The Valuable Fools Music

1996	Hungry For Your Love Written in 1996, after going on holiday to Italy with Warwick. I hadn't been abroad for a while. The beach and the holiday did me good. We met up with good people, two of whom who became our girlfriends, so it's kind of a romantic song. Since then it's undergone a few musical style changes. It could also be used as a spiritual love song. It's definitley one for those "cruising down the coast road with the top down" moments.
1996	Wailing Wall A left over from the earlier Fools days. A hard hitting rock song with a touch of Led Zep, I'm led to believe! An anti-materialism, business pressure on family life type lyric. Why the Wailing Wall?. It's a symbol and a reminder of oppression. Steve Goodhall, the bassist at the time, was a Jewish-Christian, which got me thinking about Jewish images a bit.
1998	Falling Down Musically inspired as a sort of cross between Nirvana's Come As You Are and a pop chorus. Lyrically about whether or not to go on with a relationship. This is a question of which I have personal experience and I found this becoming a highly relevant song at the time.
1999	Strange Love My attempt at writing a Bryan Adams style song. Lyrically it sort of tells the story of meeting my wife!
2000	It Makes Me Wonder A real group effort this! Perhaps my fave one of our bunch so far. This is mainly due to the inter play between the viola and the guitar effects. It's brooding atmophere is reflected in the lyrics. A modern blues song?I'm not sure, but it's got so many things going on in it, I really love it.
2001	White Water A happy accident when messing around with drum programmes. I had this little chord sequence buzzing around and the two fused together quite well! I'd just come back from New Zealand and the breakers on the Coromandel Peninsula were the inspiration for the lyrics. Never performed live as yet. The part about drying the eyes of a thousand tears reflects the power of love.
2001	Pretty Little Head A counscious attempt at writing a more commercial song. I wanted a heavy sound but it came out more pop ! Not sure about the middle eight yet, but it's a boppy song with some great solos! Lyrically, a look at taking the more difficult approach of forgiveness and turning the other cheek, which I definitely struggle with.
2002	What I Want Inspired by Blondie and the Velvet Underground sound. It's about obsession.
2002	What Will Be Written as an attempt at a Hip-Hop style commercial song. Shades of rock guitar were replaced by a more gentle Spanish guitar solo for the break. I managed to get Dionne Curd (Devereaux) to do the lead vocals on this and she did a brilliant job. It's hard to sing this one without her as no one I know can yet top her performance.
2002	Is That Love? Devloped over a number of years and finally finished in 2002. Inspired by a more laid back acoustic ballad style, it morphed into a bit of a rock ballad courtesy of lead guitar break. A poignant lyric about a couple having relationship problems and reflecting on their beginnings and the past years. "We've shared the joys and the pain", isn't that what love is about?
2003	Beautiful Another ballad that started out as an acoustic number. I wanted a very sparse sound in an Americana style. It turned out as a rock ballad with some excellent drumming building up in to a cresendo. A great guitar solo adds to the rock feel. It ends in a gentle fade out. A song of peaks and troughs and a tale of a girl on a lost highway.
2004	Walls Another moody bass intro that lifts off in to a great hook. It builds up into one very intense ending with a lot of riffing energy. It's kind of a folk/rock/pop song about a couple that hardly talks and one of them prefers to go off running instead of sorting things out. The inspiration behind the song were a few things, not least a great BBC documentary on Richard Thompson, whose work I've got to know a bit more recently.
2005	Inside A team effort again. I'd got an acoustic Cult/Mission riff and a pop chorus and discovered the joys of diminshed chords. Steve added a rumbling bass line and Warwick a classic Heavy Metal riff and some great guitar work. It sounded as if it shouldn't work, but it does wonderfully! Lyrically, it focuses on a state of mind about a crisis situation.