GHOSTS IN THE ATTIC

The great Delta bluesman Robert Johnson recorded only four sessions in his life - in a hotel room in San Antonio in 1936 and in a disused storage room in a Dallas office block in 1937. He produced just 29 songs but undoubtedly changed popular music forever. In contrast, this album was recorded over endless days and months in my spare room in Sherborne. I’ve now finished 32 original songs but, sadly, so far all I’ve managed to change are a few sets of guitar strings! There are no blues tunes on this album (my third, after 2021’s “Losing Track Of Time” and “It’s Later Than You Think” from 2023) but there is a fair bit of doom and gloom, with a number of songs reflecting anxieties about the perilous state of the world at the moment. The album opens with a couple of songs that were co-written with my great friend Neil Morton, who provided the lyrics to both. When Did The Dark Invade Your Heart is, in Neil’s words, about “a certain world leader, not mentioned by name, but the obvious peg. The lyric is about tyranny and tyrants in general, and the misery their obsession with power and twisted ideology inflict on the innocent and peace-loving.” Fun start, eh? The year 2024 was the year of the election and Middle Way was written by Neil specifically for me to reflect my oft-expressed-over-a-few-beers view that we need a new centre party. The third track, Wasting My Time, is a reworking of an old song (from the late 1970s) that I found in a bag in the loft during lockdown. The rediscovery of this and a number of other songs, co-written with another old friend, Peter Monteith, was the spur for me to start recording all this old stuff and now, a few years later, I have finally managed to record all of them (well, most of them!). B B Bye Bye is another angst-filled song, written by me and Pete in my flat above a chippie in Leeds in 1978. We were not getting anywhere with our band, the Boiler Brothers (B B), and had decided to look for work down south and to try to find a new band, which we did eventually manage, moving to Marlow in 1979 and then joining Legal Tender. In September 1981 my future wife, Jenny, and I went to work in New Orleans as the first stage of a planned round-the-world trip, an adventure cut short by the Falklands War, which broke out just as we were planning on heading down to South America. Back Home is a song I wrote in our apartment at 3222 Prytania Street in the city’s famed Garden District when I was feeling homesick and Down So Low was written in the same vein (and room) - bemoaning the fact that I was feeling the blues when, really, everything in my life was actually brilliant. Many Happy Returns is an even older song (from about 1972) and probably the first I ever wrote. Starting life at 14 Grosvenor Avenue in East Sheen in London - home of Alan Rogerson, drummer in my schoolboy band Matilda - it was purely a short instrumental ditty until one day in Leeds in 1979 Pete and I were writing and, while struggling for ideas, I played it and Pete decided we should write some lyrics for it. It’s another love song about fragile and broken relationships. Carry On Playing is a rare song of ours, in that it has actually been performed live - by Legal Tender in 1981. At the time Pete and I thought we were musical purists and detested heavy metal and this song was intended as a send-up of the genre. Ghost In The Attic, this album’s title- track (another gloomy one), is our attempt at a horror song - we were both huge fans of Stephen King at the time. I decided to call the album this after Neil talked about the “ghosts” I had found in my attic. My response? “You’ll never guess the title of one of the songs I’m going to be doing next”. Keeping the gloomy subject matter going, the next track Somebody Up There Doesn’t Like Us is a song about how the human race has messed up the planet and how imaginary interplanetary policemen (little green men!) might deal with us. Written in Leeds back in about 1978 it was perhaps well ahead of its time, foretelling the eco-concerns of today’s troubled world. The idea for the title came from the excellent 1956 movie “Somebody Up There Likes Me”, starring Paul Newman. The final track, I’m Singing One Of Our Songs, was another written in New Orleans, when I was missing my songwriting sessions with Pete. I tried to name-check some of the tunes we had written, all of which are now immortalised on my albums - none of which would have existed without my musical partnership with Pete. The songs on this album were, like the others, produced using Apple’s Logic Pro app. The vocals are all me and I play all the guitars (except for the solo on “Ghost in the Attic”, which was experimentally adapted from a Logic loop) as well as some of the bass guitar parts. All other instruments were created in Logic Pro. I really wanted Pete to appear in some form on this album so I have taken his vocal from very rough cassette tapes we made in Marlow in 1980 and woven them in to two songs “Wasting My Time” and “Ghost In The Attic”. Finally, if there is anybody out there actually listening, I hope you enjoy. Ian Tasker, Sherborne, July 2024 All songs by Ian Tasker & Peter Monteith Except When Did The Dark Invade Your Heart and 
Middle Way by Ian Tasker & Neil Morton Back Home, Down So Low and 
I’m Singing One Of Our Songs by Ian Tasker