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A few years ago when Richard I started playing and writing together I told him about an idea for a song related to my childhood. I suffered from asthma as a kid and in the late 50s/early 60s one of the treatments was a pill called Franol - http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/medicines/100001096.html
This was a bitter white pill that I took from the age about 4 until I was 21. It's now not prescribed to children and one of the side effects is anxiety. If I didn't take the pill every night I had an asthma attack. What I could never work out at the time was why I always felt very awake and alive after taking the pill. It turns out that one of the main ingredients was ephedrine. Yes, I was taking speed for 16 years!
At night while I lay in bed unable to sleep (because of the pill) I'd have my little transistor radio under the sheets listening to Radio Luxembourg [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Luxembourg_(English)] which played pop songs we rarely heard on the BBC. In southern England, at least, the reception was a little patchy and at a certain point in the evening a repeated motif started to overwhelm the broadcast until it became impossible to listen. That motif is what you hear at the beginning of this track .
I've since learnt that the motif was probably a carrier signal for an eastern bloc country sending messages although I'd like to think it was designed to block decadent Western radio stations (this was the Cold War don't forget).
Richard wrote the lyrics and played the guitars (Strat through a miked up George Dennis Blue valve amp). We wrote the music and I did the fiddling with Garageband. The radio noises I recorded from an old short wave radio. The image is the logo for Radio Free Europe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Liberty
Lyrics © 2007 Richard Marris
Do you remember
When you first suspected there was something more?
Something exciting
Cutting through the static roar
But as my world opens up
My throat begins to close
And I'm fighting every breath
Beneath my sweaty bed clothes
But I know something's out there
From the streets of London
Down the Mersey and the Tyne
The beaches of California
At last something that sounds like mine
But I'm lying in this room
Wondering why I'm so afraid
And the static's closing in
And the Surfer dreams fade
And I know something's out there
As I sit and swallow
The bitter tasting breathing pills
I hear the source of my nightly fears
An international war of wills
Just as sleep is taking me away
An eastern bloc-ing signal starts to win the day
And I'm scared of what's out there
Radio station pumping six string dreams
Dissolving into cold war schemes
What I fear and what I crave
Two sides of the same radio wave
This was a bitter white pill that I took from the age about 4 until I was 21. It's now not prescribed to children and one of the side effects is anxiety. If I didn't take the pill every night I had an asthma attack. What I could never work out at the time was why I always felt very awake and alive after taking the pill. It turns out that one of the main ingredients was ephedrine. Yes, I was taking speed for 16 years!
At night while I lay in bed unable to sleep (because of the pill) I'd have my little transistor radio under the sheets listening to Radio Luxembourg [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Luxembourg_(English)] which played pop songs we rarely heard on the BBC. In southern England, at least, the reception was a little patchy and at a certain point in the evening a repeated motif started to overwhelm the broadcast until it became impossible to listen. That motif is what you hear at the beginning of this track .
I've since learnt that the motif was probably a carrier signal for an eastern bloc country sending messages although I'd like to think it was designed to block decadent Western radio stations (this was the Cold War don't forget).
Richard wrote the lyrics and played the guitars (Strat through a miked up George Dennis Blue valve amp). We wrote the music and I did the fiddling with Garageband. The radio noises I recorded from an old short wave radio. The image is the logo for Radio Free Europe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Liberty
Lyrics © 2007 Richard Marris
Do you remember
When you first suspected there was something more?
Something exciting
Cutting through the static roar
But as my world opens up
My throat begins to close
And I'm fighting every breath
Beneath my sweaty bed clothes
But I know something's out there
From the streets of London
Down the Mersey and the Tyne
The beaches of California
At last something that sounds like mine
But I'm lying in this room
Wondering why I'm so afraid
And the static's closing in
And the Surfer dreams fade
And I know something's out there
As I sit and swallow
The bitter tasting breathing pills
I hear the source of my nightly fears
An international war of wills
Just as sleep is taking me away
An eastern bloc-ing signal starts to win the day
And I'm scared of what's out there
Radio station pumping six string dreams
Dissolving into cold war schemes
What I fear and what I crave
Two sides of the same radio wave
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richard13
Sometimes I think it's a wonder that ANY of us survived childhood. Great rocker Dick. Love the sounds of anxiety about 2:15 and the speedy string runs. You work with some good lyricists too.
Cheers. Hope you're feeling better ;-)