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The Doggler Effect - Track By Track
Tee Haka: A fast song about incommensurability and what aliens
find frightening. Susie, Andrew and the band on backing vocals and Rob
on theremin.
Ambivalence: The riff from Ambivalence was written by a friend
of mine in 1995. It was only seven years later that I managed
to put it into a song. I also stole the idea of only having one feeling
from the Frogs track on the "What's Up Matador" compilation,
I think…
Tom Tom Tom*: About the Archangel Gabriel, who I met in Garden
Place once upon a time. Recorded through one microphone onto one track.
We could build some sort of manifesto around recording method, but no.
+ Plume Of Hell*: An 82 year old veteran of the war in the Pacific was
quoted in the newspaper while marching against the invasion of Iraq:
he went through "the plume of hell" in Papua New Guinea. The lyrics
don't do justice to the strength of that image, unfortunately.+ Mustang
Song*: You can hear my speaker cone or reverb or something farting out
around the middle of the song. Rob plays the wah solo. My vocals are
very wavery! The song is about a lot of things.
Too Stoned To Say Goodbye: A certain emotional paralysis brought
about by intoxication. The solo is by Rob.
I Am Fucked: About the cult of the $29.95 self-help book. I
like the chords in the chorus.
Ruapuke*: We went to Ruapuke on the 10th September '02. Driving
back along the cliffs, the sky and sea were luminous indigo and blue,
and the land was perfectly black. We also saw a dead seal in the creek,
but I didn't put that in the song, because it was gross. Andrew does
some hollerin' in the background.
Broken Down Blues*: Andrew caught us jamming - Rob is on guitar
and I play bass. +
I Don't Know What I'm Doing: Neil wrote the cool bassline first,
the part under the singing and in the bridge. Our practice room at the
time had a Metallica poster and a large scary guard dog. +
Spiders Come: A sped-up vocal and a modulation into A-flat.
Chris plays clarinet. 'Vivacious' is probably the wrong word to use
in the chorus, but I couldn't think of a rhyme at the time. Susie later
suggested 'Tenacious', which would have been perfect. + Sorry Ian: The
title is an apology to Ian Anderson for nicking an idea off him. The
lyrics are about angry young men. The solo is the first time I ever
used a wah pedal, and it shows! +
Marmalade: Chris came round while I was making marmalade. Neil
does some cool improvising on the bass towards the end. We never played
this live; punters would have taken us out the back and smashed us,
had we dared. + Exhibit B: Of course, the first three chords in the
verse are 'Summertime', but everyone thinks that I nicked them off the
Kinks for some reason. Chris had been in the band for a month when
we recorded this. It was the first song we got on the radio. (recorded
to hard drive)
Blue Hawai'iki*: This is just a song about going to the beach.
The band was just Neil and I at this stage. The drums are borrowed from
Dirk Thrust and played (to a click track - and badly!) by yours truly.
+ See It Through The Clouds*: Vague lyrics and an even more vague idea
for a band. + Songs arranged in reverse chronological order. * denotes
previously unreleased track. All songs recorded to 8-track except those
marked with +, which were recorded on a 4-track machine.
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