Annotations: Do More, East Less

This song was finished on the morning of February 2nd 2007, but it was BEGUN at LEAST eighteen months beforehand - I'm not sure when exactly it first got the idea, but i NOTE that in June 2005 i was on about trying to finish it off for the proposed ZIPCODES tape, so it must have been a little bit before then.

I do however remember WHERE the idea came unto me - it was while walking through Russell Square in That London one morning, i THINK i'd been away the night before and had just got off the train at St Pancras and was walking home, though I'm not sure. The idea obviously came from my OWN trials with THE FLAB, and also from meeting and talking to other people who were trying to SHIFT it through Loony Diets and being SURPRISED it wasn't working.

The first couple of verses and the chorus FLEW out of my BRANE that morning, and I had several attempts at finishing it all off, before the printed sheet of lyrics got placed into my Big Lyrics Folder, there to GERMINATE. I'd occasionally think of digging it out and finishing it off, but it wasn't until last night that I actually did anything about it. We've just had our first band practice in AGES, at which I realised that I didn't really have enough ROCKIER numbers i.e. those that would be nice and EASY for us to learn as a band, before we got stuck into TOUGHER (NB possibly less FUN) songs. "I need a RIFF, really" I thought and then, like so many other times before, one MAGICALLY APPEARED beneath my very fingers. "Ooh!" i thought, "I like this - what WORDS shall I use tho?" I MENTALLY rifled through the Unused Lyrics in my MIND and quickly realised that "Do More, Eat Less" would fit.

There then followed a FRANTIC FLICK through the file to find them, at which point I realised MORE was required a) in terms of WORDS and b) in terms of POINT - as it stood it was just a bit of a MEAN ATTACK on overweight people, which would be ESPECIALLY naughty as I'm hardly SLENDER myself. I pondered these matters as I set to fitting the words to the new tune, ever WATCHFUL of Tim's demand earlier in the week to write a song with "less words", so that "the music can breath". Those original verses slid in easily, with more "ESS"-ending words PINGING into my brain for the choruses, and I realised that if this was going to be a Nice And Easy VLADS Song i didn't necessarily NEED to write a Complicated Middle Eight, I could just BREAK IT DOWN. I tried doing so and LO! a great PILE of words appeared which would fit in - AGAINST the wishes of Tim, but i REASONED that in this case there'd be LESS music for this bit, so there could be MORE words.

As I did THAT bit i CLEARLY SAW the way the song could go forward: into METAPHOR! Yes yes, i know this is HARDLY an original idea for one of my songs, as at LEAST 50% of them wander off into this well charted area BUT this is because i think it is VALID, also GOOD, especially in this case where the desire to lose weight in an EASY and CHEATING way echoes the fashion in which we all would much rather leave the responsibility for sorting out our problems to somebody else (prime candidate: THEM) rather than GET ON and sort it out ourselves, when in the long run it is SO much better to, as the song says, ABANDON TRACTOR and start walking. I'm thinking PARTICULARLY of DEBT, which i have MUCHO experience of myself - i would also like to claim i was thinking of The EnviroNNNment, but to be honest i wasn't.