Touch

Words by Ivan Matič, music by Ivan Matič and Mijo. Produced by Mijo. 

Recorded over two days Jan 2-3 2020. ... and yes, that is Ivan singing. Just wonderful! It's a sincere and heartfelt song and it was awesome fun getting it out and down for Ivan.

Sorry

Re-uploading this. Heard too many stuff-ups in the mix, so had to fix 'em. David Thompson at the time was an aspiring singer/songwriter who had an incredible knack for a catchy chord progression. A wonderful sounding voice, but there were challenges. Žejlko Horvat and I recorded a number of his songs in our little studio and this was the best of the lot. Upbeat, with brilliant drumming by the incredible Kerod Fletcher, and some over enthusiastic fretless bass by yours truly. We were pretty happy with how this turned out, but I’m happier with it after spending a few nights on it in Pro Tools. There was a keyboard part, but that MIDI file is long gone now. This would have been recorded some time around 1993, I think.

It's Over

Recorded on Dom's 442 (man, I loved that thing... Changed my life!) in the rumpus room of my parent's house in Algester. It's an attempt at restoration from a very old cassette, so there's clicks, noise, drop-outs, etc. One of the first songs I'd written and recorded. Around 1986 or 87, can't remember. You can partly blame Yolumba's Fruity Lexia for it. (Oh, and a particular young lady and her dad's well-placed mistrust of me!)

Three Bells

Ok, another old tape restoration attempt. This was VERY noisy... Please be kind... 

Zeljko and I had been listening to a lot of Midnight Oil at the time we wrote this. We tried our luck at a political theme. This was, I think, only the second song we had ever recorded together. We used a borrowed ETI kit mixer. It sounded like complete shit as far as the audio quality was concerned. We did the vocals in the toilet. We didn’t have a reverb back then. I guess that the message still got across and I still like to think of this tune as valid. 
 
An election was looming, and we were a little cynical about the way before the election had been called, everything was hard because it had to be, but during the various campaigns, the message was that everything was going to be ok once you elected whoever it was doing the ads. 

I used a guy called Marco Grbavac’s old bass guitar in this song. It had a great sound but was horrible to play. No wonder he gave it up. If you listen carefully you hear me bashing it with my fist to get that gong like sound. There are also some Yamaha DX horns in the background that I really liked. The noise from the mixer spoilt what could have been a great recording. Nothing could have spoilt it from being a good song, though. In my mind anyway!

Streetlife Soldiers

This was the first song I ever wrote completely by myself. I wrote it at the J. C. Slaughter Falls near Mt Cootha in Brisbane. I wrote it on “The Bitch”, my bombed out twelve string guitar. I was truly impressed by the way the lyrics went together, and I recorded this also on Dom P.’s little 244 four track. 

The best version is one I recorded at Murdo’s place in Bardon. Garry Rogers played drums and there was another guy who was recording an album there who played the bass. Clayton Pearson was his name. The searing lead guitar solo was my piece de resistance, or at least I thought it was! I remember when I first recorded the vocals, I was a little too hesitant to really pronounce a particular person’s name in the lyrics, but the time I was recording it at Murdo’s, it was a little more audible. I’d say that was because the writing was very much on the wall for that relationship at that time. 

“Distorted face in the dark, he comes from the light, a bearded face comes at you from the adrenalin, snow and the night” 

Again, I went with the version recorded at Murdo’s for this compilation.

Opening Heart Part 2

Empy Hands - Yamaha Song Competition version.
Keyboards - Dom Dom Rotili
Lead Guitar - Mijo 
Bass - Ivan Matić
Vocals - Mijo
Drums - Gary Rogers
Engineering - Željko (Steve) Horvat

My spell checker in my PC knows that there’ something wrong with that Empy Hands title, but the one in my old Atari computer didn’t. This is another one of Ivan’s masterpieces. It’s funny to listen to the first recording of this song because when you get to the only words in it that I wrote, “My heart still lives for the promise you made, etc…” because I really give it heaps of gusto in comparison to the rest of it.

We tried to do a reggae version of this that Australia Day long weekend we spent at Dom’s parent’s unit at Bribie Island. It sounded really dumb, but we actually managed to have a wild time during those days there. I think that during that little experiment, I finally realised that we weren’t destined for stardom. No discipline, no drive, no hope. Ivan did, however, manage to catch a fish that he left in the car park. That would have really stunk after a while, I think… 

The live Yamaha competition version is the best and the one I’ve chosen here. This is a stereo mix that was mastered to cassette, one I lost, but luckily dubbed to a PCM501 at Murdo’s place and he transferred it to a CD for me and this is what you’re hearing here.

Empty Hands

Probably the most troublesome recording to try and fix up. Domenic Rotili and I wrote this. There's a story to it, but you have to get a few beers into me before I'll tell you about it. Suffice to say it's about a girl and me being too proud to take a well meant compliment.

Breakneck Speed

“Depression thrives on darkness, consuming all my life, but my sanity, clings to her smile.” 
Pretty deep stuff for an 18-year-old, huh? Well, this song was about, well, you know who. I used to sleep in an old bed in the front room of her parents’ house. It was an enclosed veranda and the rain hitting the roof and going into the drains used to sound like music, it was so percussive. 

But this wasn’t the only inspiration for the song. Domenic Pallazotto used to have a now ancient drum machine called a Boss Dr. Rhythm. It was almost impossible to program and I’ll never forget how impressed I was when Dom-Dom Rotili actually managed to program the Talking Heads track, Psycho Killer, into it for the St Laurence’s College gig we did with U4EA. Anyhow, I was having a go at programming it one day and after a few frustrating seconds, I wiped my hand across all the buttons, and the resulting pattern is what you will her making up the rhythm track of this song. I had an awful time trying to recreate the same pattern in Murdo’s studio when I went in there to re-record some of those tracks later on. 

I like both versions of this, but I think the one I did at Murdo’s sounds much cleaner and is my favourite. Dom-Dom likes this one too, I believe.

Rain On Tin

Prazne Ruke in Croatian means empty hands. I know… It always bothered me that we had two songs with the same name, but in two different languages. Ivan even wrote the lyrics for both of them, too! 

My parents thought the lyrics were a little weird, and in some instances I don't think they were quite right grammatically, but it was our first Croatian language song, and we were impressed! 

Thanks to the very talented and gracious Garry Rogers for his wonderful drumming on this version of the track recorded at Murdifications back when it was in Bardon.

MijoMihatov