Around 1991 I came to love the blues and particularly the blues/rock music that came out of
the British blues boom period of the late 1960s. New and exciting sounds started emerging when
British 'white boys', with one foot in the rock scene, discovered American black
blues guitarists and imitated their style with Gibson Les Paul guitars and Marshall amps.
They pushed their amps harder than had been acceptable for Chicago blues, thereby causing
greater sustain and overdrive and creating the British blues sound.
John Mayall's Bluesbreakers band was a major nursery for this sound and his early
albums featuring Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor, though far removed from the slick
blues sounds of Chicago, brought an extraordinary new and exciting sound into being. It was this
incredible guitar sound in particular which caused fans to decorate London with graffiti such
as 'Clapton is God' and 'Peter Green is better than God'. It wasn't the songs or the singing -
it was the SOUND of the guitars that caused such excitement. Many great bands had their roots in
this blending of blues with rock. Free and Led Zeppelin were among them.
Many of my contemporaries in New Zealand in the late 60s were onto it as it happened. At the time
I missed it entirely, and was following the lead of others in the Action who wanted to specialise
in Motown and Stax material. Meanwhile the La De Das and the Underdogs were pumping out John Mayall
songs. Better late than never. After four years of drying out I went back to playing guitar in 1988
and subsequently discovered what all the fuss had been about over twenty years earlier.
Right click on player to download mp3 (select "Save Audio As")
FREE MP3: RIGHT click the download icon on the left and select 'Save Target As...' to download the mp3 of the song. ('Save Link As...' in Firefox & Chrome.)
I recorded the idea for the chorus back in 2008. I was frustrated at the unchangeability
of someone I cared about who was locked into a mindset with an inevitably bad outcome.
I revisited the idea in September 2011, wrote the two verses and set about recording it.
Rather than patronise the original target of the lyric, the verses are addressed to isolated
people in general. I was once deeply in this category and still don't consider myself as fully
"emerged into the clear" as I would like to be. By this I mean having the precious quality of
being able to be truly educated and internally transformed for the better by empathetic communication
in love.
I asked Colin Willams to play lead guitar. He is a fine rock guitarist and one of those very smart
Australians who came to live in New Zealand. His band at the time was "one-one-one".
Right click on player to download mp3 (select "Save Audio As")
FREE MP3: RIGHT click the download icon on the left and select 'Save Target As...' to download the mp3 of the song. ('Save Link As...' in Firefox & Chrome.)
I first wrote and recorded this early in 2006. It is addressed to an old 'drug-crazed
hippie' friend who has since died. He was a Kiwi world wanderer and at the time I met
him in Sydney (1970-71) he was a solo Kiwi version of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters.
I tracked him down again in the the late 1980s. He had a property in the wilds near
Kaitaia and I drove up there from Hamilton about once a year until his death around 2007.
To the best of my recollection I wrote these lyrics just before I got saved. Like a lot
of people in the late sixties and early seventies, I had some experiences with
mind-altering drugs. Some were good. Some not so good. LSD and the other drugs which are
associated with the so-called psychedelic experience mentioned in the lyrics of this song,
are a Pandora's Box and always lead to disappointment and sometimes tragedy when they are
relied upon for an ongoing spiritual experience. The hippies and the mind pioneers of that
era (e.g. Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon) were partially right in making LOVE their
god. The apostle John said in more than one place that God is love. But human love,
without the sometimes stern and disciplined love of God, is easily led off course and into
tragedy by the god of this world. We need the Holy Scriptures, the armour of light and the
One who is above all principality and power to protect and guide us.
Its more of a pop song than a blues or rock song. I re-recorded the organ and lead
guitar in October 2010.
Right click on player to download mp3 (select "Save Audio As")
FREE MP3: RIGHT click the download icon on the left and select 'Save Target As...' to download the mp3 of the song. ('Save Link As...' in Firefox & Chrome.)
I first recorded this around 2005. It is basically a blues jam in G with some lyrics and a
vocal and organ track I added in October 2010.
Right click on player to download mp3 (select "Save Audio As")
FREE MP3: RIGHT click the download icon on the left and select 'Save Target As...' to download the mp3 of the song. ('Save Link As...' in Firefox & Chrome.)
I wrote this mid-2004 and invited Kerry Kostanich to play harmonica on it. We first recorded it
in July 2004. I uploaded it to the German Besonic mp3 community site and it went to number one
on their blues chart and stayed near the top for several months. Besonic had to rebuild their
site after a major crash and I haven't reloaded any songs there since the revamp.
The lyrics are just about accepting that not everyone's going to like me. Some are always going
to think the worst of me no matter what I say or do. But don't tell me I ain't got the blues.
Right click on player to download mp3 (select "Save Audio As")
FREE MP3: RIGHT click the download icon on the left and select 'Save Target As...' to download the mp3 of the song. ('Save Link As...' in Firefox & Chrome.)
I wrote this during a melancholy spell while visiting my son and his family in Seattle in 2003. I had
just read Brenda Ueland's book "If You Want To Write", in which she encourages writers
to be "microscopically honest". The first verse was an attempt at honesty about my psychotic episode
in 1983 and the second verse was about my life twenty years on in 2003.
Microscopic honesty about the incident would be different today. It happened in 1983, toward the end
of twenty years of riotous and selfish living, so it is small wonder I spun out. When I wrote the song
in 2003, all I had was a concept of God. I couldn't have said that I knew him, though I'd had some
genuine experiences which made it utterly clear to me that what I called reality was a far cry from
ultimate reality. I knew that the apostle John said that God is love so I tried to always go where
my love led me - hence singing the blues and walking the dogs in the park. Since being saved in 2006,
God is making himself known to me through his Word and Spirit, so my heart has undergone some serious
changes. I still look forward to the Lord's return.
Ray Collins kindly provided a violin track. The lyric "bombed me out of the sky" is one of many
colorful terms I learned from Christine, my second wife. In case you hadn't guessed, it means to be
brought down to a more mundane reality with the help of anti-psychotic drugs - chlorpromazine in my
case. I added an organ track, redid the drum track and remixed it in December 2010. I built a new drum track
and mixed it again in January 2025. I had never been happy with the earlier drum track.
Right click on player to download mp3 (select "Save Audio As")
FREE MP3: RIGHT click the download icon on the left and select 'Save Target As...' to download the mp3 of the song. ('Save Link As...' in Firefox & Chrome.)
I'm not sure when I first wrote this song - late 1980s or early 1990s. After several years off the
booze it became apparent that I was abnormally oversensitive and was easily manipulated into throwing
a tantrum by those who delight in going around pressing the buttons of the oversensitive. In the
last verse I borrowed a saying from the recovery community - that we immature, self-centred folk
don't have what 'normal' people would call a relationship. We take hostages instead.
I have recorded several versions of it, but this one, featuring
Kerry Kostanich on harmonica and his son Dominic on piano, is probably the best. Kerry used to
own the Victoria Street Record Exchange in Hamilton and he played a big part in my re-education
into the blues and blues/rock of the late 1960s.
Right click on player to download mp3 (select "Save Audio As")
FREE MP3: RIGHT click the download icon on the left and select 'Save Target As...' to download the mp3 of the song. ('Save Link As...' in Firefox & Chrome.)
I came up with the lyric, melody and main riff in 1982 whilst living at Bondi in Sydney.
We hadn't got Diamond Cutter together at the time but Billy McMahon and I were
auditioning guitarists and drummers. The song became a mainstay of Diamond Cutter's set
when we started gigging and was among the demo recordings that enabled us to get the
interest of CBS records.
I recorded this version in my home studio in May 2012. I used guitar
and organ for the main riff rather than the synthesiser I used in Diamond Cutter.
The guitarist of Diamond Cutter, Brett Hamlyn, kindly agreed to record a solo for
the song at his studio in New South Wales. He emailed it to me early in August 2012
and I remixed and uploaded it here on August 6th, 2012. He emailed me
rhythm and riff guitar tracks late in September 2012 which are included in the
latest October 2012 remix.
Right click on player to download mp3 (select "Save Audio As")
FREE MP3: RIGHT click the download icon on the left and select 'Save Target As...' to download the mp3 of the song. ('Save Link As...' in Firefox & Chrome.)
One morning in Riyadh in 1978 I awoke with a dreadful hangover and quickly wrote down the complete
lyrics of this song in a few minutes. I worked out the simple melody and chords on a dobro acoustic
guitar I owned at the time.
I first recorded it in 1979 or 1980 on a 4-track that I bought after my return to London. That
version was faster and the rhythm was dictated by my limited supply of drum tracks. I had a
couple of drum track LPs and had to fit my songs to the format supplied by the session drummer.
No drum loops in those days.
I carted it and other song demos around with me after my return to Sydney in 1981. I auditioned on
keyboards with a very good band who liked the song and suggested it would make a good rock ballad.
I never joined that band but kept the ballad idea when it became a part of Diamond Cutter's repertoire.
The demo recorded by Diamond Cutter late in 1982 was one of about six songs we recorded at an 8-track
studio for $100. The Diamond Cutter version with Billy McMahon on bass and John Affleck on drums
was excellent. Terry Barker sang the song better than I could and Brett Hamlyn excelled himself
with a beautiful guitar solo.
This version was recorded in 2005. I was not
happy with any of the lead tracks I did myself and invited Rori Hayward to have a go at it. After
one practice track Rori played the excellent lead guitar track that is on this version. The sound quality
on the lead track is not the greatest due to my shortcomings as a sound engineer at the time.
I remixed it in November 2010 with a new vocal track.
