This is a song which I don't get to play too often. I remember this is a song that was demoed right at the end, towards the
completion of the album. We made the demo in one of the rooms of my house, I remember Dave putting the guitar down on it
and Twist playing drums in the hallway. God knows what the neighbours though.
This is a song called Black Sun
Black Sun
This is a song which... I can't even remember writing it actually! It's called Trapped In A Prison Without Prison Bars.
Prison Without Prison Bars
This song in some ways our own Alarm tribute to Mr Bob Dylan. And it's in here somewhere...
(Searches through his lyric
book) It's called How The Mighty Fall. And it goes like this...
How The Mighty Fall
This is a song which was one of Mr Macdonald's tunes. Eddie came to me with this whole rising chord progression and he had
the title Corridors Of Power. I put the lyrics together round it and it came out as a b-side on Sold Me Down The River, but
I always thought it was one of the better recordings that we made during the Change album. I was quite pleased when the
Japanese added it to the album in Japan.
This is called Corridors Of Power
Corridors Of Power
This is, I think we sort of pinched the sequence from an Eagles song somewhere along the line. This is a song called
Breaking Point.
Breaking Point
This next song I'm going to play for you, this is actually a Dave Sharp song. It was written while we were making the
Strength album in 85. Dave recorded a demo of this song while we were making the album. We thought it was one of his best
songs, a brilliant song. In time, when I get around to creating the whole, putting all the demos together that we ever made
this one will come out. It's a brilliant recording. I don't know why Dave never pursued the song, again we thought it was
brilliant and wanted to work on it.
When we came to do the Change album there was a much more open relationship going on again as we always did on the Change
album. And Eddie and I wanted him to record this song which we knew as Rivers To Cross. But he kept feeling it wasn't
finished so Eddie and I said "Can we finish it off for you?" He said "Yeah, have a go", so we worked on it and it became
Rivers To Cross and we recorded it for the album. It goes like this, except I can't do the riff like Dave does. You'll just
have to bear with me...
Rivers To Cross
Thank you.
I'm going to close this particular era in the story of The Alarm with the last song from the Change album. I don't know
whether to sing it in Welsh or in English.
(The audience shouts for Welsh) In Welsh then. I just remembered
something. In '89 we went to Japan to play some dates at the end of the year. The Japanese record label was JVC and they
put out IRS' records in Japan. The label managers' name was Zee Tsaisu and he really liked The Alarm and the Change album
in Welsh, he liked Newid. And he wanted to release the Welsh version of the album in Japan, cause he thought it'd go down
just as well as the English version with Japanese people. He'd figured out they didn't care if we sang it in English or
Australian or Russian or something. Every time I go to America people think I'm an Australian. I know I've those hats going
on, don't I.
Anyway, when we'd finished the dates all our mates in the road crew went back to Britain and the 4 of us in the band stayed
on to do a load of interviews and some TV. Zee from the label took me and Eddie out one night to go to this kind of
Japanese college radio convention. There were all these radio stations and student of Japanese college radio and there was
a band playing on the stage. A band came on and they were doing a set and we were watching them and Zee said they were a
really good Japanese band.
They were singing all these songs in Japanese, then on the encore they started playing 68 Guns. It was a brilliant version,
you can imagine with the eye for detail the Japanese have. When they got to the middle break and were doing all the fast
drumming before the final chorus I thought I'd get on stage singing with them. So I jumped on and we all sang 68 Guns on
the mic and I was singing with this Japanese singer right up close to me. I thought they were brilliant and I went in the
dressing room to say thanks for letting me do it, I enjoyed it and they couldn't speak any English at all. They'd actually
learned to sing 68 Guns phonetically and they had it down absolutely word for word. Brilliant.
I was asked to write a whole set of sleeve notes for the Japanese release because although JVC were releasing Newid as a CD
in Japan he felt that maybe some people in Japan would only know Wales as being part of the United Kingdom. So he got me to
write a whole set of sleeve notes about where Wales was, what was happening with the culture and what happened with the
album. So when you get your Change album, your year 2000 version, it will have some of these sleeve notes about what Wales
means to me.
My father passed away not long after this album was finished and he was my best mate in the world, I miss him like mad
still now. One of the great things I was able to do with him when New South Wales came out was that my dad actually appears
in the video. He's that guy sitting in the chair on his own, he plays the part of the vicar in the video. The Japanese CD
has a picture of me and my dad on it which I thought was very cool. So I'd like to dedicate this version of A New South
Wales to my dad who was a Londoner from Acton. And it's called Hwylio Dros Y Mor.
Hwylio Dros Y Mor
Thanks very much. Gonna take a little break, take a leak and we'll get into the Raw thing!