Song 22: All You Good Good People

All You Good Good People

This is a story about a real song and an imagined song. They're both called 'All You Good Good People', they're both by Embrace. One is better than the other, though I'm not entirely sure which.

When I was in Kenya on my gap year (for 7 months), my marvellous mother sent me, every week, a copy of the NME. The extent to this was a priceless treasure is quite hard to state. Where I lived there was no electricity or running water, it was hard to buy a paper that provided worthwhile news, it was 1997 so no internet nearby, no mobile phone (no phone full stop). To receive this weekly dose of real life (or real life through the prism of later-90s London loons) was one of the things that got me through, along with the waxy Kenyan version of Cadbury's Dairy Milk.

But actual new music, there was less of. There was no TV or UK radio to actually hear the stuff I was reading about - again, my mother did wonders, as did my friend Alex, as i recall - new Blur and Paul Weller albums found their way to me, but as for whatever else was happening in the first half of 1997, I could read, but I couldn't hear [I took about 20 tapes with me - if I appear to know every song on Blood on the Tracks word for word, there's your reason why].

So, in around February 1997, NME's Single of the Week, which the reviewer was getting very excited about, was a song called 'All You Good Good People' by a band I hadn't heard of called Embrace. And the extremely thorough review made it sound right up my street. Rock anthem - big-hearted - big chorus - string-soaked - epic ballad - heart-tugging - humane - future of rock'n'roll. Ooh, this sounds good I thought. A new Oasis but without the unpleasantness. Super.

At that stage, 'All You Good Good People' was just a limited edition single on the Fierce Panda label, I wouldn't have been able to get my hands on it if I'd tried, so, it was left to me, over the next five months, to imagine what this song might sound like.

And I imagined and imagined, and you know what, I'd basically written the song by the time I heard it, from the verses to the chorus to the string section. And it was really really good. Possibly one of the greatest songs in the history of rock'n'roll.

Of course, I hadn't actually written a song, I'd just had some vague thoughts about what it might sound like. Or had I? Music and composition is a baffling thing. I, let me tell you, have always displayed a spectacular ineptitude for the actual "music" side of music. I'm not entirely without musical education, I have my Grade 5 theory, my mother tried her best to find me an instrument whereupon I'd display some talent - piano, violin, then clarinet, all in vain. I even took GCSE music, which included composition classes, which should have been a great opportunity, but it was an opportunity utterly wasted.

We had to submit three compositions over the course of the two years, and the night before submission date, I just has two hopelessly drab, by numbers, string quartets. In despair and in twenty minutes, I then came up with a thirty-bar piece for oboe and trombone called 'Marriage Problems' (the oboe was the woman, the trombone the man), which, while my other two compositions were summarily dismissed, was highly commended for its "wit and imagination". Which shows that one bright idea is worth more than two years' ill-applied effort.

But anyway (I just wanted to tell that story, i just remembered it, but it was a bit of a detour) I did play clarinet for six years, I failed Grade 5 twice, I was hopeless and utterly short of application, to the despair of my teacher. Occasionally, cos she knew I wasn't doing the practice she set me, she'd just say "just go home and play it a bit" and I wouldn't.

Except, literally twice in those six years, I would just play it, I'd play my clarinet, and I would know somehow what note should follow the next note and what sound i might make, and I, useless me, created a song, a song which I thought sounded pretty good.

Which makes me think - Bob Dylan, amongst others, says things along the lines of that he doesn't create songs, they already exist, and they just come to him. Eveything is inspired. And so the great composers/songwriters are those that are most skilled/disciplined in marshalling that outside inspiration, in listening when it comes and bringing it to life.
I think we all have some vague sense of the vague truth of that, without ever actually possessing any great gift for anything. But when i played football above myself, i'd think, how did i do that, when i wrote well, i'd wonder where it came from, when i spoke fluently and wittily, likewise. Music, words etc they do already exist, we don't create anything from scratch. In that sense, we can all be inspired.

This is all my long-winded way of asking whether, really and truly, I did come up, in those five months of cultural desert and long days and nights of only the imagination, with a better song called 'All You Good Good People' than Embrace's.

Suffice to say, when it had a full release to a big-hoohah in the summer of 1997, I was a little disappointed by their version. Not quite the salvation of rock'n'roll I'd hoped for. Pretty good, like, don't get me wrong. I like Embrace, I've been to see them twice, they knew their way round a rock anthem, they soundtracked some good times, they were better than their critics said, yes his voice was a little foghorny on record but it sounded good live and he sounded like he meant it. I noted that my teacher trainer on my PGCE, an older man but a man with impeccable taste in music, said he liked Embrace when he heard I was going to see them one evening. "No, I like them, they're all right. Good choruses". Which was true, and validation.

I backed them through various travails, ups and downs, all the way to their last album (the previous one has actually been rather a hit and then they'd done England's 2006 World Cup song, which was weak, sadly).
But I'd begin to get worried when lead singer Danny McNamara was talking in interview about a new way of songwriting the band. had discovered where they'd just jam in the studio and improvise and come up with great songs that way. [My flatmate, likewise a fan, did buy the album, then took it back in disgust the next day, saying it was the worst thing he'd ever heard].

Whenever I hear that, alarm bells ring. Perhaps backing up or contradicting what I said earlier, songs should be written by the songwriters, by the one with the talent. How many talented songwriters can one band hope to have? Likewise, I've worried when top bands with great songwriters have got too democratic and begun to share out the duties on albums, from Super Furry Animals to Belle and Sebastian to the Beatles letting that useless Harrison have that useless 'Something', 'While my Guitar Gently Weeps' and 'Here Comes the Sun'. Doh ... well, you know what I mean.

Anyway, 'All You Good Good People' was a well-crafted, epic song by Embrace, but if anyone ever happens to hear a heartbreaking song of staggering beauty with a similar name floating on the breeze, get in touch with me, that's mine and I lost it.