Midnight Hours (Revisited)

Robert James

Tempest Fero Lives again!

My first real band was called Tempest Fero. We shoulda rethought that name. Anyway, this was one of the first four or five songs we wrote. There should be keyboard, but I don’t have the skill or the patience to try and pull it off.

Recordingly speaking, there are things to note about this turkey. First, it is the first time I ever used the tempo track in Garageband. There is a bonafide tempo change in this one that I didn’t cheat my way through by recording two separate files and then editing them together.

Second, all three of my electric guitars make an appearance. The rhythm guitar is my Les Paul Custom. The first half of the guitar solo during the slow section is my Stratocaster. The second half is the Les Paul Custom again. The two solo breaks toward the end should have been keyboards, but instead they are my ES 335 Pro. The guitarmonies at the very end are actually all three guitars. They weren’t part of the Tempest Fero arrangement, but I thought it would be fun to have all three gitters in harmony.

As for the old days in T.F., this song was monkeyed with often. I believe this is the arrangement (sans keys) we stuck with the most, but there were others. I remember at one point the slow section opened the song. I only found one old (ancient) tape of the song and I could not for the life of me figure out the lyrics in the last verse. What I have here is close, but probably not 100% right.

As for the lyrics, well… we never had a chance. It was 1987 or 88. I was really into Deep Purple. Our drummer was into White Snake and Iron Maiden. We all loved Led Zeppelin. At some point we were going to write a hooker song. None of us would have known a hooker if we had one sitting on our lap, but there was no way around it. We were going to write a hooker song.

I clearly recall three, maybe four, of us sitting in a fast food joint working on the lyrics together. We created the character together and threw the lyrics together. I also seem to remember thinking it was pretty funny. Really, it was just kinda sad.

Ah, the 80’s.