Taken In
from the Boss Tuneage Album Only Souvenirs

While blowing the digital dust of my music library recently, I stumbled across many songs and rarities from my previous punk band Barefoot – songs mostly confined only to memory.  I had a great time and a lot of laughs playing, recording, gigging and touring the UK with the Glasgow-based band between 2003 and 2007 .

It was on listening to these songs again recently for the first time in ages, that I came to appreciate their quality, melodies, musicianship and energy a lot more.  Our music, labelled punk, melodic punk, power pop etc, was very much in the vein of bands like Leatherface, Mega City Four, Doughboys and (earlier) Greenday. High speed, driving drums and bass, a 2 guitar attack with melodic embellishments/solos and unique, song-defining vocal melodies and lyrics were order of the day.

Playing and working with these songs week-in week-out for such substantial periods obviously colours how you hear and feel about the songs.  It is all too easy to get lost in the minute details of something that from the outside may not be of any particular worth. Conversely, you can become completely sickened of something great when you play it repeatedly. Such is the dilemma when trying to both write and listen to songs.

Time away however, has rejuvenated these songs “in my ears’ eyes” and I can also look back nostalgically now with a clearer overview of the different musical stages in Barefoot’s short history: Early 3-piece pop punk gems like Taken In (above), Ten Past Broken and Punch Your Weight,

Ten Past Broken
from the Boss Tuneage Album Only Souvenirs

Punch Your Weight
from the Boss Tuneage Album Only Souvenirs

Via the beefed out, more jagged, 4-piece sound of the Undone and Done In songs such as Face First:

To the more updated, varied and intricate guitar sound from “Deliverance Sessions” such as On The Edge, Useless and Bitter.

On The Edge
from the “Deliverance Sessions”

Useless
from the “Deliverance Sessions”

Bitter
from the “Deliverance Sessions”

Amongst the trinkets and treasures of the clear out I also came across a markedly different side of Barefoot – a rare, more laid back, partly acoustic rock song called Secure. One that I think stands up as a great song all by itself. If Barefoot had ever wanted to be radio-friendly….

Secure
from the unreleased album Undone and Done In

Apart from this new found personal interest in the songs themselves, part of the reason for putting them up here on shanx.co.uk is because many of these songs have never actually seen the light of day. There is an album’s worth of completed songs that only those in the band or those who saw us live in our latter gigging days have ever heard. So let’s blow the digital dust off some of them…