The Sea Is Filled With Horrible Fish

Moving from the past towards the present, here's another song I did long ago and that was on the Arphus album as well...I had fun with this one. Originally I had done the bass solo to a drum track, goofing around, and it sat there for a while until I started to assemble this. I think the drum track came first (another loop, basic at first and then fleshed out later), and the echo-y guitar, then a bunch of other guitars & several tracks of basses. One that I like was a guitar playing in fourths, that I played at half speed and then speeded up...I still can't play that line in real time! And of course that undersea-sounding bass solo, some synths & percussion, with the Salty Sea Captain explaining everything.

This was one of my first photo montage videos, and as you can tell, it's fairly primitive...but I still like it. I found some amazingly grotesque fish, and I think the sequence works well. Today, it would be different, but ahh.

One thing that was amusing to me was that after I finished Arphus I sent a few copies out to my friend Tim Jones from the great band Census Of Hallucinations, and he passed it around to some of his friends in the European underground music scene. Somehow it was apparently taken note of by a BBC subsidiary in Scotland, where it became the #1 Vocal Tune for 2 weeks!! Vocal Tune? Really? Well, whatever you think. Thanks Tim!! I'm still thinking of experimental music fans in the far hills out of Queensferry or wherever, listening to this on their radios late at night. All the best to you all out there!!

                              THE SEA IS FILLED WITH HORRIBLE FISH

The sea is filled with horrible fish

And horrible fish are they

And the mariners curse the fish from here

To the shores of Mandalay

But the horrible fish, they do as they wish

In the dark and briny deep

And they do it all day in a horrible way

Till they finally go to sleep

Not content to be in the measureless sea

Where the whale and the plankton flow

There’s a secret door in the ocean’s floor

That they open to travel below

Through the secret door to the earth’s deep core

All the horrible fish descend

And they do things there more horrible still

Far away from the eyes of men

I was out, just me, on the billowing sea

When the horrible fish appeared

I have terrible tales of what they did to my sails

And my captain’s hat and beard

Now a man might eat of the horrible fish

But a wise one, he might not

Far better they swim in the waters dim

Than a good chef’s bouillabaisse pot!