I have a couple of hundred songs and instrumentals that I’ve recorded over the last 5 or 6 years with varying degrees of success, they’re all on my SoundClound page and many of them are in various groupings on BandCamp. Some are incredibly dull, others very naive, some (I think) actually rock! So, I asked Clive-upon-Sea, who regular readers will know from his album Fragments, if he’d have a listen to what I perhaps rather ostentatiously refer to as my back catalogue and to pick out 10 or 11 tracks to make an old-fashioned LP (20 minutes each side back in the day, remember?)
Anyway, he did just that and we ended up with eleven of what he reckons are my best songs that sit nicely and play together quite well. Clive (real name Simon) then worked on order, a sequence, that would make for a good side 1 and side 2. So, forget all the earlier compilations of my songs, the playlists, the mixes and mashups, this is now officially the definitive debut album from David Bradley Music and we will be fund-seeking to get it burned to CD with proper artwork and lyric sheets and thence pressed to vinyl with a gatefold sleeve to accommodate all the variations on the cover theme I came up with in my art app.
Here’s a bit of a tipsheet as to what to expect from each song in terms of who I think my personal influences (always subliminal, never deliberate) were on each in terms of the music that emerged from my writing, I’ve retrospectively thought about it and suggested a maximum of two for each, be interested to know who you hear in my songs, if anyone:
The Long Sands – Camel, Simple Minds
In Deep Water – RHCP, David Bowie
Give My Love to the Waves – Pink Floyd, The Beatles
Lost to the Weather – Rush, Porcupine Tree
Prevailing Wind – James Taylor, Neil Young
Swallows – Al di Meola, John McLaughlin, Paco de Lucia
Sail Me Back to Uhuh Town – U2, The Monkees
Grace – Lindisfarne
Who is Fooling Who? – James Taylor
The Last Witch Hunt – Rush, Radiohead
The Sea Refuses No River – Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley