Abubilla Music

Background to Immovable Thing

Written by The Saturday Morning Canasta Club

One of the band’s favourite songs, forever ruined…

Six things you need to know about this song.  Okay, you’re right.  You don’t NEED to know anything about this song.  I mean it’s not like you got up this morning and said, ‘Oh Goodness, before I shave I have a compelling, over-riding need to know the background of Immovable Thing.’   So, here are six things we feel compelled to tell you about this song.  Better? 

1.  The Basics:   Acoustic, simple song, introducing Sophie on Cello, Louise on vocals and Ed on guitar.  Recorded in one live take at Abubilla London studio (giggle) on Feb 13th 2010 – but with a long history of multiple takes, dating back to Misery Marmalade recorded during the Summer Spanish Jam, 2009.   Rushed out as demo to our loyal members as Valentine’s Day Gift.

2.  Jimmy’s Perspective:  In the table of song topics, I always wanted to write a good ‘loss’ song – the aftermath of someone horribly in love, faced with break-up or death.  Then a good friend in US faced such a thing and a theme quickly emerged.  The fantastic paradox that the only words of re-assurance that any can give, is the one thing that of course is NOT going to happen for that individual.  All words are ‘time will heal.’  But, of course, the person doesn’t control time.  They are in the moment.  And essentially, the hidden meaning of ‘time and distaince will mend’ is the ‘you’re on your own, now, pal.’   Originally, the song was named ‘Time and Distance.’   I also wanted to hint at the loss of perspective too.  So first verse, a little too cleverly, has the singer reference where they were supposed to meet, saying it’s close to the flowers and chalklines, impying close to where some murder must of happened but not even noticing that.   [Later, Louise pointed out that this wasn’t what I meant and the chalklines were about THEIR loss and I was, of course, stupid.  Welcome to my world].  Lyrically, I did the numbers thing, with the Hair song, Three Five Zero Zero going thru my head.  Finally, I knew this song needed to be attached to Misery Marmalade, our sad little Jam from Summer 09 Spanish Jam.    So, everyone arrived Thursday for the Winter Spanish Jam and Andy and I did Big Old Bird at 2AM Friday Morning.   Ed played with more chords on Friday afternoon and I knew the Band needed lyrics fast.  On Saturday morning I got up at 8AM, having not written Misery Marmalade lyrics.   I cranked this out in 8 minutes so I could get something to Ed/Louise.  It all just came out very easily and fast, which given point six is one of the great ironies of this song.    

3. Ed’s Perspective:    This was one of those tunes written by completely miss-hearing  or misinterpreting something that has already been written. Jimmy thinks it’s an extension of Misery Marmalade, our 9 minute Portishead jam from the Spain Summer jam 2009, but the simple truth is that I only know so many chords and can only put them in so many orders, and occasionally (or maybe frequently…) I write things that sound the same as each other!  So, the genesis of this tune was Big Old Bird. That was written in the wee small hours of Friday morning by Jimmy and Andy, with Andy recording it onto his phone to defend against sleep and alcohol induced forgetfulness. Upon playing the recording to us the next morning, I instantly knew it was a hit, picked up a guitar and started trying to play it. I started well, getting the first chord right, but that was about it – it was in the wrong time signature (6/8 vs. 4/4 – the lilting 6/8 is what gives it a similarity to Misery Marmalade) and all the following chords were different. But hey, sometimes that the way things are written – by accident rather than design. And sometimes they turn out well, like this one has.   The tune was all Lou – ask her to explain how she manages to write such good tunes, cos I just don’t know!   The seed for the cello line was a theme Jimmy came up with. I was recording trumpet parts on a massive, fuzzed up version of Immovable Thing (my fault – I was taking us down the Coldplay route – which sounded awesome, maybe we can bootleg it sometime – but this acoustic version is far more affecting) and he sang a little line to me, which I put in. Then, when we came to do a stripped down version, I put that motif into the cello part, along with some basic base lines and pretty moving scales/ suspend and resolve dissonances. Wrote it on a bus journey into work one morning (in my trusty pocket MoleSkine manuscript book – never leave home without it).

4.  Lou’s Perspective:    ‘Everyone else has their instruments in the studio in Spain, and I have a microphone. I actually prefer the rough microphone we use (instead of the swanky, static one with that reflector shield thing), because it hides the crappy bits in my vocal line. So, we started with the chords to An Immovable Thing, and then Jimmy went away and wrote some lyrics, and they have a wonderful 6/8 rhythm, and I think Andy had sung a vague tune to one of the lines, just to describe something to Ed in terms of chords, and that stuck in my head. While they were jamming the chords, in fact, I started to write my own 6/8 lyrics (we’ll be waiting about a year for anything to appear from that so don’t hold your breath). I do find it pretty easy to sing a tune when the chords are slow and the lyrics are, well, lyrical. The tricky thing was the jump into the chorus, because the notes of the vocal line stay the same but something shifts in the guitar which makes you think you’re singing the wrong thing. Ed and I tried to work out different ways of doing the chorus tune – it was originally quite blues-y – but with the cut down version, this became a bit redundant (thank god).  I fought for Sophie to join us. It was touch and go as to whether she’d make it at all – I felt terrible harrassing her, because I hardly see her enough as a friend as it is. And thank god. As you will hear, the original version threatened to be a trumpet and band extravaganza…’

6. The inside joke that will ruin the song for you, forever.   Do not read further if you like the song.  Seriously, do not read further.   Okay, you’ve been warned.  Someone thru one of our endless takes last weekend, 6 February, someone pointed out that Immovable Thing would be a great song for a constipation advert.  That was it.  We lost the will to live.    Ironic, of course, for all of us, that the song that came out the fastest, the easiest for each of us, well, you know… Yea, Yech.

The Saturday Morning Canasta Club