frolicking like new born baa-lambs in the clover (will that do?)

Hello chums.
Having finished Winter Nights last week, I’ve spent most of the last week worrying. ‘It’s a big pile of guff’, I found myself waking up and saying last Thursday. But, having heard the track again this evening through proper speakers, Lex was able to put my mind at rest. It’s only a small pile of guff, so – cool, that’ll do for now. One of the benefits of living in a recording studio is that you get to reassure yourself of these things without panic, so Lex doesn’t have to worry about stuff like that. His only problem is having to put up with sweaty roadies being sick on his pillow.

This evening we wrote a new song. The bones were but in place by lex and his box of tricks over the week, but we fleshed this out with words amd structure and stuff. It’s all about those crazy days in spring when it snows, and it will replace The Troubadour’s Lament on the 4Seasons EP. This isn’t difficult, and is a bit like putting anybody else I goal instead of David James. I think y’l’all be surprised when you hear the new direction… think spandex… think face paint… think ZZ Top beards… think driving your chevy to the levy, only to find that the said levy is dry… then think again. We’re not going to tell you what it sounds like, that’ll spoil the fun. You’ll have to wait. Not long now.

Oh, we also sorted out some drummage for Summer Days: it’s currently got hi-hat and bass drum… the rest is on its way… somewhere. Anyway, I’m off to Yate tomorrow for the football, so I’d better get to bed.

Until we meet again… I’ve been Carts and you’ve been wasting your life.

Bongo, Mugs and Scissors

Legal advice. If you ever need it, ask a clown. That’s probably the best bit of advice my Dad ever gave me. Ask a clown. And so, when Balustrade got into a spot of legal bother this week, they turned to former Moscow State Circus clowns Bongo, Mugs and Scissors. It all started last Thursday when Lex, high on the joys of summer of other things, came up with an idea for a new middle8 for The Harvest Song. Unfortunately, ElCartino had already written an identical middle8 for a different song. So he sued Lex in a thinly-veiled attempt to get his increasingly greasy mits on Lex’s enviable collection of imported Region 1 DVDs and photographs of monkeys and lemurs doing hilarious/unspeakable things with boomerangs and air pumps. Luckily, Messers Bongo (representing Lex) and Mugs (Representing ElCartino) managed to force an out of court settlement, with both parties paying the other’s lawyer £15. Mister Scissors, meanwhile, didn’t have a lot to say as he can’t speak. He’s a pair of scissors, and his legal qualifications look like they’ve been photocopied.

However, he did come in useful as an instrument of percussion/torture juts this very evening when he was called to add his dulcet tones to the now almost-complete Harvest Song. Listen out for his old friends Bongo and Mugs, too, as well as Tam Bourine, a frightening cliché of an eighteenth-century Irish navy busy digging the Kennet and Avon canal… erm. Yeah.

Anyway, we’re both dead chuffed with the progress that we’ve made on The Harvest Song this evening. Listening back to the demos we made a few months ago, what one a steaming pile of fresh cow manure is now something so pure, glistening and fruity that you could slap it in a bikini and sell the photos to Nuts. If you really wanted.

Anyway, the plan is for us to re-do Winter Nights next week, so I’ve got to strengthen my jaw for all those ten-minute harmonica solos and I come over all Bob Dylan / Badly Drawn Boy. I can’t wait… can you?

Summer Days are here again

Like a particularly pungent fart after a good chilli, you just can't get rid of Balustrade! After an exciting and enterprising summer the boys returned to Alpine Studio this week to finish work on their new masterpiece, the 4 Seasons EP.

In typical Balustrade fashion, Matthew turned up complete with neatly pressed slacks, polished shoes and a brand Action Man pencil case from the Big W. Dropped to the door by his Mum who couldn;t resist wiping a small speck of dirt from his rosey cheek, he entered the studio laiden down by his lunch box which was brimming with cheese and chutney sandwiches, a pack of Frazzles and a Muller light.

Lex on the other hadn looked as if he had slep in a shed the night before. Arriving as he did with no tie, an un-ironed shirt, last term's shoes and a badly bruised banana. It's a good job he had done the unthinable and actually done his summer holiday homework and so arrived carrying a new version of Summer Days in his satchel.

Needless to say the boys vanished into the Alpine Studios mixing booth from which much chuckling and cooing was heard (although that could have been the collection of old Mojo's that Lex found in his Dad's shed over the summer) and exited 2 hours later with an almost finished version of the EP's lead track.

After such fevered activity a break was called for and so they speny the rest of the day trying to go all the way over the top on the swings in the Alpine Park playing fields - all becasue Lex's mate Tim's brother's friend from the north once said he had!