Songs: I Want To Find Out How It Ends

notes / gigs / releases

If I had a time machine
I wouldn't want to go
To the Mesozoic
All I really want to know
Is what is to become of me?
What happens to my friends?
To put it succinctly
I want to find out how it ends

I want to find out how it ends
I want to see what happens next
I want to go back to the start
And maybe watch it all again
Don't want to ever have to sit
Through another boring bit
Don't want an album what I want
Is the Greatest Hits
I want to find out how it ends

I'll find a future Wikipedia
With a precis of my life
Then go through on fast forward
So I just get the highlights
No need to sit through Tuesdays
Never have a hangover ever again
Why bother with the padding
When you know how it all ends?

I want to find out how it ends
I want to see what happens next
I want to go back to the start
And maybe watch it all again
Don't want to ever have to sit
Through another boring bit
Don't want an album what I want
Is the Greatest Hits
I want to find out how it ends

But I know what you're going to say
Obviously
What about strolls and Sunday afternoons
Sat drinking tea?
I'll say that I have thought of that
They're things I plan to do
The main thing I'll be missing out
Is listening to you

I want to find out how it ends
I want to see what happens next
I want to go back to the start
And maybe watch it all again
Don't want to ever have to sit
Through another boring bit
Don't want an album what I want
Is the Greatest Hits
I want to find out how it ends
I want to see what happens next
I want to go back to the start
And maybe watch it all again
Don't want to ever have to sit
Through another boring bit
Don't want an album what I want
Is the Greatest Hits
I want to find out how it ends
I want to find out how it ends

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

Mr S Patrick and Mr J Hunt got in touch to ask if we'd consider writing and recording a theme tune for their forthcoming podcast series, "A Short History Of Time Travel". I said I certainly WOULD, so we met up in a PUB to talk about what they were after.

They had in mind something LIKE (but not LIKE) the theme tune to Red Dwarf - a proper SONG which related to part of the show but also could live APART from it. They specificaly did NOT want me to include the title so, with that in mind, I went home for a good old THINK. "What," I asked myself, "would it be like if you really COULD have a time machine? What would you do?"

It struck me pretty much right away that I'd want to skip to the end and find out how everything worked out, and then skip back through just enjoying the highlights of my life. This was SUCH an obvious thing to do that I was quite surprised not to have seen it anywhere else. I mean, I'm sure somebody HAS thought this, but not in anything I've ever read.

Thus EMPOWERED with IDEA I wrote the song (being certain to include a CHORUS and an INSTRUMENTAL RIFF that could be used for STABS - working to BRIEF!) and sent it off to Seb and James. They really liked it, and The Validators seemed keen, so they went off into a rehearsal room to work up their own version (with pretty much no direction from me, except to say "Make it sound good"). We'd put in all sorts of MILESTONES to make sure that Seb and James heard the song at every stage, but it all turned out mega-easy as a) it kept sounding GRATE and b) they thought so too!

I recorded my vocals at HOME, along with various other bits and bobs for the various INSTRUMENTALS that the Vlads also recorded (which got used in the final show and given as a mini-album to the people who funded the show via Kickstarter) and that was that.

We released it as a "single" when the series came out, did a VIDEO for it, and gave it to Indietracks for their compilation album, but still it never seemed to get across as much as we'd have liked it to.



When it came time to put together the Still Valid album there was some debate about whether to include it. I personally quite liked the idea of it being a "lost" single (or at least more lost than everything else we've ever done!), but wiser heads prevailed and we decided to include it. We hoped to remix it, as we felt that it's "BIG" sound wouldn't work with the deliberately less over-produced sound we were trying for but nobody could find the masters. We did have a go at re-recording it but it didn't really work out (as Tim said "this is the first time anyone's re-recorded a song to make it sound worse") so in the end Team Snug did some Clever Things with EQ to make it fit in. It seems to have worked!