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Lonely Joe Parker – Exile’s Sketches

Lonely Joe Parker – Exile’s Sketches Artwork

Exile's Sketches

Self Released May 2008

Tracklist

  1. Intro
  2. Spanish Girls
  3. Love U Baby
  4. Caught In A Trap
  5. Charly
  6. Davy Crockett
  7. Ah Didn't Try
  8. Introductions
  9. London Streets
  10. Not That Good
  11. Cocaine
  12. ...Ever
  13. How 2 Make Rock And Roll Songs
  14. Walking Down Streets
  15. Sorry Lover
  16. Surprises
  17. Aim For The End
  18. Torture
  19. Slurry Jamaica Rum Nite
  20. Bedroom
  21. Bee Stings
  22. Cowboy Jam
  23. Not Bjork
  24. More Swing
  25. Really Not Bjork
  26. Princesses
  27. Some Days Are Different
  28. Space-Meh-Bones
  29. Concrete Gypsies
  30. _MCS
  31. _OP
  32. _R
  33. _r
  34. _T
  35. _C
  36. _E
  37. _D
  38. _MR. E
  39. _MJ
  40. Bee Stings
  41. Number Nine
  42. Goin Out
  43. No Sex
  44. Mary Rose
  45. Advertising
  46. Fat Kids
  47. Jim's Not Gonna Fix It
  48. 1º Outside
  49. Town Hall Blues-Slow
  50. Town Hall Blues-Fast
  51. When Ur At School
  52. Power Song (Backing)
  53. Big Car Small Cock (Backing)
  54. Love Jugs-Live
  55. Kleptoromantic-Live
  56. Bee Stings-Live
  57. A
  58. Deep
  59. Opinion (2Trk)
  60. Coffee
  61. Dublin Girl
  62. Robbies' Reins
  63. Hake
  64. Buttercup
  65. Opinion
  66. Points
  67. Kleptoromantic
  68. While
  69. Boom
  70. Toot!
  71. Drunk and Disorderly
  72. Got Home Drunk
  73. Shanty
  74. Queasy
  75. Bitter River
  76. Fishwife
  77. Arcs
  78. Scars
  79. Peacemaker
  80. Raining
  81. Piano 2
  82. Piano 1
  83. Great Coat
  84. Outro

Exile's Sketches

Ltd. CD (run of 88)

Joe Explains:

In the summer of 2008 (while I should have been in the death throes of my PhD thesis), I collated most of my recorded musical output to that date.

Weighing in at 88 tracks, this collection of archive tracks, demos, live material and unreleased studio recordings came in boutique (read: hand-assembled and really fiddly) packaging. I made a run of, yes, 88 copies, initially each 7-disc sets. After about five of these monsters at CD-quality, I switched to a single disc per copy with tracks as 320 kb MP3s (burning 7 CDs per copy by hand being a huge pain in the arse.) The inlay was also pretty special – handwritten, I spent a couple of days laying and re-laying it out before I was happy with it. The power of PhD procrastination, hey?

The tracks span the period 2003-2008, with tracks being roughly split chronologically over discs. The first disc covers early songs written as a student in London, mainly (of course) being about girls’n’stuff. These mainly fall into forgettable 3-chord pop ditties lile ‘Spanish Girls‘ or more interesting constructions like ‘Slurry Jamaica Rum Night‘ – which I like for their naivete. I gave a lot of these tracks out at open mic nights and the like, usually with art by Liz Moores and the title ‘All My Friends Wear Stetsons‘, or something similar.

Next up, the ‘Basement Songs‘ were recorded in my first year as a grad student in Oxford, mainly with my mates Ben and Finn, who lived in the building next door. Drinking wine late at night was de rigeur for them as Oxford arts undergrads. It had a worse effect on me and these are mainly pretty hopeless songs (as in, both rubbish and depressing).

Exiles Sketches

Disc Three is ‘Ten Friends‘ in its entirety, the demo disc that ended up turning into – with friends from Moneytree, The Beaux Hardts and Jimi Ray – The Mega Hairy Men and later The Power. The fourth disc was also released elsewhere, as the Power’s EP ‘Bee Stings’. Here it was also packaged with the vaguely Nick Cave-esque murder ballad ‘Mary Rose’, which was removed from the EP tracklisting prior to release. A shame as it was the best song on there, though a poor recording.

More tracks from The Power make up Disc Five, this time in the form of unreleased studio tracks (finished and unfinished) as well as live sets from the Access Festival (a 4000+ open-air fundraiser held in Southampton in 2007) and the Beaux Hardts’ leaving show at The Talking Heads in September 2007. After they left, the Power effectively dissolved despite a few ill-fated attempts to revive it with a different lineup. Songs like ‘Buttercup‘ and ‘Points / Quiet‘ are still in my live set today, however. The most finished tracks make up Disc Six, the ‘Do This’ EP which was – heheheh – never actually ‘done’.

Finally, Disc Seven consisted entirely of new works and demos from Jan – April 2008, after the van I was living in got stolen and I had to move into accommodation. I tend to write in busts and this was a great example of that – for a few months I averaged about three songs a week. Also, I was trying to pull a girl, which always helps get the creativity flowing a bit…