A guitar piece I’m rather fond of. Originally it was a lengthy improvised intro to ‘Needle Of Death’, but over time it lost ‘Needle Of Death’ and gained a couple of overlaid instruments – resonator slide and a Variax pretending to be a Coral Sitar and a more conventional electric guitar.
Moonflow II (Harley)
The Silk & Steel page includes most of the tracks from my Sheer Bravado cassette album from the early 80s, but not including the tracks that are featured on the page Don MacLeod & David Harley. Mostly, these tracks were recorded in 1983 at Centre Sound, Camden, and the quality is somewhat compromised by the degradation that affected the master tape and some occasionally inexpert mixing and engineering. I guess you get what you pay for, but I must admit that I wasn’t well acquainted with the technical side of recording, so it’s certainly not all down to the studio… These tracks were also featured on the CD Silk And Steel, which isn’t currently available.
These are remastered, so timings may now be slightly different.
1. Long Stand 3.03
2. Ten Percent Blues 3.42
3. Hands of the Craftsman 5.46
4. Death of a Marriage 4.16
5. Diane (Going Out) 6.04
6. Silk and Steel 3.30
7. Paper City 5.28
8. Coasting 5.34
9. Circle 8.16
10. Blues for Davy 2.10
David Harley: vocals; acoustic/electric/slide guitars.
All Words and Music © David Harley
This guitar piece started as a sort of fake Irish air in DADGAD but somehow became a slide guitar piece in Csus2 tuning (if I remember rightly), by way of one or two other tunings I can’t remember right now. And I can’t quite decide which way I prefer it. But there’s no reason I can’t keep them both in the repertoire (though I’ll need to practice them a bit before I do them in front of a real audience again).
Here’s the slide version, which acquired the title ‘Faintly Fahey’. Not that I’m as well acquainted with John Fahey’s work as I ought to be, but when I played the first demo version back, it reminded me vaguely of ‘The Death Of The Clayton Peacock’, even though the tune and tempo are completely different.
Here’s the original version. It didn’t have a title originally, but it’s now called ‘Fainter Fahey’ because it’s pretty much the same tune, but not very Fahey-like.
I discovered this lurking on a blog I’m not currently doing much with and thought it was worth posting, even though it has nothing to do with Cornwall.
David Harley
Words by David Harley, tune by Don MacLeod
Recorded at CentreSound in the early 1980s.
You learn to fall, then you learn to fly
I’ve been a lifetime learning, but I always got by
Living in pain isn’t living in vain
I’m used to losing and there’s so much to gain
Your love’s a mountain that I’m learning to climb
And it’s a long way down but somehow I don’t mind
I know the dangers but I don’t want to stop
It’s worth the fear of falling for the view from the top
Dawn rings the changes from a crawl to a run
Out of the shadow and into the sun
It’s not surprising if the light hurts our eyes
But if loving you is crazy it’s too late to be wise
Sometimes a voice inside whispers “Take care of yourself:
What makes you think you’re the one to take care of anyone else?”
All I can say is, “Don’t care if I fall:
She’s got the best part of me – she might as well take it all.”
You’ll say I’m crazy, but lady, no joke
I’m scared of busting but I’m going for broke
And I don’t know if I’ll fly or I’ll fall
But living without you is no life at all.
This is a song I haven’t really thought about since the 70s, but it turned up when I started to (try to) rationalize my boxes and folders of lyrics, verse and prose, so I put it straight down as-is.
Between the bar and the dance floor / Thinking that maybe
I might just catch up / To my accelerated lady
Why don’t you keep on dancing? / Dance on by
Watching you at a party / Too drunk to see
What it might take / To make you come and talk to me
But you’d better keep on dancing / Dance on by
What makes you think / I should apologise
For once drowning / In those bedroom eyes
Why don’t you keep on dancing? / Dance on by
Lights run hot / But the bottle’s not yet dry
With a little luck and whisky I’ll forget / even your name by midnight
Better keep on dancing / Dance on By
David Harley
I previously recorded a fairly polished version of this, complete with double-tracked vocals and bouzoukis. (See below.)
This is a quicker-and-dirtier solo version that has, however, the words as I sing them now…
Here’s the older version (remastered).
And here are the lyrics.
Two isn’t company, three is a crowd
Two is a silence, three is too loud
Two is a silence gets harder to break
But three always leaves one left over
Three into two isn’t good for the head
It’s no problem in math, but it’s bad news in bed
And it’s one for an ace and two for a pair
But three always leaves one left over
When we’re alone somehow he’s always there
You say it’s the same when you two are the pair
So it’s one for sorrow and two for joy
But three always leaves one left over
All the shouting is over and dead
Somehow there’s nothing much else to be said
And it’s one for the money and two for the show
But three always leaves one left over
Two isn’t company, three is a crowd
Two is a silence, three is too loud
Two is a silence gets harder to break
But three always leaves one left over
David Harley
