On a road near my house there lived an old man who was a bit mad. The only noticeable symptom of his madness was that he’d cheerfully say good morning to you as you passed by. Maybe it’s sad that we live in a society where that could be a sign of madness… Maybe it was justifiably odd that he’d say it at 11pm.

So I wrote a song about him. And then I put ‘Good Morning’ as the tagline on my Nike iDs, but that’s a different story. Well, actually it’s quite relevant: I must have liked this song a lot. So let’s start with the good points:

1. The chorus could be anthemic. As evidence, try singing Coldplay’s ‘God Put A Smile Upon Your Face’ over the top. It works. The chords are basically the same. I didn’t copy this one deliberately. I remember saying proudly to a friend when we realised they were similar: ‘my one has one more chord in the progression though’.
2. The lyrics are not bad, and more importantly, in terms of my early standards, they have a consistent theme.
3. It used to go down well at my band’s gigs. There’s a terrible video of us playing it in a bar when only one friend had come (the person filming), and every other audience member was sitting at tables trying to have a quiet one. My voice sounds mangled and shaky (it often was when we played live, on account of me moving my arms quite quickly at the drums). I realise that story doesn’t suggest it went down well, but I think it did, generally.
4. The second version is the first recorded song which includes the fourth member of the band – the keyboardist. One day during band practice my doorbell rang, and I answered to find this friend (he lived very close) shifting nervously between feet. DRAMATIC REENACTMENT — ‘Oh, hi.’ ‘Oh, hi’. ‘I’ve got band practice on at the moment.’ ‘Yeah um, so I was just wondering if I could be in the band as well..’ ‘Oh, right. Um, yeah, on keys?’ ‘Yeah’. ‘Oh. Umm, I guess yeah, I’ll have to ask the others but that would be fine yeah I guess.’ ‘Yeah, alright.’ — DRAMATIC REENACTMENT OVER.

Re: point 4 – this friend would prove to be my most enduring musical companion, out of the 3 in the band. Our alliance started a bit inauspiciously- he was a singer, a good songwriter, competent at jazz piano, confident on the violin, rhythm was not his strong point. I wanted him to basically stab out a few chords in a couple of below average indie-pop songs (in time).

The first version of Good Morning I’m Not Mad was recorded on my own though, maybe a year before the band version. It is worse. There are a couple of terrible rhythmic mistakes (I especially like the one in the 2nd chorus where I hit the crash cymbal immediately afterwards as a blatant attempt at covering up the mistake). The singing is, I would say, more out of tune than in the 2nd version, although it’s a close contest. The jazzy bit at the end is cooler in version 2, mainly because of the nice bass and piano not played by me. Oh and also the first version has a completely wrong chord strummed once near the beginning of the outro. Couldn’t I have spent 2 minutes fixing it? Yes. I could have.

However, there is a vibe that I like to the original. It’s more exposed and wiry. It has a bit of grunge to it. The band song sounds like you’re hearing it through a thick cloud. The instruments blend into each other. There’s no definition. I never spent much time mixing tracks in those days, the instruments came out pretty much as recorded. And I never spent much time recording them either…

Until next time, good morning.