and gradually the angst came out of the vocal and irony and wit took it's place.

We had already started falling out over money, money we hadn't even made yet and royalties we hadn't even receieved. Oh, and solo careers that weren't even possible.

67 had had a small deal and I had been very friendly with the record company staff. I think there was some jealousy about that and some feeling that I was in too much of a postion of power. This and the fact that certain people's opinions were being ignored. That kind of thing. We were still young and arrogant and just a little angry. We were drinking a lot too. Anyway, the cracks were showing long befor 67 became Tea, so didn't last long. It ended in a dramatic and comical post-gig scenario involving the drummer's wife, a flying drumstick and a balaclava. Think: "It's your fucking wife! She's not my wife! Whatever fuck she is, alright..."

We had some good songs though. A strong and cohesive set which included a stonking cover of Teardrop Explodes' Reward. Some of these songs have lasted to be played more recently in Pocket Rocket's set.

Happy at Work has been on my mind for a while as a possible revamp. It's quirky and very English. I wrote it about the time I was doing temporary clerical work for BT. I'd got this job at the job centre to get off the dole for a while. I worked for a couple of years for them on temporary contracts and finally got let go for, let's just say, doing something that I shouldn't have. I wrote it form the perspective of an older woman at my work who had a crush on me. The irony is that now, I am her age. I feel this irony when I sing the line: "We kissed and I lost twenty years". At the time she at 40-ish could afford to lose twenty years, me being 24-ish, could not. Now, of course, I can.

This woman was just a bit tarty, short and skinny with long black hair. Small tits, cat-like eyes. We snogged a few times and soon she was really after me. Stroking my leg in the office. Making eyes at me. Buying me stuff. The problem was her husband was a bit of a crook by all accounts. I remember she came in one day with a shiner, so I knew not to take our 'encounters' too far. I think I even met him at one point. So she's so into me that one night she comes to see my band play at the Rock Garden and she buys a black biker jacket to try to impress me. Unfortunatley, I'm too busy with my friends and self-absorbed to notice and so I upset her by not appearing to even care. I didn't mind the occasional snog but I certainly wasn't gonna go home with her as she had suggested when her husband was away.

Happy at Work is unusual in that it doesn't really have a chorus. It has a repeated guitar chord phrase that punctuates the verses. When it was written it had alot of these; too many. They upset the momentum of the song so I've taken a few out. It was written in A and half way through changed to E. I have put the whole song in D which enables me to sing the early verses in a lower register and to belt out the last verses in the higher one. This has the same effect and is smoother that the original key change.

Bearing in mind that we don't get to play more than a thirty minute set these days every 6-8 weeks, it's gonna be a while before this song will make the set, if it ever does. Still, in the process of revamping Happy at Work and revisiting those times, I did momentarily enjoy losing twenty years myself. All that hair. All that beer. All that testosterone.