Wednesday, September 24, 2008

it comes down to this

It comes down to this was a song written by my brother sometime in the middle of 2008, probably it got to my desk around the end of july 2008 and this track was to follow 3 other previous collaborations between the brothers Thierry/terry.

Accompanying the lyric were some url’s for youtube, which served to highlight how the lyricist perceived the track taking shape, or at least ideas that he thought could assist me in how I put together the music. Stylistic ideas conveyed through the net that could help to offset the notion of words being written in Melbourne Australia and music being written in Beijing china.

The previous three tracks finally titled ‘egg slice suicide’, ‘If you’re not a player (then you’re not in the game” and ‘fall from grace’ had all taken the same pattern of the lyric being sent from Australia and then the music produced offshore and all without any further input from the elder terry. The younger Thierry simply arranged and then wrote and produced and recorded as his whims would take him. It after all had been his style for the better part of a quarter of a century.

‘it comes to this’ though had different origins. Whatever accompanying notes had been sent with the other tracks might not have been picked up on; this time around, however the url’s sent were looked at long before any writing had taken place and in so doing d.sinny blaque, the younger Thierry had a much clearer picture of what c.lawd-bawles, the elder terry might have been thinking of as the lyric was written. From this perspective the very first strands of music were therefore inspired by images from a variety of songs that screened over youtube. By watching the url’s there was already going to be a stylistic departure from what went before and it is this that I write of since from a composition perspective I have found the source elements to have affected my normal process of writing.

The initial reference point was for the soundtrack to the opening of the soprano’s television series, a piece initially written by…………………….. . Interestingly I had always dug this piece of music and had watched all 8 seasons of the of the show. I had heard this piece many times, both digging it and equally inspired by its cadences and rhythmic elements. A second url from british 80’s recording stars, fine young cannibals both reflected a return to the past, but equally an insight into what the elder terry felt might be a good vocal style for lyric he had written.

Several days later in the horrific heat and humidity of a Beijing summer and also severely restricted in movement by an horrendous back injury I had finally gathered some elements into a coherent songesque form. For the beat of the song which would replicate, but not copy the title track of the soprano’s I had used a drum wave sample from my collection of drum wave loops. It featured a syncopated style though at 100bpm it was a little slower than the tv show’s tempo. I wasn’t worried about this since I felt the elements were correct. This beat initially was accompanied by a cadence of E major to D minor and that this was accompanied by a bass line that harmonically was dictated by the cadence in as much as it rhythmically lent itself to the backbeat.

Once I had gotten to this stage of having the “bedding” for the track I could begin to work on the melodic elements of the piece which were to include guitars and vocals and other instrumentation which was not yet defined. My initial take on the vocals was woeful and having come from a reasonably successful period of writing it was alarming for me to know that in reality I was and am a god awful singer. It was tragic and no other word could be used to describe it, but then every song I have written always has an element of frustration related to vocals so I was prepared to accept this as a first take and little more than a guide for what could come later.

While resolved to the notion of “what comes next” may be a process entered into by any composer or engineer at any stage of the recording or compositional stage of a piece of a music I was still vexed by just how bad and how lame my vocal had been. As a direct result of this a few nights later I decided to mess with some different cadences which could allow me to deliver the piece. While staying within the same A minor harmonic key I messed about a bit and on one hot evening finally found a very guitar friendly movement of Am –E7/B-C6add9-Dm7, which would repeat 3 times before resolving on the 4th time to Dm-Dm6-E sus 4- E7. this cadence worked well and allowed me to deliver a much better vocal, which had better vocal control and also a more relaxed phrasing. The only trouble with this was that it was very different from the first time out.

I was left to ponder the differences and two weeks later am still pondering the differences though interestingly all the harmonic and melodic work is being played in the secondary piece of music and then being imported into the first score. This is a strange phenomenon since they have a very different rhythmic foundation, but share the same key and the same tempo.

The other intriguing element though by no means cutting edge is that the guitar, which is my main and most expressive instrument is generating all the melodies for the keys, which might take the form of piano or organ, or synthesizer, so while I write with guitar I am actually composing for multi-layered instrumentation. In fact this is most common amongst multi timbral instrumentalists though it’s sort of a first for me since I normally write on the instrument I am intending to use, e.g. if I am writing for piano I will play on piano and if I am writing for bass or trumpet then I will write on those instruments, however this time I am doing all the writing on the guitar which I hope gives an even richer melodic and harmonic content. A key to assisting here is a plug-in (vst virtual studio technology) called melodyne which is assisting both in vocals and in guitar lines. It’s support is profound since it enables at one level for me to tidy up errant vocals (though not in the case of what’s called a ‘tragi-vocal’) by realigning pitch and at a secondary level it assigns wav files to keyboard nomenclature allowing me to assess the pitch of the melody, which can then be easily transferred to a midi instrument or indeed to an acoustic or analogue instrument such as another guitar or piano or brass etc. this plug in over the past 6 months has changed dramatically the way I go about my work.

Over the last week, and it’s now close to a month since I started this project I have added two layers of guitar and established a lose structure to the piece. Slowly it is beginning to take shape and just yesterday, aug 29 I was able to move into another stage of recording vocals which created structurally a two verse chorus followed by a musical interlude all within 1’30”. This was pleasing since the two guitars served as motifs in their own right, one being very much arabesque and utilizing the two tone movement from F to G# followed by the semitone to A and resolving to a B. this movement in itself has been the key to the sound of this song that everything wants to come home to B, even though the piece is written in A harmonic minor. In case I forget later to comment the arabesque sounding guitar line would ultimately be included and played with a backwards delay to enhance the mystical element of its harmony within the track almost as if replicating the confusion within the character portrayed in the piece.

The second guitar part was a much thicker and richer instrumental component using slide and distortion to put the piece into an overdrive. After a few listens I remain enthused with both my playing and also the positioning within the arrangement of this piece, falling as it does post the first chorus, and serving as a reminder that when needed I can still default to my main instrument as both a writing tool and as a statement of mood within a piece.

At least a week has elapsed. It’s been a tumultuous week regarding my personal life and that this has heavily impacted on what I have been allowed to do on this piece. Fundamentally my studio of the last 4 years has been packed up and I will now have to sojourn for an undefined period of time. With this component of life firmly in place I had no option but to try and finish the song right up until the last moment available. As I type now in early September I have both commenced packing up the studio and as of yesterday have finished the track.

The final stages of recording and rehearsing were heavily affected by the move…yesterday Friday 5 I had 4 hours packing and cleaning the apartment and the office I had used. By around 12 I was done with the work and the place was now more or less ready for the removalists to come in on Monday. The weekend I would be away on working assignment so it all had to be done on Friday. With the time constraints firmly implanted in my imagination I began building the track from it’s under 2 minute content into a fully fledged song.

The key element for the day’s work was settling on a structure and in this area I took a path of least resistance and created an A B structure, eschewing a harmonically rich component of music that in the end might just be contained in an entirely new song. (this was the piece I mentioned earlier that allowed me to produce a better vocal, although I was still able to retain the melodic movement of the vocal, I couldn’t get the cadence into the song, and thus it was left out) So often songs are written as by products of songs currently being worked on and it is this aspect of composing that continues to excite after all these years, and in this case I believe I have written a “neat new track for further down the line” (at time of writing in mid September it now appears this piece of music is being used in an upcoming song)

Once the structure was mapped out I then color coded all my saved data to assemble within the structure. In using Nuendo it was the first time in over two years that I was working without ableton live as my main writing tool. Nuendo has over the years become my main mastering software, and while one can easily write and assemble tracks in it, I find that it is far more useful to me as a mastering suite, since live is just so intuitive and so efficient to work with in the compositional stage. Nuendo’s mastering capabilities are powerful with a delightful audio algorithm alongside very powerful and clear mixing tools that really do turn a dual monitor environment into a virtual studio. I totally love nuendo’s mixing desk (F3 command) and also the individual track inspectors alongside the very powerful automation tools that reside within it’s underbelly.

The color coding effected I was able to piece together all the elements into a linear arrangement that sat at about 3:30, much shorter than my more recent work. This pleased me to some extent since allowing for tails (codas) I was confident that I would get the song out and back home inside 4 minutes. Pop being as pop is one is still dictated to by the requirements of writing in the spirit of the genre, and sure, while indagaddadavida and all it’s laborious 26 minutes might once have been hip, it generally would be considered an exception since pop like fish has a very short retention span, thus whilst not essentially a pop writer I am exposing myself to its market, and have to pay more than lip service to its rules and ministrations.

As mentioned earlier by this stage on the last available day of recording I had around 1’30” of workable material, with just some simple ideas for the chorus “it comes down to this” involving a two part harmony between my voice and the samples I had saved from young singer Maggie zee. I had essential piano riffs and I was confident that they could be woven through a structure to retain an interest and freshness each time they appeared in the track. These pieces were written from a guitar perspective where the wave file was mapped to midi allowing me to input in live on my laptop, so in this respect this track was very much a track that comprised both my desktop and nuendo and ableton live on my laptop. With my lan working well I would just work on either machine and swap rendered files as necessary to fit into the structure on either operating system. (I should point out that the desktop computer had to be completely reformatted in the middle of working on this song and as a result and for an inexplicable reason right now I was unable to get ableton live to install. After several abortive attempts including ableton’s fully programmable demo version I just gave up and opted instead for the two computer split.)

So on this final day with the walls of Jericho crumbling around me I would finalize this piece which had taken over a month of my time and energy. There were in these final moments of “forbidden city studios” some good decisions made, though equally there were some poor ones made. This very aspect alone serves to remind me of the fickleness of producing music, since something can be done that reflects mastery yet so easily and even within the same piece a poor mix

The vocal records took over 2 hours to produce and included several takes alongside rehearsals and was clearly done in sections. With time being so tight it was almost impossible to try to get the whole song together since not only did I have to get the vocals laid down, but also had to get the pitching right which was going to be a struggle for me since I was really singing way out of my usual zone, and had the added obstacle of having to get the semi-tone movement which would occur from time to time. Of course this did prove difficult throughout the afternoon, but with sufficient endeavor I was able to get close enough knowing in fact that I still had melodyne pitch correction software up my sleeve to tidy up where I had missed. I knew though while singing on each official take that I was certainly parking my car somewhere near the ball-park and that it would be a quicker task of tidying up than otherwise could have been the case.

I made a note during this session that if I worked like this more often then it would be very likely that my production would increase dramatically. I can’t recall a session where I had labored so extensively and so efficiently within the last two years. Perhaps not since a song I recorded in 2006 called “pan am man” had I been as prolific, or perhaps even “young been old” which after 2 years of “running around my head” was structured recorded and produced inside a day. Regardless there was a methodical, take no prisoners approach to just getting the piece finished. It had already transgressed a month much longer than any other piece I had worked on and by this final day I had arrived at a feeling that if it wasn’t going to be today, then it wasn’t going to be at all.

With the vocal I already had recorded a prototype chorus where I had combined the samples of Maggie z and put them with a chant of ‘it comes down to this’. At the time of doing I wasn’t even sure where this amalgam would fit into the song, and had little idea that in fact it would become the chorus and indeed the title of the song. The interesting part here is that Maggie had sort of out of the blue approached me to try out for singing. It was just before the Olympic season, but definitely post my back accident and the day she called on over I really wasn’t in any position to sit and play guitar and rehearse her, or run through some hip hop type beats that she had already sent me as a guide to her preferred style.

As I recall we just sat down in the studio, talked for a while and then I said that I had a piece with a slightly different melodic scale that reminded me in parts of a Middle Eastern feel. I remember I set up the microphone and stand and headphones and also gave the pop shield I had crafted from a former lovers stocking that had been left after a tryst. Not sure that she really was comfortable singing into another woman’s stocking despite my reassurances that it had been washed many times! (it worked effectively as a pop shield though) I didn’t have much music to offer her, rather just the sample beat I mentioned earlier, a syncopated bass line and the keyboard spread that was a movement from E to Am. Alongside this I had a lose piano riff and after the two of us fiddling about I decided the quickest way of getting something concrete on this was to just get her to record the piano line. It worked well enough, but the intriguing thing here is that neither she or I had any real idea what would become of this. It took an hour to produce and needed some tidying up with melodyne but in the end it worked well enough to impress me that not only did she have a strong voice but that with coaching and tuition she could be very useful in the studio environment.

The real spark of this work, as is often the case, came after she left and I sat about the studio messing about with different parameters and EQ’s to manufacture a sound that I thought would fit what I wanted. A period of time later, perhaps a week or so I added my vocal line of “it comes down to this” and for the first time on the track became excited about the possibility of having a worthwhile piece of music to send back to the lyricist.

Returning again to the final day some elements of the vocal worried me in that I couldn’t get the right meter regardless of what I did to it. In many cases I rearranged words and took great license on chopping and editing ideas from the writer, decisions that I had to make to get the track coherent. While people have said over the years they think my speaking voice is very nice, I totally loathe it and it was with trepidation that I went down this road again, but in the end I felt the best way to make the piece work was with two narration deliveries, one at the beginning and the other at the end of the guitar solo. I recorded both verses in prose and let the first one go as it was recorded, whilst the second one was chopped a bit and laid up to match beats for some extra dynamic. I particularly liked my utterance “nothing” which was an understatement of the “nothing” that so often resonates from the film “runaway jury”. In runaway jury the line is delivered by gene hackman’s character, a hotshot legal type as he finally realizes he’s under great heat and that the jury he had thought he was buying was in fact going the other way….you’d have to watch the film to get my drift on this.

So the decision taken I then spent time as intimated getting the other vocal parts right to fit in and around the chorus that was recorded earlier. After a couple of hours it was done. I had the elements all done to a level that I knew I could live with but that many of these components were so “mix non friendly” with divergent levels and timbres that were going to make mixing a nightmare. Indeed it was a nightmare, since by the time I had completed the vocal it was already 5pm and I was already tiring from my day’s labor. There hadn’t been a break and I was famished, but sadly the food had all been taken away and the only thing that remained was coffee and some biscuits, which were given a severe buffeting on this day. One advantage was that I was still working in natural light which helped me keep fresh so I was able to push through fatigue and work through the obvious problems of a mix.

The process of a final mix in my nuendo software was made easier by the controls that I have available to me and also be better understanding of the automation tools that are applicable to every track including the master track. At every stage I was easily able to get levels to match what I wanted and also to get balances between the copious information contending to be both heard and vital in the score. Really there were some positives in the mix, for example the strong and effected slide guitar both in the instrumentation break and in the coda. This track which was recorded in an unusual way for me these days, since it didn’t utilize an onboard vst guitar processor rather an external guitar effects unit, being my Vox tonelab processor, was easily manipulated as a wave file. I really went to town with staggered reverbs and delays alongside several EQ settings that enabled me to get this really strong guitar sound that I had been looking for seemingly for ages. For me the guitar became the hook of the song and when I mixed it during the coda with only the female part of the chorus I think I got it right. The interesting aspect of this stage of the mix was that the slide guitar and the vocal were recorded over different cadences, yet, melded as if hand to glove when they were mixed together. I have to say as is clear I think that I was happy with this aspect of the mix, though it wasn’t all a gravy train since there were clear glitches that left me with the worst feeling of all amongst writers and that was ‘the cringe factor”

This is an extract from junkieland’s ‘the forbidden city days”
soon to be published by darktrunk press

Friday, January 25, 2008

das u-boot master and commander (a tale)

herr dreizler

A recent find, which should interest you, considerably......

A very excited G.C.C. archivist, a Mister Clarey Breeze, came across a photo of a relative whom I know you suspected of existing during tumultuous times.

Using the latest technics in histrionic cross reference paradigm splicing and dissecting patterns over a double helix formula and filtering it all very very carefully through a cup of tea, his assistant Mrs Heidi Thomas produced the photograph. The Old Breeze declared it accurate and authentic.

( It's here that the connection fails so the photo of this particularly distinguished and very wet U-boat Captain fails. To describe him as a steely eyed example of teutonic rectitude and rat cunning wouldn't do justice to the woodcut figureen said to be a dead likeness of him and a great pipe holder-[refer googleimages:uboatcapatin].)

Yes, your distant second cousin, through your paternal line is one Capt. D.D.S. von Blaquewasser-Shtiffel, late of Gruptminster Bratwurst, Bavaria.

This photo, taken under studio lights at the time of the Atlantic Campaign we reckon was just a few years before his famous tour( winter '41) with the Uber 1st XI.

The records state he held his bat in his first three innings on tour. Wisden's only naval historian concurs he was responsible for sinking many a career with his notorious sweeps.

However, like other legendary attackers of the ball there came a time. And, in a reccy with his preferred Class nine U-boat on an unspecified longtitude he was bowled shortly after taking the crease for the Norwegian blockade in '42, though not before creating some customery havoc through mid-ships against the Convoys, where at some silly point he spat the dummy and the seawater.

Yet, when on a more stable pitch...............

Legend has it that he partnered many a wassermermaid, particularly one famous encounter with nautical consequences.... Leni Reifinschtal in a stand, a very long one in fact, with no runs but many appeals for LBW. This and other stories of his early and subsequent shorter furloughs do credence to the rustic seaman's motto- "no sea to rough ...etc....to tough"

I hope this helps to patch together the dispirate arms of your distinguished family tree. It's just as well this relative gave his life for the Fatherland because the punative actions by Himmler's Henchmen was exacting a terrible revenge on the august ranks of the patrician classes who had no time for the lunatic corporal and the other Fuchers.

Yours

A Borderline

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Saturday, December 01, 2007

morning in the capital

This glorious morning. Cold. Very cold, don’t for a moment romanticize it. The stellar appearance of a red eastern haze, offset by crystal clear skies and the luminous orb-like moon visible in the western sky scream for a picture, scream out in admonishment my neglect in not packing in any form of camera or video device.

Walking along the narrow street at front of my apartment I could sense the cold, this was immediately apparent as it bit with the ferocity of a rotweiller or a dyke or even worse a rotweiller dyke, perhaps apart from the hyena the most vicious and callous of animals. It bit. ‘nuff said’.

I still hadn’t by this time seen the radiance of the pre dawn giver of life, though the moon was already clearly visible looking up at 10 o’clock, but not one, not two, not even three, but in fact 4 delightful femme’s passed me in the opposite direction, all making their way to the subway about 500 meters behind me; all were obviously making their way to their daily captivity in the office. Dressed in jeans, with knee high boots and with heads wrapped in scarves they were sirens to my own journey. Any one of these I could have stopped for and given away whatever life I have for their heavenly pleasures.

The dream over and again realizing my position in society as little more than the saliva droppings from a dog’s panting mouth I picked up my stride to the nearest taxi rank ahead of my own daily enslavement. As I turned the corner of the apartment blocks opposite my own, gazing westward towards the moonlit morn I found myself imaging the same scene in my native hotchpotch australia, though I couldn’t for the life of me imagine such feminine beauty passing me with such frequency. The starkness of the contrast hit me almost as vividly as did the flash of red on the opposite concrete wall. An atypical red that I couldn’t at first reconcile with my environment. I couldn’t hear any commotion, there weren’t fire-trucks departing from the fire station which I had just walked past and it made no sense, before suddenly the redness enveloped the whole of my visual world with a surging power rendering me as an ant in a world of giants.

The sun was just moments from rising. This was a sexual orgy of heavenly relations, and for the price of forcing myself from slumber earlier than I would like I was a voyeur to their tryst. The flame red flare emanating from the east enveloped the whole heavenly sphere all the way, all the way before dissipating in it’s challenge from the western located moon, defying it’s roll in the play and lingering within the afterglow of lovemaking. It was if the moon were challenging the sun for a position on the stage, defying the director to make a call on just which scene should be offered before that motley audience making it’s way as if mercantilist slaves towards their own gloomy fates.

Morning in the capital
November 26, 2007
7am-7:58am

Thursday, November 08, 2007

ringside in beijing

the fight

The jab seemingly innocuous took him on the right temple, grazing moreso than hitting and more hurtful because of his opponent’s lacing on the underside of the glove rubbing on the side of his head as in anticipation he slightly ducked the targeting offense of his fellow combatant.

An audible grunt from the pressing Hispanic fighter accompanied the blow along with a distinct rise in the level of the audience watching and an unmistakable shrill female exhortation as she herself rode the punch, indeed the fortunes of her preferred fighter.

With only the slightest of signals being sent by his opponent’s eyes and body it was clear that no follow up missive would be delivered and all that was required was to continue with his evasive action, swiveling to the left in a clockwise position and then straightening his body to resume his combat stance.

It was round 7, already in the second half of the 12 round championship fight and until now the former security guard turned boxer had acquitted of himself well in his attempt to wrest the middleweight title of the world. Not inclined to moments of dreamlike anticipation, which he fully understood would appear as the fight progressed, for just a fleeting moment he felt that momentum and fortune were with him tonight.

The impact with which the blow struck sent bolts of pain with after tremors compacting as does the concertinaed bellows of a piano accordion in successive aftershocks. A piercing, stinging ringing in his ears the diffused blurred imagery of the ringside apron officials and reporters along with strobing visuals closer to his field of vision of the Hispanic’s black adidas footwear gave way to a cacophonous roar as quickly sensibility and the realization of what had just happened struggled into the ascendancy of his consciousness. Trailing out at this time were the words of Vinnie Vega, John Travolta’s character from 1994’s Pulp Fiction “so what yer gonna wander the earth like a bum” which rapidly gave way to an urgent voice coming from his corner his patch as it were of the ring.

“you trained to take this shit now get up and suck it up and come back with some” “Five”, and then a slap on the apron followed by “six”, which experience implored him to acknowledge and acknowledge ‘fucking quickly’. Disorientation a fighter’s nemesis presented as does the disbelief from a letter of yet again another failed job application as he got to is feet. A disbelief in the outcome having to give way to a reality and some quick decisions to access; forget and move on or wallow in confusion and finish it now.
The latter wasn’t something he’d worked hard and expended so much energy over the past seven years to befall him tonight; not now, not this way, and not by this guy, who had for the past two years dodged every possible matchmaking arrangement.

“What’s your name” blurted out from the black and white stripe shirted official now standing only inches from his face. He didn’t recall rising to his feet but recalled the count ‘eight’ at the same time as the ringing inside his head subsided beneath an even stronger ringing from outside. Momentarily he felt strong arms embrace him from beside as the words “he’s fucking ok Joe, don’t pussy out, he’s fucking ok…let me get him into shape in the break…don’t fuckin’ do it Joe, you know it’d be wrong” blurted out from nearby.

For a moment everything stopped; the ringing faded along with the dull roar of the crowd and the exhortation of “fuck it Joe” fused into slow motion, grabbing a bite of sound synced to the flickering of the ringside lights and camera flashes from around the ring.

A cold wet sensation brought him back to a semblance of immediacy of consciousness though he wasn’t sure where the words “great ass on the round 8 gal” came from. It took a stinging slap on his face to complete the transition along with the barking of his trainer beseeching him to focus. “We fucking worked for this for two years, so are you gonna quit on me now?....are you? He shook his head trying to make sense of everything before aimlessly uttering “no, no”.

“Who are you” his trainer replied, though this time with just a slight concession to compassion. Through the pain and confusion a wry smile from the edges of his lips formed before he breathed out “the devil of Tasmania, gonna lay some evil on you”. “Tell it to me, don’t parrot the fucking words” and then the whole corner crew including himself chanted in unison “we’re the devils of Tasmania gonna lay some evil on you, gonna beat you and yer army up, and gonna take yer belt too”

“you fuckin’ bewdie mate” he heard from one of the corner men, maybe his cut man Steve, but by now he was more intent on getting back his focus for the upcoming round along with his imagination of why the fuck he was even here in the first place. While all around him seemed normal he didn’t and as seconds ticked by and as his corner men attended their duties he was still trying to push the shit of the knockdown trauma out of his mind.

“I fucking told you about this, but you got stuck. Put whatever shit you are thinking out now, it was his best fucking shot, you took it, so alls you got to do now is not let him do it again and remember that on the swivel and comin’ back up to keep your right hand up and keep covering your jaw”. At the same time he said those words his trainer was also tapping on the right side of his face to emphasize this defensive maneuver. While he could hear the words now almost at normal speed it was the tails of fist images he could still see hitting his trainers jaw that made him wonder just for a moment where the fuck he was.

Whatever his state of mind there was no time to dwell as again his trainer began speaking; “you’re in this big, you done 7 and we got 8 coming up, and your body shots are working so keep that focus. You can see like me that his ribs are as red as....that’s your work, your smarts, and you’re hurting this chicano son of a bitch.

‘This’! He always loved it when his trainer emphasized this word. It made him feel as he knew his cat felt when it purred as he patted its head. “This is what you wanted to do to this bum”, and this was this, the fight, it was what he did, and through a strange fog it was what he was doing here tonight.
“Steve, quick mate give his mouth guard a rinse” he heard before the ’10 seconds’ audible from the time keeper crashed through his trainer’s words. Normally he thought the words were muttered by a timekeeper like his mate Craig at the gym who nightly during training would utter the words ’10 seconds’ to prepare for the upcoming round. Tonight though due to a fight of this magnitude it was prerecorded in surround sound for extra audio pleasure befitting the drama of the occasion.

“Bobby ice his neck again”. “Ta mate, go easy not to rough” as Bobby softened his touch on the base of his neck with the ice patch.
“Steve, where the fuck is the mouthguard, I said rinse mate, not a fucking makeover”
“Ball buster here you go mate”, as he saw Steve hand the guard back to his trainer. His trainer replied with a quick ‘ta’ before once again putting the guard back in his mouth. While all the way conscious things still didn’t seem right and with the guard now back in place he bit into it to get the feel of both it and his jaw into a comfort zone, which normally was one of the little things he always liked about this sport.

“Ok, get up son” his trainer implored. “You ok? Don’t shit me, you ok, or you wanna call it quits”?

Of course he wanted to continue since the stakes were high here, and although not yet fully back to a clarity that would indicate fight ready he knew that to quit now would be shutting the door on all he had worked for. He muttered ‘ok’ and hoped the glare in his eyes conveyed the intensity of the moment more than the words that just spilled from his mouth.

Beyond his trainers shoulder he could see his opponent ina similar engagement with his trainer though there appeared to be more movement than in his own corner. At first he couldn’t reconcile why and then the ringing in his head cold be heard again followed by a sobering embrace from his trainer. The bell kept ringing as he saw his opponent’s mouthguard drop to the floor and a large, broad grin break across his face. He wondered why the Mexican was throwing fists into the air before the words from his trainer conclusively ended the doubt in his mind. Still in the embrace he heard “you gave it your best shot, we’re all proud of you and you’ll be back again at this level. It’s ok son, we’re all with you, but it just wasn’t meant to be tonight”

His trainer uttered more words, but with the pandemonium in the ring due to security guards, the media and other well wishers, they simply fell upon deaf ears. The disappointment of the moment descended upon him and as his consciousness gradually returned the enormity of the failure began gripping him as does an eagle its prey.

t.s.warwick
darktrunk chief boxing columnist

Thursday, November 08, 2007

junkieland's Blog

it comes down to this

das u-boot master and commander (a tale)

morning in the capital

ringside in beijing

ringside in bay jing