The Unscrupulous Fishmongers Daughter

Finally, we finished the lyrics to 'The Unscrupulous Fishmongers Daughter'. It took ages, looking for fishy innuendo and rhymes but it was worth it. Another Nonkey classic.

PC's Are Faeces

Shit! 14 November we spent hours recording the guitar and structuring the song previously known as 'American Tourettes Doctor'. Then, at 11pm we lost the master edit file. Don't ask me how, I'm guessing Nige' wiggled the mouse too furiously, and William F. Gates has in-built obsolescence to CRASHIF Mouse_Wiggle = 'FURIOUS'. Cnut. Willy 'kin Gates if you're reading this, Fu-Q.

We then spent an hour trying to restore the corrupted file.

HOTTER NEWS: Nonkey Brothers Reform

After some negotiations, the The Nonkey Brothers have agreed to reform to complete the new album. Recording night has been moved to Wednesday 8 November 2006.

HOT NEWS: Nonkey Brothers Split

Hot off the press, Peter Nonkey has questioned Nigel Nonkey's commitment to the band. Tuesday 7 November 2006 is a scheduled recording night, but Nigel has decided to out for a beer with work colleagues instead.

The Nonkey Brothers have agreed to go their separate ways.

We're On A Roll

Yeh baby! Now we're on a roll. On Tuesday 12 September 2006 we recorded the guitar parts for 'I Table A Motion' and to 'Wrong Place in Cyberspace'. Once again, my guitar virtuosity triumphed! The Funky Guitar Jedi returns.

One Chord Pony

What Nige' fails to understand, of course, is that where it takes lesser guitarist several chords to capture the emotive essence of a song, I can do it in one. Forget Scotty Moores jazz-tinged rock 'n' roll strummings or Jimi Hendrix's wild-ass noodlings and Steve Jones three-chord thrashes. If you are as good as me, one chord is all you need. And my playing ain't 'out of time'; it's called 'swing'. I got 'swing' by the sackful. I'm the original swinger.

I will admit one thing...

...Peter is an extraordinary guitarist. I know that sounds weird coming from me, I'm usually putting him down, slagging him off or otherwise trying to pump up my ego whilst deflating his. But when it comes to mastery of his chosen instrument, Peter is second to none. In all honesty, it's a true delight to watch him play. The way he carefully but sensually lifts his strat up onto his lap, like a delicate lover. The way he tunes it's strings, gently plucking and twisting as if beginning the musical foreplay. The way he grips the maple neck, firmly but sensually, as if to show his baby that he is in charge, but that he wants nothing more than for her to sing with delight. And then he slowly turns the volume and tone controls, engages the acoustic simulator, flicks the pick-up selector whilst positioning his fingers and then down, down comes the plectrum, it hits the first string perfectly and continues on, a chord begins to swell and by the end of the stroke the sweetest most beautiful symbiotic combination of tones rings out. The hair on the back of my neck rises, my eyes sting with the emotion, the shear beauty of the moment is breath taking. And then it is over. I stop the recording and that single perfect chord is captured forever in millions of ones and zeroes.

And there's the problem right there, one chord, one f#'king chord, that's all he can bloody play and guess who has to w#nking-well cut, paste and pitch shift that chord into a whole bloody song, yep, you've guest it, muggins here. He can't even play the damn thing in time, I have to manually correct that too! Sheesh, what a tosser.

Having said that, after I had worked my digital wizardry on Peter's chord Big Naturals History Museum is actually starting to sound pretty good. If I can be arsed I might upload a little snippit for you to listen to. No vox yet I'm afraid.

I Am The Funky Guitar Jedi

Yo, Nonkster! Finally we got down to the best part of the Nonkey recording process; recording my guitar parts. The song ain't worth a sh*t until I've sprinkled my magic funk dust over it. Then, it comes to life. I just plug my funky Fender Stratocaster into my funky Boss Acoustic Simulator, take the output to the PC and when Nige' says 'Funk it baby!' Funkmagic comes from my fingers. Listen out for the funky riff on the opening of 'Big Naturals History Museum'. I am the Funky Guitar Jedi. Freak out.

After the Hiatus

Hey...yeh...we're still alive. Sorry about that little break in communications. The creative juices dried up and when you're constipated the worse thing you can do it force it; just ask Nige' (his constant creative constipation has resulted in many-a stiff-shit song remember 'Willy Poppin' anyone?)

After the classic 'Special Glue' song we've taken a bit of time to gather our thoughts, review our work in progress and have a holiday. The good new is that we start recording the guitars and vocal parts for the songs next week. Tuesday, 5 Sept. 2006. My birthday! I'll be forty-bleedin'-two. Yeysuz. I started the Nonkeys when I was a young whippy-snappy twenty-one year old!

How times change. I guess that's why we find it increasingly difficult to write funny lyrics; we just can't write songs about the things we used to write songs about. 'I Want To Caress Your Creamy White Breasts' makes you titter when you're 21, but if we sang it now we'd just be accused of being dirty-old men. Which actually, we are, so maybe it doesn't matter. I like young firm white breasts. Nothing under-age, you understand. Just plump, flubbery, jiggly juggles. Yummy. Oooo.

Special Glue

So, here we are again. Pete and I back to blogging. Actually we're sitting together at the keyboard right now so this is a mutual blog. We've just finished the words and music to a brand new song called "Special Glue". It's all about a guy who exploits the glue-like properties of his...er....love secretions. Not sure there is much else I should say...oh... apart from the fact that it involves 18 nuns and a broken rolling pin.

Uma Thurmans Pallumpas

She's kind of funny looking, not your natural beauty,
she looks great in tight jeans, but she'd look better covered in my juicies.

Mongos Bongos

He's got an extra 21st chromosome
makes him dribble, and rock and moan
He suffers a degree of cognitive debility
but demonstrates a modicome of rhythmic ability

Wherever he goes his bongos with him
and everyone loves Mongos bongo riddim

Caught Up In Da Boollax

Sorry folks for not updating da big log lately, we've been caught up in da boollax.

As you recollect I wrote a song called 'Would You Like A Smack In the Mouth' which Nige' dumbed-down to 'Would You Like a Punch In The Face' to avoid any drug connotation. Well, that done, we set out to program the music. We found a superb Pasa Doble song on the internet, and we've spent a hairy mamouth balloon-busting 4 weeks re-programming the booger just to get it to match the melody. It sounds great, but it's STILL not finished, and in a rush to comlplete it Nige' has suggested he raps the hook line /chorus. It makes me laugh but it's turned what could've been a classic sing-along into what we call a 'stocking filler' (ie a song that we'll record for the album but will never see the light of day again).

So I think we should drop the Pasa Doble idea (after 4 weeks work) and go back to a more traditional guitar/drums/bass song. Tonight, I take the proposal to my writing partner. I will let you know how it goes.

Ooo, gotta shit. Laterz.

Foresight IS a wonderful thing

So Nige' scoffs, because I said I'd like the power of 'foresight'. Yeh, I could've said I'd like to be X-Ray Man so I can see girlies nawks through their lacies. I could've said I'd like to be Cumslinger Man so I could shoot crims with my high powered blue-veined custard chucker. But I didn't. I said I'd like to have the power of foresight. Surely an equally cool superpower?

Surely, If Nige' had foresight he would NEVER have taken the life-paths he has. Heh?

Foresight is a wonderful thing

"If you had a super power, what would it be and why?"

This is a classic psyche analysis question. Not being a psychologist I have absolutely no clue how one would accurately interpret a subject's answer. But what I do know is that normal people will all say "The ability to fly" and "Coz it would be a right laugh". People who are just beginning the short journey to noodleland, and hence have the potential to be saved, might say "The ability to shoot web" (ref. Spiderman) and "Coz it would be a right laugh". Any other response and I'm afraid you're in for a long stay at Hotel Binlooney.

Now, you may wonder why the heck I am telling you all this? Well, Peter recently had a psyche test, and in the test he was asked this classic question "If you had a super power, what would it be and why?". And do you know what he said? Go on, take a guess....I'll wait....nope, not that, although there is a small land-locked state in Madagascar where that is actually legal...go on try again....nope...he didn't say that either, not even for comedy effect, and the doctor doing the test was female so that may have been inappropriate. OK, you are never going to guess, so I'll have to tell you. He said......"Foresight".

(cue tumbleweed and the sound of gentle wind)

I didn't even hear why he said this coz I think I may have fallen asleep. It was such a DULL answer. DULL DULL DULL. I'm going to treat this as a short transient phase in Peter's life. I have to. I'm not even going to begin to consider what this response might infer regarding Peter's mental state, apart from perhaps that he didn't have one.

Anyway, I think he's OK now. His idea about nailing rubber castings of ladies chesty-bumps at waist height (see previous blog and associated song idea) seems to suggest to me that he is back in the land of normal. But, I will be monitoring this situation....

It's started raining again

Metaphorically of course. Yep, so what, so freakin' what, we had a short "ideas drought", it happens to the best of us. And since Peter insisted on banning the use of my hose pipe (which I usually use to shower him with inspiration when I'm feeling a bit artistically frustrated or he's annoying me) what's a guy to do. So, we sat and festered in dried up puddles of creativity for nearly 2 weeks.

Then suddenly, on Monday night, the thunder clapped, the heavens opened and a torrential downpour of sidesplitting comedy rain soaked us through (am I pushing this analogy a little to hard?).

Peter's "big naturals" idea actually turned into one wickedly funny song called "The Big Naturals History Museum". I'm not even gonna try to describe it, you'll just have to wait, but this is a good one!

New Album Hits the Skids

Another song writing Monday evening came and went. No fervent tappety-tap of computer keyboard, not guffawing at our own genius, no marvelling at how we managed to shoe-horn obscure words into an impossible rhyme.

The fertile minds that once bore Nonkey fruit have dried up. We are in the midst of a comedy drought. Not since 1976 have we faced such hardship. If this continues we will need to install stand-pipes.

For 3 hours we sat there, in the music room, staring at each other. All Nige' could come up with was a idea to write a song called 'You Are Shit'. I had an idea to write a song about 'Big Naturals'. We laughed at the thought of a song called 'Big Naturals History Museum'. And that was it. Total waste of time. We need inspiration. Anyone?

Nonkey Songwriting Technique Part 3 - DRUMS

So, we've (I've) written lyrics to 'I Table A Motion', and Nige' has tweeked them (ie removed some of the words cos he thinks it's a physical impossibility to get all of the syllables to scan - where as I think he's just lazy).

We've got the formula (Key to The Safe) * (Catchy + Happy) * p = NONKEY CLASSIC
Where p is the special factor, 'Peter Magic'.

We already know the Key to The Safe is going to be 'A'. We've devised a happy major chord progression of 'E', 'A', 'D' (and we've added a bit of spice to the D Chord by leaving one finger off and playing an 'E' note). And we've decided on a Ska-style song.

Next we need to lay down the drum track. We could get a drummer in, but they never keep perfect time. So we program the track via midi, beat by beat in Tracktion. OR we find a previously programmed, like-style midi song on the Internet and use the drum sequence from that. For this song we took 'Baggy Trousers' by Madness as the basis for the drum sequence. We lifted a short 2 bar section to give us a basic bass drum, snare drum, hi-hat sequence to provide is with our drum template.

As Sweet As My Come. To be continued.

Isn't Spam A Wonderful Thing?

Hey, I'm a lucky geezer, ain't I? It's amazing how many emails I get from people I don't know -- and they're all offering me amazing things; Knock down prices on Viagra and dirt cheap penis enlargement pills -- their market research is amazing! The only way they'd know I have a small, flacid dick would be if they'd surveryed my old girlfriends. Smart people.

But the best emails have to be from Mister Umbongo in Nigeria. His last dying wish seems to be for me to have the small fortune he's accumulated legitimately though accountancy fraud. Come on, how could anybody refuse such a wonderful opportunity? And I've been chosen for my trustworthiness and for my closeness to Godliness. Who has Mr Umbongo been speaking to to know I'm such an upstanding pillar of the community?

Anyway, these great unsolicited offers inspired the new Nonkey song 'Switch off Your Spam Filters'. Great song, great spam.

Keep diggin' the Nonkeys!

C'mon Nige' Where's Ya Classic?

OK, gang, here's the rub. We've written the lyrics for at least 50% of the songs for the new 2006 album and Nige' has only come up with one of those songs. Sure, he's added his special sauce to my lyrics, but the only original idea he's had is 'Lady Lemonade'. So, I would just like to remind him (and everyone else) exactly how good a song writer he is, when he's in the zone. Here are the lyrics to 'Darren McTangles Turnips'. Oh, Nige', those were the days. Please, please, please get in the zone. You can't rely on me to carry you.


I grow turnips in me wee allotment
Situated in the Forth of Firth of Fife of Scotland.
All the bonnie lassies come from miles around
Just to see me turnips growing in the ground.

You take the high road and I'll take the low road
And I'll be Scotland afore yee.
I'll take the high road and you take the low road
And we'll have turnip soup for tea.

diddley idley diddley idley
diddley idley diddley idley
diddley idley diddley idley
diddley idley diddley oh

Two wee lassies, I think that they were foreign
Were givin' me a funny look as I fumbled with me sporran.
I felt a little shameful I felt a little guilt
When I pulled a 2 pound turnip from beneath me kilt.

You take the high road and I'll take the low road
And I'll be Scotland afore yee.
I'll take the high road and you take the low road
And we'll have turnip soup for tea.

diddley idley ...