Flying south…

Butterfly Polite’s blog has flown over to www.butterflypolite.com

This temoprary page is now, sadly, gone.  Kiss it goodbye and migrate south with us…

Recording.

Days one, two and three of recording.

Cor blimey, there are a lot of people in Butterflypolite.  Setting up to record is a job in itself.  This set of recordings are being made basically ‘live’ with some overdubs later.  This effectively means lots of microphones, lots of leads and lots of takes.

After two and a half days of recording we have now got something to show, and morale is high.  Day three has been spent recording ‘one of his weird’ songs.  (As six sevenths of ButterflyPolite previously described it).  After slogging away at it the mood towards the song has changed to one of love rather than distrust.  There is still niggling doubts about whether it’s single material.  Four other songs are in a nice healthy state, and awaiting b.v. overdubs.

Food matters:

Day one:  Pizza then Chinese.

Day two:  Indian.

Day three:  Bean salad and samosas.

Casualties:

One DVD player.  (day one)

Feast your eyes.

Some pictures of the 25th June gig have surfaced:

Sarah, up-close and in colour.

ButterflyPolite in sophisticated black and white.

Andy blathers.

Birthday Boy.

The Special 'K's.

Things I have learned:  Singing makes you colourful (remember Judy in Oz?).  I wear an acoustic guitar far too high to be ‘cool’.   Doug thinks he is Elton John (he is not).  It is impossible to smile and play violin simultaneously.  Jon and Dan are photo shy (by virtue of the fact they hide at the back of the stage).

All photos (c) Jayne Carter.

Grateful dead.

I heard a ButterflyPolite bootleg of our last gig yesterday.  Next gig I shall set aside a quiet area for the army of fans armed with cassette recorders.  I aim to be the Jerry Garcia of the Baroque Pop world.

I’ll see if I can find something from this unofficial live recording that I can post here.  Possibly my inane blathering on between the songs.

Andy

Quack! Get out of town.

Imagine if you will, a marginalized member of society.  Eschewed by others: shunned and ill-fitting.  Like the black-sheep*, ugly-ducking or square-peg of trite sayings.

Now imagine our hero’s joy when he one day finds a clandestine group of similarly minded individuals.  His spiritual brethren.  He is not alone!  There are others who share his lifestyle choices and rejection of society’s norms.  He has found a home.

Today I was world wide webslinging on the Amazon (Canada) website and reading about the 1970′s Quadraphonic releases of some albums I have spent the past year tracking down.  [Don't judge me].  Now, as I am sure you are aware, Amazon is scarily accurate in it’s “…you might also like…” and “Amazon recommends”.  To the point that you find yourself saying “Why!  Yes I would!” and then questioning how it knew, and checking if there are Amazonians outside your window with binoculars.

The album I was reading about occurred in a few different categories;  ”Pop Rock”, “AOR”, “Singer-Songwriters” and “General” it also appeared in a category I was not familiar with “Baroque Pop”.  That’s not a term found on Amazon UK!  Being the inquisitive fellow I am (and intrigued by the pun) I started to explored.  A few clicks later I found I had stepped into a room full of me.  Or mirrors.  Or similar black-sheep*.  I had found a genre that ButterflyPolite can fit in.  My family.  I was home!

I felt like crying with joy.  Say it loud – We are Baroque Pop and proud.

All I need is for the rest of the world to be familiar with the term, and I can answer the “What kind of music are you?” question.

* I actually saw a black sheep the other week, and it was not being ostracised by the other sheep (as far as I could tell).  I think the saying is fundamentally flawed.

p.s.  The quad mixes are, (now I have finally heard them) incredibly beautiful.  Although I might appear a bit odd raving about this, you are the loser for not already owning them.  That’s my justification and I am sticking to it.

Andy

Quite excited.

I am really quite excited about stuff at the moment:

• Recording Butterfly Polite (Made some definite plans yesterday)
• Watching Laser Discs (they are the future)
• Scripting Millicent’s adventure
• Retro Fusion (I may well wear one of my new badges)
• BP Website stuff (big plans are afoot)
• Getting Volume II with my reviews in it (and writing for Voulme III)

I have loads of energy to expend on exciting things, and am very excited about it all.  It is slightly annoying that my being happy makes for less entertaining posts than my ranting about stuff.  Fear not – I am sure something will get my dander up soon.

Andy

 

Decorated Lapels.

Collections are amazing things.  For 10 minutes or so this morning I looked though a person’s collection of badges that a foolhardy parent was selling at a car boot sale.  They were officially awesome.  And 5 pence each.

There is a moment in High Fidelity when the protagonist can’t bring himself to buy a collection of rare records from a women who is selling her ex’s collection. I felt like this today. There was too much love and time invested in these badges for them to be sold off for peanuts in a field on a Sunday morning.

Although I wanted them all, I allowed myself just 50p’s worth.

Here are some of them:

Hey, There’s egg on your teeth!

Surely, nationality should not be the only criterion.

Can you imagine the co-op in Lapland?

ButterflyPolite’s motto.

So, what collections have you started today?

Andy

Too sophisticated for the likes of you.

ButterflyPolite are a sophisticated bunch. You can tell because they like olives, and have balsamic vinegar with everything. When not playing Music, they play Croquet. And their ball gowns and dinner jackets are kept clean and pressed by their butlers and maids. Let’s not mince words: They take their tea at four. On the lawn if you please.

Here is Sarah singing “Ex-Lover” with a string quartet. This is a long way from the version found on the CD of http that was available to the hoi-poloi. Benevelent soul that she is (always organsing raffles and baking victoria sponges for local fetes in aid of worth causes), Sarah has decided you should be allowed to learn how the other half live.

Ex-Lover (string quartet version)

ButterflyPolite are available to hire for tea-dances, vineyard openings, and debutante balls.

Wedding Jazz

Sarah, Kerry and I went to a wedding yesterday of an old friend Damien. Although not mentioned during the ceremony, or vows, I am pretty sure most of the assembled people were remembering Damien’s trombone playing on Jazz Singer (one of the early songs recorded when ButterflyPolite were just finding their wings).

Listening to that song today, as I did, allows me to listen to it with the benefit of hindsight, and a critical ear only afforded through the passage of time. A few things spring tomind that are noteworthy:

The sampled drum loop (where was that from? I think Doug played it, then we sampled it).

The low solo guitar was bent clumsily out of tune, and Damien follows it – sounding a bit crap in the process. This is cancelled out by the anticipatory noise before the guitar solo which is officially fantasic.

There’s a squeaky noise (percussion), and I can’t remember what caused it – it is eaither utterly brilliant or annoying.

MIDI problems ahoy! This songs was fraught with problematic MIDI glitches. The MIDI interface was ditched immediately after this*, as it had decided to improvise wildly – holding notes, and playing them later. There is a synth string note near the end that doesn’t sounf, then hangs on necessitating a fade. Also there are very obvious timing anomylies in the percussion [Which is consistently too loud].

The ‘vibesy’ sound was single useful terrible-but-ace sound on the technics keyboard it came from.

Hear/get the song here, although not our proudest moment mix wise – has an interesting lyric; It explores the difficulty of being an actress moving from the silent film ear into the age of the talking pictures. Deconstructing the http album might be revisited at some point.

Anyway, Damien’s wedding had a Jazz Pianist playing organ for the ceremony. As well as “Toccata and Fugue” ending with The Simpsons theme, the The Hymn “Jerusalem” was decorated with the Rocky theme and the Indiana Jones theme – which kept everyone smiling. I also smiled at it being refered to as “Jerusalem. And did those feet in ancient time”. The Blake poem uses the first line as the title, the Hymn (Blake’s poem set to music) doesn’t. It is not just us that stuggles with naming songs then.

* I have a good story/rant about replacing the MIDI interface and companies dropping support for products. Some other time perhaps.

Andy

Testing the technology.

I shall be testing the technology here. And occassionally may break things.
If things are broken when you view it then feel free to email or comment about the problems and I’ll try to get it sorted as soon as possible.

In the meantime, I am testing a music host; rightclicking and Saving As should let you grab this little fellow:

ButterflyPolite – Laid In Grass [live]