Jack Mountain

2 unvarnished pebbles

Conquest of the Planet of Rockers is now in hand. Whilst I'm waiting for that to come back, here are two jams that never got worked up into something for the record. Heavy Weeds is just one big riff, Come Sea is kind of a Supremes rip off, submerged in fuzz and wazz.

Heavy Weeds

Come Sea

That's How You Rule Balls

Here's a song that we played at Silver Rocket a couple o' weeks back. We're not doing it tonight and maybe never will again but I'm pasting it right here.

It's called That's How You Rule Balls

The title comes from something the band Friends Forever said in the film about them. The words are about 3 bands and their contribution to rock n' roll. The verse about Half Japanese is mostly from quips they made about how to play guitar.

Seeing as the whole Jack Mountain enterprise has in many places been about my love/hate/slap/tickle relationship with rock n' roll then this seems a fitting song to close out the current punk phase of Jack Mountain.

This was jammed in practice, the words are barely there so they're here:

What about Geeee Fugazi? 

Man I love how you dance

Your songs have so much passion

I dig forensic scene

Ian gets all the cred man but he dances worse than me

What about Half Japanese?

Bring the world to its knees

If you wanna go fast play fast

If you wanna go slow play slow

Sure you might need some chords, if you wanna plug those guitars in

That's how you rule, rule balls, alright

That's how you rule, rule balls, alright.

What about Beat Happening?

Taught the world how to sing

They went on tour with Black Flag

The hardest band around

But Calvin's got more punk attitude than Henry had in his damn life

That's how you rule, rule balls

That's how you rule, rule balls, alright.

XZ

2 tracks from the new Jack Mountain album

Here are mp3 of tracks 2 and 3 off of the new album. This stuff is all kind of garagey with Boy Howdy banging the pots n pans. 

Work With Me - about people putting a downer on me. This song has 3 or 4 parts and is the second longest song on the album

Do the Idiot - concerning foolish behaviour. This is the slowest song on the record.

Once I've worked out the artwork I can get the CD's made up. Deets to follow yo.

Rest Your Bones On My Bones

Here's probably the last or second to last (seeing as I accidentally wrote another) song of this type. By that I mean mellow, picky, pastoral, a little sad.

This one is about death, the event and the character. The recording has 1 guitar, 2 voices and some feedback sounds played on the good Dr Rhythm. I'm not sure if is the first time that I have 'la la-ed' on a song but it really should be - and the last.

I'm going to round up a few of these recent tunes for a 3rd CD. 

Not sure what I'm going to write after this but it will probably be a lot louder.

Rest Your Bones On My Bones

Feeling Dog

Probably only the second song with a title that's not from the song. 

The music is a bit different too but the themes should be familiar: animals, ruralness, loneliness. Again, it's that book 'Independent People' casting a mossy shadow over my thoughts. 

I've finished that book now and am reading Grass' The Flounder. So expect songs about fish, history, food and sex.

There's heavy use of the Dr Rhythm DR5 drum machine and the Shaker Retro Rocket harmonica mic here. Both classic bits of kit, in very different ways.

Feeling Dog

 

Puffin Island (instrumental)

The first song featuring a cowbell. A real cowbell as worn by a cow, plus thunder sounds and a couple of instruments broadly impersonating wildlife. My friends know I like a little bit of exotica music and this is must've come from that place in head.

Originally I had been trying to do a Xiu Xiu style vocal on it but that was really bad and making me laugh and then I couldn't get my head around doing it as a proper song with words (and everything). But I like this just fine. As I was recording it the night was coming in and the rain clouds were gathering over Kilburn High Street.

This song is for Will and Karen because they like Puffins.

Puffin Island

Four Or Five Men

Continuing into hicksville... This song is about inter-family squabbles and stubborn sheep. The case against Laxness mounts...

The Danelectro Tuna Melt is all over this lamb. Other than that it's pretty straight up: two mouths, two guitars, that's ya lot. I like the little guitar line that comes up after the chorus parts, maybe because it was made on the spot up at whilst recording, it's easy to get bored of playing a song over so that kind of thing is always welcome. It's not very prominent on this mp3 but there are some shimmery strokes on the guitar in the verses too. Sexy huh? Sexy farm music.

Four Or Five Men

Come Back My Way Again

OK two more country tunes. I swear, it's this book I'm reading called Independent People that's doing it to me. Blame Iceland.

This is the first appearance of a new harmonica mic that I bought for doing vocals. It arrived, hand built from the USA today and I haven't quite got to grips with it, hence the snap and crackle on this tune. Lo fi man. Yar. So this partly inspired by a character in the aforementioned book and, I realise now, by Pavement's 'two states' in the chorus part there. But they didn't have finger popping in their verse. A clear oversight, now rectified. A pleasure. No, thank you.

I like this one quite a bit, it almost feels too short. Which is new.

The only other notable thing is that it is the first tune in a different tuning. Yes, guitar geeks, this one is in 'drop D' rather than the 'open G' I have used uniformly on all other songs. So you might wondering... Is the g-funk era over? What are you, East coast? California knows how to party. Keep it rockin.

Come Back My Way Again

Saturday/Fuck Off

If I wasn't much into the results of that last song I feel completely differently about this. I reckon it's one of the best songs I've done for Jack Mountain (which is now a year old, with something like 38 songs to show).

This song is in two parts and it just switches between them twice, then it's done. There's one guitar, some bubbling bug noise, melodica and an extra voice on the 'fuck off' part.

The words are a story, sort of influenced by some weird hard country trip I've been on, which seeped onto 2 of the songs last week. Relationship stories, hardly about me at all but with some feeling in there for sure.

So this is exactly the type of thing I wanted to do with Jack Mountain: simple songs with maybe odd changes, some random noise with hopefully interesting words.

Saturday/Fuck Off

You're Not Going To Get Paid

Another one of these rockers like I tried before with 'The Man Next Door...' and 'I Should Have Stayed...' The results aren't much better on this really. I'm kind of committed to putting up all the songs I write so this goes up too. It's the sort of song I was writing when I was 15 or that bands make up in 5 minutes in the practice room.

So there  you go. The words are a bit about a guy getting screwed over by his company taking his pension fund which happened to someone in my family. But I've mixed the vocals low and pasted them with distortion and that tuna melt pedal so you can't really tell anyway.

On the other hand this was fun to record as I got to hit my guitar harder than usual and make sloppy noise. Hello neighbours!

You're Not Going To Get Paid