Often Mickey will chuck me out of the garage (studio). I get bored quite easily and when he is busy checking the triple resonance loop of an equated reverb dynamic echo thruster (or something like that, I don’t tend to pay attention) for 2 HOURS I will start fiddling with anything I can find.
Unluckily for Mickey the garage is full of instruments and so he often bites his lip for a bit before telling me to 0121do-one. So, I trudge around the back of his house, trying to avoid his carpet of a next door neighbour, go in the kitchen and have a cup of tea – if I can get his induction hob to work (who has these?!?!? What’s wrong with BRITISH GAS FOR BRITISH PEOPLE—oh shit, I let the veneer slip there..).

Once I’ve got my tea I’ll usually find a quiet corner, slip half a bottle of vodka into my tea and cry myself to sleep at the thought that we’ve never headlined arenas or been to a sauna with Sting (bucket list, #2 after swim with dolphins/Bono) BUT on some particular days I’ll pick up a guitar and have a strum…

That’s how Baywatch came about – I must have been in a good mood as it is quite a positive song.. Mickey had left an old guitar lying about (it’s got quite a big sound, so lends itself to strumming rather than picking) and I was really going for it, trying to evoke who knows what, and I started singing this line about “watching television, Baywatch should’ve taught me better than that”. The words didn’t really fit and clattered together but I really like it – it was fun to sing and I thought it was a really good image.

Mickey came in half way through a chorus and was like, what’s that? We pretty much demo’d it straight away… I played Mickey’s son’s toy drum kit, which actually songs pretty good – we kept some of it for the final recording…

Most of the words for the verses came quite easily – there is quite a melodic contrast naturally and the chorus line is so grand in intention that the job of the verses seemed obvious – to fill in a bit of the detail about why I was singing about Baywatch…

Initially the chorus evoked a lot of memories of 90s evening TV – boundless energy, anything is possible, in your face nonsense a lot of the time, but with a sinister edge… pretty similar to now in lots of ways, just transported for the next generation of pliable young minds… I mentioned Gladiators, John Fashanu, Jim Davidson (tosser) but it didn’t really get to a point…

Even though the demo was quick and painless there were a couple of big struggles when it came to recording the song properly – we couldn’t recreate the energy of the initial recording, this is often a problem for us – in the bass and in the drums it just wasn’t there, plus the constant chugging got a bit annoying – hence the change in soundscape between chorus and verse. We solved this by Mickey leaving me alone in the studio for 10 minutes (this is normally really bad), but I used my only three tricks – mute stuff, change the key of some vocals, and reverse some guitar shit. I felt like a momentary Brian Eno… That solved one conundrum but then I couldn’t get the last line of the chorus… for months..

I felt like the chorus had a great first and last line – Baywatch should’ve taught me better than that, and What kind of message is that to send out? – and I had a coherent message – the idea of having a platform and choosing to inundate people with inane, pretty sexist content, reinforcing stereotypes, and not saying anything… but I had no set up line – what is the message I was talking about?!?… an initial line I had was in reference to Jim Davidson – So if you give a job to a wife-beater.. but it did not sit comfortably with me – I didn’t want to trivialise domestic violence by using the phrase wife-beater – which is not right on so many levels, and by its normalisation into everyday vernacular in an almost light hearted way, undoubtedly undermines a debate on men who assault their partners.. I know some people turn off when the debate on intricacies of language crop up but words are powerful stuff that is linked to behaviour and attitude in my mind – I often find myself questioning my own use of certain words and actions, all part of my own conditioning and learnt attitude… ah!!!!!!! I mean well….

So yes, eventually I found a line and it stuck and we could finish Baywatch and let you hear it. As is the norm with a Little Comets song it is probably not as deep as we think it is and quite a crass portrayal of a complex issue… but at least we are trying eh!?

I saw something the other day that I think relates to this song, and it bothered me enough to mention it. I was watching the sports news and an article about the return of the Women’s Premier League Football came on, even though my team are down the divisions I was interested to see the scores and some action, so imagine my dismay when the one goal from the one match they focused on wasn’t a thirty yard screamer or an outrageous dibble and finish, but a “comical” goalkeeping error – why?…  Small this may seem, but this is every second of every day, drip drip drip drip..

Anyway..

Morally Outraged in Sutton Coldfield.

LYRICS

The kind of person I want to be
Was crystallised in 1993
When staring at a oblong screen
The world got bleaker
Transfixed upon a culture of men
How easy now for me to pretend
That I was not infected at all
It runs much deeper

Saturday evening watching TV
Baywatch should’ve taught me better than that
See the endless possibilities
Get lost in the swimsuits
A shoreline filled with vacuous words
Repeated on every channel I turn
Get underneath the waves until you feel nothing
What kind of message is that to send out?

I fear that this is happening again
Our children become women and men
They tap at an implacable screen
Their will gets weaker
A life in which you have to pretend
I hope they break before they can bend
The tireless self-erosion goes on
and on
and on
and on

Saturday evenings watching TV
Baywatch should’ve taught me better than that
See the endless possibilities
Dissolve in the swimsuits
Then after that the channels I turn
More dubious lessons for me to learn
I’m underneath the waves and I feel nothing
What kind of message is that to send out?

Underneath the waves until you feel nothing
What kind of message is that to send out?
Covered by the waves until you feel nothing
Get sicker
Self-loathing in the bathroom mirror
Real people
No fear
Same message
Can it get much clearer?

Saturday evening watching TV
Baywatch should’ve taught me better than that
I see the endless possibilities
Dissolve in the swimsuits
There are no longer channels to turn
There are no longer lessons to learn
Underneath the waves until you feel nothing
What kind of message is that to send out?