..Fiddling Fool from the Spectrum Part One album, which he’d apparently opened the first Pojama-People show three or so years ago. It’s an extreme example of a very small song idea I’d written being taken by the band and expanded exponentially over time - notwithstanding in a quite disciplined way. The result is a very long song with an almost folksy-feel that features a subversive organ section that challenged the live audience’s sensibilities with stratospheric frequencies that are only hinted at on the record due to the limitations of the recording process – all of which was achieved without losing the underlying flow of the piece. In short, all the creative input in the song happened after the band got hold of it, admittedly under my direction, but the basic song that I wrote originally was barely two minutes long.
Chris also played The Sideways Saga from Milesago which turns out to be the first of a series of songs I’ve written over the years to feature an ascending chord pattern building to an inevitable climax bringing the song to an end. Coincidentally there were another two examples played on the show that night, Ariel’s Garden of the Frenzied Cortinas and the penultimate line-up’s recording of 2nd Coming.
I was vaguely aware of it as recurring fall-back motif or device, but I’ve not heard them all in a row before. I was embarrassed at my lack of, well, progress over the years.
The case of the estimable Larry Hoofs swam into focus at some point, but I never got to bring him up during the interview. Larry Hoofs? I can confidently say that you’ve not heard of Larry and he was equally unknown to me until he sent me a CD of his versions of some songs from the Rock & Roll Scars album, scored for himself as a player of various stringed instruments and a singer of some gruff humour – a bit like an Aussie Tom Waites for a broad comparison.
Perhaps because I enjoyed his unique treatments of songs like I’ll Be Gone, We Are Indelible and Red Hot Momma he sent me another CD with yet more Ariel songs, this time taken from the A Strange Fantastic Dream album and some post Rock & Roll Scars tracks, including the unlikely prospect I Can't Say What I Mean and a track from the Jellabad Mutant. Incidentally I’ve asked if he’s OK with putting some of them up on the site and he’s agreeable. I reckon they’d make great party albums for Rudd maniacs, but I suspect the general public would find them annoyingly loose and sparse – as well as unfamiliar and impenetrable, but I think that’s down to the songs themselves. Dunno – maybe you could let me know what you think. (See some of Larry's interpretations below)
I’m used to hearing versions of I’ll Be Gone (witness the I’ll Be Gonz compilation) with Manfred Mann even tackling Launching Place Part 2, but apart from The Hornets’ version of Going Home I'm not aware of anybody locally or internationally attempting to play any other songs from my quite extensive back catalogue.
Larry Hoofs, for whatever reason, has changed all that and perhaps because the songs were approached so differently it got me thinking about the intrinsic value of all these songs and further, the worth of my entire song output.
There’s no doubt that Spectrum and then Ariel’s band grooves were a major part of almost all the Rudd songs with perhaps the exception of the Living on a Volcano CD in the 1990s, and the integral part of that groove was, of course, provided by the personnel in the bands, including the drummer.
In Larry’s drumless versions of the Ariel songs the individual instrument lines are essentially the same, although they’re played with acoustic guitars and an Irish bouzouki (sounds like a mandolin) as opposed to electric guitars and keyboards, so the prevailing texture is acoustic rather than electric and the bass guitar (or octaved guitar in this case) takes on the role of rhythm instrument in place of the drums. I think if I was considering redoing some or all of the songs from the Spectrum and Ariel eras outside the band context I would start from the ground up - that is I’d not just rearrange them but I’d actually rewrite them altogether and maybe even add some more lyrics to flesh them out.
Which brings me to the real issue – why bother to go to all that trouble when it would be simpler to write a bunch of new songs? And, furthermore, where am I at with the blues album we recorded with Bill just before he died?
Dealing with the second part of the question first: I’ve set a date for the release of the provisionally titled Lottery album for the anniversary of Bill’s death, i.e. the 7th of August – this year. On it will be a bunch of blues covers that Spectrum plays regularly and that Spectrumites (or even Chants R&B fans) would be well familiar with, songs like I’m Your Witchdoctor, Crawlin’ up a Hill, Strange Brew and Sleepwalk, plus a couple of trad blues songs not usually played live, but I’m also intending to include two or three blues-skewed originals – and this is where I get round to addressing the first part of the question - wouldn't it be simpler to write a bunch of new songs?.
In fact I have the musical frameworks for these songs mapped out and have had for some time. Just the lyrics are required. On the Oscars recently they had an amusing-because-it’s-true preamble to the screenwriters’ presentation characterising the typical screenwriter as tortured and procrastinating. Read double ditto for this lyric writer.

* She's a Woman on the No Thinking CD

Listen to the 3PBS podcast of Chris Pearson's Po-jama people show. (Incidentally, nobody's come up with the answer to my FB question; what was the factual error I made about Ray Arnott during the interview?)

See Wikipedia's catalogue of Beatles covers

Some tracks to savour from Larry Hoofs untitled LP of Rudd tracks -

I'll Be Gone - And if it Wasn't for You - Rock & Roll
Scars - What the World Needs is a New Pair of Socks