.. have them still. So there’s a lot of stuff that’s going to have to be painstakingly transcribed from vinyl to digital, so belatedly the songs are getting the love and attention they possibly deserve, even if it’s of the frustratingly nit-picking kind.
It’s been interesting reacquainting myself with some of the recordings, particularly from the Warts Up Your Nose album. Warts was the product of another epiphany – well, the band, The Indelible Murtceps was devised as a response to the reality that Spectrum, the concert entity, would be unable to sustain itself in the pub environment which had suddenly sprung up as the major employer of bands.
Prior to that Spectrum had skipped between Berties, Sebastians, The Thumpin’ Tum and the TF Much Ballroom and played their trippy fare to hippies and fellow travellers who were happy to sit on the floor, close their eyes and shake their heads in time to the music in some kind of patchouli-induced reverie, but beer and beer barns changed everything. Hippies were out, drunken rowdies were in.
So we had to change, and The Indelible Murtceps was the almost brilliant solution – same band, less gear (no organ) and a different repertoire of snappier, almost danceable songs. Warts up Your Nose embodies this change, but with a couple of embellishments that only the studio could provide.
I wasn’t there when the horns were added to Stay Another Day and the notorious Excuse Me Just One Moment, but I was absolutely delighted when I heard the finished result. (There again, maybe I was there, because I seem to remember a horn player saying to me how much he enjoyed the session and that he’d really liked the songs).
Anyway, the album benefitted from the extra aural dimension the horns provided as well as the actual lines of course, evoking as they did arrangements of the thirties and forties. Incidentally, those two songs highlight the two opposing tendencies in my writing, one being sentimentality and the other sensationalist lapses of taste and decorum. Hard to say if the tastelessness worked for or against me though in hindsight – I get requested to play ‘the song with the spew at the end’ probably more than any other apart from Confessions of a Psychopathic Cowpoke which is even more execrable in tone if anything.
So, here I am, looking at the imminent release of all my recorded material in the brave, new digital world. Probably just in time for the next major technical revolution, but better late than never. Vincent is pestering me for a number of things, amongst them some new material. Somebody cares! Maybe that’s exactly what I need to get me back on track.

I suppose I should update you as to where I’m at with the hearing aids’ saga. I’ve been equipped with a pair of bottom-of-the-line (or ‘entry’) hearing aids in a distinguished silver finish which sit behind my ears with a clear polythene tube trailing into each earhole. My left earhole is actually slightly problematic as it’s what they call a ‘surfers’ ear with a convoluted entrance to the eardrum which necessitates a slightly smaller speaker and some persistence to persuade it to slip in satisfactorily. The tubes ‘memorise‘ the shape of the ear and so are fitted quite easily after the first few times.
The hearing aids are prone to whistling or feeding back when you’re putting them on, betraying that they’re tuned to boost those top frequencies that have been gradually whittled away from my audio receptors over years of rocking and rolling. One surprising result is that the tinnitus in my naff right ear has actually diminished somewhat. My audiologist predicted as much but I’m still surprised. And pleased.
It’s too early to say definitively whether they’re much of an advantage overall. They’re helping a bit with my TV viewing and generally about the house interacting with my long-suffering companion, but the jury’s still out when being deployed in chatty crowd situations. However, so far they’ve not made anything worse so I remain hopeful.