Civilisation Ho! – John Bentley’s soundtrack

The YouTube channel of EclecticWarrior is always worth a look – David Milner did the videos for the Squeeze Spot the Difference Tour – and very good they were too! He’s now done a collaboration with Squeeze bassist John Bentley

A collaboration with Mr John Bentley is always a thing of joy….and here we both cross that wide Atlantic and tackle the almost genocide of a race of proud people.

Here’s what John has to say about the track:

The track has a long long history.
At the time of its creation – I’m guessing about 17 years ago! – I wrote a whole bunch of tunes based on overdubbing samples, and Civilisation Ho! was one of them.
It was originally recorded on a Tascam Portastudio. That is an analogue 4 track Cassette Recorder. George Harrison used the Porto studio for his demos – and I think Glenn used one for quite a few of his too! I recently had to go on E-Bay to buy another Portastudio as my old one stopped working shortly after recording Civilisation Ho! and I haven’t been able to play any of my hundreds of old recordings.

So having revisited the track I decided that it was worth revamping, and transferred the four tracks onto my Digital 8 track.
Track 1. Electric Guitar
Track2. Samples and Piano
Track 3. Drum Loop
Track 4. Bass Guitar

Then I overdubbed a live drum kit and some trance style keyboards. Although on this version the live drums are very low in the mix. I re-recorded the piano and the Bass. The sound of the guitar is fantastic – partly down to good old fashioned analogue recording. So that remains unchanged.

The samples – which were the inspiration for Civilisation Ho! are all lifted from an album by the Firesign Theatre called “Waiting for the Electrician or somebody like him”.

David Milner’s contribution adds a bit of cinematic magic to the whole thing, and I am very pleased with the end result. I’ve been getting quite a bit of positive feedback about the track!

Enjoy!

Here are some more of John’s songs and David’s videos.

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