Reimagined B-Sides (Volume 2) – A track by track guide

This was a song about a particular person I knew around the end of 1994 – it was a projection in which I accused said person of all kinds of things only to admit at the end of the song that I’m actually talking about my own inadequacies. It was one of the first songs written after completing the first set of demos ‘Fear’ and went on the second lot ‘Fear II’.

(Lyrics and Music : Peter Nuttall)

I’ve never really been sure what this song was about. I think it was probably just random things that fell out of my head to be honest. It’s definitely not about marriage. It was written around March 1995 and the demo never got re-recorded again until 2023 on this project. It hasn’t changed much from the original because it’s so basic, it doesn’t need anything done to it. Doesn’t really fit the ‘re-imagined’ brief really.

(Lyrics and Music : Peter Nuttall)

I don’t think I ever wrote a darker song than this besides ‘Ignore me’. It’s reflective of a solemn time for me in December 1995 where I was nearing another one of those big life transitions with no real clue where or what. I actually love listening to the original of this because it captures the analogue hiss of the time the demo was recorded – it starts with a music box because the original idea was to chart life from beginning to end – it went in a different direction once I started writing it. The re-imagining discards that and goes straight into the meat of the song.

(Lyrics and Music : Peter Nuttall)

The original ‘Alive’ was on 1994’s ‘Fear II’ and had a lovely little synth part. I thought this too nice to leave as is and re-wrote the song in January 1996 (just over a year later) and added some rhythmic gymnastics into the chorus and added a bit more solo to the intro. This just about captures what the demo was trying to achieve. The original song was about someone I liked who liked me but was with someone else – I was saying, stay with him basically – ‘don’t keep yourself alive for me’. It’s metaphorical – or something.

(Lyrics and Music : Peter Nuttall)

I’d come up a lyric for ‘Ghosts’ in February 1996 but the verses were awful. Then Ian gave me something he’d written on a diary page dated 7th April 1996 – I used those lyrics and kept the original chorus. I was writing more and more music rather than songs – the songs around this period had longer intros and middle sections and sounded much more interesting than the stuff before it.

(Lyrics : Ian Forbes/Peter Nuttall, Music : Peter Nuttall)

This was about the same person as Forty Fields and was written a few weeks previous – same vibe really. It’s funny how the years get in the way of songs you were so in touch with and now, you can’t even remember what you were trying to say or why. That’s probably a good thing in some ways but when trying to put the same emotions into a full version, you’re always going to end up with something that lacks the original soul.

(Lyrics and Music : Peter Nuttall)

I wrote this lying in bed – keyboard on my knee and smooth bass groove pulling the song along. The bass part is in 12/8 and the drums are in 4/4 – it makes it sound a bit sexy. Re-recording this demo was impossible because you can’t set a digital workstation to quantize that. Playing it loosely against a Quantized backing just sounds completely off. This is probably why this re-imagining sounds very amateur. The new version contains the unused last chorus. The point of this pet project is to revisit these songs like old friends, spend time with them and see what went into the inner-workings of each track. As this re-recording shows, it doesn’t always translate into something better than the original demo and I’m fine with that.

(Lyrics : Douglas Hunter, Music : Peter Nuttall)

The original lyrics show a date of 5th August 1996 (11:12 pm). That puts it during the writing sessions for ‘Magic’ but as the note on the lyric notes the music was written in November 1996, it looks like this was written in the same sessions as ‘Face to Face’, ‘New Fear’ and ‘Goodnight’. I have no recollection of writing the words or music for this however and as it was pushed right to the back of ‘Foxygen’ I probably didn’t think that much of it at the time either. It’s fun to re-explore these things though.

(Lyrics and Music : Peter Nuttall)

I’d just got my hands on a Zoom guitar effects board. It had everything on it. I started using it for recording vocals and, for the first time, guitar lines on real guitars. “Until I Remember” was the first song I wrote on electric guitar – it wasn’t very good but it was quite an important moment in the Fox history, so it’s re-imagined here. I then started to re-record some of the better demos from 1995/1996. These didn’t turn out any better than just the original demos with guitar parts. You can hear these on the ‘Strange Friends’ album.

I wrote this lyric on 10th December 1996. It’s about insecurity – functioning perfectly well and then the fear comes. Feeling good until I remember – remember everything that holds me back.

(Music and Lyrics : Peter Nuttall)

Written on the afternoon of 17th January 1997 this was such a ‘demo’ that it only had a verse and a chorus. This re-recording has just made that small section a little bit longer and it’s alright – definitely a B-side.

(Lyrics and Music : Peter Nuttall)

I jammed this song with me on guitar and Ian on bass which is why it doesn’t really have any structure. We just hit record and played. I then wrote some lyrics and improvised a melody – the resulting demo wasn’t half bad. This re-imagining takes the song up several notches and is one of the best ones I’ve managed in this entire project.

(Lyrics : Peter Nuttall, Music : Ian Forbes/Peter Nuttall)

On the same .txt file Ian sent me in 1997 as the one that had ‘I Ran’ on it, this was nestled amongst the other ramblings. It, I think, was about a neighbour’s cat that would often wander into the room he was renting whilst at University. The other things in the song might be based on truths too such as people stealing cars in the street outside but I’ve never thought to ask. This is a very unusual song which made use of the effects board mentioned above, using the fun delay settings to make the vocals a lot more interesting than me just chuntering on. I’m still waiting for a real singer to come along and take over lead vocals – everything would sound much much better. At least the Zoom guitar effects were masking a lot of what was wrong with my voice.

(Lyrics : Ian Forbes, Music : Peter Nuttall)

Ian had a guitar part and the bass part. Just like ‘Gone’, we pressed record and played the looped four chords with bits we came up with in that one jam. I had some lyrics I’d been writing mid-1997 and like ‘Gone’ I just improvised a melody over the demo. This has been re-recorded several times since and although this re-imagining will be the last time, it’s probably not the definitive version. The original is probably still the best one just because of how grainy and atmospheric it is. Everything else was just an imitation.

(Lyrics : Peter Nuttall, Music : Ian Forbes)

This is one of those really important songs – written in October 1997 – it rounded off phase 1 for Urban Fox, one of the last tracks on the best album we managed for quite a number of years, ‘Transfection’. This re-imagining is closer to the original demo than the update we did a few years ago. I think I actually prefer the piano version to the one on this project however.

(Lyrics and Music : Peter Nuttall)