Abubilla Music

Song of the Moment: Mah Knees

Written by Jimmy

Mah Knees by AbubillaMusic

Oh, my goodness.  Never has so much gone into so little.  This is the anti-Battle of Britian.  And yet, there’s a wee bit of charm in this Martyn classic, which started looking like Houston and concluded with the best 1-2 Shhh in history.

Listen and read.

Okay, 5 things to know about this song:

1. Birth:   The song was born on 29 November 2009 in the living room of the Spanish Villa, during the Autumn 2009 Spanish Jam.    Martyn had hinted at it’s existence multiple times before saying ‘I have a song’, but had never brought it forward until Spain.  When we say ‘it’, the song consistent of two things:  the riff, all Martyn, and very very cool.  And the phrase ‘My Knees, they go up.  My knees, they go down.  My knees they go up.  My knees, they go…. Big. Big. Big. Big.’   Martyn played the riff.  Then said the words. Then turned to us and asked, ‘What do you think of my song?’   We looked at each other and asked, ‘What Song?’   No, Martyn, there was no song in that song.  Like Houston.  No city in that city. 
2. Teenage Years:    So Jimmy and Martyn and Ed were asked to go into the living room and turn Martyn’s ‘song’ into a ‘song.’  We fleshed out the lyrics, and then recording the song.  We circulated thru vocalists, from Ed to Martyn to Gus.  We settled on Gus.    He never understood this song.    He arrived terribly hung-over and just tried to sing thru it.  He failed completely at middle 8, so the band had to fill in. This screwed up our performance credits massively because there are 27 backing vocalists on this song.  Since we divide performance credits evenly it means poor Ed, with awesome trumpets, get same performance credits as the Pizza Guy who we dragged into to shout ‘big’ 8 times before he headed off to deliver cold chicken wings to a guy named Baxter in Twickeham.
3. Troubled Early Adulthood:  We then struggle somemore with this thing and brought Ed in on trumpets.   We slowed the track to half speed and he recorded trumpets at full spead.  Gus’s voice at half speed is funny, so Ed was always cracking up during his trumped bits, which got us laughing, which when sped back up to full speed sounded like the chip monks (See below).  We left in the laughter but not the chipmonk bit.  We were worried about copy right issues.
4. The Big Naming Thing:  We are like faculty –the politics are intense because the stakes are so low.  We spend ages debating whether this was called Mah Knees or Big Knees.  We settled on Mah Knees, which screwed up 307 blog tags.  That is what it is called on album.  We immediately regretted it.  We never once sing ‘Mah. Mah. Mah. Mah. Knees’.  Nope it is definitely 8 Bigs that conclude the song.  Silly us.
5. Our absolutely coolest moment ever in the history of Abubilla.  No kidding. Really:    When our history is written (by us, to be read by us, alone, sad, in our little apartments, dividing cans of dog food between us), there will be a long debate about our coolest moments.   Some will point to Birdie.   And for good reason.  Steph’s cheep, cheep is remarkable.  Others will point to Ed’s Water Trick.  Again, extraordinary.   And there’s Toby, and Sammy.    And there are Lou’s Mum’s very famous Dead Flies.    But, nothing compares to the 1-2 Shhh of Mah Knees.  Nothing Compares.

So, Enjoy the Song of the Moment.