The Grimmered

Recorded in October 2021 for the REM Challenge

Running Time: 35:00

Later Released On: "Ratione Personae Mentalis"

Label: The Church Of Noisy Goat

Release Date: 9th March 2022

Format: Download

Buy Link: Bandcamp

< Reverbnation Edit - 3:50 / Full Version - 35:00 >      

A Tale Of Two Hedgetrimmers

It was the best of days, it was the worst of days, it was the age of the man trying to record himself using a power tool, it was the age of the idiot who hadn't figured out what he was up to, it was the epoch of frustration, it was the epoch of temper tantrums, it was the season of summer, it was the season the hedge needed trimming, it was the recording of hope, it was the recording of despair, we had everything before us, then he burned the motor out on our new hedgetrimmer...

Our story begins on the summer solstice, when Skit turns up bright and early with a spring in his step.

"Skit trim hedge for you!" He exclaimed enthusiastically.

We've touched on this in the write up for The Cage Variations, of course, and that's what it turned out this was all about. Basically, Skit had been unhappy with the solo rendition of Cage's 4'33'' that I had submitted to John Wills' The Great John Cage Project - In Lockdown podcast series, without his knowledge, our co-produced version having previously been rejected for broadcast. 'The Big Girls Blouse Version', he would refer to it as. He had long argued that nothing proved Cage's postulation with regard the impossibility of silence as effectively as power tools. Thus, he had sworn revenge, that he would create his own take on the work of the master, and that it would include power tools. Then, to add insult to injury, he decided to con us into letting him record it in our garden with our hedgetrimmer, the blaggard!

Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold. No, I've never understood what it meant either, but it seemed like the kind of deep and meaningful thing I should start a new paragraph with. Now, to be fair to Mr. Z, the end result was a pretty decent track, which Sam and I have enjoyed many a happy hour stage diving off the coffee table to. However, his journey in getting there served up an easily equal amount of amusement. His first attempt was ridden with bitter frustration.

"Skit trim hedge for you!"

Just a reminder of where we were.

"Okay," I'd responded with some hesitation, being only too well aware of his bull-in-a-china-shop approach to most things and not wanting our reasonably new hedgetrimmer trashed, "give it a try with this. And, er, thanks."

I set up our old hedgetrimmer for him (it's the one I'm holding in the picture top right) and left him to it. But myself and Mrs. Magic were sensible enough to keep an eye on him out the window. Oh yes, we saw him set up the microphone before he started, we soon figured out what was going on, especially when he sidled up to it and said something before he started cutting. He'd barely been at it a minute before his finger slipped off the safety trigger, causing the machine to immediately cut out and him to growl like a wounded animal. This happened over and over again, much to our mirth and his ever mounting frustration. But we're not without feeling entirely, and after a few minutes of watching him suffer, well, possibly half an hour, who knows, we took him down a coffee and asked if he'd like to try the newer hedgetrimmer. He dropped to his knees and sobbed pitifully.

"You treat Skit with kindness when him con you like this," he whimpered, "you better friend than Skit deserve."

"There there," said Mrs. Magic, dabbing his eyes with a Kleenex while I got the bigger and more powerful tool out of the garage, "everything will be alright."

His little eyes lit up when he saw the size of it. He took it in his hands, leapt up on the ornamental wall at the bottom of the garden, raised it above his head in triumph and struck different poses while we took photos for the track graphic to go with his take on 4'33''. Then he leapt down, shouted SKIT ZOYD VERSUS JOHN CAGE into the microphone and proceeded to trim. Solidly. His finger glued to the safety trigger. For so long he burned the bloody motor out and ruined it! Which is why, when we found he'd foolishly left the whole recording on the studio computer, temper tantrums and all, we did this with it.

As for the title; well, it comes from the track graphic for this one. It was Halloween and Skit wasn't around (like I'd have got away with remixing his temper tantrums if he had been), so I posed for a pic with the surviving hedgetrimmer. I look grim, don't I? I'd been starting to feel ropey for a couple of days by this point, but Halloween was the day it really hit, the beginning of nearly 17 days of some unknown virus from hell. From grim to grimmer came The Grimmered, which, by some strange coincidence, also just happens to be an anagram of hedgetrimmer. Small world.

Addendum;

Skit has since bought us a really nice replacement, quite an

 expensive model ordered from an advert in the Radio Times.

So we feel a bit shitty about doing this to him now.

Actually, thinking about it, fuck him...

HEY, INGLES...