Category: Music

You may have noticed I wrote and recorded yet another song – it was originally entitled Footprints in the Sand. It was angst-ridden and full of random allusions and imagery, as is my wont. I added the word “No” to the title having used a photo of  beach on which there were no footprints and I thought that would make it even more angst ridden, suggesting that the song’s protagonists were hankering after the beach but unable to be there for whatever reason.

As I mentioned earlier, the song started off in my usual way, simple chord progression over which I ad libbed a few words…I tightened the words up after I laid down a quick demo so I wouldn’t forget the tune I’d come up with. It started out as being about coping with grief following the death of a loved one. But, it somehow morphed into thinking about the kind of grief that migrants suffer in leaving their homeland in search of a better, safer life. Their attempts to reach foreign shores and to land on beaches from flimsy boats. There is also a kind of allusion to regrets migrants might feel in reaching that foreign shore.

Anyway, let me spell out what I think I thought I meant in the song, I’m reverse engineering it really, as many of the words arose spontaneously and from my subconscious.

The days are colder and the nights drawn in
No barricades of comfort, now the aching will begin

After the clocks go back in October, my mother would often remark on how quickly it seemed “the nights are drawing in”. I made the phrase a finite point, the nights are “drawn in”, in perpetuity, you might say, it’s always going to be dark from now on. The warmth of the summer, a kind of psychological barricade definitely long gone and the pain of the cold, dark days now starting.

I'm running down an unlit corridor
The pain can chase me, but I head out through an open door

This was a nightmare image of the fear of death, I think, and the possibility of somehow getting away from that pain and emerging into the light.

And you won't find a clearer path today
If you turn your back on the future, try to run away

Basically, don’t dwell on the past, try to look to the future, but also live in the present, which brings us to the next couplet

And, there are times when you can plan your day
But the tide will turn and wash your wishes away

Moving through grief it seems very hard to think of getting on with normal stuff, but you have to, but it’s worth remembering that your romantic dreams written with sticks and stones on the memory of a beach are always washed away by the rising tide.

But I can see the warning signs ahead
They don't deter me, they draw me on instead

This sounds like being well aware of the psychological damage that might occur in the wake of trauma but being pulled along by it instead of finding a safe haven.

And I should say that we can choose a tougher path
The path of least resistance was never going to last

I think this line in the pre-chorus is where the notion of it being about my grief morphed into something broader about migrants and people escaping. Always easier to stick to the well-worn track, but even they don’t offer an escape a tougher route has to be forged in some circumstances.

Now, we’re at the chorus:

Walk with me, I'll take you by the hand
Can't promise anything like a promised land
But, I’ll give you love, though nothing's planned
Walk with me, leave just our footprints in the sand

Offering a helping hand, partnership, promising something but not necessarily the dream, maybe just a chance to walk in the sand, which would be a bit of a dream at the moment, to be honest.

The summer comes around and the days are long
I thought I'd moved on but something feels so wrong

What if time isn’t a healer, what if there’s still pain long after the dark winter days when the summer clicks into view again? That was me worrying for my future self, I think.

And there you're kneeling with your head in your hands
Still can't believe we found ourselves in this foreign land

An allusion to the despair felt by those hoping for a better life reaching that new world, but struggling when the reality is not what they thought they had promised themselves.

Like I said, angst-ridden and grim. But, else would you expect, I’ve written and recorded dozens of songs over the last few years and they’re almost always a bit depressing lyrically even if the tunes sometimes get a bit funky. Any questions? No? Good. I’ll let you have a listen to the song (also on Bandcamp) and you can comment at me on Twitter.

Incidentally, it struck me after recording that at least two of those lyrics are half-borrowed from a couple of other songs. “I can feel the warning signs” is in Half the World Away by Oasis, while “eyes cast down on the path of least resistance” is in A Farewell to Kings by Rush. You can check out this page for a very incomplete list of what I’d call my musical influences.

No Footprints in the sand

The days are colder and the nights drawn in
No barricades of comfort, now the aching will begin
I’m running down an unlit corridor
Pain can chase me, but I head out through an open door

And you won’t find a clearer path today
If you turn your back on the future, try to run away
And, there are times when you can plan your day
But the tide will turn and wash your wishes away

But I can see the warning signs ahead
They don’t deter me, they draw me on instead
And I should say that we can choose a tougher path
The path of least resistance was never going to last

Walk with me, I’ll take you by the hand
Can’t promise anything like a promised land
But, I’ll give you love, though nothing’s planned
Walk with me, leave just our footprints in the sand

The summer comes around and the days are long
I thought I’d moved on but something feels so wrong
And there you’re kneeling with your head in your hands
Still can’t believe we found ourselves in this foreign land

Though I could see the warning signs ahead
They didn’t stir me to turn away instead
And though I said that we should choose a tougher path
The path of least resistance was never at our backs

As usual, words, music, and production by David Bradley
Vocals, guitars, bass, keyboard, percussion mixing dB/

Available on Soundcloud to stream and on Bandcamp to stream or download

Started off in the usual way, simple chord progression over which I ad libbed a few words…the words tightened up and something that was originally perhaps about getting through grief but maybe not getting through it came out the other side as an allusion to migrant regrets…I think.

Listen on BandCamp and SoundCloud

Having put together a song for Mrs Sciencebase that was about some of our shared experiences and made some kind of lyrical sense – The people we can be – I thought I’d go back to my usual unintelligible, stream-of-consciousness approach to lyric writing for my next song.

Basically, start a tune in demo form, ad lib some lyrics, burble a few of them incomprehensibly, write them down as best I can and then edit into a useable form for a proper recording. The only difference with this one is that I had a go at recording it using a Wikiloops instrumental backing track called Easy Come, Easy Go and the chorus morphed because of that to use that phrase rather than my allusion to repairing my head. In the end, I didn’t use the Wikiloops track and started from scratch with electric rather than acoustic guitar and built percussion and bass and then acoustic on top of my demo.

The title’s a bit of a cliche, but a little bit more understandable than the original and provides a stronger hook than what I’d thought of originally.

It’s on BandCamp and SoundCloud as usual.

Easy come, easy go

There’s a tension in the air
Always someone being so unkind
Never found the right time to make that repair
To my confounded state of mind

Didn’t see you out and about
You couldn’t bear to breathe the air
You’re clued up there is no doubt
But you missed your cue ’cause you just don’t care

And, I feel
That something is missing
The lonely aren’t kissing anyone
Just before the dawn, I will know
If it’s easy come, then it’s easy go

Did I mention it today?
They’re always looking for a fight?
Never found the peaceful way
To resolve the wrong from the right

And I feelThat someone is blessing
those second guessing everyone
Before the sunrise I will know
If it’s easy come, then it’s easy go

But, I feel
That we’re all missing
That we’re lonely and we’re messing with our heads
To think we really ought to know
That if it’s easy come, then it’s easy go

NB It was originally to be tacked on to my After the Lockdown album, but I’ve changed my mind about the three songs I’ve written since my mother’s death and they’re now part of a newly released Lifelines EP.

As usual, words and music by yours truly. Vocals, acoustic, electric, and bass guitars, percussion, production, mixing, and artwork too.

Listen on SoundCloud or BandCamp

A lot of the lyrics to my songs come out ad lib when I have a go at recording a first-pass demo of a new tune. I usually then edit them into shape as the song evolves. But, sometimes they have a bit more of a story, and although the basics just emerge as I’m putting it together, they do get more craft occasionally. My latest conflates a couple of encounters Mrs Sciencebase and I have had with Paris over the years. The most recent encounter was from a high altitude, a few years ago we were flying back at night from a trip to Croatia and could see Paris from the airliner. The Eiffel Tower was illuminated and looked like a tiny golden dagger poking up from the cityscape.

The earlier encounter was a cold and snowy winter trip to the city back in the very early 1990s. We did all the usual sights including a trip to the top of the tower during the day. That evening we searched for a nice restaurant near our lodgings and stumbled upon a rather rustic place near the Bastille and shared a table with a couple of French gents. Neither of them spoke a lot of English and our French was Franglais at best, but we had a chat over a couple of carafes of red wine and ate some food. One of the things they were keen to know was what we thought of living in a monarchy…how we interpreted that conversation I don’t know, I think we lost the thread at one point, but basically, they wanted to know what we thought of The Queen. It was funny.

The airport race was our return from wintry Paris, we almost missed the flight, we hadn’t heard it called, and I think actually at the time they didn’t call flights at that airport. An airport attendant sought us out, mooching in the bucket seats, and chucked us on to the back of a luggage trailer and drove us like baggage to the aeroplane, threw us up the steps. The business travellers were might irritated that we’d delayed their flight home, but we thought it was funny and we didn’t miss our takeoff slot, so no harm done…and a story to tell.

I waited until we visited Greece the following year before I offered a proposal of marriage to Ms Sciencebase, who as you know accepted, long before Sciencebase was even a thing. Incidentally, the lock with T&D wasn’t ours, but it was clipped around a fence on a walk way in Dubrovnic we spotted on our visit to that beautiful city.

This song is for her, a rarity. Its tongue-in-cheek working title was Parisian Nights and then it became C’est la Vie but both phrases have been used a lot, so I’ve not settled on it being called People we can be.

You can listen on SoundCloud or BandCamp

People we can be

You remember how we flew home at night?
Head full of memories, I could tell
You shone when we caught sight of Paris
and smiled at the lights of the Tour Eiffel

It was so small, a golden dagger
In a playground of street life and bars
Full of the memories that make me stagger
A flashlight on streetlights and cars

Oh, how I wish I could find a way
To take us back to those nights, we’d see
The secret to happiness isn’t time or place
It’s the laissez faire of the c’est la vie
The secret to happiness isn’t time or place
It’s the finding the people we can be

The mighty drinkers in that old cafe
Who asked us all about The Queen
We shared their wine and spirit, I have to say
But we lost the thread, I felt so mean

We headed home along the banks of the Seine
I headed out on a limb
The easiest thing to do was to stake a claim
But, my mind was dulled and my eyes were dim

Oh, how I wish I could find a way
To take us back to those nights, we’d see
The secret to happiness isn’t time or place
It’s the laissez faire of the c’est la vie
The secret to happiness isn’t time or place
It’s finding the people we can be

We chased the plane in an airport race
Entangled in our own youth
Although I’d held back just to check out the place
What more did I need, in truth?

Just in from the critics: “Great song! Beautiful lyrics and melody, and it’s always good to hear that stripped-back acoustic guitar sound.”

Blessed Release

You whispered to me just days in the past
It was the last time, now forever’s holding fast
I turn to music this moment cannot cease
But, I skipped a beat before the blessed release

The chords seemed faked, the melody obscure
There was give and take, but nothing too secure
Unchained, as they say, you’re free to find your peace
But for those left behind, there is no blessed release

Blessed release, it comes to us all
Obscure but unmoving
Our backs against the wall

Blessed release, the end of it all
No cure, no approval
You have to take the fall

I heard a sound, it was the sighing of the night
Cut through my breath, because the binding was so tight
There is a feeling, the growing mystery of that peace
I tried to write it down before the blessed release

For my late Mother

Listen on SoundCloud or BandCamp

A friend suggested that after posting my 9 albums in 9 years update, I should put together a “greatest hits”. I suspect they were being ever so slightly facetious, but I took a look at my BandCamp stats covering all the time I’ve been posting songs there and pulled out a Top 10, so here it is:

1. The Silent Spring – The amazing Emmazen on backing vocals
2. Push the Button What if Peter Gabriel did a song about cybersex?
3. Burning the Candle at Both Ends – Too much, too young, too soon?
4. In Transition – Are the times a changin’?
5. Bait and Switch (Mono Stone Remix) – Contrarywise
6. White Line Warrior (Bradley, Schwaegler & Tropp) – Rush’s Tom Sawyer meets the Digital Man heading home from Bangkok
7. Who is Really Fooling Who? – If James Taylor had been a gambling man
8. Escape to the Stars – Featuring Eddie Bryant on saxophone
9. Time to Unwind (It’s Over) – At the end of the day…
10. Complications – Lo-Fi lockdown woes

Of course, this Top 10 goes up to 11 and a track from earlier musical incarnation on BandCamp looks like it did better in terms of streams and downloads than the No. 10 song on this list by a small margin – Golden Light.

Some time between joining a community choir in its opening month more than 14 years ago (September 2007) and helping set up a local “Arts Night” about 9 years ago (April 2012) that ultimately evolved into my gigging band C5, I started writing and recording music in earnest. None of the youthful noodling that led nowhere back when I was a youthful noodler, these were meant to be proper songs and instrumentals with an intro, middle-eight, and a coda. The works.

Well, several years on I seem to have amassed around 200 or so songs and instrumental many of which are on my BandCamp and SoundCloud pages. The BandCamp stuff is under two different names – davebradley and sciencebase, my SoundCloud stuff is all under the username sciencebase.

I think there are about 135 songs on the 9 collections pictured above…back in the day a 40-minute vinyl album would usually have 10 or so tracks (prog rock excepted), so I reckon some of these are double albums, and that older “If at First…” album (the spider’s web one) which has 25 songs is almost a triple album!

If you’ve been to any of my solo gigs, the CCC Arts Nights, or even early C5 gigs you may well have heard a few of these songs live, among the ones from the collections that I remember singing in a pub, at a party, in a community hall, festival, or other venue are: Winter Warmer, Sunny Days and Rainbows, White Whine (First World Problems), Bedding Down the Roses, Too Old to Die Young, Grace, Give My Love to the Waves, Bridges (Crossed and Burned), It’s Never Too Cold to Snow, Christmas Present, Burning the Candle at Both Ends, The Mighty Fall, Wild Honeysuckle, The Silent Spring, Turncoats, Burning Out etc etc

Obviously, none of the Lockdown LP nor the After the Lockdown songs have had a live airing. Moreover, while some of these songs fit the C5 format of – lead vocal, acoustic and electric guitar, drums and bass, and backing vox, it’s been a long time since the band ran through any of my material and we’ve not had a chance to rehearse the party cover songs we do ready for upcoming autumnal gigs, so it may be some time before they get that live treatment.

UPDATE: As of, 12 Nov 2021, I have written four new tunes since late September 2021, that are now part of my Lifelines EP.

A (hopefully) soothing instrumental inspired by a peaceful trip on a narrowboat along the Old West River on a midsummer’s dawn, “composed” by David Bradley. Synth strings, French horns, oboe, clarinet, and glockenspiel played on AKAI keyboard, Taylor six-string for the pseudoclassical guitar, mixing and production by David Bradley.

I don’t hear anyone else’s melodies or snippets of melodies (and usually with my music I can hear all the influences outloud), so I think I’ve avoided copying the tropes of the wonderful new world, big country, deep south stuff from the likes of Copland, Dvorak, Gershwin, and Moross. Nevertheless, it’s a big sloppy slice of Americana from a Geordie daarn saarf in England rather than the deep south US of A. The sea refuses no river, as they say.

You can stream or download the latest version of the track on BandCamp. I’m still working on it and remixing.

“I pondered whether this wandering refrain heralded dawn or dusk till I realized it was all the same. The Mobius strip of life ties light and river movements through music to eternity, [Dave] moves my soul again”
— Kae, via Twitter

Gradually building my After the Lockdown EP into an album. 10 tracks at the moment, 8 originals, plus a horny remix of one of those and an instrumental version of an older song.

The latest song was inspired by a throwaway line from my musical and spiritual guru – Clive-upon-Sea whose album Fragments I recorded and produced and played on (electric guitar, bass, percs, and BVs). Oh, the line:

He makes friends in an empty room

I pulled together some random thoughts on that line, made the he a she and then built the song from a basic acoustic chord progression, rearranged it from a folky singer-songwriter version, and then settled on something not unlike the early days of The Police, but with a Rushesque edge and plenty of harmonies as usual.

Empty Rooms

You hear her talking in the afternoon
But, come the evening, well it’s all doom and gloom
She’d make friends in an empty room
They’re gone by morning, not a moment too soon

Though she finds it hard to understand
The callous feeling of your open hands
She’ll come to you when she needs a friend
Won’t give up hope until the bitter end

Knowing only that the pain will grow
She’s praying harder for the light to show

She hides her feelings in plain sight
Fearless moments in the still of the night
Time will come when she gives up the fight
Sees the day when there will be no morning light

You see her heading for her velvet cocoon
In the evening, well she sings another tune
She’s got no friends in that pale empty room
She dreams of stardust and the rising of a crescent moon

She’s gone walking in the afternoon
Come the evening dances to a different tune
Found no message in that empty womb
All done by morning, to her feelings she’s immune

Heal this moment in the heat of the night
Seize the day