Get the Flash Player to see this player.

what have you done to my eyes?

One from It's Been A Bad Week, inspired by the news that Kenny Rogers was suing his plastic surgeon after being dissatisfied with the results of an eye-lift. No idea if it actually looked as bad as I'm making it sound here, of course.

What Have You Done To My Eyes - 2.47 MB [ PLAY ]

RUBBISH

Another one from Crimes series 3. This touches on a pet theme of mine; how many of the world's problems are caused by "Certainty" and how a bit more doubt and humility would do us all a world of good.

Rubbish - 2.98 MB [ PLAY ]

Vodka and Toblerone

This was written for the "Stansted" ep of series 3 of Mitch Benn's Crimes Against Music; it's a sort of Johnny Cash-ish Dark And Despairing song imagining being trapped in an airport departure lounge for months with nothing to eat or drink except the contents of the Duty Free store...

Duty Free Shop

Vodka And Toblerone - 3.65 MB [ PLAY ]

The Devil And A Hard Place

Another one which needs a bit of explaining; I was driving along listening to Radio 4 like the loyal company man I am, when they broadcast a trailer for a forthcoming documentary on global warming, which ended with the voice of some expert or other warning us in grave tones that if we didn't do something to address the problem soon, "we could be standing on the precipice of a runaway train". Now I've heard some bad mixed metaphors in my time, but this one nearly made me swerve off the road. I wrote this for The Now Show as soon as I got where I was going.

the beast

The Devil And A Hard Place - 2.35 MB [ PLAY ]

Try Singing This

I was flabbergasted in the run-up to the 2006 World Cup when Embrace, arguably the most boring band in the history of popular music, were given the job of providing England's Official World Cup Song; this was my idea (written for The Now Show) of how the song might end up sounding. I genuinely can't remember how Embrace's ACTUAL World Cup song sounded; make of that what you will.

Embrace

Try Singing This - 3.94 MB [ PLAY ]

Goonshadow

This one had two goes on the radio; I wrote it for It's Been A Bad Week around the time poor old Yusuf Islam was turned away from the US and then incorporated it into the ep of Mitch Benn's Crimes Against Music in which Yusuf actually turned up as a character (played by me with a comedy Greek London accent for which I can't apologise enough).

Goonshadow - 1.28 MB [ PLAY ]

Nothing Happened

Remember last June when the media tried to whip up a bit of phony spiritual panic around the fact that on the sixth, the date would be 6.6.6? I wrote this for It's Been A Bad Week to commemorate the resulting anti-climax. Quite pleased with the Black Sabbath guitar sound on this one.

666

Nothing Happened - 2.07 MB [ PLAY ]

Gecko-Man

Another Now Show song; this one was based on a news story last year that scientists had developed a super-adhesive polymer derived from the stuff on geckos' toes, which in theory could be made to produce a working Spider-Man costume.

Gecko-Man - 1.09 MB [ PLAY ]

Budgie Out Of Hades

I thought I'd put this up here because it's one of those songs of mine which don't quite work without a bit of background, and I can give it that on this site (unlike say on an album or on the MySpace page), and also because I was quite pleased with how it turned out... This was a Now Show song I wrote when Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman settled their differences over who had the rights to the title "Bat Out Of Hell"... Meat wanted to make Bat Out Of Hell III, Jim wasn't interested and was on the point of suing Meat if he went ahead without him. I said I was pleased as the album wouldn't have been the same if Meat had to call it something else...

Bat Out Of Hell cover

Budgie Out Of Hades - 1.37 MB [ PLAY ]

Happy Birthday BBC7

Don't know if many of you will have heard this, so here it is for curiosity value... I was asked to write a song for BBC7's fourth birthday a few months ago; as some of you may know, I play a lot of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band on my BBC7 show so I thought it'd be fun to do a sort of Bonzos tribute.

BBC7 logo

Happy Birthday BBC7 - 1.18 MB [ PLAY ]

<< Older Music Stuff