A Traveller’s Guide to Lost and Later Songs #15

For those who may appreciate some background detail, I offer below my workings.


#15 The Strangest Thing (1/3/21) – https://tinyurl.com/ysxf23x5

Latest of the later songs and yet another to come in a dream. I seem to spend half my life in a dream, the other half in denial. In this dream I found myself running through the dimly lit labyrinth of a post-apocalyptic Venice whilst battling some strangely attractive zombies. I didn’t know whether I wanted to fight the Zombies or….well, you get the idea. It was all a bit Lara Croft meets Sigmund Freud. The end of the dream felt like completing a level. I outran the zombies only to find myself running down a dark alleyway into a dead end, at the end of which was a drinking fountain. As I approached the fountain, I saw there was a secret button in the middle of the fountainhead. Ooh. I pressed a secret button and the fountain began to sink into the ground whilst playing the doorbell melody you hear at the beginning of the song. That was the dream. Pure spooky man. My dreams are rarely light-hearted. Never mind. I try to see them as free entertainment, the brain’s bonus section.
Lockdown recording felt like a clean slate, like we could sound like anything we wanted. It liberated us from the bang and crash of the rehearsal room (fond as I am of that). I suspect “The Strangest Thing” would never have blossomed in that environment. I should be grateful it wasn’t written 25 years ago.
If you are in a hurry, I would say this is not the song for you. If you are not in a hurry….may I suggest you make yourself comfortable, maybe with a glass of something lovely. Let us take time out from the world. The chaos will still be there tomorrow. Just not the way we left it.

Photo by Inge Morath- Venice, Italy 1955

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*