Two Worlds Album -Part 2

Part Two:

It's been a long time since I listened to this album, so I've forgotten many of the inside details. But I'll try to remember what I can, as I go song-by-song.

The album had a pompous keyboard intro, which was typical of my artsy viewpoint at the time!! Dating back to my Guards of Zeus era, it always seemed appropriate to start a concert or an album with some kind of "fanfare." Back in those days, I used to play a small segment from Gustav Mahler's 1st Symphony. I'm sure all the kids were eating up all that funky Mahler shit!

Well, the Awakening was not spared this same Prog-attitude!

You Can't Hide was written by Andy, and was a song we played very early on in our career and obviously stuck with us. Again, the 80's technology concept took this guitar oriented song and turned it into a keyboard extravaganza!! Mike played his "octobons" in the verses. This was a long, tubular drum that Stewart Copeland was using in The Police. Of course, these drums had to run through the typical 80's "SPX90 Gated Reverb" setting, which is still giving me nightmares to this day!! (Who thought that sounded good?!!!) Also of note on this production was the wonderful sound of the Yamaha drum machine! Nothing like crappy electronic ride cymbals!

All You Need To Know was one of my early songs. The band did a good job of making this song work, because it was originally a bit of keyboard "cluster" song, so the chord voicings were not clear. Andy playing along with the melody helped define what the chords really were. This shows a little bit about how I still hadn't quite figured out what a chorus should sound like. The chorus in this song sounds more like a pre-chorus in that it doesn't have that "conclusive" feel to it. It leads somewhere rather than being the final statement. In the end, this song didn't really get to where it was supposed to go until the ending.

It had some of the "show off-y" riffs that I used to like to throw into the songs, including the odd time signature shift. Again, the band YES was a huge influence.

Two Worlds was a song I wrote to lyrics written by Al Powell. When I hear it now, (like most of the music from this point in my life) I can't even believe that I did it. It sounds so foreign to me. I would never play chords or voicings like that now. Strange how you morph with time!

This is a good example of how the drum programming made no intention of sounding real. You can hear repetitive hats and cymbals all continuing even when there was a tom fill going on. No human could ever play a busy kick, snare, tom figure while playing a busy 16th note high-hat figure! Ah the 80's!!

When The Crying Stops was another one of my songs written to Al's lyrics. I could be mixed up on the song order. It's been a long time!!

You Turn Them Away was a song of Andy's, and we continued to play this song live for years. It had some neat rhythmic shifts later in the song, especially the bridge, when Mike would shift the 2 and 4's around backwards creating false time signature changes. Very cool!

At the end of side one, we put a little musical clue for something that would start side 2. People today have little concept of what an album SIDE was all about. Back then, you listened to 5 or 6 songs and then you had to take the record off and put on side 2. Sometimes you'd get a snack between the sides. Today's digital music world has destroyed the concept of an A and B side.

Side Two started with Fireside, a song Mike Powell had written. The intro was designed to scare the hell out of the listener! Why not?! If you listen closely, you can hear Mike reciting a poem during this scary intro. The poem ended up being the words to the song "November" which The Awakening wouldn't write or record until years later. This song became a concert staple right up until the end, although live, it was much more of a death-rocker!

The Only Way was a song I wrote on guitar, if I recall. It was largely written using harmonics, so when it came time to play as a band, I had to play some odd voicings on the keyboard to make it work. The lyrics to this song are so bad, it honestly hurts me to hear them! I hate the fact that I thought I had all the answers back then, when really, I didn't know jack squat! That silly intro was one of the rare instances of humour on an Awakening album. Thanks to the Yamaha drum machine for that silly concoction!

Lift Your Heart was Andy's song! We'll just let him think about that for a minute before I continue!!

This was one of those songs that at the time seemed to be a really good idea, but years later embarrasses me to no end. I honestly don't want to remember anything about this song! It was a wonderfully composed and constructed song, but I hope I never hear it again!!

The Forest was one of my early songs. Again, it is pretty unfocused, as you'll notice the verses don't follow a standard path. It was a nice song though and at the time, it meant a lot to me.

One funny story I can tell about this song is, that while I was getting ready to sing it in the studio, I was very concerned that I wouldn't be able to nail it. I had heard from someone that honey and lemon and hot liquids are good for the voice, so an hour before the session, I downed a few packets of Neocitrin cold medication, with some honey and lemon added. I didn't know that this stuff made you drowsy! I ended up passing out and I'm pretty sure the whole session was a wash!!

With that, we have a completed Two Worlds album. I remember going to Toronto to master the album to vinyl. This would be the only time in my life I would witness that sort of technology again. We made LPs and Cassettes, but our future albums would be made for the new CD market.

I still have boxes of un-opened vinyl copies of this album, and I'm sure the other guys do too. So we'll start the bidding at $1000!!!

Ian - June 5/09