DESPAIR

oh i am sick tonight, my seeds
sick as a proverbial parrot
sick fireseed
not sick as in ill
but sick as in frustrated
angry
pissed, as they say in namerica
it's all my own fault
i can't blame anyone else
even georgie boy and tory boy are off the hook this time
a stupid chain of events
the bottom line of which is
i have managed to lose not only all my recordings since last summer
(the entire 'elephant in the room' album so far)
but also all our family photos from the same period
oh the stupidity of it, my seeds!
how i should know better by now
having done this kind of thing before on a smaller scale...
when i get home on woden's day
mrs f tells me she's got some bad news
she was on the computer in the spare room
when all of a sudden there's a power cut
when she tries to turn the computer back on
it won't start up
just produces an error message
so next day the computer bloke from down the road
comes and picks it up
says he can copy the files and reboot
i'm already worried
cos with one thing and another
i haven't got around to backing up any of the recent files
and this kind of thing happened once before
when the computer got a virus
and all my audio files from 'mustard seed'
(that's the singing, the bass and the guitar bits)
got deleted
so i'm starting to worry
but mrs f says it's ok
she's told the bloke to treat my audio with kid gloves
anyway the machine is delivered back today
and lo and behold
inexplicably the audio files are there
albeit scattered around one of the drives in different folders
but everything else
the track programming which activates all the music files
and the photos and videos
have all been erased
where has it all gone?
computer ajossi is fucked if he knows
i'm cursing myself
how could i let this happen?
i should have gone and stood over him
throughout the entire process
making sure that everything was ok
and i would have
if i hadn't been bloody busy
knackered
and otherwise detained
now i'm panicking
my mind is racing
i'm desparately trying to work out a solution
an explanation
a way back
but it's too late
i realise that there is one major saving grace
alongside two major killers
i've got compressed mp3 files of the five finished tracks
downloaded to my mp3 player
now i can't edit them
and i'm not sure how compressing the files affects the quality
but there's a decent chance
that they'll be good enough to burn to CD
thank god for my mp3
the first killer is 'hero with a 1000 faces'
my opus magnus of the last two months
my pride and joy
though i've got a 95% finished demo saved as an mp3 like the others
this one ain't no good
cos the vocal is only a guide vocal
it's out of tune, full of mistakes
and there's sound spillage from an earlier version
which i later deleted
the drum and guitar tracks are pretty good
but they need tweaking
now my head is in my hands
the love i have put into recording this seven-and-a-half-minute epic
this double-song
this spiritual oddyssey
the painstaking effort to get everything just right
the smooth undulating synth pattern
the woodland sound effects
the swooping slurring bassline
which covered my fingers with blisters
the echoey double-tracked guitar lines
which took umpteen takes to get them right
cos of my clumsy fingers and lack of technique
not to mention the love and work locked up in the other songs
which i cannot edit
nine months of hard graft!
sometimes late at night into the wee small hours
sometimes squeezed in after a long day's work
this work is the best i've ever done
it's my pride and joy
it was my goal to finish this album by the summer
to release it, promote it, share it
my philosophy, my creed, my latest manifesto
i wanted to nail it
draw a line under it
and move on to fresh pastures
and now this...
the second killer is that all the photos and videos are gone
thank god we printed the best ones
from the summer hols
the autumn
and the christmas holidays
and i uploaded a few other nice ones from last month
onto my office pc
but the rest are gone forever
pictures and little blurry films of our little girl growing up
as she will never be again
i guess i can re-record 'hero'
though i dread to think how long that's gonna take
but i can't bring my darling hannah's pictures back...
oh i am sick tonight
sick as a parrot...