Don't Worry Baby

I'm writing this blog a bit of a sweaty mess. Not from doing exercise, but from wrecking the house trying to find a wee tiny hardback book that I recently re-acquainted myself with. The contents were purest gold dust. Especially given my intent to write some historical blogs about my musical past. The front page of this little book still contains the words "Geoff Topley-Cell3-'C' Shift-Kiefel Instructions. There follows 7 points about how to start up the big plastic forming machine I used to run on the night shift in a local factory. Thereafter, there are details of every CD I released under the name Foamboy, or Foamboy Deluxe, or The Foamboy Deluxe Arkestra. Not only that, but a list of every one of the lucky bollockses who received a promo copy of their very own. This information is extremely handy given I have misplaced a lot of these CDs and can't recall the exact order of releases.

You see, I didn't just pop up and fire out a lock of CDs and disappear. Oh no. I was good to my word from the outset and released at least two CDs a year, some of them double CDs. That directive was still in force as my newly found release of being a solo artist loomed large. The debut album from Foamboy was going to be called "Don't Worry Baby" after the Beach Boys song. My back catalogue is absolutely bursting with references and basic theft of other artist's song titles, album names and umm, their actual music, as back then, I had zero qualms about sampling the bejaysus out of ye. My thought process was essentially this. The record is likely to be heard by a few hundred people at best who won't care. IF this record gets the success it richly deserves, I will be able to afford the best lawyers and will have oodles of moolah to clear the samples. Isn't that right Prince old buddy? I once asked Claudia Gonson of The Magnetic Fields if it was ok for me to sample the very song I was intending to cover. She replied that Stephin Merritt did not approve of either sampling his music, or indeed covering it. So a hasty retreat was made. I DID give Conrad Keely from ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead a copy of the CD with a sample of one of their songs. He replied later saying he loved it. Great lad that Conrad. I met them at one of their gigs in Belfast, they really were lovely fellas, despite their moniker. Anyway, I digress...

I also thought nothing of nicking other people's images or photos or art for my covers. Again, my thinking was once I altered it slightly, it was no longer their art. So Jennifer Love Hewitt got the honour of being on the cover of the first Foamboy album. No idea why. I liked the way she held her head in the photo and there was a hazy sunset in the background. It seemed to fit the mood of the music which, as most of my music at that time, was dreamy and melancholic. The year was 2003, I was 31 years old, working in a night shift, no relationship and no real worries, well, none that I was prepared to admit to, and still won't be admitting to! But yet I called this album "Don't Worry Baby". The album had 14 songs. I can't remember most of them, looking at the track listing. Isn't that odd? It's not that odd when you consider I recorded these songs as they were written and would only have selected some of them to rehearse for any live shows. Then they would never be played again. No greatest hits tours for me.

Reading through the song titles, it's clear I was missing something, or someone in my life. I never sat down to write words so it was always a string of whatever happened to be in my head. I'm not in a rush to pour over any of my lyrics and if I can hypershift a few years, I actually found myself making instrumental music because lyrics were just something I no longer wanted to commit to. The last track was called 'When I Get To Heaven', a steal from an old Sunday School song we used to sing. Like my idols Prince and Jason Pierce, I wasn't averse to applying religious themes to my song titles if need be. The first song was called 'On Fire' so maybe this was nice bookend, I don't know. I'd go into more detail on this music if I could find the fecking CD!  Maybe I should go ask some of those lucky bollockses I sent them to!

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