Dubstar: Disgraceful GDR demo
I wrote the Dubstar song Disgraceful during the dark days following a relationship breakup in 1992. It’s an unusual composition, heavily influenced by Can’t Trust The Waves from Kitchens of Distinction that had become my personal anthem at the time. If the connection between that song and Disgraceful isn’t immediately clear, it’s all about the shift from 3/4 to 4/4 in the first verse — a moment that was removed from our demo.
You can still hear the ghost of the 3/4 time signature in the early part of the song, where Graeme tried to fit the original rhythm into my straight 4/4 beat. Speaking of which, where did that beat come from? You can find it yourself on Norman Cook’s Skip to My Loops sample CD from 1992. Yes, it’s true — Dubstar were sampling Fatboy Slim before Norm had even changed his stage name.
And speaking of Norman, seeing Beats International at The Mayfair was probably the most important gig I attended in the 90s. Not because it was a great show — it wasn’t. It was a Brighton-style sound system event awkwardly staged in a rock venue that, just a year later, would host the return of Nirvana. A mismatch indeed. But I remember watching Norm DJ this song while Lester Noel sang Summertime over it. He also played Candy Flip’s Strawberry Fields Forever, which I prefer to The Beatles’ version. That soaring vocal over a rolling breakbeat made quite an impression on me — an idea I thought might come in handy for my new band.
So what do we hear on this demo of Disgraceful? It begins with a sample of my guitar playing, mangled through my Roland W-30 sampler — chopped chords jumping across octaves, which sounded pretty cool to me. Then the drums kick in, with the Yamaha DX100 handling a simple sub-bass. That section never sounded quite right to my ears, but hey ho. Next comes the Norman Cook breakbeat and Sarah singing through a Tandy PZM microphone — the sort you might find mounted on the wall of a police interrogation room. For some reason Graeme loved the sound, and I think Sarah did too. I’ve always been more of a Neumann man…
A Disgraceful microphone, price at purchase £15
And of course, there’s Chris’s beautiful guitar work and some pads from Graeme’s best friend, Jon Kirby.
Of all the songs on Disgraceful, this one went through the most changes from the original version on The Joans’ cassette album Gear. The first verse shifted from 3/4 into 4/4. There’s a second verse that includes a couple of lines I think Sarah may have written (later changed for the album version). The “this match that I’m burning” section was moved from the intro to become a middle eight. I’m pleased the bass line survived unchanged from 1992, and I have to tip my hat to Gavin Lee for his dubby input all those years ago.
Thinking Back Now
Disgraceful is a song about the behaviour we hide. It was inspired by a moment in 1992 when I was DJing at The Riverside on a Thursday night. I was feeling pretty low — Walkers nightclub had closed, my five-year relationship was over, the club was nearly empty, cold, and damp. I was drowning my sorrows in far too many pints of Scotch and a line of speed to keep me wide awake through it all. A bad move.
Then my ex appeared out of nowhere to inform me that she’d discovered I’d had an “intimate moment” with a mutual friend two years earlier. (We were on a break — and unlike Ross and Rachel, there was no ambiguity.) She was not pleased, to put it mildly.
Damn.
The combination of relationship failure, career failure, the revelation of a long-past and “disgraceful” indiscretion, alcohol misuse, and a brief flirtation with a drug I quickly realised wasn’t for me — it all led to one of the darkest moments of my life. But from that came a life-changing song.
Looking back now, it’s fascinating to realise that something which felt monumental thirty-three years ago ultimately amounted to... a song. Nothing more. It felt earth-shattering at the time, but we were younger than we realised — so very young — and with so much ahead of us.
This song, one of my favourites, summarises it perfectly
This article includes excerpts from DUBSTAR.COM. Want more? You can find the story behind every Dubstar song ever recorded including dozens of unreleased songs right here at Dubstar.com
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