This is a selection of tracks, most of which were recorded at CentreSound in the 1980s and appeared on one of the cassette LPs Sheer Bravado and ScriptWrecked. ‘Diane (Going Out)’ and ‘Blues For Davy’ also appeared on Sheer Bravado but were recorded live. These were briefly available as a CD, and perhaps will be again. 🙂
David Harley: vocals; acoustic/electric/slide guitars.
All Words and Music © David Harley
Long Stand
Long Stand is partly about the curious custom of ‘hazing’ apprentices by sending them off for ‘a long stand’ or ‘a can of striped paint’, partly about being young and unemployed.
Although there’s a song of Sting’s called ‘Skyhooks And Tartan Paint’ that has a strangely similar first verse, ‘Long Stand’ was originally written for the revue Nice (If You Can Get It), in the very early 1980s, a good 30 years before Sting’s The Last Ship project. The whole revue (directed by Margaret Ford) – or at any rate most of the parts of it I contributed – can be found here: Nice (If You Can Get It) – Revue.
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‘Ten Percent Blues’ is a kind of farewell in the 70s to a not-very-lucrative living as a professional musician. Though I have to say that my career at that point was even less glamorous than that described here. I really don’t do raw autobiography.
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‘Hands of the Craftsman’ is also from the Nice (If You Can Get It) – Revue. It’s about the way in which so many crafts have been eclipsed by automation and computerization. At the time I wrote it, I was a wood-machinist. Not many years later, I embarked on a career in IT that took me through the next 30-odd years, so you could say that I exemplified the shift from making real things to Doing Things With Data. Not that data (and data protection, which is what I was engaged in for most of that time) should be regarded as valueless, but…
‘Death of a Marriage’ isn’t strictly autobiographical, but maybe too much so for comfort.
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‘Diane/Going Out’ was recorded on home equipment. It reflects both a long-gone relationship and my brief career in psychiatric nursing.
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Here’s a more recent (acoustic) recording, for Coast FM.
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‘Silk & Steel’ is a companion piece to ‘Diane’. Obviously, it’s not about guitar strings…
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Video:
https://www.facebook.com/GlobalJammingStIves/videos/876110216206070/?t=130
A video especially recorded for Global Jamming St. Ives in support of Collective Aid, an organisation working with displaced people in Calais, Dunkirk and in the Balkans. Please follow the link to their Just-Giving page, if you care to.
Here’s a mastered audio capture of the video version:
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‘Paper City’ is more in line with my more recent output, though a bit rockier than most of my songs. It’s a cheerful little ditty about the decline of capitalism in a global economy founded on instability and fiction. So different to the world today. Oh, wait a minute…
As Brexit and oligarch-friendly pre-fascism continue to bite around the world, it feels in parts very contemporary. This is also one of the very few songs of mine that I got to sing with The Flying Piglets. But that’s a whole different story…
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‘Coasting’ is one of my rare excursions into quasi-jazz. I tend to do it faster now and with jazzier vocal phrasing, and I should record it properly one day. However, I like this straightforward version as well, and my voice was in better shape then.
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‘Circle’ is a long song about how war and terrorism dehumanize individuals. I wouldn’t write a song this way now, but maybe that’s because as we get older, we lose hope that our rage can make a positive difference. But it does have some powerful moments. In my unbiased opinion.
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‘Blues For Davy’ was also recorded on home equipment and hasn’t survived very well, but there’s a good guitar piece in there somewhere. I’ve recently been revisiting it, as seen below.
Blues for Davy (Harley): 1980s version (acoustic guitar solo)
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Blues for Davy (Harley): 2020 video
Audio capture of video version: my current favourite despite its length.
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Blues for Davy (Harley): 2020 version (electric guitar solo): another long, semi-improvisational version.
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Blues for Davy (Harley): 2020 version (acoustic guitar solo). Not my best version, but I was rather pleased to be able to get my fingers around it at all. For a long time, I couldn’t…
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David Harley
Wheal Alice Music 