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.
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June 2007
06/19/2007
Synth and Metal Folk!
06/15/2007
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
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.
06/10/2007
With Someone Nice Like You
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
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
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
06/09/2007
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
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
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)
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.
..........
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
I wrote this in 1968 at 17 but rewrote it 1978 after reading feminist writers
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
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
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