“Pubs of London”
(Written and arranged by Reynold D. Philipsek 1994 and 2025 copyright Zino-Rephi Music BMI)
Voices, guitars and all instruments by Reynold except
Drums by Steve Read Smith
Bass by Luke Kramer
Trombones by Zane Schaefer
Recording Engineer:Stymie Seamans
This song is literally a recitation of London pub names lifted from the London phone book. At the time when this song was written, I had a good friend in London named Peter Martinsen. He was a staff recording engineer for Virgin Records there, and Mary and I visited Peter and Geraldine several times in the early 1990’s. One day, Peter and I hatched the plan to collect all of these pub names and tried to see how many of the pubs we could visit in one week. We had a good time tracking down many (not all) of these pubs.
Sadly, Peter left this quaint old vale of tears way too early in 2000. Peter and I had planned to actually book time at Abbey Road studios to record a song (and might have because he could have swung it), but it unfortunately was not to be.
I did write this song based on the pub names, however, and appropriately tried to fashion a very “Brit” 1960’s pastiche of a song using the influence of The Beatles in particular. (There is also a little Burt Bacharach there too in the horn parts, but that just adds to the “sixties vibe”.)
The whole point of music like this is to convey a joyous noise. The music of The Beatles, and Burt Bacharach for that matter, often conveyed joy. Maurice Ravel also said that music should aim “to express life’s mysterious thrill”.
The track was also era-appropriately recorded on an analog multi-track machine. And Steve and Luke are a killer rhythm section. This is one of three tracks I did with Steve on drums before he left for Nashville.
By the way, there are 41 London pubs named in this song.
Please use headphones on this one because there is a very “sixties stereo” mix.
Be kind.
Love,
Reyn