what does anything mean? basically

The Chameleons looked inwardly through the suffocating intrigue of the chaos and the crass to see what lies behind the mask.  Formed in 1981 in the Middleton area in the north of Greater Manchester, the original lineup included Mark "Birdy" Burgess, Reg Smithies, Dave Fielding, and Brian Schofield.   John Lever took over for Schofield before they secured a deal with Epic Records in 1982 to release their debut single "In Shreds".  The band was dropped from Epic over creative differences and they moved on to Virgin Records subsidiary Statik to record their debut album Script of the Bridge with producer Colin Richardson.  

Richardson helmed the sessions for the follow-up 'What Does Anything Mean? Basically' at Highland Studios in Inverness, Scotland during January of 1985.  The album features Mark Burgess on vocals, bass guitar, strings, and production;   Dave Fielding on guitar, strings, and production;   Reg Smithies on guitar, acoustic guitar, album cover illustration, and production;  and  John Lever on drums and production;  with  engineering by Ian Caple.  

Burgess admits:   "We had no idea what we were going to do next. Obviously there was a guitar sound. Dave (Fielding, guitar) had a sound. Reg (Smithies, guitar) had a style. I ha a style. The drums had a style in keeping with a lot of the stuff John (Lever, drums) was into. However, in terms of what we actually produced with that sound was varied. There was nothing typical about it. The only reason why the second album sounds remotely like the first one is because a lot of the songs which ended up on it were written around the same time but didn't end up on Script Of The Bridge for one reason or another. I think there's only two or three brand new ideas on the second album. The rest were all done around the same time as Script.... Songs like 'Looking Inwardly' and 'Singing Rule Britannia' especially we'd been playing for such a long time ... Some of the songs off the second record stretch us a bit. For example, 'P.S. Goodbye' is very untypical of anything we've ever done as a band. We wrote it in the studio, put it together in the studio and basically did it one piece at a time."







http://www.thechameleons.com/





lyrics
http://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/The_Chameleons:What_Does_Anything_Mean%3F_Basically_(1985)






 'What Does Anything Mean? Basically' 
full album:



All lyrics written by Mark Burgess, all music composed by The Chameleons (Burgess, Dave Fielding, Reg Smithies and John Lever).

Side A
00:00 "Silence, Sea and Sky"   1:59
02:01 "Perfume Garden"   4:36
06:41 "Intrigue in Tangiers"   5:17
11:59 "Return of the Roughnecks"   3:26
15:27 "Singing Rule Britannia (While the Walls Close In)"   4:17

Side B
19:47 "On the Beach"   4:10
24:01 "Looking Inwardly"   4:29
28:35 "One Flesh"   4:28
33:02 "Home Is Where the Heart Is"   4:54
38:57 "P.S. Goodbye"   4:02

bonus tracks
11. 42:02 In Shreds
12. 46:14 Nostalgia

Intrigue in Tangiers [live at Candem Palace, 1984]




Singing Rule Britannia - (Live at the Camden Palace, London, UK, 1985)
Burgess;   "There were a lot of political writers in music at that time who were raising awareness and that was brilliant but I would only write about what I had direct experience of. I've never even been arrested so I was never going to write about being in solitary confinement because I feel like I'm in solitary anyway when I walk down the street. There are plenty of writers cleverer than me who can bring that stuff to people's awareness so I tended to avoid a lot of the heavy political issues. What I wrote about I don't regard as political; it's more social. 'Sing Rule Britannia' is very much about Thatcherite Britain but I'm there I'm trying to write from the perspective of the social repercussions of that rather than the politics of it."

strange times

These Manchester post-punk shape-shifters made the majors with this dark and moody reflection of a world of madness, alienation, death, and redemption. The Chameleons had just signed with Geffen Records and decided to work with Dave Allen, who had produced albums with the Cure. 'Birdy' Burgess recalls: "The album was recorded at Jacob's Studio in Surrey, south of London over a period of five weeks. Again the material was only loosely sketched and we didn't really have any idea how the album would turn out. We'd spent a month or so getting the ideas together living in a small house in the Lake District of England and rehearsing the ideas in a school hall, specially hired, just outside the village of Hawkshead. The lyrics and vocals were usually worked out the evening before or the day of the vocal take." Though none of the singles broke the top one hundred, 'Strange Times' made it to number forty four on the British album chart.

http://www.thechameleons.com/

'Swamp Thing' became an underground hit in the US. Mark calls it "Definitely one of my favourites from everything we did. I'd had the chords of the chorus, which Dave had come up with, running around my head for some time and knew, when the time came, what I'd sing to it. John and Reg meanwhile, had jammed out what were to be the verses and, not knowing what to call it, had named it 'Swamp'. When it came to working it out I started singing over it and then suggested we switch to the chorus idea. It was one of the quickest songs we ever did. It was recorded some months earlier in London and remixed for the album. I was dissatisfied with my own voice and it was suggested I stop smoking for a couple of days. I did and didn't light up again for about a year. Lyrically I regard it as a true prophesy."

"Now the world is too much with me

Please leave, just go away

Before I lose my mind completely

Just leave, please go now

Now nothing's sacred anymore

When the demon's breaking down your door

You'll still be staring down at the floor"

Birdy says: "A few months prior to starting 'Strange Times' I'd lost a very old and dear friend to cancer. At that time it was the hardest blow I'd ever been dealt and I wanted to write something specially, the idea 'Tears' originally 'Tears Are Not Enough' seemed perfect for it. I think it had been earmarked as a single by both the producer and the label from the word go, hence the first 'rocky' version, which I liked up to a point, but it didn't quite capture what I'd had in mind and so I argued and eventually got, an alternative treatment. The studio was residential but the producer chose to commute each day from nearby London. We chose to continue working into the night and it was the band and the engineer that put the track together, the producer then coming in on the mix. Personally, the night we recorded it was one of the highlights of the album."

"From the window of my room now

I can see the colour blue now

You can't even look in my eyes now

What would you see?"

Burgess says for 'Caution' "the vocal was completely spontaneous, nothing actually written when I stepped up to the mike to do the take. I'd tried to write something down but to be honest I was struggling and decided to use a 'stream f consciousness' approach, which involved a litre of wine in a very dark vocal booth. We did about six takes all in all, each completely different, but I could tell from the Producer's voice on the intercom that we had something special. I'd placed a glass on the floor, in the dark, and during te takes I'd somehow broken it without realising and cut myself. The Producer and engineer couldn't see me so when it was finished they drew back the curtain and turned on the lights to find me covered in blood, they thought, I think, that I'd been mutilating myself in the name of method performance. I did nothing to kill the myth :-)"

"We have no future, we have no past

We're just drifting ghosts of glass

Brown sugar, ice in our veins

No pressure, no pain"

For 'Soul In Isolation' Birdy says, "The original idea was taken from one of the first things we did together, demoed but never actually finished, entitled 'Dear Dead Days'. We re-worked it in rehearsals and came up with this. I start singing the original lines at the end of the song. We were struggling to kick start the song following the intro when John came up with the stabs, which I absolutely love. The lyrical idea was inspired by one of my all time favourite books 'Star Rover' by Jack London, which at that time I'd never heard of. It was the Producer Dave M Allen that gave it to me."

"In total isolation

Surrounded by fears

Too many clowns, too many tears

Isolation

Surrounded by crowds

In another world, head in the clouds"

'Ever After' was one of the tracks on the six song bonus twelve inch that was included with early pressings in the US.

"Disguise and distort all you will

I'm burning up I can't stand still

I'm finding out I always will

For ever after."

'Strange Times'  full album:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuBYqvVEcYn9RtMD6eUvHP0e9GTaKy7fq
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ3osEyiiXU





All tracks written by The Chameleons (Mark Burgess, Dave Fielding, Reg Smithies and John Lever), except as noted. 

Side A
1. "Mad Jack"   3:55
2. "Caution"   7:46
3. "Tears"   5:05
4. "Soul in Isolation"   7:28
Side A+
5. "Swamp Thing"   5:56
6. "Time/The End of Time"   5:41
7. "Seriocity"   3:00
8. "In Answer"   4:54
9. "Childhood"   4:39
10. "I'll Remember"   3:39


bonus EP tracks
11. "Tears"   5:10
12. "Paradiso"   4:35
13. "Inside Out"   3:34
14. "Ever After"   3:59
15. "John, I'm Only Dancing"  David Bowie 2:30
16. "Tomorrow Never Knows" John Lennon, Paul McCartney 6:08