30 Songs in 30 Days – Day Thirty – Porch

And …. stop!

So that’s it. 30 Songs in 30 Days. Finito. Fertig. Fini. I’m rather proud of myself for keeping going. It took some doing, I must admit.

I thought I’d dress up for this final video. I bought the suit for my friends’ Bruce and Claudia’s wedding. I picked it up for £30 from a vintage shop. It’s genuinely moth-eaten – when I pulled it out of the wardrobe this morning, the moths have taken chunks out of it. It’s Canadian, Rick! It survived the journey across the Atlantic only to get chomped in Streatham. Seems a cruel end for such a fine piece of cloth.

I tried doing a multi-camera angle thing but it didn’t quite work out. Ah well. Never mind. The sun was kind enough to come out as I recorded, which is what caused the comical dappled effect as the song progresses. And the garden looks great, (that completes the tour of the house, Liz!). And the trains were kind enough to stay away while I was singing, (the house backs onto 2 railways, including the route of the Gatwick Express).

Porch has appeared on three albums so far. I included the same version on both Pop Happenings Vol 4 and Love Songs from the Feral Park, (for reasons that made sense at the time but which I can’t quite fathom, right now) and Simon does a great take on Born in a Barn. The best version is Speedy Sue’s forthcoming version on Speedy Sue and the Shadowy Collective – she sings it so beautifully.

It’s a nice signing-off song, I think. It steals a line from Rock and Roll Suicide, (or Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine’s Shopper’s Paradise, if you like) but then Bowie is such an eclectic pilferer, I don’t think he’d mind.

So what have I learned from this. Well, I have some wonderfully supportive friends, for a start, but then I knew that already! Another key take-away is that, whatever you want to do, you’ll get better at it if you practice. My picking went from laughable to kind-of competent during the course of these videos. I learned to trust my singing, (though even if I’ve sung a line correctly twenty times, I can still cock it up – how does that work!?).

It was great to have a music project to get my teeth into, and hopefully it will spin off into gigs and albums and what have you. It’s up to me to keep it going, but then that’s true of everything we do, isn’t it!

Many thanks to everyone who, over the last month, has Tweeted, Shared, Facebooked, Liked, passed comment in passing, proffered advice, laughed about, put up with, championed. Hopefully, there were a few of you who thought, well, if he can do it, I can do it, too. Let’s hear it, when you’ve got something you’re ready to share!

Anyway, your kind thoughts have been thoroughly, thoroughly appreciated. You’re good eggs, the lot of you!