First new original in a year - and it's in fucking German.

[Bubba]

Hi rebels. I've been in a bunker for most of the year, but I'm poking my nose out and sniffing the air. Those of you who know me will be aware that my nerves have been pretty shot for a while.

Any road up, some of you will know I've been teaching myself German for a couple of years and running quite a large Clash fan group on Facebook. I got to know a German bloke called Fred on there, who's into punk generally. His English is not good and he's not judgemental about my faulty Deutsch, so it's been great to share thoughts with him about stuff and practice my Kraut.

I asked him if he'd ever written lyrics, as he's a bit political and wound up about the situation in Europe with Brexit and the 'Rona, and he had a go. I've written a classic punk-style tune to go with them and actually sung the the thing myself. Fred loves it and says that my English accent is "Sehr Geil".

How VERY dare you, Fred . There is no possibility I have a noticable English accent, I've worked too hard on my pronunciation!.

This is about two thirds done and not properly mixed. It has a placeholder drum machine beat, while the Loin Fruit records me some real drums. It needs a couple of guitar breaks, too.

Eigentlich Nicht.mp3

First mix with real drums

Eigentlich Nicht.mp3

German Lyric:

Nicht schöne,

nicht neue,

Nichtwelt

Wo die lautesten Recht haben

Die lautesten haben recht ,

Schlecht!
_______

Laßt uns mal demonstrieren

Gegen Fakten rebellieren

Euch zeigen, wer wir wirklich sind

Die Erwachten, auf dem rechten Auge blind
____________

Wir machen jetzt auch ne Revolution

Wie die anderen 89 schon Ja,

so wollt ihr euch doch sehen

Laßt eure Fahnen wehen
_______________

Dem Orangen wurde der Sieg gestohlen

Ständig nur Phrasen, leere Parolen

Aber so war es schon immer

Die Masse folgt dem größten Spinner

My English version, which is not a perfectly exact translation. You have to make compromises to keep the sense yet preserve some rhyme and scansion.:

Not beautiful ,

Not novel ,

Non-world

Where the loudest get the rights

And the loudest are the Right

Shite!


Let's begin our demonstration

Foment our anti-fact rebellion

Show you all where our loyalties lie

Woke as fuck, but blind in the right eye.


We’re starting our own revolution

Like the one in 89, YEAH!

And you're surely going to see

When our banners are waving free


The Orange one had his victory stolen

Incessant sound bites, Empty slogans

Though it's always been the same

The masses tend to follow the most insane.

Thanks for any and all comments.

[Lt. Bob]

that's pretty cool man ....... I'm toying with the idea of learning Spanish and it's not easy so props to ya' on the german thing .

Song is great actually and even this rough mix sounds good to my ears ..... nice playing too.
look forward to the final product ..... if it's better than this it's gonna be awesome!

[Greg_L]

I like it. I don't think German is capable of not sounding angry or irritated so it fits the song style very well.

Guitars and bass sound good. My only critique would be the length. I think it's unnecessarily longer than it needs to be. Maybe some lead breaks will help bridge the sections together better. But as it stands IMO it's a great 2.5 minute punk rock song that kind of gets monotonous when you stretch it to 4 minutes.

And for what it's worth, your German sounds good to me. I can't tell that it's it's an English bloke singing in German.

[CeeBee]

I saw a bit of the AFD Parteientag om tele, that would fit nicely in that mob.
Nice tune though.

[Bubba]

that's pretty cool man ....... I'm toying with the idea of learning Spanish and it's not easy so props to ya' on the german thing .

Song is great actually and even this rough mix sounds good to my ears ..... nice playing too.
look forward to the final product ..... if it's better than this it's gonna be awesome!

Many thanks, Bob. I'm pretty happy with the sound on the cans, particularly the bass. It's my '1978 P bass into the JVM actually. No sims. It's a beast.

Give the Spanish a go, I don't think you'll regret it. Start with Duolingo on your phone - it's fun!

I like it. I don't think German is capable of not sounding angry or irritated so it fits the song style very well.

Guitars and bass sound good. My only critique would be the length. I think it's unnecessarily longer than it needs to be. Maybe some lead breaks will help bridge the sections together better. But as it stands IMO it's a great 2.5 minute punk rock song that kind of gets monotonous when you stretch it to 4 minutes.

And for what it's worth, your German sounds good to me. I can't tell that it's it's an English bloke singing in German.

Thanks Greg. You are echoing my own thoughts there. It's one middle 8 too long I think, so I'm going to edit it down. The ending could be shorter too, even with a guitar break.

I think I'm going to do the English version as well.

[JD01]

Looking forward to hearing the final version now, mate.
You probably don't need any english version - it works well in German.

[Greg_L]

Thanks Greg. You are echoing my own thoughts there. It's one middle 8 too long I think, so I'm going to edit it down. The ending could be shorter too, even with a guitar break.

I think I'm going to do the English version as well.

Yeah exactly. I think if you can get it down to around 3-3.5 minutes you'd be golden.

[Bubba]

I saw a bit of the AFD Parteientag om tele, that would fit nicely in that mob.
Nice tune though.

Cheers CeeBee. Querdenkers, eh? Who would've thought it.

[CeeBee]

Eher Nazis, die neuer Rechts. UKIP in Jackboots

[TripleM]

I think it sounds great. Can't understand the singer, but the vocal sound is great. Channel your inner Mick Jones.

Love the whole thing all around. I look forward to the finished version.

[Armistice]

Don't mention the war...

Sounds good Bubba. I might have suggested it go up a tone in your register, but too late for that now. Sounds pretty good as it is though.

Eins, zwei, drei, vier...

[Bubba]

Don't mention the war...

Sounds good Bubba. I might have suggested it go up a tone in your register, but too late for that now. Sounds pretty good as it is though.

Wins, zwei, drei, vier...

Cheers, Armi. Yes, it's always hard losing some of one's range. I used to be able to easily reach D below low E (on the bass guitar) but that's gone. Not singing for 6 months doesn't help either, I started to lose my voice really quickly during tracking. I will probably do some re-tracking although I don't think I could improve the bass!

[rayc]

It's cool...nothing to add as everyone has summed it nicely. Look forward to the Frankophile version.

[vomitHatSteve]

Nice. It sounds pretty cool.

Obviously, the placeholder drums aren't great.

The other nit I'm noticing is that the guitars seem to have a lot more room on them than the rest of the instruments. Is that added later or printed on the track? Maybe match the vocals to that?

[Bubba]

Nice. It sounds pretty cool.

Obviously, the placeholder drums aren't great.

The other nit I'm noticing is that the guitars seem to have a lot more room on them than the rest of the instruments. Is that added later or printed on the track? Maybe match the vocals to that?

Hi Steve. Thanks. One of the guitars has some room and some faint slapback on it, similar to the vocal. The other two just have some room added to them on a reverb buss, so not printed anywhere. The unbalanced effect is because there is nothing but a tad of Slate Drums proprietary room sound on the drums. The kit style is called "Dry and Tight", which probably explains a lot. It's literally just there to play along to and I've made no attempt to get it to sit with the other instruments seeing as it would all be wasted effort when the drum tracks turn up!

[WhiskeyJack]

and now for something completely different!

Jeeze welcome back Bubbs so good to hear something from you. Quite the undertaking there! that is fantastic. I think i like this more than I like your German cooking show on youtube. This is very very cool. the bass tone i think is my most favorite thing about this! that is perfect for me. I may have to pick your brain about that sometime. I might echo Greg a bit that it is a tad long. I want to say there is something missing in the lower end of the spectrum but that might only be the canned place holder drums? It might get gooder when the lad get's his drums in there?

Ok and another thing that leapt out at me was i sort of lose you in the mix on the first utterance of this line "Wo die lautesten Recht haben" that Recht word just sort of flops out of the mix. I want to say it is maybe you trying to get the pronunciation right and it might be an unnatural tongue movement for an Englishman maybe? German just sounds so alien to me hahah. regardless of the cause that word does flop out. It was fine in some of the repeated lines?

Maybe that one instance could be corrected with some more comp and automation or enveloping rather than retracking?

[Bubba]

and now for something completely different!

Jeeze welcome back Bubbs so good to hear something from you. Quite the undertaking there! that is fantastic. I think i like this more than I like your German cooking show on youtube. This is very very cool. the bass tone i think is my most favorite thing about this! that is perfect for me. I may have to pick your brain about that sometime. I might echo Greg a bit that it is a tad long. I want to say there is something missing in the lower end of the spectrum but that might only be the canned place holder drums? It might get gooder when the lad get's his drums in there?

Ok and another thing that leapt out at me was i sort of lose you in the mix on the first utterance of this line "Wo die lautesten Recht haben" that Recht word just sort of flops out of the mix. I want to say it is maybe you trying to get the pronunciation right and it might be an unnatural tongue movement for an Englishman maybe? German just sounds so alien to me hahah. regardless of the cause that word does flop out. It was fine in some of the repeated lines?

Maybe that one instance could be corrected with some more comp and automation or enveloping rather than retracking?

Hi WJ. Yes, I've been away.

The bass is my favourite thing on it, too . It is the perfect bass sound for this type of music. I mentioned earlier that it is the 1978 P-bass that I bought last year, which was my Holy Grail bass. It just has "something". Maybe it's the extremely heavy ash body combined with the maple neck, maybe the pickups have an effect but they look pretty nondescript. They are actually Fender pickups of the right vintage, though. I just plugged it into the crunch channel of my JVM, green mode with about half gain and blazed away with a pick. I compressed a bit on the way in, and on the track. It's just there.

You're perfectly right about the odd word getting lost. In fact the whole vocal is a bit too low but there are flubbed words as well. Similarly with the word "SCHLECHT" shouted at the end of the first two verses. The first one on the lead vocal is really weak. The backup doubles have the word pronounced a LOT clearer. And I was losing my voice really quickly so there will definitely be some retracking to do. The German "rubbed" R is pronounced at the back of the throat with the back of the tongue and it's notoriously the hardest consonant for non-Germans to pronounce. I'm actually not bad at it but there are occasions where I go for it and it just doesn't work! Nothing for it but to re-track.

I've already edited the song down to 3:30 which I think will be fine when I add the lead breaks.

And you're right again, about the low end. when I get the beefy kick drum in and some nice tom fills it should round out nicely.

[itsnotkcearl]

Love it, love the sentiment...and one of the few languages I have a little understanding of.

[Bubba]

Love it, love the sentiment...and one of the few languages I have a little understanding of.

Thanks Keith. I wasn't aware you had a little German.

You did tell me once that your Grandad died in a German prisoner of war camp. Admittedly, when he fell out of his watchtower.

[itsnotkcearl]

Dear old Grandpa Helmut