Idlebones

My Red Notebook

I found my old notebook last night, buried under some old boxer shorts I haven’t worn for at least a decade in the back of a cupboard at home. Its an old red book that I used to scribble teenage attempts at songs when I first decided to learn guitar back in the eigthies. Actually, thats not strictly true. I and a few friends decided we were in a band. Not that we were going to be in a band, but that we just were in a band. The fact that none of us could play an instrument, or could sing at the time really just didn’t either occur, or seem important to us. It was more important that girls thought we were in a band, I think, so we concentrated on just letting them believe it. (Its a lot less hassle)

We even took lots of “band photos”.Standing around in woods looking enigmatic and downright miserble in long trenchcoats, a la Echo & the Bunnymen, or with white shirts and braces, casually hanging around in a field with floppy fringes and bad achne. By todays standards, I suppose we were half way there really. In the end, I was the only one to actually bother learning guitar.
Two of us did decide that the odd song wouldn’t go amiss, though, so we set about jotting songs down and showing them to each other. Mine were, to say the least, utter rubbish. My friend, however, showed a real flair, and kept coming up with some very clever stuff. I was a bit miffed, to be honest, so I started buying a few of the same albums he had at home in hope of finding what had inspired him. When I started finding a few of the more obscure ones, I found his inspiration written all over the inner sleeves. The bastard had been ripping them straight off the album. I think at one stage he had written an entire album, and had the tunes worked out and everything. It was excellant. Surprisingly Identical to the Lotus Eaters’ “No sense of sin” album, however. Unsurprisingly, our band never progressed to the, well, post-daft teenage idea stage.
Anyway, the book still survives, and it’s more like a diary looking back on it now, with its scratchy entries dated at the top, and some combination of the four chords I knew at the time listed at the bottom.(Am7, G, D and C).I can pick out certain incidents, good and bad, that happened in the period of 3 years it covers. I’m not sure what the hell was going on in August ’86 though. Something about chickens and bats and living in flats apparently. And it looks like I had a bit of a world peace phase going on in ’86. Must have been band aid. Looks like I spent a lot of time walking along beaches and harbours under clear sky’s in the freezing cold too. No wonder I never grew past 5 foot 7 and have a high tollerance for the cold.