Category: Songs

Ten Percent Blues [2020 demo]

Recorded in the 80s using slide guitar: this version, though, has no slide. Dropped D tuning.

Backup copy

 

Slide version (studio recorded in the 1980s):

backup

 

YouTube video version played in dropped D, no slide. From 2020.

Audio capture:

backup:

Got a seat facing the engine
So I don’t have to face where I’ve been
Luggage on the rack, no reason to look back
At all my wrecked and reckless gypsy dreams
No more bright lights, no more white lines
Or crashing in the back of the van
No more hustling small-time gigs
I guess time has beaten the band

No more deadlines, no more breadlines
Mr 10%, you’re on your own
No more fine print, no more backstage  blues
This rolling stone is rolling home

Got a ticket to take me to tomorrow
It can’t be worse than today
So driver, take me home and don’t spare the horsepower
I’m on a ten year holiday
No more missed chances and chickens*t advances
Cold chips in the back of the van
No more blown tires and fuses, no more broken promises
Time has beaten the band

No more deadlines, no more breadlines
Mr 10%, you’re on your own
No more fine print, no more backstage  blues
This rolling stone is rolling home

No more spotlights, no more ups and downers
Absolutely no stage fright
No more superstar fantasies
From today I’m strictly 9-5
No more infighting, no more moonlighting
No more one-night stands
All along while the band was beating time
I guess time was beating the band

No more deadlines, no more breadlines
Mr 10%, you’re on your own
No more fine print, no more backstage  blues
This rolling stone is rolling home

 

Best Days [demo]

I tend to regard my songs as fiction, albeit sometimes taking their starting point from my own experience or that of people around me. This one, though, actually sounds closer than is comfortable to how I often felt in my mid-20s: not the best time of my life…

Backup copy:

The best days (Harley)

Sometimes I miss those other places where my lifestyle has been forged
I might even miss this town when I’ve moved on
Though I’m just turned 24, right now I’m feeling so much more
When I get this weary feeling that the best days are gone
The best days are gone

Other times I felt so low and wanted what was lost
Are hidden in a mist of golden days
But mostly I was happy, though I didn’t know it then
Such strange tricks that hindsight plays
Tricks that hindsight plays

Nothing’s as it seems to be, there’s no one I can trust
I want to wake and find myself a million years away
And more than once or twice when just living wore me down
I’ve wished I had the nerve to split and drift with the highway
And drift with the highway

There are names that I remember, many more that I forget
All the girls I never had, too many that I lost
One or two could make me cry at midnight all alone
But when you go I think I’ll miss you most
And now you’re gone, Lord knows I miss you most

David Harley

Accelerated Lady [demo]

This is a song I haven’t really thought about since the 70s, but it turned up when I started to (try to) rationalize my boxes and folders of lyrics, verse and prose, so I put it straight down as-is.

Backup:

Between the bar and the dance floor / Thinking that maybe
I might just catch up / To my accelerated lady

Why don’t you keep on dancing? / Dance on by

Watching you at a party / Too drunk to see
What it might take / To make you come and talk to me

But you’d better keep on dancing / Dance on by

What makes you think / I should apologise
For once drowning / In those bedroom eyes

Why don’t you keep on dancing? / Dance on by

Lights run hot / But the bottle’s not yet dry

With a little luck and whisky I’ll forget / even your name by midnight

Better keep on dancing / Dance on By

 

David Harley