3.1.22 I'm down, across the years

I have a bookmark. I have several bookmarks, one's a leather bookmark from the seventies, used to belong to my granddad, it's currently keeping my place in a copy of then first volume of the collected Cerebus The Aardvark that I bought when we lived in Leeds (been back in Liverpool since July 94) and started reading in the sunshine of the first lockdown.

The specific bookmark we're talking about though?

It's a free bookmark from Waterstones. Probably from sometime in the 90s, feels like that's pow long I've had it. I assume they produced a series, all with literary quotations. 

The quotation on this one?

"We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people's lives." Robert M. Pirsig: Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance

I love that quote. I've loved it since I first read it somewhere about 1980. It's a sentiment that makes you (well, me) feel both tiny and unnoticed and extremely special at the same time.

Bering unseen doesn't mean you have no effect. Thinking yourself unseen doesn't mean you have no effect.

This is about that.

This is about this record:

I'd be vaguely astonished if there's a single person who recognises that record.

Equally, I wouldn't even be vaguely surprised if at least one of the people involved in it doesn't see this post, that's the way life tends to work. Connections all over the place.

The group were Apologies For Innocence. The A side, Across The Wire; the AA side Days Alone/Is This Heaven. All songs were by Lodge/Jackson. That's all you're getting from the sleeve. No date of release.

The joys of the internet tell me it was released 11th June 82, which is roughly where I'd have guessed. The wonders of Youtube give me Graeme Lodge as the 'Lodge' portion of Jackson/Lodge. Discogs tells me they were from Formby. Which I knew. I remember being told that when the guy 9n Tudor records said, "Listen to this, think you'll like it."

It might have a feel of The Cure to it, in the chorused guitar riffs, in the drum sound. It certainly sits alongside Modern Eon in terms of the bands I was listening to in those couple of years.

So I bought it, and I played it to mates. And we all loved it, it became one of those records enjoyed in our small circle. 

It's 82/83. Which means it's me, Andy, Geoff, Peter. We called ourselves Boyish Daze after Care's magnificent Boyish Days single. We were building a set. Our first actual band. And as with all first actual bands, that set was a mix of covers and originals. Waiting For The Great Romance, Hey Girl, and a few others I can't currently recall the titles of, were the originals. The covers? Going Up by The Bunnymen. Rescue. By The Bunnymen. The Back Of Love by The Bunnymen. Zimbo by...

You wear your early influences broadly and brightly.

And one other cover: Across The Wire by Apologies For Innocence.

Our reasons? We loved it, it was a really good song. And nobody knew it. We reasoned that it was the same as The Beatles doing Twist And Shout. Something obscure that people would love. And if anyone asked, obviously we'd tell people what it was, where we found it. I can't remember if we actually announced it live on stage as a cover. But then we didn't announce the Bunnymen songs as covers.

All of that written down in black and white looks quite damning. We weren't passing this off as ours, simply playing a really good song. We never claimed it was ours. And never thought of the sheer cheek of doing this. Formby was a world away from Fazakerley, it felt like we were covering a song from another planet.

The naivety of eighteen year old lads.

Something to note here: I can't really play by ear. I'm a decent rhythm guitarist and my lead work has improved markedly in my fifties (when I don't actually need it) but learning songs is difficult for me. They don't stay imprinted. It's difficult with YouTube, it was much harder without.

The Bunnymen songs were learned through endless studying of the Sefton Park gig that the BBC broadcast in 82. Brief glimpses of chords worked out, the Peel session version of 'Taking Advantage' as it was then called used to nail Back Of Love, its slower, more psychedelic feel great for nailing the structure.

Apologies For Innocence? The one time, in that early time, I actually found the chords through listening. I mean, I'm not entirely sure the chords are correct and, in my hands, the entire song is two chords. On the band's original version there are two guitars. 

We stayed faithful to the original. Played it at the only ever Boyish Daze gig and then, when Mally and I formed Vanilla Beserk we put that straight into the setlist. It became a set closer due to the 'Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye' refrain (which I much later realised owed a debt to Gang Of Four), the dynamics that allowed you to stretch the song out and the fact that you could close the set with an abrupt end and an echo of the final 'goodbye'. As they do on the record.

We never met the writers, had literally no way at all of finding them to wither thank or ask permission.

So, in this world where everything is linked (though Graeme Lodge's Facebook activity ends in 2014 and we have no mutual friends, I hope he's okay, hope all's good) I'm taking this as a moment to say, "Messrs Lodge and Jackson, I know nothing about you at all and you don't know me from Adam but, once upon a time, my band played your band's tune a few times and loved every second of playing it. So, thanks; we hope we did you proud and hope you appreciate we did it all for the best reasons on earth - just loving the work."