Hot City Tracks 3 and 4
Chris Glen and Ted McKenna run through another two tracks from Hot City which were redeveloped to appear on The Impossible Dream...
3. Hey You
Chris: Well, the big difference here is Alex is singing it, but I did it on Impossible Dream. You notice how he copies me by singing out of tune?
Ted: You've been waiting years to say that.
Chris: And finally I can say it! He copied me!
Ted: The track speaks for itself. It's art. Although it helps if you know the joke behind it.
Chris: A guy is stranded in the desert, desperate for a pish. But he's one of these people who can't go unless he's standing up pishing against something. There's nothing around him so he's not dehydrated even after three months --
Ted: Three months? Stretching it a bit.
Chris: Okay, three weeks...
Ted: Three days.
Chris: Okay, three days. So he sees a camel train coming, and goes up to the leader and says, "I'd like to buy twenty black camels and twenty white camels." The leader gets his notepad out and writes it down, "Twenty black camels, twenty white camels..." Then the guy says, "And I want the black camels to have white saddles and the white camels to have black saddles." The leader's writing this down, "Twenty black camels with white saddles, twenty white camels with black saddles -- Hey you! Are you pishing down my leg?"
So we decided to change the story to a guy leaving his girlfriend because she needs to stand up to pish against something, and that's where you get the lyric, "I knew we had to say goodbye when I felt that warmth against my thigh..."
Ted: The joke's good and the song's good, although anyone who does anything like that should be locked up.
Chris: As we were, as soon as we'd finished recording it.
Ted: Poetry.
4. Long Haired Music
Chris: What's this? Aaah... interesting start. Much slower and heavier. But it should have been played heavier.
Ted: It's too polite, isn't it? Drums sound too clean, not dirty enough. I like my drums sounding dirty... Sometimes I put soot on them. This is played like the way 10cc would do it.
Chris: This is more of a Led Zep riff when it's done live, but here it's more like Sweet. Although Alex is much more aggressive. Yet another good vocal performance. The fact you can pick out things like a tambourine in the mix shows you there's space for more aggression.
Ted: But it's very groovy. Good tempo.
Chris: We could play it like that live now and it would sound the dog's bollox. If only the band could sing backing vocals.
Ted: Speak for yourself... And now Hugh will play the solo exactly the same way on two different keyboards. It's the old-fashioned way of blending sounds, before you could assign two sounds to one key on a synthesiser. I've always thought it's one of the things that gave us our unique sound.
Chris: Nice to hear it's the same solo too! The song's not all that different, but there's a riff there that didn't make it into Impossible Dream.
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