It's Later Than You Think

This is my “difficult” second album - following on from 2021’s “Losing Track Of Time” and, once again, the bulk of it is songs written with my great friend and former bandmate, Peter Monteith, back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. None of them have ever seen the light of day until now. My inspiration to start recording them came during the Covid lockdown after discovering in the loft an old Waitrose carrier bag full of lyrics and chords that Pete and I had written soon after we first met, in Leeds in 1977. In those days we played in a band called The Boiler Brothers and our musical partnership continued when we both moved south to become journalists in Marlow - where we joined another band, Legal Tender. Years later I played in the LayzeeBoys (although our last gig happened way back in 2000). Pete, who is a brilliant drummer, went on to join Trampoline and is still playing today in the Norfolk band Hunter. This album also includes cover versions of three of my all-time favourite tracks - more of which later. The first song on the album is called Take What You Can Get and, like many of our songs at the time, deals with our twentysomething relationship problems - real or imagined (maybe even both).. Bluegrass, I suspect, must have been written after we had seen “Gone With The Wind” or some such Southern pot-boiler. I’m pretty sure it’s not really bluegrass at all but, hopefully, adding fiddles and banjo (all digitally created in Logic Pro on my iMac) might give it some kind of spurious authenticity. USA to Go was written with the help of the Rand McNally atlas of the United States that I had carried round in the summer of 1977 when, after first working as an ice cream salesman and later an office clerk in New Orleans, I Greyhound-bussed my way around the country. We wrote it in my flat in Leeds, above Eddie’s fish n’chip shop. I recall hitting various chords on my guitar with Pete writing lyrics, helped (I think) by me shouting out various towns and highway names from the atlas. We were very proud of Desert Island when we finished it. Starting off seemingly about a boy-girl-in-paradise ditty, with clever (we thought) lyrics such as “we’ll wear seaweed suits with a Savile Row cut”, we then turned it on its head with the introduction of a gay element and the subsequent double meaning of the word “queen”. I know, I know - but, hey, we were very young. Reading the lyrics now I am not so proud of the phrase “You and I” when it should have been “You and Me”. I’m frankly amazed that we both went on to become journalists. Glove Shack (reprise) is an early - but different - version of the instrumental that originally appeared on my first album. Stay Tonight is a song about yearning and trying to come to terms with a complicated relationship that might or might not happen. Disco Dummy is a jokey number about a hapless dancer who is better off in a bistro. In order to make it acceptable to modern tastes I have had to change the point of view of the song (No further explanation I’m afraid!) Pantechnicon Song is about the frustration of not getting anywhere when living up north and deciding to look for a better life back home in the south. The word “pantechnicon” does not feature in the lyric but we loved the word and, of course, when you move you definitely need one. The Girl From Tobermory is a humorous new song, written in 2021 after a holiday with my wife, Jenny, to the beautiful Isle of Mull. We kept noticing that a lot of place names ended with “-ish”, so we started wondering - over glasses of the island’s delicious Ledaig single malt whisky, if somebody named Trish Nish from Fishnish perhaps worked serving fish in the Mishdish restaurant at the Mishnish hotel. After recording it I sent a copy to the hotel hoping that it might at least amuse them a bit. Sadly, I am still waiting for a response . . . The year 2023 was a traumatic one. The music world lost some all-time greats such as David Crosby, Tina Turner and Jeff Beck but, for me personally, the biggest blow was the loss of one of my oldest and dearest friends John Gardyne. John, who I’d know since we met as 11-year-olds at the First Richmond scout troop, was a supremely talented actor, director, writer and producer as well as an inspirational teacher. He was also our keyboard player in the LayzeeBoys and will be remembered fondly for many things - one of which was his exortation that we could allow ourselves to have one pint of beer “with impunity” before gigs. Any more and we would have been all over the place. The year also saw the 50th anniversary of my first gig - with schoolboy band Matilda - in East Sheen. These three cover versions are included to mark these events. Triad is a superb David Crosby song that I have played by myself a thousand times over the years and is an all-time favourite. As is Traffic’s Dear Mr Fantasy, which recorded, using vocals by Matilda bandmate Roger Cooper that I extracted from a recording we made back in 1974. Like A Rolling Stone uses vocals by John, me and Roger, similarly taken, this time from a terrible 2000 recording of the LayzeeBoys’ final gig. It’s my tribute toJohn, a wonderful, larger-than life character, who we loved and all miss terribly. The final track on the album was inspired (if that is the right word) by the realisation that, whereas in the past we all expected the world’s march of progress to keep progressing, recent events - wars, pandemics, climate change, divisive politics, toxic social media et al - have suggested that this is perhaps no longer the case and, maybe, that from now on everything is going to get worse. An uplifting thought to finish on! Anyway, I hope you enjoy this album and rest assured there are still even more Tasker-Monteith “classics” waiting to be rediscovered. Watch this space. . . Ian Tasker, Sherborne, July 2023 Dedicated to the memory of JOHN GARDYNE 1957-2023 “With impunity” All songs written by Peter Montieth & Ian Tasker Except Glove Shack (reprise) and Later Than You Think by Ian Tasker The Girl from Tobermory by Jenny Tasker & Ian Tasker Cover versions: Triad by David Crosby (1968) Like A Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan (1965) Dear Mr Fantasy bySteve Winwood, Chris Wood & Jim Capaldi(1967)