(Written and arranged by Reynold D. Philipsek 1994 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 I had a good friend in London named Peter Martinsen. He was a 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 us way too early in 2000. Peter and I planned to actually book time at Abbey Road studios to record a song (and might have because he could have swung it) but it 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, The Small Faces and The Hollies in particular. There is also a little Burt Bacharach there too in the horn parts but that just adds to the “sixties vibe.”
We even recorded the song on an analog eight-track reel to reel machine and “bounced” tracks to build up the song just like George Martin and the “boys” at Abbey Road. By the way, there are 41 London pubs named in this song.
I should also mention that the line “from Tiananmen Square to old Soho” refers to the around the world trip Mary and I took in 1994. We started in Beijing and the last stop before returning home was London. The album is called Global Home Movie.
Please use headphones on this one because we were thinking very “stereo.”
Hope you are all well. Stay that way.
Link below: