OILY ROAD HIDEAWAY

Oily Road Hideaway by Flicker.
Album: At Least 1000 Words

Fun Facts:
* Oily Road Hideaway is in the key of G minor and the tempo is 85 BPM.
* It was composed at around eleven o’clock on a Friday morning in October 2000.
* Instead of being at home composing a tune, George should have been in Luxembourg to celebrate Floyd and Kat’s wedding.
* Unfortunately, Joe’s old Ford Sierra wasn’t up to the task of completing the journey.
* Joe, Mel, Vince and George had all put on a show with some live bands at The Hideaway in Torquay, as was usual on a Thursday evening.
* The plan was to drive overnight from the show in Torquay to Luxembourg, taking turns sleeping in the car and on the ferry.
* At around 3am, the old Ford emptied the contents of its sump all over the A303, about two miles from Stonehenge.
* Fortunately the breakdown was close enough to a lay-by to simply coast in and park.
* Despite Joe and George both being members of a well-known breakdown and recovery service, they were not found for four hours, on the second busiest road in the South West of England very close to the most famous monument in England.
* It was a poor effort.
* It was so poor that the breakdown company upgraded Joe and George to top tier membership for the rest of their year, and gave them a free bonus year each at that level as well.
* The first recovery vehicle to arrive was the wrong type and unable to help, so a second one was summoned.
* This one only took about an hour and a half to arrive.
* The stricken Sierra was towed right back to Exeter and its sleepy occupants returned to their homes, disappointed.
* Within 15 minutes of returning home, George had composed this piece on a Hokada classical guitar.
* Nearly all the other pieces on the album At Least 1000 Words had their drums recorded at Tim’s house in North Devon, in a room about the size of a toilet.
* The mics were all pretty horrid too, and the whole system looked like it had been built by Captain Hook at a Heath Robinson school for elementary electronics.
* Oily Road Hideaway is the only track on the album that uses programmed drums.
* The rhythm breakdown in the middle of the piece was somewhat longer originally, and cut down quite drastically to save precious space on the CD.
* The Hokada classical guitar, on which the piece was written, plays two parts panned to the left.
* One is the main rhythm part, and the other a melodic motif, which only uses the two top strings.
* The nature of the part means that if one should find oneself at a party where there is a wreck of a two-string guitar, it is still possible to play Oily Road Hideaway!
* The other lead guitar part is played on the Yamaha steel string, which is panned to the right and plays unison with the bass to begin.
* Oily Road Hideaway features a delicate, wistful ostinato played on the string fish, an extraordinary instrument built by Martin from Pyg.
* It starts at 2:05 and continues to the drum break, then reappears at 2:54 and plays until the end.
* A string fish is a like a pair of dulcimers or zithers, joined together at an acute angle.
* The strings are vertical and to play a scale, the player must alternate between the left and right side, like a kalimba.
* Dave and George both play a unison bassline, on the Fender and the Plank respectively.
* George and the Plank are panned right, Dave and the Fender panned left.
* Just after the drum break, at 2:48, George plays two notes that Dave doesn’t play.
* Other than that, their parts are beautifully in sync.
* Flicker would have liked very much to have found a brass section for Oily Road Hideaway, but none was available.