Long Cigarettes, Cheap Red Wine [demo]

Written in the 1970s when I was getting disenchanted with the idea of being a rock star. Not that there was ever the slightest chance of that happening. (There is a version around somewhere played on resonator guitar.) Actually, the new intro might be interesting played on bouzouki and/or banjo. I’ll have to think about that.

Backup:

Lyrics (slightly amended since the resonator version):

You sing your songs / the stage is bare
There isn’t / anyone out there
From time to time / it just seems that way
And I run out / of songs to play

Forget the musak / and the beer
The open mouths / the grudging cheers
There isn’t / any better way
To freeload / your life away

Back in / 1969
I lost someone / I thought was mine
That’s the price / I had to pay
When I ran out / of songs to play

Goodbye old friend / I have to leave
Just to prove / that I’m still free
I’ll see you / in a year or so
And buy the round / you say I owe

The long cigarettes / the cheap red wine
The melodies / you say are mine
And if you find / somewhere to be
I hope / you’ll save a place for me

Moonstruck [demo]

Moonstruck
David Harley, copyright 1987

Backup:

Mirror-eyed and misty
and veering into black
Tiptoe across the flagstones
falling through the cracks
I’ve lain too long in midnight
and I can’t find my way back

I was leaving close on midnight
but I couldn’t find the door
Creeping round the moonlight
littered on your bedroom floor
I’ve lain too long in midnight
and I can’t find my way home

I’m frozen to your mattress
and my mind is playing dead
I can’t reach across the moonbeams
to the wordgames in your head
I’ve lain too long in midnight
and I can’t recall a thing we said

Rainy Day Moments [demo]

Backup:

ordpress.com/2017/07/rainy-day-moments.mp3″][/audio]

This is a song for another stranger
A ship that moaned in the night
That I spent a lifetime with one long weekend
Then lost with no trace of a fight

What a party that was, what a bitter-sweet dream
What a raft in an ocean of blues
A theme for a song or a stag-party joke
A memory I never quite lose

What made her want me, that rainy day moment
Is something I can’t understand
I’m grateful she did and I really don’t know
Why I let it all slip through my hands

My ego was flattered, I liked her a lot
Yet deep down I couldn’t respond
I tried once to pick up the pieces by mail
But I knew that the chance was gone

As I bled later on from a deeper wound
I heard from a friend of a friend
That she’d just got married and anyway
I’d no reason to see her again

My life is a patchwork of rainy day moments
And she was just one of the bits
A tiny regret and a faint irritation
And wondering just where she fits

Whistle While You Walk [demo]

Backup copy:

Whistle While You Walk (Harley)
Copyright April 2017

Sometimes – you look into her eyes
And all you want to do is talk
Sometimes you have to see her
Other times you just have to walk

Just walk away
Walk away
And whistle as you walk away

Sometimes you’re the heartbreak
Sometimes you’re just broke
And all your songs are lost
In the space between the notes

Just walk away
Walk away
And whistle as you walk away

Sometimes you know you love her
Sometimes you feel so cold
Sometimes your heart is empty
And you turn back to the road

Just walk away
Walk away
And whistle as you walk away

Sometimes – you look into her eyes
And all you want to do is talk
Sometimes you have to see her
Other times you just have to walk

Just walk away
Walk away
And whistle as you walk away

Hannah version 4 (or thereabouts) [demo]

An arrangement that went in a slightly different direction to what I expected.

Not sure the final version will be like this, but it’s kind of interesting.

Later, cleaner version:

backup:

David Harley

Dying of Communication [demo]

A suddenly resurrected blues-y song. First time sung in about 30 years, so a bit rough, but I like the energy.

I woke up in the night thinking about this one for the first time in maybe 30 years. Fortunately, I could still find the words, though I’ve changed them slightly here (also the tempo is a bit more upbeat than when I originally wrote it). Unusually (for me) the slide is an open G. I’ve been using an open C again recently, too.

Dying of communication: Copyright David Harley 1976

Remastered:

Backup copy:

Backup copy

Sitting it out at the full moon
Reading my mail from the next room
Can’t you see we’re dying
Dying of communication?

Checking it out with the radio
Late late news is ‘no place to go’
Can’t you see we’re dying
Dying of communication?

Sitting it out in the bathroom
Freaked out on ego juice
Fighting it out in the bedroom
Wondering what’s the use
Everyone knows we’re dying
Dying of communication

Big Road Blues [demo]

A Tommy Johnson classic that suddenly revisited my head after a decade or two.

I was actually noodling around with an arrangement for Castles and Kings, which I’ve started to think of as a sort of Shropshire train blues, when I suddenly found myself thinking of the Tommy Johnson classic ‘Big Road Blues’, which hasn’t crossed my mind in decades.

Now lightly remastered…

Backup:

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries [demo]

Updated version of a setting by me of the Housman poem.

And backup:

Another Housman setting, this time from Last Poems. I’m seeing whether it will fit into a sequence of songs I’ve been working on. (See Soldier (You Come, You Go) and Soldier of Fortune.)

The 1917 poem refers to the British Expeditionary Force, which German propagandists referred to as ‘mercenaries’ because at the outbreak of war, Britain’s army consisted of professional soldiers rather than conscripts or the later volunteers of ‘Kitchener’s Army‘. The BEF was practically wiped out by 1916.

A poem by Hugh MacDiarmid, ‘Another Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries’ takes a very different view, regarding the BEF as ‘professional murderers’.

The setting by Geoffrey Burgon sung by Gillian McPherson on the soundtrack to the Dogs of War is much more dramatic, and very effective (even though some might doubt whether the poem is entirely appropriate in terms of this particular novel and movie). This is much simpler and fits the cycle I have in mind better. Still, I might rethink that. This is definitely a work in progress.

Here’s the Housman poem:

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling,
And took their wages, and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

David Harley

Coasting [demo]

I’ve recorded this several times before, including a ‘proper’ studio version, but have never been quite satisfied with it. This rough mix attempts a looser version with a jazzier guitar. Both guitars here are a Gibson jumbo with a P90 pickup, by the way, if these things are of interest to you. 🙂