In August 2003, Miles was booked to
appear at the Beautiful Day Festival in
Devon. After a string of problems
with the running order and timing of the
on-stage acts, Miles was only given a 30
minute window in which to perform in.
By way of apology to the fans who had
made the journey to the festival site,
Miles made three demo tracks available
on the Miles Hunt Club website for
people to download.
"These three songs were recorded in
London during January & February of
2001, with Pat Collier at the helm. I
had invited Michael Ferentino over to
the UK to write & record with me. At the
time I was playing with Tony Arthy & Dom
Murphy, we had all actually played with
Michael in New Jersey & New York in
October of the previous year. We had
already reworked the acoustic versions
of "Everything Is Not Okay", "Amongst
The Old Reliables" & "Not In My Plans"
for the shows in the States, but while
we were rehearsing them for the studio
we also came up with these three toons.
Two of them, "Playing The Twist" & "Not
Waiting", will be entirely new to you,
as I've neither played them live or
released them in any form before this.
The third song, or songs, is/are
"Flapping On The Pier (Pts. 1 & 2)". The
latter part of the song will doubtless
be familiar to any of you that got
yerselves a copy of The Miles Hunt Club
CD, as it is, in essence, the blue print
for "Flapping On The Pier (Pt. 2)" which
appears as the final song on that album.
So now, for those of you that were
curious, you get to hear what "(Pt.1)"
sounded like. I can't say why I never
got around to finishing ("Pt.1"), partly
because I hate going back on songs &
partly because I really can't think of
what else to do with it. The reworking
of ("Pt.2)" that appears on THMC was in
no small part due to a shit load of work
that Michael Ferentino had done. Thanks
Brother.
The full line up on these recordings
was; Myself (vocals, electric & acoustic
guitars, percussion), Michael Ferentino
(electric guitars & vocals), Dom Murphy
(bass guitar), Tony Arthy (drums),
Martin Bell (keyboards & strings), Pete
Whitaker (piano) & Nick Muir
(accordion). And towards the end of
"Playing The Twist" a rabble rousing
chorus is sung by Russ & Deb Hunt, Tony
& Jane Arthy, myself & Dom Murphy. Maybe
some other drunken pals appear too, but
it was so long ago....
The purpose of these recordings was to
see how my new stuff was coming along &
how the older songs, previously only
heard as acoustic performances, would
transpose to the band. Eagle Records
footed the bill for the session & as a
result signed me for The Miles Hunt Club
album. Sadly the budget never ran to
taking Tony & Dom to the States with me
to record the album, so we pulled in
Andres Karu, a resident of New Jersey &
producer of the album, to take over the
drumming duties, while the bass guitar
parts for the album were covered by
Michael, Andres and, on occasion, even
myself.
"There's certainly an energy that
existed in the sessions that produced
these recordings that we never got
around to repeating again. And I think
all that remains to be said is a Great
Big Thank You to everyone involved. I
hope you enjoy them too."
