A song that was written during the London Songwriters Autumn Retreat in October 2022. (https://www.londonsongwriters.org/)

This was my first songwriting session for quite some time, and the particular exercise was to write a 'song story' - a narrative based song.

50 in 90 is the story of the Ansel Keys study which yielded remarkable insights into nutrition, through a study involvingconscientious objectors who volunteered during the Second World War. The participants lost around 50 pounds in 90 days - hence the title, but knew that the results of the experiment would have profound effects.

Recorded as a demo at the end of the writing process, using Garageband and a borrowed guitar in a bedroom in a barn in Derbyshire.

Songwriting retreat Oct 2022

zx85 - 50 in 90

A cover version, as part of my "Saturday Song In An Evening" project.

jamelopoeia - Into The Blue

 wrote this song during a homeward commute on a dark, damp evening, and challenged myself to record it only using 'real-life' synthesizers, to give it an 'electro' sound. 

Jamelopoeia - Finchley Road

The song was inspired by a message from a friend on the Twitter  microblogging site, who was awaiting with apprehension the results of a college test; I'm not entirely sure what the intention or sentiment is, and the song is somewhat formulaic (certainly for me!) in structure!

I tried to avoid the painstaking hassle of moving notes in a sequencer by recording this as 'live' as possible...

Jamelopoeia - no advice

I wrote this for the rather strange b3tavision competition of 2007 (http://www.b3ta.com/calendar/event/8675). The whole point was that readers should represent their counties and submit a piece of music to this board. Nobody seems to have won, but I'm not overly fussed.

Jamelopoeia - the seaside shuffle

We made this in 2005, for the XFM 'Feel Good Hit Of The Summer' competition, thought suffering the ignominy of not having it played on-air, because I was a little too honest about the derivations of some bits of it (can you count the five references to other songs in there)? Suzanne's brass arrangement was amazing - I've included the instrumental because I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out (without my singing!) It's worthy of note that this song is my most-played tune on the internet, since it's part of the Podshow Music Network.


Monster gratis - summer in britain

A song written for my friend Jana as a birthday gift - and shared with permission.

I worked on the melody first, and then wrote lyrics and recorded the track in an evening; it's fairly raw and 'demo' sounding but features my trademark(!) ukulele and hopefully works!

Look Out For Me

My debut entry for "Song A Week 2019" ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/songaweek2019/ )- intended to give me a little practice in storytelling, rhyming and some more interesting chord progressions. I had a go at all three, at least.

A Song A Week

Larry was a limousine driver

My entry for week 47 of "Song A Week 2019" ( www.facebook.com/groups/songaweek2019/ )- a song melody that got stuck in my head on about Monday, but the lyrics took until today to arrive, so I didn't record it until this evening. All a bit last minute.

Ukulele, glockenspiel (a birthday present - I still need a LOT of practice!), bass and cajon.

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