Past Perfect

So much for trying to upload one MP3 a week, huh? Will try to keep more on top of this, though this time of year is a bad time to attempt to do anything with any regularity.

Past Perfect.

I always promised Matt that I'd write a song about him some day. We had an on-again off-again tour romance for ages - every time our paths crossed, we'd just kind of fall into each others' arms again. But the truth was, I lived in London and he lived in Hull and neither of us were going anywhere. So we took our romance where we could, supporting each others' bands on tour, trying to play the same festivals to snatch backstage moments.

Matt was probably one of the most beautiful men I'd ever known - the kind of angelic blond Englishman that caused Pope Gregory the Great to remark "non angli sed angeli". About 6'2", with long, curly golden-blond hair that fell in great tousled masses to his skinny shoulders, wide blue eyes, a viking nose and the softest of perfect peach lips. He played guitar like a man possessed. I didn't even know if he was a boy or a girl the first time I met him (he was playing in an "all girl" band) but when he let me braid his hair, I saw the golden stubble on his jawline. Just everything about him was golden. The first night we slept together, I woke up to see a sign reading YOU COULD DIE TODAY pinned to his ceiling and knew this was going to be something... *special*.

We never got it together, really. Morning-after pills, hangovers, incompatible touring schedules, it all proved too much. I carried a poem he wrote me as a text message saved on my phone for years. He was obsessed with Canada - I think he assumed from the fact that I played in a band that counted as CanCon, that I was Canadian, too - no, I was the 1/3 that was not.

The song was my attempt at utterly pure bubblegum - right down to the direct lift of the Yummy Yummy Yummy intro. I spent ages working on that, but it still doesn't seem quite right. I kinda want to rework the song with different drums, as there's a lot about it that I do love. The gentle "la la la-la-la-aaaah" on the choruses. The weird thrum of the gurgling noise I used for a bass. The hard panned tremolo keyboard wub - I did actually record two separate keyboards and put them slightly out of phase and panned them left and right for the effect instead of actual proper wub.

The breakdown where the drums drop out and it's just voice and the odd synths is one of my favourite musical moments I've ever written. I kinda want to re-record the rest of the song to match. But the song is about regret and not getting it together, so perhaps it's fitting that I could never get the song to fit together.

Past Perfect.mp3

a tour diary from those days