RAILROAD 1971
This short lived band was basically a re-titling of The Mick Green Blues Band. Perhaps they were trying to forge a new identity / direction.
I arranged for them to practice in the little theatre at the back of the Umbrella club around Feb / march 1971.
The nucleus consisted of Mick Green (Lead / rhythm guitar) Mojo (Tony) Morgan bass and Steve Harrison drums
but I think they were trying to expand the line up a bit with (if my memory serves well!)
With Trev Teasdel (vocals / lyrics) Jim Allen on sax (Jim was later in EMF in 1981 and I remember Mojo introducing me to Jim in Cov centre and him turning up to a session in 1971)
Also I was invited to try out vocals and write some lyrics for the band.
The band were R & B based but exploring a more progressive side to their material.
I was asked to bring a PA and try out vocals. Pete Waterman had suggested Billy Campbell of Coconut Mat might lend me a PA for the night. Billy agreed but I think a gig came up on the actual night so I was PA less.
I did write some new lyrics for the band with a kind of King Crimson feel (or that was one of the influences anyway).
For one reason or another, the band never got off the ground although the musicians continued to play together in other formations. the initial ideas sounded good but I think maybe differences of direction and lack of a PA might have been problems.
Not a lot more to say as the band never got beyond a series of exploratory practices but here are two lyrics I wrote for the band but not in the end used.
The song is about illusion and I seem to remember that Glaik is a Scottish word meaning fool but the inference I took from my original source was one who lived under illusions. I can't seem to find a definition on the net that gives that inference so I don't know if it was me that gave it that slant or not now! The story of the monkey who seeing the sun in the lake dived in to catch it but discovered it was only a reflection was the starting point for the lyric.
GLAIK (The Illusion of the Lake) by Trev Teasdel (C) 1971
I tried to catch the sun
but it was only a reflection in the water.
I was only seeking treasure
But I ended up 'kissing the gunner's daughter'
The velvet coated bard I followed
was just a caird who was in a play.
I looked up to the sky to see
they had blackened the 'eye of the day'
chorus Glai - Aye Aye Aye k (3 times)
The Illusion of the lake.
I went to see the archimage
but he turned out to be just a javel.
I pulled the bedclothes back
to see a snake unravel.
I almost made the rainbow's end
when it suddenly turned wan
I gledged upon a peacock
who suddenly lost his fan.
Another lyric probably owed something to McBeth although it is not about McBeth and also the images in The lyric to Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson.
Beneath the Phaeic Sky (Trev Teasdel (c) 1971
The Black Knight's spectre
Prowls the battlements.
Beneath the phaeic sky
Sounds his sad lament.
The phantom pillion rider groans
as he leaps a lazing stile.
The faceless henchman totes his gun
and points it with beguile.
And the shivers of my uncertainty
Cloud my mind so I can't see.
The moon has closed her eyes
to the surrep[titious hand of fate
The groined pasageway becomes alive
Ornamental armoury vibrates.
The trees they are approaching now
Like Birnam Wood on old McBeth
The assassin's blade drips with blood
There's a stench of cobwebbed death.
And the shivers of my uncertainty
Cloud my mind so I can't see.
Beelzebub whets his fangs
and summons the firedrake
As a prudent Aquila swoops in
along the monsters wake.
The unsuspecting demon squirms
with the stab of a venom tongue
And the shivers of my uncertainty
Cloud my mind so I can't see.
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