Secret Subsociety by George.
From Volume IX Side A of the Band of Georges.
Music and lyrics by G. Davies.
Composed 15th May 1987, 11:00ish to 12:55ish.
Additional composition circa September 1987 and January 1988.
Recorded December 1987 to April 1991.
Mixed May 1991.
Lifted from cassette August 2025.
Copyright © 1987 Explicit Music.
Copyright ℗ 2025 Wud Records.
Fun Facts:
The first ten seconds or so of this are a bit garbled due to cassette deterioration over several decades.
Secret Subsociety may have the longest set of lyrics of all of George's songs.
It expresses a lot of experiences around the themes of claustrophobia, fear and paranoia.
George is no longer sure about how it was produced exactly.
The reverb that rather dominates the mix may have belonged to Watershed, or Zaphod, or Paul, who produced the Rough Terrain demos.
George remembers playing this, and the next three songs on this tape, to Pete inn his van in 1991.
This was the occasion when Pete collected George from Plymouth to move him and his belongings back to Exeter.
Pete didn't like the first three songs, including this one.
The opening lyrics describe George's writer's block, which then became unblocked as the song unfolded.
There was a pre-bounce mix of this which featured the bass and two guitars.
Sadly this mix has not survived the passage of time and is beyond repair.
As such, the way the song ended up being mixed was quite odd due to the number of tracks needed for all of the parts.
This is quite an ambitious recording, especially for just four tracks on a cassette.
It uses the newer Boss DR 220A drum machine, which actually ran out of memory.
The drums at the end had to be overdubbed once the first 256 bars had been recorded.
See also:
https://www.wudrecords.co.uk/miscellaneous/band-of-georges/
https://www.wudrecords.co.uk/miscellaneous/band-of-georges/volume-ix-side-a/
https://www.wudrecords.co.uk/news/band-of-georges-release-permission-granted/
https://linktr.ee/wudrecords
