The Secret Album was recorded in conditions of discretion which have remained to this day. Some would call it absolute secrecy, but anyway it’s time Jim and I put and end to all that cloak and dagger stuff.
However, we are still not sure if the studio was ever paid for, so we don’t want to draw too much attention, you understand.
After all, we’ve survived obscurity for this long, it isn’t so terrible. Hence our marketing strategy has consisted of furtively passing CDs to people inside plain brown paper bags. In case of trouble and in order to spread the blame, Jim and I would like to point out that Richard Tandy was the producer and that we were immensely egged on by guitarist and vocalist Bob Daffurn (born with magic fingers and a left-handed guitar). Steve Wheate was also heavily complicit in the proceedings, both with encouragements and the wonderful throb from his drumkit.
Dave
These album notes above were written in 2010. Sadly I have to report that Jim died on 10 April 2012, after a short illness.
The ‘Morgan’ Album was produced by Lou Reizner in London in 1970 and then released in America, where I sat with The Bird (aka Warren Samet) in our apartment in Miami while he wrote these liner notes for it:
Dave Morgan is among the new wave of lyrical, acoustical folk-rock performers who have taken the recording industry by storm. Forceful, earthy, and yet gentle he is an artist who fell into the musical pudding rather by accident at the ripe age of twenty-two. Now twenty-eight, he is a veteran of several rock groups in England, still having manage to find the time to write two hit songs, ‘Mary Collinto’ and ‘Something’ plus all the songs on a soon-to–be-released LP by a new group, Wishful Thinking.
Dave has a deceptively rangy voice and the ability to call upon a throaty, gravel-like quality which can change in a moment to a sound that is soft and sensitive. Virtually self-taught, he assembles things which he has heard with things that he feels, and comes up with a sound that is distinctly Dave Morgan.
The Bird
It’s the end of May and I took some time off from producing the new SEVEN album to work on this track for a planned re-issue of the ‘Bubbles catalogue in the near future. It now starts and ends with somebody breathing, which you will either love or hate, but I think it fits great. It’s not there to make a deep statement or be morbid or anything, it’s just something to epitomise the story line:
Lord Rockford, posthumously spitting in the eye of blood suckers sat in a paneled office, listening carefully and waiting to hear their name attached to lots of green sheets of paper…
The solicitor holds up a solitary sheet of A4, half hiding behind it, concealing a watered down smile from avid onlookers, as he speaks the Lords’ mind loud and sure, enunciating every syllable with relish, and remembering the words before they were translated into legaleese: And being as he is, very much of perfectly sound mind, he is going to leave the whole flippin’ shebang to Caroline.
A gasp.
‘Who?’ – ‘Who is Caroline?’
That girl Rocky had puffing his pillow and preening his dahlias and fetching and carrying and all. And who knows what else she was taking care of, ay? I said so at the time. I didn’t like the look of her. That canny smile and that walk she had with her frock dancing in the wind. I did say but nobody listened to me…
Things could be better, Things could be much worse
I could get what I want I could get what I deserve
Well I could be a superstar –
This could be my number one
Or I could be selling matchsticks to a second city son
when THE WHEEL turns around
There’s faces at my window, voices at my door
I give them what they want
but they keep coming for more
It’s all so obvious, so plain to anyone
they don’t want meet my daddy
they just want to have some fun /meet his son
when THE WHEEL turns around
I stood before the people so perfectly alone
Just me and my guitar And this megaphone
I spoke to them with passion, with not a shred of doubt
Oh but the wind was from the North then
now it’s from the south
and THE WHEEL turns around
Well I turn on the tele, to catch up with the news
I could understand it if I wasn’t so confused.
But it doesn’t really matter, if what they say is right
Well I’ll be on the balcony
and you’ll be on your bike
when THE WHEEL turns around
Well it’s 2019 and we’ve all been living on easy far too long. ‘ON A PLANE’ is MOrganisation’s single from the album ‘Bubbles’, but just now in 2019, with Brexit at the top of the everybody’s playlist, I heard this song again with a message for our predicament. So a verse now says ‘I’ve been searching in Red White and Blue’ (give the old one a spin to see what the colours originally were). The flag of the United Kingdom is indeed Red and White and Blue so take it from there. ‘And the ravens sent to feed me..’ Some might recognise the imagery borrowed from the biblical story of Elijah, who was prodded to leave his place of comfort. And yes, this is a story about leaving a situation that is familiar, predictable and safe, and heading off across an unknown horizon. It’s Airport escapism from an escapee, a scared stiff one. Okay, I’ll stop waffling now. Let’s face it – it’s only a pop song! – one propelled along by the nimble fingers of guitarists Tony Kelsey and Alex Lowe. Check it out.
Yes I know it’s an old chestnut but cut me some slack. Come back in a bit …
Thanx!
I’ve become a record company and a publisher too and I’m also the guy who licks the stamps and makes the tea. Phew! – As well as all that I’m down in the boiler room doing my proper job – writing, recording, playing gigs and loving every minute of it! I record all my songs at my home studio, affectionately known as ‘Grimm Doo’ (legend has it that the mixing desk used to growl at people. But that was years ago. Now I use Protools software. The desk has gone but the name ‘Grimm Doo’ remains). When I’m not doing music, I teach people to fly aeroplanes down at Wellesbourne airfield near Stratford-on-Avon. The bottom line is I am a writer – of songs mostly but also books and sermons too.