Abubilla Music

11.06.19 Report Back on Summer Spanish Jam

Written by Jimmy

We have just completed our fifth Spanish Jam – almost a full week of sun, music and videos… here’s our report back… Believe it or not, this was number 5 (you can find out about the rest here)…We’re all safely back from the cloudless skies of Spain, ready to return to work under dreary London skies… Here’s a little report back on the trip, starting with the music and then everything else…

The Music

We broke the cycle, having decided not to finish up Album 4 (now called King Henry’s Tears) before the jam.  Instead we wanted to add a few new songs and re-do some others before declaring victory.  So the week was divided between wrapping up our fourth album, and also practicing live gigging of our ‘greatest hits’ (well, our own personal favourites).    We ran two separate studios – the main one (where the dancing shoes video took place) and a new one in the main living room that we used for over-dubs.  Here’s what happened:

• • Time: Monday morning we wrote a song called Time, about how time is seen from different perspectives depending on your age.  A little folksy number with Jimmy on lead vocals.  Crappy Jimmy vocals, but lovely cello bits by Sophie.
  • Ballad of Paul and Linda: Monday Afternoon, we started from scratch on Ballad of Paul and Linda, a track started in London.  Silly song about Paul’s love for Linda and how little we really understood what he had at the time.   Jimmy had mentioned Heather Mills in the original version, but the band talked him out of it – she’s now referred to as Number Two, which is a lot ruder than Jimmy intended.   Meant to be fast and frivolous – just fun to perform life.   Sophie steps in for some great backing vocals to try to rescue Jimmy’s rubbish lead.   We view the original about John and Yoko to be somewhat (well a lot) better:

• • Meanwhile, in Studio B, Andy was having the band put down a recorded version of King Henry’s Tears, including a better recording of good old Mike playing the Moroccan lamp and table.   This took the whole week to get all the parts down again.    King Henry’s Tears had been a standout moment of our Autumn 2010 Spanish Jam and one of our most loved songs (by us, although we probably don’t need to say this).  Classic drumming by Mike and harp playing by Martyn.  A wonderful new vocal by Andy, but he did get a bit frustrated when we repeatedly told him to not be ‘so good.’   Here’s the original video from the Autumn 2010 jam – we think we kept the magic…

• • These Strings: On Tuesday morning we brought Louise in to take the lead on These Strings, a broken love number that rocks between ballad and soft rock.  Will be a fun one to do live.  We returned to it throughout the week to get the band vibe right and finally finished it late Thursday just before Louise left for London. it shares 75% of the letters of These Streets, which seems like a good excuse for a video commercial break:

• • Jamming: We let the band jam a bit on Tuesday afternoon, playing with the new loop machine we bought.  We did three new songs, the last of which became the basics for Lunar Eclipse (see below).  The boys enjoy these sessions – each has this image of themselves in a big Arena rocking very hard.  Their eyes are generally closed when they play.  Jimmy’s eyes are also closed because these sessions last about 47 minutes… and all he gets to do is press the ‘on button’ and then wait a very long time.   Ed wins as best new comer on the loop machine.     None of the jams sounded like the Bob Marley classic, but that doesn’t mean we can’t listen to it:

• • Market Town:   We did this on Thursday, having focused Wednesday on preparing for a live gig (see below).  As Andy put it, this is the third song in our modern wars series, this time focused on Wooton Bassett and their extraordinary support for fallen soldiers.  Jimmy had seen a recent documentary and wanted to write something. Borrowed chords from a song he wrote in 1981.  First take on piano led all to fear that we were creating a musical, but then Louise found her character for the song – a war weary, angry but respectful observer of the Repatriations, who hated the loses but was determined folks ‘lined up.’   We fought all urges to add and add, and have kept the song a simple vocal/piano part. Great piano by Ed who had to sort out Jimmy’s rather unhelpful request to play only black keys while being discordant.  And Andy kept counting an 8-11 tempo, or at least that is what Jimmy heard.  For completists, our other two songs are Roadside Comedy and No Bells.   This is long, but it tells the story of Wooton Bassett and what the town has done for the families of fallen soldiers…

• And throughout the week, Andy was running studio B producing overdubs for Sarah Why, Footprints, One Way Home and others.    Ed put down some fantastic horns on Footprints.
• Lunar Eclipse: In addition to adding strings to No Strings (ironic?) and new vocals to Jimmy’s songs and Sarah Why, we did a song called Lunar Eclipse, about our Wednesday night gig where we were initially told to ‘shut down’ after 3 songs.  We were also interrupted by a Lunar Eclipse.   You can’t make this stuff up.  Well, actually you can, but in this case we didn’t.

Here’s some videos of the performances on the night:

• Pints over Shakespeare:  A final quick Saturday morning song, that sadly will never see the light of day.   But fun to try

The general feedback from five full days of recording – fewer new songs, but we worked hard to get the takes on any new songs really tight and really right.  And we also confirmed that Martyn is a lot better without his ridiculous ‘pedal.’  He rediscovered guitar this session because he wasn’t so distracted by his huge foot thing.

Everything Else:

To remind you of the setting.  We are recording in a little ‘suite’ off the main house, which is dark anyway, but gets darker as we close curtains and gradually one after another blow every fuse box, causing all lights to explode.  The room begins to smell of unwashed shirts, really stinky shoes, leftover coffee mugs, bugle crumbs.    The boys tend to stay in the whole time because it is filled with so many electronic toys.  Others are far more sensible and avoid just ‘hanging’, happy to work when required, but far too sensible to find much sense of a cave for a cave’s sake. The primary reason for this?  Well, the cave is located on a little plot of land, with a little pool, overlooking a little sea, in absolutely stunning sunshine!  So ‘Everything Else’ really matters on these trips…

• Footprints Video:   The team arrived Sunday.  Monday in the studio.  Then, a 5AM wake up call on Tuesday for Jimmy, Mike, Greg, Andy and Pratap.  The 5 AM was required to rush to Marbella, so we could film the sun rising on the beach soon after arrival.  Well, that was the plan.  Two small problems.  The sun rises over the hills to the East (not the sea facing at that point on the Coast due South West), which means the Marbella beach doesn’t actually see the sun until about 8:30 after it rises over the hills and then the buildings.  Do’oh.  But it gets worse. You see the sun stats raising at all about 6:45.  And we arrived at the beach at about 5:45.  That is a lot of time to wait on a beach in the pitch dark.  A lot of angry eyes were pointed at Jimmy and his planning.  He kept arguing that this way we could capture all sorts of amazing light and sounds of the hour before dawn.  They kept arguing, with fairly substantial evidence, that there wasn’t really any light or any sounds at that time in the morning… There were four of them.  There were one of Jimmy.  It was nasty.  Anyway, Greg is Greg and he captured beautiful images anyway.  And Mike is Mike which means he’s an incredible trooper and did all the things we ask him to do, including walk in the (very cold) water as though it was a great temperature and he was enjoying himself.   In addition to becoming the best musician in the band, Mike is also winning award after award for ‘best attitude under stupid pressure.’  He’s a marvel.
• 71 Hours to Monday Video: Greg is amazing with video and images.  While the rest of us walk by a moth or a sea gull poking about the rubbish, Greg turns the images into some kind of struggle for the soul.   We gave him the overwhelming job of putting together the final video for 71 Hours to Monday, which we are using for fund raising for the Singing Wells Project.  This was his task:  a) Sort out the making of the song, which involved musicians from Campo Limpo Brazil, London and Nairobi, b) tell the story of the March Pilot for Singing Wells, c) tell the story f the song itself.  All with video.  All in words.  All by end of week.  Greg won second prize after Mike for ‘Best Attitude under Stupid Pressure.’   In advance of Greg’s video, please click on video in this blog for Andy’s earlier work…
• The Gig and the Lunar Eclipse:  We agreed to ‘gig’ on Wednesday night at ‘The Club.’  The ask was to provide some music over dinner.  We agreed to do acoustic versions of our favourite tracks.  The song list started with Louise alone playing No Poetry, the standout song from our first album, followed by her latest song.  Andy and Rob would then sing breath from the up-coming King Henry’s tears.  Ed, Louise and Sophie would do Immovable Thing, followed by the full band going through TWIRL, 500 Letters, Chamberlain in Munich, and Let Love Shine.   That was the plan . Two things went slightly wrong.   After two stunning songs by Louise and one great song by Andy and Rob, the Spanish waiter asked us to shut down.  The table closest to the speakers couldn’t hear themselves think, much less talk.  Well, this was our quietest stuff so we were a bit surprised.  But, we retired to a great dinner and dinks at the club.  After some intense negotiation we were allowed back on later to finish our set.  And then the second thing happened.  And we kid you not.  Mid-way through our second set every one rushed to the edge of the balcony, ignoring us, to look at … a lunar eclipse.  No kdding.  Were were shut down by an eclipse.  You can’t make this up.  Well, you can, but here’s the photos!   We took advantage of the break to put together a ‘moon melody’ of a whole set of songs that we didn’t actually know, but could play 2-3 chords … Moondance, Moonshadow, etc….   We then got to finish and there’s one thing that is definitely true. We had a blast and Chamberlain to Munich is a rocker!  Our night was captured in our Thursday song, Lunar Eclipse.

• • The Loops and Jams:   We have a loop machine now.   You might remember we love loop machines, being fans for Natalie Ross who plays often at the Half Moon.. We don’t need one.  But we have one. And we played and played a lot.  Ed is the master and we did a nice little loop part for Lunar Eclipse.   Expact to see a whole album of ‘loop’ music.  But we’ll grow bored and find another toy.  But it is another reason to stay in the cave, away from the sun… Here’s Natalie…

• If I Were a Little Birdie:  We have to report, rather sadly, the potential disappearance of some baby bird. This is upsetting.  The background is important.  The third album is ‘If I were a little birdie’ which was about a song we wrote last summer, inspired by the little fact that a family of small birdies lived in an outside lamp over the outdoor fire place.   Very cute and we watched them grow.  Fast forward to this summer.   We were trying to turn the kithchen lights one moring and eat our breakfast. After about 10 minutes we started smelling something burning.  We looked outside only to see a different bird’s nest, in a different lamp on fire.  We had turned on the porch light, not the kitchen light.  And the nest was on fire.  We rushed to put ou the fire, first turning off the light.  And then we threw water on the lamp/nest.  There was, well, not to put too fine a point on it. There was an explosion.  Nest, burned wet twigs went everywhere.  We have decided there were NO birds harmed in the making of that explosion. But we can never really know.  So the new song will be titled, ‘If I were a little birdie, I’d have a 50% change of being immortalised in an Abubilla Video, and a 50% chance of being blown up by Abubilla”   We will work diligently going forward to changing the odds in favour of the birdies.  We managed to take a quick picture – but again assume no birds were hurt in the making of this picture..

• Cloudless Skies:  We mentioned the cave.  Let’s take a moment to talk about what was happening outside of that smelly pit.  There was not a cloud in the Spanish sky from Sunday to Saturday.  Not a cloud.  The weather was perfect ( a bit hot in afternoon) and the pool was cool. There was ping pong, corn bag throw (a classic!), novel reading, pool soaking, cock tail drinking and bugles.  There was no reason any sane person would enter the cave.  No reason at all.   Greg was the only one to master this pressure.  How do you look busy and committed to music making in the smelly cave, while devoting a significant amount of your time doing the sane thing – sunbathing.  In current Final Studio, there is a problem for video-makers called ‘rendering’.  You make changes to a video, and then you have to render.  Greg claims each rendering takes about 60 minutes and freezes his computer.  He can do nothing but wait.  So it was rationale and necessary that he was mostly found in the pool.  The rest of us had no ‘rendering’ fall back.  Jimmy used the excuse that the band needed space and time to ‘jam’ without the pressure of the record button. That bought him two hours in the Sun.  Sophie argued that a cello part can’t be overused.   A cello’s absence from key songs was critical to artistic perfection.  That bought her quite a bit of time in the pool.

• The Bugle Challenge:  By this time, you know Pratap and Jhoy.  More than sun, more than the pool, more than the sea, they are why we love Spain.   Amazing couple who constantly work, doing an amazing job for their clients and creating a great family for their son (who is a recent karate champion – but they can tell that story).  They run the villa.  We are merely passer buys.  But they can be very cheecky.  Their big moment on this trip was the Bugle challenge.  Bugles are fast food, salty snack food to be specific, that are very tasty and can be worn on each finger like witch’s nails – this encourages you to eat 10 at a time, doing quick witch impressions and then eating your nails.  Well, that’s what we did.  Pratap and Jhoy challenged us to eat 20 bags of Bugles in one day.  The first day, Tuesday we failed.  But they bought 20 more packs for Thursday.  And sadly, we prevailed.   That’s a lot of Bugles.  There are 60 bugles in a pack.  That is a total of 1,200 bugles.     That is a total of 120 ‘witch’s hands’ of bugles.  There are 8 of us.  So on average, each of us proudly filled out hands with witch’s nails… 15 times.  Given that we watched 3 episodes of In Betweeners a night, that meant that in any one episode we would EACH do a witches hand thing 5 times.   But that is what it takes to respond to the Pratap-Jhoy Abubilla Music Bugle challenge.

This was the challenge – eat all these packets of bugles in one evening…

• Rob’s Sweet Potatoes:   There’s not a lot to say here. Rob made Sweet Potatoes with 22 kilo’s of ginger that were really good. These little facts shouldn’t be lost to history.   Oh, and the views from our ‘gig’ were quite beautiful.

• So that’s it.  Back to the London Studio… and to day jobs…

Jimmy