Jesus is for Losers track 11: Wake Up Dead Man

Calamateur – Wake_Up_Dead_Man.mp3

I’ve always liked U2. I realise a lot of people think I shouldn’t…..but I do. I even got into them during what many see as they’re most pompous phase – the Joshua Tree and Rattle & Hum era. But I was too young/stupid to see all that stuff and just loved the music.

Pop is seen as one of their worst albums, but I’ve been listening to it again recently and it’s really not that bad, bar 3 or 4 tracks.

Anyway, this is my cover of that album’s last track, Wake Up Dead Man. It’s the last song on my Jesus is for Losers album which, if you haven’t gathered already, you can download for free (including a 9 page digital booklet and artwork) from here:

www.jesusisforlosers.co.uk

The whole album will be up from March 9th, but you can download 8 of the 11 songs on the site just now and pilfer the remaining 3 from this blog.

Jesus is for Losers track 10: Jesus, I

Calamateur – Jesus_I.mp3

My friend Gareth gave me a copy of Zwan’s album not long after it came out a few years ago.

I really liked it, especially the first few tracks, but to hear a song about being persecuted for following Jesus near the end of the album came as a bit of a surprise. I’ve no idea what led Billy Corgan to record this song, which he supposedly found in an old hymn book, but there’s an interesting discussion of it here.

My favourite comment on that page by far is:

“yeah i just don’t like billy no more this album seems too christian… this song is great because of the great drums of jimmy chamberlin and musically is pretty good. but th lyrics are bullcrap”

Genius.

—

As an aside, according to Release International:

“The persecution facing Christians is the largest human rights violation issue in today’s world.

According to the World Evangelical Alliance, over 200 million Christians in at least 60 countries are denied fundamental human rights solely because of their faith.”

Jesus is for Losers track 9: Talitha K

Calamateur – Talitha_K.mp3

Many years ago, there was a very cool band in Glasgow called Talitha K. That’s a picture of their one and only 7″ release above.

At least one member of the band went on to bigger and better things….I have no idea about the rest.

My song is named after that band, but it’s also about a conversation my friend Richard had one year at Greenbelt with Martyn Joseph about not necessarily having to know about something to experience the benefit of it.

Talitha K originally appeared on my Son of Everyone EP, but I’m much happier with this new version.

Jesus is for Losers track 8: Jesus Hands’

Calamateur – Jesus_Hands.mp3

Many years ago I remember hanging out with Craig B – he was a student, while I was just pretending to be one, and we would go to gigs, listen to records and play each other our songs (actually, now I think of it, I only remember playing him one of my songs – what a shy boy I was then).

Craig introduced me to a wealth of new music, much of which has hugely shaped my own musical direction. The most important band he introduced me to at that time was American Music Club, and the solo work of the band’s singer Mark Eitzel. Mercury, San Francisco and Songs of Love Live are still 3 of my favourite ever albums, and the impact they had on me, both musically and personally, was immeasurable.

The song ‘Jesus Hands’, which I’ve done a cover of for my new album,  is from one of American Music Club’s earlier album’s, Everclear, and has some of the saddest lyrics I’ve ever heard.

Jesus is for Losers track 7: Jesus

Calamateur – Jesus.mp3

I’ve uploaded the next two tracks from my new album here:

www.jesusisforlosers.co.uk

The first is a cover of ‘Jesus’ by The Velvet Underground.

When I first started making music with my friend Mark Russell back in 1997, going on to become the band Oldsolar, we listened eagerly to each other’s music collections and borrowed loads of each other’s CD’s.

One of the albums I remember borrowing, and loving, was this The Velvet Underground album. The song Jesus is a wonderfully gentle and simple song – my new take on it is hopefully different enough to warrant existence.

Jesus is for Losers track 6: White Light Unknown

Calamateur – White_Light_Unknown.mp3

I wrote this song years ago, possibly as far back as…hmmm….1998. 10 years – wow, I didn’t realise it was that long ago until I figured it out just there.

The song began it’s life with a completely different chorus which hopefully only 1 or 2 other people will remember. Then, in the summer of 1999, my friend Mark (who I was in the band Oldsolar with) went away for 3 weeks and let me stay in his flat and use his studio equipment. I recorded 6 songs, including White Light Unknown, and then in early 2000 I released my first and only 7″ single, with White Light Unknown as the A-side and Inhabit as the B-side.

White Light Unknown was played by John Peel, Radio 1’s Scottish Evening Session & Beat 106 and got some great reviews. I was thrilled and surprised by the positive reception the single received and I think White Light Unknown is still many people’s favourite Calamateur song (which is both cool and little bit depressing!). Hopefully most folk will think this new version is an improvement on the original.

As for the B-side Inhabit, it recently had fresh life breathed into it when the song’s lyrics were chosen by DUFI to be one of 30 stencillised quotes to be sandblasted into the city streets as part of the current re-development of Inverness city-centre:

Jesus is for Losers track 5: Perfect Moment

Calamateur – Perfect_Moment.mp3

One day in 2005, I decided to try and write and record as much music as I could in about 10 hours. I managed 4 songs in all and Perfect Moment was one of them. It’s a song about disappointment, disillusionment, betrayal and murder; all set to one of the poppiest tunes I think I’ve written. I think I’d been reading this book when I wrote it. The same book that also inspired this song.

Jesus is for Losers track 4: I Don’t Know How to Love Him

Calamateur – I_Don’t_Know_How_to_Love_Him.mp3

Track 4 from my new album is a cover of I Don’t Know How to Love Him, taken from Jesus Christ Superstar and written by Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice.

Just to get something straight, I really don’t like musicals. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, they’re just not my cup of tea unless we’re talking about The Muppets’ Christmas Carol, which of course ranks among one of the best films ever made.

I heard this song mentioned by John Smith once, probably as far back as 1993. He obviously wasn’t a big fan of JCS either but he thought some outside inspiration, other than the obvious (cough) talents of Rice and Lloyd-Webber, must have brought this song into being as it brought so much humanity and honesty to the subject matter. I remembered what he had said when I was gathering together songs for my album and decided to see if I could do something with it. I’m hoping it sounds better than I suspect most people will expect it to….

Jesus is for Losers track 3: Lonely Boy

Calamateur – Lonely_Boy.mp3

I’ve just released tracks 3 and 4 from my new album, Jesus is for Losers.

Track 3 is called Lonely Boy and it’s a brand new Calamateur song you won’t have heard before.

I wrote this song a silly amount of time ago. I already had the idea for this album in my head and had started recording the songs. I had some older songs I wanted to revisit that dealt with the album’s theme, but none that dealt with it explicitly. My good friend Peter Noble challenged me about this and so I knew I had to write another song for the album, though I’m not sure the finished result was quite what he had in mind….

A few weeks later I was at my in-laws’ house in the south of England, nowhere near a guitar or any other music making device, and the words, riff and melody pretty much just arrived while I was sitting quietly in my room. The day before, the vast majority of the essay I wrote for the album artwork came to me fairly quickly as well. It’s funny when things just happen like that, and unfortunately it makes it hard to take credit for it!

Jesus is for Losers

Calamateur – I_Can_Hear_Her_Breathing.mp3
Calamateur – Jesus_is_for_Losers.mp3

This is the artwork for my new album which is out today. You can start to download it here -

www.jesusisforlosers.co.uk

This one’s been a ridiculously long time coming. I had the idea for it probably over 4 years ago when I started learning to play some cover songs that all followed a similar theme (you can read more about this theme in the essay I’ve written for the digital booklet you get with the download). I started recording the songs, played some of them live, found older songs of mine that fitted into the overall concept and soon found I had the rough template for an album on my hands.

I actually thought I’d finished the album 2 years ago (I’m procrastination personified) but listening to it again recently, and having done a lot of recording and producing over the past 2 years, I could hear a lot I wanted to do again – vocals, guitar parts, mixing, etc.

So, I’m a lot happier with it this time around. I’ve still got a little bit of work to do on some of the tracks which is just one of the reasons I’m releasing them 1 or 2 at a time over the next few weeks.

The artwork and digital booklet were designed by MOOSE77 and some of the photos were taken by Fin Macrae. Hannah Clyne, Mark Hilditch and Phil Moir played on the album, and Iain Hutchison at Glo-Worm mastered it. These folks are all hugely talented and I’m incredibly grateful for their help.

Anyway, the album is here: www.jesusisforlosers.co.uk

I hope you enjoy it – if you do, please let other people know about it, be it via word of mouth/email/blog etc. It all helps immensely. And please let me know what you think by emailing or leaving comments on this blog.