Album Notes
Nine Lives is based on a series of true and intriguing stories told from a first-person perspective, immersing the listener in the centre of the narrative. Only one song, Seven Feet by Five breaks this convention by using the second person.
The music incorporates elements of rock, funk, blues, gospel, and other styles which I can't find names for.
Creating Nine Lives took nearly two years, mostly in my home studio during the Covid-19 pandemic, with one or two interruptions when recording wasn't feasible. Nine Lives is a solo album in every respect, from writing and performing to recording, producing and mastering.
Acknowledgements
Almost all of the sounds on Nine Lives were made by me, however special thanks go out to:
- Eddie Nickson for his banjo playing on Seven Feet By Five.
- Ellen Armstrong for being half of the gospel choir for One Born Again Every Minute.
- Vanessa Clarke for her vocals on Tunnel Vision.
Thanks also to Steve Coates (Red Tape Music) for being my mastering quality control.
Finally, a big thank you to my wonderful wife Gibby, for all the love and support she has given me during this process, and her belief in me and my musical vision.
I hope Nine Lives entertains and brings you enjoyment
Graham Raine - April 2021
The Black Mirror
Following an idle conversation about dog food, a friend noticed their social media now showed lots of adverts for dog food. This raised the question: do our devices secretly listen in? Although this is a well known phenomenon, tech manufacturers downplay the notion that our conversations are constantly monitored.
Mobile devices have become an essential part of modern life, for communication, banking, music, photography, and more. But do we own them, or do they own us? We trust them blindly, lacking a full understanding of their inner workings. They can track our location, recognise faces in our photographs and create photo albums based on our activities. They gather data along with our browsing history which can be sold and then used to influence our future decisions.
How often do you agree to cookies without a second thought about who is collecting your personal data?
The title of this song refers to the TV series created by Charlie Brooker, who observed that when your phone isn't working, it's just a black mirror.
The North Pond Hermit
Reading a newspaper one rainy Sunday, I stumbled upon Michael Finkel's article about Christopher Knight, a man who left work one Friday, emptied his bank account and simply vanished. Knight travelled with no destination in mind, staying in motels until his money ran out. Abandoning his car, he found seclusion in woods by a lake, building a shelter where he lived alone for twenty-seven years.
Having no hunting skills, Knight survived by stealing from holiday cabins, taking what he needed to survive. He did no damage and covered his tracks meticulously, however the arrival of affordable home security cameras eventually led to his capture and imprisonment.
When Finkel interviewed him in jail, Knight talked about his profound feeling of not belonging. He longed for solitude, claiming that disconnecting from others spared him from self-reflection and concern over how others might see him. Somewhere in that process, he lost all sense of identity.
At their final meeting, Knight told Finkel that they were not friends and not to keep in touch — a final act of self-isolation.
Room Seventeen
In 2016, Gay Talese published The Voyeur's Motel, apparently based on notes provided by motel owner Gerald Foos, who modified his motel to allow him to secretly observe guests through ceiling vents. Justifying it as socio-scientific study, his records documented all of his guests' intimate activities.
Foos went to extreme lengths to watch his guests. On one occasion he turned up the heating to discourage a couple from getting under the bedclothes. On another, he parked his car with the headlights shining into a couple’s room so he could see them clearly.
The most disturbing incident involved a young couple dealing drugs to high-school students. Outraged, Foos entered their room in secret and disposed of the drugs. When the couple returned, the young man assumed his girlfriend had stolen the drugs, planning to sell them herself. In the argument that followed, the young man strangled his girlfriend then fled. Knowing his own voyeurism would land him in trouble, Foos chose not to call the police to say what he'd witnessed, leaving the girl to die alone from her injuries.
A song with light and dark moments, it has a sleazy electric blues Route-66 vibe. Play it loud!
Green Boots
On Mount Everest, over two hundred bodies lie frozen, victims of treacherous weather and challenging conditions. One area called Rainbow Valley is named after the colourful clothing worn by the climbers who have perished there. Retrieving bodies from Everest is perilous, so victims remain where they fall, preserved by the freezing temperatures. The corpse known as Green Boots rested in a cave beside the route for nearly two decades. It's believed to be the body of Tsewang Paljor, an Indian climber, although he has never been formally identified.
Everest’s Nepalese Sherpas believe in reincarnation, and for them, being left on the mountain is a terrifying prospect. Without proper death rituals, spirits are trapped in limbo, unable to move on. Green Boots was apparently moved out of sight in 2014, but it's unlikely he was carried down the mountain.
While researching this story I was reminded of people who pay to have their bodies cryogenically frozen in the belief that they will be revived in the future. This made me wonder; are Everest’s frozen climbers are actually dead or in suspended animation, conscious yet unconscious and unable to move? What might Green Boots think and feel as he becomes aware of other climbers approaching?
To reflect Everest's atmosphere, I incorporated the sound of Tibetan throat singing, accompanied by drums, bells, and gongs. The flute melody is played on my father's wooden piccolo. My dad always got a good sound out of, although when I was young I never could. When I recorded this song, the instrument played smoothly for one take, after which I could only produce the unmusical sound I made as a child.
Seven Thousand Miles
This song starts like a love song; you're flying across the world to meet someone you’ve been thinking about, someone you know well. You know their routines, where they go, and when you can be alone with them. As with most of the songs here, all is not what it seems.
In 21st-century warfare, drones now play a prominent role, operated by ground-based pilots in secure military bases. They unleash guided missiles and bombs on conflict zones such as Afghanistan. Situated roughly seven thousand miles away in the USA, young pilots spend weeks, watching their targets, before launching their missiles, guided to their final destination by a sensor operator beside them.
Firing on people who have no opportunity to defend themselves is murder, although the military prefer terms like "cutting down the weeds before the garden is overgrown." Following orders without question, they perpetuate a recurring cycle of violence and retaliation. Many young pilots become troubled by the cold-blooded nature of their work, and develop mental health issues. At the end of the working day, they are struck by the contrast as they step out of the combat-zone and back into normal life with family and friends, who may be completely unaware of what they do.
Collateral Damage
The day after I finished writing Seven Thousand Miles, I began thinking about the missiles that miss their intended target and land on innocent civilians. What would it be like to be trapped inside a building which was unintentionally brought down by such an error? People have been known to survive this kind of experience, although testimonies from survivors in war-zones are not readily found.
Collateral Damage imagines the experience of being fired upon by an unseen assailant, and trapped under fallen rubble and masonry. No chance to run or turn around, and little hope of rescue.
Seven Feet By Five
This song is based on the story of Anthony Ray Hinton from Alabama, who was arrested and wrongly imprisoned for murders he did not commit. Despite his cast iron alibi, and the lack of any evidence linking him to the killings, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. Hinton spent the next twenty-eight years on Death Row waiting to be executed.
The title of the song refers to the size of his solitary cell; roughly the same as a king-sized bed, but considerably less comfortable. At his first appeal, the state prosecutor threatened to kill Hinton himself if he was ever released, perhaps because he knew that the lies told to secure his conviction would be exposed. One of the few considerations given to Hinton in prison, was permission to start a reading group. This activity provided not only a brief escape from prison life, but also gave a diverse group of convicted men the opportunity to understand each other better.
The full story of Hinton’s trial and his time in prison cannot be told in one short song, but it is told in his moving autobiography The Sun Does Shine - How I Found Freedom On Death Row.
As a White Englishman, it felt inappropriate for me to voice the words of a black American man in the first person, so I decided to write the song in the third person, accompanied by a musical fusion of Bluegrass and Southern Rock. What came out however, sounded more like The Ballad Of Jesse James and felt totally wrong. Fortunately, the song had its own ideas and when I changed the narrative style to second person, the song found its identity, demanding delta blues-style acoustic slide-guitar and some not-quite Zydeco-style accordion.
I believe the recording captures the spirit of where the song wanted to go, although it’s probably as far removed from delta-blues or Zydeco as the Mississippi is from Scotland, which is where I was when I wrote it.
Tunnel Vision
This song is based on the experience of a London commuter calledOsman Dean. He was travelling home via the underground at the end of a fairly unrewarding day at work when a woman on the platform threw herself in front of an oncoming train. With little hesitation or thought to his own safety, he jumped down after her and saved her life.
Some time after I read Dean’s story, I tried to find the article again online but instead found a story written by an anonymous woman who had thrown herself in front of a train. The two incidents are probably unrelated, but I was interested to see whether I could write a song which would tell two sides of the same story, as a duet between a man and a woman. Each narrator shares their feelings about their lives. They use almost the same words, although the meanings are as different as their circumstances.
One Born Again Every Minute
This is a song about crooked evangelistic faith healers although it's not about a single individual. I was inspired to start writing it after watching a couple of YouTube videos: The first was a George Carlin stand-up routine on religion, in which he observes: “God loves you... and He needs money”. The second was the Derren Brown programme Miracles For Sale which exposes the tricks that evangelist preachers use to perform so-called miracle healing.
True stories abound of American televangelists who ask their followers for millions to pay for private jets and luxury homes, tricking vulnerable, elderly people to leave their estate to their church in return for the guarantee of a place in Heaven. I shan’t name individuals here, but a quick internet search will reveal who the biggest perpetrators are. It seems that as long as there are people around who want to believe in miracles, there will always be someone willing to sell them one.
