Cookin’ in the Sun

The Fringe Rock song of the summer!

This song is one of those that just wrote itself. I wrote it one evening in January 2022, in between working on tracks for my first full-on debut album. It was cold and dark and I was daydreaming about the summer to come.

I was remembering my wedding and honeymoon in Las Vegas and how I’d ended up with a swollen face because I’d spent too long sunbathing around the pool at the Mandalay Bay Hotel. This was two days before my wedding but that’s a story for another time! It was ferociously hot and I felt my skin literally cooking in the sun.

I started writing the lyrics taking in cues from this memory and merging them with a satirical poke at the favourite pastime of us Brits to complain about the weather, no matter what the weather is doing. We’re never satisfied, it’s either too cold, too wet or in this case, too hot!

The music is written around the bass line. Something that I have decided I should do a lot more of as I am predominantly a bass guitarist!

The drums are a simple program that I put together using BDF2 (I’m recording on a PC from 2008 running Cubase 4 Essential remember). I remember trying to be a bit too flash and ‘realistic’ sounding when I was recording Condor Leader and I was never really satisfied with the results. I decided that if it wasn’t to be real drums then I shouldn’t try to hide the fact that this is a drum program, created by me, a non-drummer.

I recorded the track in between working on other music during January 2022, putting the final touches on it in February 2022. It’s my first attempt at producing, mixing and mastering a finished song entirely myself (that wasn’t intended as a demo).

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