"Lawns of a Better Place" ~ a Buck Theorem album

 Lawns of a Better Place

a Buck Theorem album

Non-electronic: inspired more by folk and acoustic as well as the usual alternative and ambient. And Field Recordings. Started a long, long time ago (decades) when I first started to try and record etc.

So some of these started as 4-Track recordings. These people I knew but I now hardly remember lent me a 4-Track and then they disappeared and left it with me. I made very good use of it, recording the duos I was in. (There was the time my cat slept on it, pressed buttons and recorded over everything…) Then we were all digital. I think I gave it to a friend…

And then there was COVID, where I found that a year and a half was quite enough of being in my natural state of a hermit, thank you. “Lockdown in a Drowned House” is obviously about that time. As it happened, my first outing after lockdown was a gig where I was performing but my equipment wasn’t working. I didn’t care. I was happily amongst friends again, for I am as much a social animal as a hermit, it would seem.

“Buzz of the Lawn” features a recording of one of my lockdown walks through the park. I remember that was a great, Sunny English Summer where we mostly stayed indoors whilst others went defiantly bonkers.

I dabbled in a little horror here with “Witch Tree” and “In A Stone Asylum”. A little street corner doo-wop, a little beach harmonica.

“Dead Names on Chapel Walls” was inspired by the time when I was clearing out a chapel as I was a cleaner in what used to be an old Victorian school building. In the entrance, there were plaques of students that had died there, one at Snowden, if I remember correctly. Another on the cricket field when the ball hit his chest and knocked out his weak heart. If you want a glimpse of the place, watch ‘Monty Mython’s Meaning of Life’; I found slips of lyrics still in stacks of Bibles (“Oh Lord, please don’t roast me…”).

During lockdown, my only In Person contact was with Pete at the comic shop. I would go there and we would talk through our masks amongst the comics for ages. Here’s to you, Pete.