The Surrender of Barcelona (Sparklemusik Version)

from Sparklemusik by Cloudland Blue Quartet

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about

20/12/20

heading into the attic to work on additional guitar, synth, bass and keys for the new track I was creating around drummer Johnny's "jazzy" drums...

Bloody freezing up there...

Back down, a quick mix and lyrics written and quickly sung...

And so I had this to soundtrack the trip to my mum's

In the evening, refining the lyric and re-recording the vocals - by the end of the day a new thing – the original sleeve featured the actual artwork after which the track is named...

7/4/21

Some slight lyric re-writes re "Crack a Smile" and "The Surrender of Barcelona" (my collaboration with drummer Johnny Weitzen from Capital Models from the end of last year) and remixing etc etc...

This evening, I sent MP3s of the proposed LP to the collaborators - niece Kitty, re her co-write in 2012 (aged 8) of "Break the Ice Around Us", the aforementioned Johnny and Stu and to Edward Spark re using the beatless version of my remix of his instrumental track "Emperor", for which I wrote and recorded lyrics last month...

No response from Stu or JW but Kitty Whatsapp'd me back showing her listening to her track...

That was nice!

lyrics

He was working on a painting when the first World War broke out
In the painting was a novel, “The Revenge for Love“
But the book was not connected, to the artwork that he made
A scene from the 1500s and this is what you see

Not “The Surrender of Barcelona”, but “The Surrender of Breda”
Not “The Surrender of Barcelona”, but “The Surrender of Breda”

He was born in Nova Scotia, upon his father's yacht
His father was a rich American, and his mother came from England
They split in eighteen ninety three and his mother returned to England
She took him back home with her and there he studied art

He travelled throughout Europe before settling down in Paris
In '08 he returned to London, and there he wrote and painted
He founded the Vorticist movement; edited their Blast magazine
The World War broke the movement, and took him to the front

Calling down the batteries, and their fiery mass destruction
War artist for the Brits, war artist for the Canucks
From this “A Battery Shelled”, and from this too came “Guns”
And he wrote many novels and essays, until nineteen fifty seven

Fell out with the Bloomsbury Set, and turned then to the Cube
At “The Cave of the Golden Calf”, the Avant Garde and night club
And that was back in Heddon Street, before the rise of Ziggy Stardust
Then he moved into Abstraction, while influenced by Nietzsche

Fell out with the Omega Workshops, on work for the Ideal Home
Became the “Enemy of the Stars”, a precursor to Beckett
He was at “The Penguin Club”, in nineteen seventeen
His first book “Tarr” was published, in nineteen eighteen

“Blasting, Bombardiering”, took him up to twenty six.
And then “Tyros and Writing” took him up to twenty nine
His career was as an artist, satirising the new Epoch
Plastic art in our time, that became a theme

In the thirties he was writing, separated from the Garde
Was loathe to be a vehicle, for pernicious idealogues
“The Art of Being Ruled”; and “Time and Western Man”
Critiquing Pound and Joyce and moving into fiction

He coined “The Apes of God”; He attacked the Sitwells
“The Revenge for Love”; and the Spanish Civil War
“The Surrender of Barcelona”, thirty four to thirty seven
“The Surrender of Barcelona”, thirty four to thirty seven

credits

from Sparklemusik, released May 7, 2021
David Reilly - Vocals, Guitars, Bass, Keyboards, Synthesiser
John Weitzen - Drums

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Cloudland Blue Quartet Edinburgh, UK

A quartet in name only, initially influenced by Fripp & Eno's "No Pussyfooting" and The Velvet Underground's debut, songwriter & soundscaper David Reilly started musicking in 1977 by creating drones using sellotape on the keys of his dad's Bontempi Organ. The subsequent junk shop purchases of an electric guitar & fuzzbox and the acquisition of an old Beatles songbook, led him into songwriting... ... more

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