Trev Songs's blog

Melissa's Garden

A new Trance version of this by Coventry drummer / Producer - Jim Pryal on Culture Fuzion My Space http://www.myspace.com/httpwwwmyspacecom424427988

Melissa's Garden Audio
Audio with this - warts an all! Rough demo on the Hi Fi double tracking my electro acoustic to add a bit of lead. I'm not

Melissasgarden

any kind of lead guitarist. Didn't get around to putting the vocals on as intended to do a better version but it will give an idea.I wrote it in a songwriting class I taught for WEA in 1998 (to pretend I can do it too!!). I was using 3rds and 4ths to play this and added some lead in the key of Yale (my favourite key!). .

MELISSA'S GARDEN

Tiger eyes that mesmerise Fireflies of her thighs. Misty sighs - sensitise Alcamize love's butterflies.

(Chorus I) Come on down to Melissa's Garden Love and light down in the garden. In the garden love is growing, She leads the way by the seeds she's sowing.

She's an archimage from another age Runic spells fly off her page Come to free us from our maze, And open up the celestial age.

Bridge.. You won't believe what you see When you see the way Melissa sees.

The world you see is on an odyssey Through policy and prophecy In the embassy of fantasy You can peek her pantisocracy.

Chorus 2 Come on down to Melissa's Garden Love is flowing in the garden In the garden lights are glowing She shows the way with her deeper knowing.

So leap-frog with the underdog And liven up those sand-hogs In a deep clog there's a hang-dog In dialogue with a pedagogue.

Moonbeams on the millstream Reflect upon the big screen. There's a sunbeam in the airstream Shining on our new dreams. Aug 1998 (N. Yorkshire) by Trev Teasdel)

Melissa's Garden

............

HEY UP! WHAT'S THE CRACK?

Hey Up! What's The Crack - Trev Teasdel

Another performance poem published in my book Nightfall in Sorrento

Nighfall in Sorrento book

HEY UP! WHAT'S THE CRACK?

There's ghost inertia on the fringe of passion
The Art of Martial sex is well in fashion
Through Venetian specs with special effects
You get sex by text - whatever next!
Hey up! What's the Crack? Alack alack
What's the Crack?
Humanoids on a downward track.

Trainspotting clones called Smith and Jones
Bug your deepest thoughts via mobile phones
Put credit-debtors in French-letters
with horse betters and ant petters
Hey up! What's the Crack? Alack alack
What's the Crack?
Humanoids on a downtown track.

The Goat-farmer from Kathmandu
Is wise to your Karma and illusion of you.
This material world for those who fail
To see the light in this urbanic trail.
Hey up! What's the Crack? Alack alack
What's the Crack?
Humanoids clickety clack a downward track.

There's a carboot sale on a virtual beach
with a plastic snail and a slice of quiche
and a shopping mall for personality
This banality's free on Reality TV
Hey up! What's the Crack? Alack alack
What's the Crack?
Humanoids slide down the chimney stack.

You get post-grad cash-back
For shagging in the love-shack
A 6-pack, fast-track; 0% APR, the money goes far
A free toy car, so there you are!
Hey up! What's the Crack? Alack alack
What's the Crack?
Humanoids caught on a salesman's camera trap.

Give me Caffrey's, give me wine
This Circe society has turned you to swine.
In this fiscal boom, you are what you consume
A two-time dildo under a lover's moon.
Hey up! What's the Crack? Alack alack
What's the Crack?
Humanoids slide down the snakes and adders track.

It's true, it's true, life is a Vindaloo
Hot with passion, too highly spiced for you
Slow down, slow down, examine your vision
Your life is a bank
Instant credit, instant decision
Hey up! What's the Crack? Alack alack
What's the Crack?
Humanoids on a downward track.

By Trev Teasdel August 2006

Sin City

PERFORMANCE POEM - Appears in my book Nightfall in Sorrento
Written in 2005. June and Sarah from the Writers Cafe had written a satirical play about the proposal to merge 

Nighfall in Sorrento book

Stockton and Middlesbrough into a City. What would they call it? June and Sarah came up with Mockton! The play was about the perceived rivalries between the two towns personified through it's two literary scenes and I was the Stockton leader under the name of Von Strudel - and for my sins had to act in it! They play ends with a Poetry slam between the rival towns - so I had to write a poem for the slam scene. I chose to cut up the Crack Magazine and some other bits and worked through a poem from that. As mentioned on the Writers Cafe - the name Mudfog (from Dickens) has been attributed to Middlesbrough and is now the name of the areas main poetry publisher. It's about Middlesbrough sort of !!

SIN CITY

Discover the secret, believe in the magic
Tale of the unexpected
MOCK city.

Grab your cameras, pixels and pens
Seek inner purity
Boxfresh and scruffed up.

Look around you
Town centre architechture
spirited away
by soul stripping salespeak.

Sin in the city
Unique and jawdropping
A pornography
of artIsts, photographers and writers
Smacked out
Underfed, under funded and underhand.

On the brink of self denial
Slammed into conformity
Competed out,
mutated
corporately branded with
killer pop songs
Live music in the
Mudsmog, mudbog
Accomplished and charming
Released in the cinemas
Itching with ideas
An Animated and virtual
Human Crockery
A Mockery
Sin in the City.

Look around you
Find Love, jobs, homes and God,
Some kind of justice
in the lighter and brighter,
more comfy after a refurb,
void and nameless
City of sin.
Liars, lepers and all things creeping,
A Wasteland of TS Eliots.

I'm not meaning to take the Dis
But kind of fresh hell is this?
It's a ham-spam city slam
Shrivelled worms on bread and jam.
Northern souls
In sin city holes.
Put the arsholes on hot coals
BUT TELL ME - WHERE IS THE LOVE?

by Trev Teasdel 2005

Borders (How Many Books?) (poem)

Appears in my book Nightfall in Sorrento
THIS ONE'S A PERFORMANCE POEM RATHER THAN A SONG
Written on a visit to Birmingham in 2005 to see the new Bullring Centre. Having seen the Simpsons episode where

Nighfall in Sorrento book

 everyshop is becoming a Starbucks, we walked quickly past it in Birmingham and in to the new Borders shop. 'How Many books?' was the first reaction - it was massive - espeically as a lot of people find their info on the internet now! Going around the corner in the store we were stopped in our tracks - there was even a Starbucks in Border - the Simpsons were right! We sat and had a coffee and I wrote this poem. Have done in in performance many times now including in support for poets Brian Patten and Keith Armstrong and in front of the manager of a Borders Bookshop!

BORDERS (HOW MANY BOOKS?)

On the border lines of literacy
Forests of publications
In neat and labeled lines
lie in Wait for curious hands
to turn in pages and turn in cash.

Along the shelves,
among relative worlds of Middle Earth and Narnia
Undergraduate hobbit sociologists
study the zoology of the Mastercard race
as they handover Visas on
the borderlines of the purchase zones.

But soon they Switch to the Coffee Deltas
of Starbucks in the corner
where they unwittingly star in Brumagem's
own James Joyce
as he sits scribble notes on till receipts.

But there among the shelves,
Clones of Socrates walk the store shouting -
"Knowledge is a commodity in the money-go-round, megaplex of modern life."

Outside in the hornet's nest hubbub
My car was booked by a traffic warden
who read the car's astrology and noted the number
on the Tarot plates,
as evidence of identity
on the borders of banality.

But now the books leap off the shelves
spilling knowledge over the carpet
that seeps through the floorboards
and into the ignorant streets.

Now the pavements chant poems
and girders contort to listen
and knowledge that once was power
seeps into you room
and if you  are clever
you can Google it in a net,
while the books stay on the shelves
longing for eyes to share their words with.

Trev Teasdel 2005 (Birmingham)

Synth and Metal Folk!

Gandalf's Quest - Trev Teasdel

No title for this unfinished piece from the early 90's and no words as yet. It shows a transition between something

Keyboardfolkdemo

Trev Teasdel

written on the guitar to the keyboards.

I wrote it first on accoustic guitar in a traditional folk style but double tracked it using the Electro-accoustic and electric guitars and then did a keyboard version. I was at a stage of playing all the instruments myself - the little band musicians I had around me had their separate ways. I played bass guitar and multi tracked the keyboards on the synth version although the bass is low in the mix.

Metal Folk

Paris Affair

This track musically was composed by one of my keyboard players - Steve Ingledew c1993 (a Geordie lad living in Middlesbrough). No samples involved - he

Steve Ingledew

composed, played and recorded all the parts on his Yamaha keyboard.  It was one of a couple of tracks he put together for me to write words for -the other being Jon Jon the Sniper's son (elsewhere on this site if you look in the index). I looked forward to getting into this track but son No 2 was born at the time so I was busy being dad!

Maybe I'll have a go now I've dug the track out again. Both Steve Ingledew and Steve Gillgallon whom I worked with in my Teesside period have a great facility for melody.

No words with this track therefore - but I love it as an instrumental.
I called it Paris Affair because it inspired my partner (at the time)  Margaret to write a poem about travelling through Paris.

Paris Affair -music by Steve Ingledew

With Someone Nice Like You

With someone nice like you - Trev Teasdel

A ska styled number this time!
For those who follow the Hobo - Coventry music site - this was one of the last songs I wrote before leaving Coventry

Covnetry Ska Blues BandEMF

in 1980. Two Tone was raging in the city and many of the other Cov bands followed through with their own brand of Ska. Ya couldn't stand still at a gig - ya had to dance. Tony (Mojo) Morgan and I met up at the Dog and Trumpet (Coventry's Cavern ) late 1979 and back at his pad he told me about a new band he was forming EMF. His idea was to blend ska and blues (perhaps ska with blues bass lines and sax). He hadn't honed the line up then and asked if I could come up with a couple of songs. I did two - Saturday Night (written in the Dog And Trumpet) which had a 12 bar verse and ska chorus and this one With Someone Nice Like you. I'm not sure I ever played them to  Him as very soon Tony (Mojo as he's now known) brought in two girl singers who had their own material. I became a big fan of EMF and was often called upon to get everyone dancing (something I still do at the Writers Cafe as some will know!) and also Hot Snacks were another fave band at the time. This was written around that time - early 1980. The recording was me on acoustic guitar on a cassette plaeyer so the sound quality wasn't great - just a draft really. I've added a bit of reverb and delay to enhance it a little but couldn't get rid of a few buzzes - still it gives an idea. (Have added a photo of the EMF at the Dog and Trumpet in Coventry and an audio of their final sound - the single Anti Bellum (it's a gudun!) written by the two girl singers.

With Someone Nice Like You

With Someone Nice Like You

 

by Trev Teasdel

I torture myself, with pent up fears

I brood a lot

I brew tea for one

I ask myself “how come”

How come I just can’t face the pots

I tie myself right up in knots

Chorus

And I long to spend my time

And I long to spend my time

Yes I long to spend my time

With someone nice like you.

I smashed a cup washing up

AntiBellumEMF

EMF (Coventry Ska / Blues Band c1980

I burnt the toast

I missed the post

And I ask myself “Whyfore”

Whyfore I haven’t fixed the drafty door

I’m frozen right through to the core

Chorus

And I long to spend my time

And I long to spend my time

Yes I long to spend my time

With someone nice like you.

Oh the nights are cold

Oh the nights are long

All I do, it comes out wrong

I wash my clothes but still they pong

How come I just can’t get it right?

Sadness got me in his long-range sights

To chorus..

Bridge

When I see a lover by your side

I turn my love lights low

Take my part in a melancholy show

Oh I just don’t know

Don’t know how to show I just don’t care

When my feeling set fire to my hair.

To Chorus.

By Trev Teasdel – 1980

THE ISOLATE

THE ISOLATE by Trev Teasdel (1st verses written Coventry 1979 / rest of lyric and music Middlesbrough 1985)

Under lock and key
In a room where no one goes

The Isolate final ver 1986 2

He sheds the tears
no one else will see.

In the recess of his mind
where troubles often hide
He feels the sorrow
felt by him alone.

Bridge 1
His eyes do not betray
the hurt that rots his soul
and his lips are sworn to secrecy
(his lips are sworn to secrecy).

Chorus - but he says it's alright
Daylight follows night
He knows to hold on tight
One day it will come right.

In a folder 'neath the floor boards

Isolate - no lead synth ver2

in a room where no one goes
are the words he wrote
to songs he never sings.

In the silence of his solitude
so void and unbenign
we witness how
his dreams are growing wings.

Bridge 2
One day his key will turn
One day his door will open
You'll see his dreams take shape
in the world outside his mind
And when his heart is sure
When his vision's clear
You'll see his dreams take flight
in the room outside his mind...(To Chorus)

Isolate synth bass

And his dreams are howling wolves
in the hopelessness of night
that beckon to
and herald in the light.

And his sorrow and his searching
are craftsmen of his dreams
chiselled in that ri n shred of life.

Bridge 3
His heart is pure and clear
like a stream that wanders free
He sees things as they ought to be.
And he climbs the stairs of life
with his visions running wild
and guides them as they grow
like a parent would a child.
..........

The Isolate

Before leaving Coventry in 1980 - I worked at Cashes (name tapes - textile firm) labouring while doing a couple of A levels in the evening. Two Tone had broken in Coventry and the music scene was lively again there. The workers in the factory took a fag break in between the official breaks in the toilets. I don't smoke but used to have a 'write'  break instead. I locked my self in the cubicle and sketch out some words - on this occasion I imagined myself to be imprisoned in some godforsaken cell (it was an old factory) and probably reflected my state of mind working in this place and hoping to get out of it. Hence the first two verses. Later that year I moved to Teesside to begin a degree course, so yes I did escape! In 1985 working with my musician friends Steve Gillgallon and Stephen Ingledew, I finished the song. We tried several versions - acoustic   and the versions here over dubbed on a double cassette (so the quality is not too hot. The final version (although no vocal on it) occurred a year later in 1986 when we had bought better keyboards and an electric guitar. The top version is also on my My Space - Trev and Collective Unconscious.

Songs feature Trev Teasdel - acoustic or electric flanged guitar, keyboards / vocals
Steve Gillgallon bass guitar and keyboards / synth and arrangements
Stephen Ingledew on keyboards, bass synth and recordings.

Mrs Stress and Strain

Poet Reprobate (Published 1985)jpg

I wrote this in 1968 at 17 but rewrote it 1978 after reading feminist writers

Mrs Stress and Strain

 like Juliet Mitchell, Sheila Rowbothem and more. Being a single parent, it comes close to home now!  I did this briefly with a Coventry band in 1980 - a Pentangle influenced band. The bassist was Selecter's roadie and we worked on a ska version of this although all of the musicians had gone folk rock. The band never got off the ground as Andy left to do Phd and I moved to Teesside to do a BA. I don't have any recordings of that version - this is just me and an acoustic guitar with the original draft of the song. This lyric was published in my 2nd collection of poems and lyrics - Poet Reprobate 1985

Mrs Stress and Strain

                                 

MRS STRESS AND STRAIN

When the sun’s out shining

Are you always ironing?

Does Steven need new shoes?

And Mary have the lover’s blues?

As life all around gets tense

Do you ask yourself

‘where is the sense?’

Now the milkman hasn’t been

And the rooms aren’t very clean.

There’s bills to be paid

On your mind they’re all weighed

Prices rising higher

Your state is getting higher.

Chorus –

Mrs Stress and Strain, To the kitchen sink you’re chained.

Worry haunts your life, And I can see you are the wife

Of Mr Toil and Strife.

“A women’s works is never done”

and the housework isn’t fun

Who else would work as hard as you

Such long hours, no rest due.

The stresses and the strains you bear,

The children and the mothercare!

And the beat goes on, day by day,

The isolation wears your soul away.

There’s nothing to show for all your work

You can’t stop a room from gathering dirt!

You feel you’ve got no life left of your own,

A permanent fixture, a doorpost in your home.

And though you’ll never make ends meet,

The adverts entice you to compete

With the image of an all-mod-con

Trendy space age super mom.

Should profiteers always hold the trump cards?

You’ve been dealt a hand of jokers –

What a façade!

Who’s the one they fall back upon.

Sometimes slave means the same as mom.

They never see the other side of you

Only what they expect of you.

Pinned down in a domestic situation

With little pills to ease your aggravation.

Sit down, sit back, light up and sigh,

Does your position in society make you cry?

“How hard’s the fortune of all women kind,                  

they’re always in fetters, always confined.

Bound down by parents until made wives

Slaves to their husbands the rest of their lives.”

Chorus

 

Lady of Darkness (Written By Colin Walker)

Steve Gillgallon 1982

Again this is not one of my own compositions but one I played on.
In 1983 as an undergraduate in Middlesbrough, I hosted Sunday music sessions with musician friend Steve Gillgallon

Colin Walker

Just prior to my finals in August 83 Colin Walker came around - he'd arranged the Violin and flute score on my song Teardrop in the Tees. Colin played us a new song he'd written and we did it there and then and recorded it on a Sharp's stereo cassette player.

Steve Gillgallon - flanged bass, Colin Walker - keyboards Trev Teasdel - acoustic guitar / Vocals.

LADY OF DARKNESS (By Colin Walker)

Lady of Darkness 2

Walking along a lonely shore
Lapped by waters of illusion
out of the mist she came to me
The timeless daughter of the ocean.

Where she came from, I don't know
Like magic out of nowhere
Here eyes glittered like diamonds
The moon shone in her hair.

Chorus -
Lady of Darkness
With Stars in her eyes
She can never love you
So don't believe her lies.
Lady of Darksness
You'll never find the key
To unlock her secrets
She blongs to the sea.

In silence we made love
Then she stood and took my hand
At midnight she said goodbye
and left me alone up on the sand.

At night I return to the shore
hoping to find her waiting there
but I'm certain deep in my heart
we'll never meet again this way.

Coda -

LADY OF DARKNESS

SHE CAN NEVER LOVE YOU

LADY OF DARKNESS

TO UNLOCK HER SECRETS.