This is our cover of the instrumental by The Music,which we loved so much from our live set that we felt it would be criminal not to have it recorded, and is included here for the sake of complete-ism. It includes the siren heard at the start of Spiral , in reverse, as its outro and also the spoof hidden track one and a half minutes after it finishes...

Walls Get Smaller (The Music Cover)

Recorded in the same session as the re-records of Spiral and Anon, this song was not part of the 'False Sense of Security' album and was the first song  written entirely from new with Steve, our then bass player (as opposed to most of the songs on the album, which were reworked with him but written before he joined) and features his trademark 'shouty' backing vocals!

Call To Arms

The only song by The Same Mistakes written by the entire band at the same time! Worked from a jam in the upside down flat I lived in at the time, this is very 'Negative' influenced, although this was unintentional. The lyrics were written using the patented David Bowie method of using newspaper headlines. Or at least that was the theory... If I remember rightly, only the title ended up coming from a newspaper and we built from there!

Upper Class Traitor

A song I wrote in 1998/99 and recorded in 2000, rather pretentiously about how someone could be the second coming of Jesus without anyone realising it, or even wanting the job. I have literally no idea where the concept came from.

Given the potentially blasphemous nature of the song, it seemed only logical to include a backwards guitar intro and solo. Always loved the cover for the demo EP this was on, featuring Jesus on the cross with his eyes blanked. Y'know, for anonymity...

PS: A German review from Besonic once compared this track to Black Sabbath/Ozzy. No idea why, but I was chuffed when it made the Besonic Rock Top 10 (True story!!!!

Anonymous Messiah

This was originally going to be called 'Vulcan Love Song,' hence all the references to logic and lack of emotion. Rather sensibly, I changed the title fairly quickly...

You'll notice quite a striking similarity to 5.15 by The Who on this track, with the brass arrangement. This is pure coincidence, and only came about when recorded, as I had no inkling about using brass when it was written. To be fair though, they were one of my favourite bands at the time, so maybe I was subconsciously influenced!!!

Emotion Is A Weakness

This song was heavily influenced by two of my favourite songs, 'Six' by Mansun and 'Every Breath You Take' by the Police. The lyrics speak for themselves, but the idea for the arpeggiated descending chord structure was most definitely something I borrowed from those two songs.

Again, this is one of those things that came out completely differently in the recording. It was written as a straightforward arrangement for guitar, bass and drums but probably became better with the addition of synths. Although there are a lot of keyboards on the track, the way they've been laid down almost makes the sound minimalistic, in keeping with the song title..

Threadbare

Firstly, this is not actually a ballad...

Secondly, you know when you write a song that you personally hate, but everyone else really likes? Yeah, that.

When I wrote this, I was thinking of the Beautiful South (My influences were many and varied at the time, hence nothing from this set of songs sounding anything like the others), and wrote the song based on their lyric "closer than a secret agent running undercover". From there came also the dual harmony lead vocal and the 'ba bas'.

Played live, as the only person in the band able to sing and play simultaneously, that aspect got stripped away and the song became something more like a bog standard Beatles type tune. When recorded, we were happily able to re-introduce the dual lead and throw in some piano too, so the song was much more as it was intended to be (even though, as with all my songs, it was written on a bass guitar!). The end result falls somewhere between The Beautiful South, Ben Folds Five and Squeeze (The latter being two of my favourite bands).

I still hate it though...

Ballad of a Secret Agent

One of my party pieces, performed acoustically live by the short lived trio I was part of, The Summer Kings.

Happy By Pharrell Live Acoustic Cover

First song ever written by the Same Mistakes. Looking back, it has its charm but bloody hell we hated it at the time!

Matter Of Fact

Another mobile phone recording from the Summer Kings acoustic gig a coupe of years ago, this time our cover of Jackie Wilson's Higher and Higher. 'Nuff said!

Adam_S_1974

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