Moving

From Supertramp to Supergrass

Hello Dear Reader

Before I continue, a little caveat. This will be my third post concerning my All Roads Lead To… covers project, and I’m mindful that not all of you come here for the music. I’m debating whether or not to do a Substack post each time I upload one of these songs to YouTube because I am loathe to clog up your inboxes. Moreover, in the last year Substack is beginning to groan under the weight of multitudinous voices as so many of us scatter hither and thither, unsure of where to post our musings now that Twitter is a sad shadow of its former self. I don’t want to add to the clog, as it were, but nor do I want anyone to feel that they might have missed something. I leave it to you to tell me what you would like, and how often you would like me to post. Please feel free to leave a comment or send me a message. I’m so enjoying this project that I am keen to share - I just don’t want it to become overshare.

It is not unlike the insanity of 2014, when I committed to writing, recording and releasing a five song EP every month. In truth, while it was quite an undertaking, I grew to love the relentless routine. It kept my mind off brooding - my favourite pastime - and it was a songwriting bootcamp like no other. The beauty of this new project is that I don’t have to write anything. I am, however, undergoing the most intense instrumental bootcamp I have been on since music college.

I am loving every minute.

Much like physical travel itself, every town or city is giving up treasures. The United Kingdom and Ireland are so phenomenally rich in culture and talent that it’s bewildering, and life affirming. These little islands have given the world so much incredible music in only a century of popular music. What it’s also reminding me is that the mere pop song is the vessel for all kinds of wonder - musicianship, lyricism and invention. I feel fifteen again. ‘How did they do that?!’ I say every time I stumble upon a new possibility for this endeavour.

When I considered the options for this week’s city - Oxford - it was hard to make my mind up. The path of least resistance would have been to do a Radiohead cover, and initially that’s what I thought I was going to do - Pyramid Song or Decks Dark sprung to mind. But - and now here is a huge confession - while I admire Radiohead (and The Smile, their offshoot whose album A Light For Attracting Attention I haven’t stopped listening to since it came out in 2022) I don’t connect with them. I know millions of others do, but I came to realise that my appreciation for them was primarily intellectual.

But Supergrass? I bloody love them. I am a pop girl at heart, and from the moment I first heard Alright I was hooked. Maybe it’s because I can hear The Kinks and The Beatles in them, or maybe it’s because they just looked like they were a bunch of fun lads who you could get a bit messed up with but they’d take care of you. Radiohead look like you could offend them, massively, at any moment, especially if you foolishly told them how much you loved ABBA.

When they released their eponymously titled album third album in 1999, it was the second single from it, Moving, that I fell in love with. It came out in the autumn, when I was driving or cycling across London every day from Clapham to work in Harrow Road and whenever I hear it, I am instantly transported to listening to XFM on the car stereo and watching the leaves turn a little more golden each morning on Ladbroke Grove. Shortly after it came out, I signed to Polydor Records, but continued working at Mute for a little while longer because, well, I loved that job and the people, and I wasn’t ready to let go just yet.

There was an energy in London back then. Maybe it’s still there but I’m too old to sense it - I hope that's the reason and not because things are so wonky hope has left the building. When I hear Moving, it sucker punches me with nostalgia and restlessness in a way few songs can do to me. Maybe more now than it did back then.

I have no idea why I’ve never covered it before. I didn’t need to change key from the original, it’s a fabulous song for guitar, even more outrageous fun to play on bass (it’s basically disco in the chorus) and few songs express the reality of the touring musician like it does. I could’ve gone all deconstructionist with it, but like my last offering, I just wanted to pretend I’d blagged my way into the band for the day.

One of the things I’m trying to do with this adventure is stretch myself as a musician and producer. So much stretching in fact, that I got my hands on a violin for the first time in THIRTY YEARS, since I was last scraping away at the back of the second violins in the college orchestra. A word of advice to any younger musicians out there - do not put down an instrument for thirty years and then think it’s like riding a bike. It is not. It is horrific painful torture, especially for the people who live with you. Luckily for me the string part in Moving is simple enough a child could play it, which is the level I am reduced to.

For this we can all blame Rick Rubin. I’ve been watching a lot of his interviews and in a recent one he did with Rick Beato he says the following:

‘Using the things you have and making the best of what those things are instead of trying to turn them into what you wish they were is the best way to go.’

We are what we are, chums. Our simple mission is to make the best of what we’ve got.

Go make the best of what you’ve got and have an amazing week!

With love as ever,

Nerina xxx

P.S. Special mention to my very brilliant husband Andy Chatterley who has been mixing these songs and also editing the videos from my très shonky iPhone camera. If any man can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, my husband can.