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Millard took the guitar, walked into Immys booth and spent the rest of the day just abusing Immys poor 1963 Goya Classical Guitar. He beat the shit out of the poor sad thing. Now it refuses to play anything but whiny ballads (which... we have plenty of). Young David Arthur Immerglck brought this song in from our friend Coby. I knew Coby because his brother Matt directed the indie film Ropewalk and we recorded some songs for it a few years back. I didnt realize Immy even knew Coby but he claims theyve played together for the past 4yrs (could be true - Immys very mysterious that way...like if Rasputin loved sushi & playedguitar). I always dug Cobys writing but Hospital floored me. When I heard it (and when we recorded it as well) I was in the worst part of 7 months of horrific drug withdrawals as I weaned myself off a number of prescription psychiatric meds. Theres no drug problem; it was just some medications prescribed me that the docs no longer wanted me to take. Nonetheless, there were a lot of them, some were very powerful and, as it turned out, rather unpleasantly addictive. During the worst of it, in June 2011, we were in the studio and I couldnt stop twitching & shaking. I shook so much I pulled a muscle in my shoulder. I was insanely focused and did some of the best arrangements of my life (see this song and Like Teenage Gravity) but you can freaking hear me physically vibrating around the room, especially on (of all songs) this one with the line Theres some pills that I shouldnt take (cue dry hacking laughter). Its probably best summed up by Immy, writing to me with some comments on all the mixes: My favorite trip on the whole batch? Your insane natural vibrato on the word TREA-EA-EA-EATMENT in Hospital -absolutely freaky...
Meet On The Ledge? Ive been playing this song one way or another since the mid 80s. Fairport Convention was a mythical band from the dim past that a lot of bands in the vibrant San Francisco underground of the 80s viewed with awed reverence. I believe Mick Freeman (drummer for contemporary scenestersX-tal) passed me my first copy of Fairports classic Liege And Lief, with a conspiratorial you oughta check these guys out. I dove deep and subsequently often found myself sitting in with fellow music freak Duritz preCrows band on a raucous version of Matty Groves, arrangement lifted shamelessly from the very same album. Bizarrely, a couple of years later, I found myself label mates with a later incarnation of Fairport Convention. Theyd been signed to Rough Trade Records, where I was ensconced with both The Ophelias and Monks Of Doom, and tangentially Camper Van Beethoven. One fine day the fabled Fairport came to play a rare show at SFs Great American Music Hall. Jonathan Segel (Campers violinist) and I went on a double date with a couple of hotties from the Rough Trade office to go meet the legends in their natural environs. We got to the club and were quickly ushered downstairs to the backstage rooms, which by this time had been converted to a proper bucket o blood backwoods British pub bottles flying everywhere, fiddle tunes echoing around the stairwell, a couple of guys fighting in the hallthese guys were SERIOUSLY drinking and carousing like it was the last night on earth. We spotted the bass player Dave Pegg through the smoke and rushed over likefawning teenyboppers to pick his brain about classic Fairport records, but the balding and jovial Pegg just wanted to offer us drinks and talk about our long hair (Jonathan and I both had waist length manes at the time) -- I LOVE your hair!!! I used to have THAT!!! I wish I still could -- and regale us with death-defying tales of touring with Led Zeppelin. Needless to say, we werent complaining! Finally they got on stage and played an extremely inebriated set that threatened to capsize at any moment but was saved from disaster at the last minute by a breathtaking version of Meet On The Ledge...which has been lodged permanently in my brain ever sinceI scurried home and dutifully relearned it, keeping it in the oeuvre on and off for decadesI actually learned Meet On The Ledge from a bootleg tape of a solo Richard Thompson gig, very stripped down, but the version we do now is based on the original arrangement from Fairports What We Did On Our Holidays album, which my cohort (and fellow music freak) Mr. Duritz favors good stuff! Yes, Mr. Immerglck, it certainly is.
(sigh) Its gonna be what I remember too (ugh) even though the whole bands trip on the song was something to witness. Immy & Jim got fused into Millards pounding acoustic and, when I suggested an arrangement based around this specific set of crashes by the band in & out of the rhythm threesomes groove, you could tell Dan had been salivating over what Millard was doing to that acoustic because he tried to tear a very nonmelodic hole in his amp with his electric. Then Dave found this really pretty melody and Charlie added, of all things, strings (?). Its the weirdest freaking song. Hopefully theres no film.
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