For those of you who aren't, for some reason, on the webdigest here is some info on the latest CDrelaese.

You would think there was some info on www.level42.com but they don't even update the for sale section

anymore. What a bogus site it has become.

 

 

I read this and found it to be very interesting - go to his website to see more....

Thanks Mike Lindup for your website and adding those personal touches to it!

 

MIKEY

 

Review of Changes, by Mike Lindup 10/03

Courtesy:  http://www.mikelindup.com

Mike has about 80 copies of Changes available for sale on his website!

Changes
Listening to it now, I can remember that the music for the verse came at about 5am one morning whilst on a tour-bus in the US in about 1986. I used to carry a recording walkman everywhere, and we had a portable battery-operated keyboard (I think it may have been Phil's). I had this idea and felt like it could really be something, and let it brew until '89, when I started writing and gathering all the material for the Changes album.
The words that came, I don't know how they came, but they were inspired. I was saying something about where I was in my life, and when I listen to them now, I believe I captured something timeless, something about the spirit that moves within. Changes often cause sorrows, i.e.the death of something that's known, or comfortable, and yet it seems part of the process.
Finally, I was looking for a final element, and one day whilst driving, found myself singing the hymn "When a Knight won his Spurs", and it just seemed to fit. Getting permission to use the words of Jan Struther caused me to discover the book "Mrs Miniver", which was a lovely discovery.

Lovely Day
I wrote this song in1982! It was submitted for consideration, but the rest of the band turned it down. I can see why, looking back. We were just about to go to L.A. to record with Larry Dunn and Verdine White (of Earth, wind and Fire), and I think that it's gentle/naive quality and style was not what the doctor ordered when trying to look good in front of your mates along with the listening ears of Larry and Verdine. So I said to myself "Sod you lot, I'll do it on my solo album!" Seven years later I kept that promise. I think that the strongest thing about it was the message about the danger of bored men in charge of unused weaponry.

Fallen Angel
This was a song inspired by meeting a girl I knew at college that admired me from afar, which I had no idea about, who I met years later, who then told me of the feelings she had once upon a time. I thought "If only I'd noticed then..."
I was really pleased with what I achieved in the realisation of this song, it has something of a blend of folk and soul that I sometimes aspire to, the music seemed to flow out of the feeling of "saudade" for what might have been. The original demo (not the one at the end of the CD, that is Mark 2) was recorded whilst on tour in the states in '87. I was lugging a so-called portable studio up to my hotel room every night (Roland D-50, 4 track cassette portastudio, drum machine, reverb unit, mic, portable speakers, headphones, recording walkman). Many mornings it would go back down into the tour bus without having been opened, and then other nights I'd be up till 3am fiddling with an idea.

The Spirit is Free
The music came first, as it often did. At B&Q! I rushed home and went straight to the piano. It felt very strong, like it deserved to have something important spoken over it. So I wrote about Nelson Mandela (pre his release), and imagined the inspiration he must have been to the oppressed majority at that time. Someone later wrote to me and thought I was writing about Jesus. I wasn't, but when I looked again at the lyrics, I could see how he may have arrived at that interpretation. That's one of the beauties of a song, you write about something, then someone else has a completely different take on it that you would never have imagined.

Desire
Trying to put into a form that ephemeral quality that is desire, and exploring something that was a constant theme, referred to in other songs (Three Words, One in a Million). Desire fuels the search for the One, but the search might conciously or unconciously be for Desire itself, which then becomes a recurring pattern that's never really satisfied, until, in my case, you know that who is standing in front of you is "everything you'll ever need", and that "perfection is the fantasy that troubles (my )reality". That's just the start of the greatest growth programme God ever invented!
I really love this song, especially musically . Production-wise, it would benefit from a fresh interpretation-anyone wanna do a cover version?

West Coast Man
It's that soul-folk thing again. Similar theme to the above, but at least I know where the heartland is. The first line of the song came to me as I walked out of a restaurant in Kinlochbervie. The sky was bright spring blue, the wind was literally blowing in fresh from the sea, the tree branches were all pointing in the same direction (east), and I felt completely alive and at home with this wild nature.
I drove to Oldshoremore beach, and there used to be (there may still be) a rock that you could stand on, and look back across the incoming waves to a great golden beach. A seal popped it's head out as if to say "What are you doing out here-this is my territory!"
I like the vocal range I used in this song, and I would like to do more with the lower range of my voice. I think one of the things that encouraged me to do this album was to show that there was more to me than "singing the high bits". Dominic (Miller) really made this song happen, because I always imagined it on guitar, and the backing track (with Pino Palladino and Manu Katche) was one live take.
I now get to live my fantasy, with the girl with whom I walk across the heather on certain saturdays...

Judgement Day
I was not a fan of Mrs Thatcher, and this was written (in 1989) because I was fed up with her and the views she represented, and I heard this conversation on the radio about those who could be moved to tears by a great painting, and then ignore a plea for help from a living human being in the street, and I thought it fitted the times. Well, as one finger points accusingly, three point back at you. Still, that never should get in the way of a good rant. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't been quite as gender-specific, as the same words could apply to a current (male) generation of political leaders who seem to have become convinced by their own arrogance.
I think that someone interesting could take this tune really do a number on it. Manu played a blinder on this -it was so great to work with him.

Life will never be the same
It was 1989, it was the beginning of a year-long break, it had been 2 years since Phil and Boon had left, and I was on the Isle of Wight working with Mark, and he took me out on his boat. I think that a lot of unexpressed feelings came up for me that day, thinking about how much had changed since the original four of us had got together to record Love Meeting Love. Mark dropped me off at Portsmouth Harbour, and I drove home in a particular mood, went straight to the piano and poured my heart into what was the beginnings of this song. I remember wishing for the rain to come (there had been a dry spell), and I walked outside, looked up at a brooding sky that seemed pregnant with water, and shouted, King Canute-like, for it to release -which it didn't! I realised that in my relationship with Mark and Level 42, life would never be the same -the sorrow of changes, again.
Musically, this was perfect. Danny Thompson (who had played double bass on my Mum's recordings) brought all of his experience and gravity, and Calum added the final touches with the drone(Jupiter 8), and the trumpet sample. If I did this tune again I would go for the same approach.

Paixao
Inspired by my time with the London School of Samba, and my love of Brazilian music that started aged 3 with Getz/Gilberto. I would love to do this tune again -I think I could bring more solidity to it with the benefit of hindsight. However, it was very enjoyable working with the late great Pato Fuentes, his brother Carlos and German, and I got to acheive a dream of writing a tune based on samba.

Jung
Unfortunately, this is not listed on the sleeve of the CD. It came from a "film music idea" that I had, and I thought, why not do an instrumental. Jung was short for Jungle, as opposed to Carl. I had pre-programmed the song on the sequencer, and set up Dominic, Pino and Manu, hit play and let them take it away. I think this was recorded first or second take, and I added the soaring strings pretty much as the only overdub. This for me is very visual, I could imagine a documentary about mountaineering or hang gliding showing over this music.