The fourth installment of Self-Retrospect, an ongoing series looking back at my past musical efforts and their respective evolutions – and pompously going on and on about them.
‘Shark’ was the name I gave to a little piece I lay down on the morning of Sunday, 16 December, 2001. It was a surfy-sounding instrumental, based around a bass line I had come up with the previous day:
The bass part was directly inspired by a groovy, bluesy track Chris, Bebhinn and I had done. However, while that one had a bit of an upbeat bounce to it, this was in a minor key and had a somewhat darker, moodier feel. Over this bass I recorded an improvised guitar part. This was based on a minor blues scale I’d learned – the same scale I’d get further milage out of later on a song called ‘Yours Truly’, which ended up becoming part of the Das Glitch (band I was in in university) repertoire. A live rendition of that can be found here.
Actually, I recorded one guitar part – and then decided to do another take. But, for some reason, I didn’t use headphones – or I had the headphones up stupidly loud – so the first take can still be heard underneath:
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So yeah, I called it ‘Shark’. Actually, I called in ‘Shark (demo)’, even though I didn’t – at the time – have any plans to do a “proper” version. I think I just used ‘(demo)’ because it was a very rough, loose recording – although, in retrospect, it’s not much rougher or looser than the “proper” stuff I was doing at that time. I don’t really know where ‘Shark’ came from. It might have been something to do with the aforementioned surfy sound. Or maybe the bass sounded like/represented a shark (?).
Either way, it was ‘Shark’. Then the song that it later spawned (recorded in March 2002) retained the name. But ‘Shark’ didn’t sound quite right, so I did what any pretentious teenager would do in the same situation: I translated it into a different language. Never too skilled in foreign tongues, I relied on an online dictionary to try out a couple of different ones. The Spanish just looked/sounded the coolest, so I went with that.
I probably could have come up with a more suitable title. I suppose ‘Shark’ could be linked – tenuously - to the words that I eventually wrote. A bit of a stretch. I’m not sure who the ‘shark’ would be – the narrator person or the person to whom it’s directed? Probably the latter. Though I suppose it could be either – it’s that kind of arty ambiguity everyone loves. (It is highly likely I went through this exact same thought process way back then…)
What’s the song about? Well, it’s fairly obvious, straightforward person-lusts-after-other-person stuff. I guess it was an important step for me to take at the time. There wasn’t any jokey self-deprecation nor vague metaphors or to hide behind. It was pretty raw. And when your audience consists of, well… your mates – people who actually know you – it’s sort of weird to be sharing those kinds of thoughts or feelings.
But the risk appeared to pay off. People liked the song. Or at least they told me they did. At first I thought their reaction was because of the bass part. I still felt this was the standout element in the song. But when I played it live – which usually didn’t involve a bassist – it also seemed to get quite a good response. Maybe I just fluked an actual decent song? Have a listen, tell me what you think:
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It evolved considerably live. Of my “old” stuff, it’s probably the song that has benefitted most from how my confidence in singing developed over the years. On the recorded version above, the words were just spoken, whereas with each live performance I’ve been able to sing it out more. Now, perhaps the original delivery was appropriate for the material (even if it might have come across a bit stalker-y) – but it feels better to put more into it. Maybe I feel it more; I’ve grown into it – it’s like the opposite of ‘Flare’.
Unfortunately I don’t have any recordings of the most recent performances of it. The best I can do is an acoustic version from April 2007. I ran through a whole bunch of songs on a quiet night at Crazy Horse in Nagasaki, in advance of a gig I was doing there a weekend or two after – to see what songs worked and what didn’t. I thought this one worked…
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Definitely glad you went for the Spanish there, Hai(German) or requin(French) just doesn’t have the same ring to it
Also, loving your performance notes, “funky!”
Yeah, I think I went German -> French -> Spanish – and then as soon as I saw ‘Tiburón’, I stopped. Could have explored others. ‘Siorc’, anyone?