The Ug Brothers: Second Act (Ugstrumental)

Second Act has a certain amount of history to it and this rather untidy and untogether version of it does the piece no justice whatsoever. Back in the days of Rough Terrain, that band had a song called At One, which had an army of chords with very long names, and numerous key, tempo and time signature changes. Danny Bouget, Rough Terrain's drummer, nailed it easily. George felt he needed a tougher challenge and composed Second Act, named thusly as many people seemed to mis-hear the name At One and thought it to be Act One. There were lyrics about being born, and probably reincarnated, although they were never really on the table. George plays the rhythm guitar part here rather than lead guitar part to try to keep the thing together. As there are frequent time signature changes, many musicians find this piece rather challenging and The Ug Brothers didn't develop Second Act significantly further, despite initially being up for the challenge of performing it live. Second Act was later performed with some success by The Bastard Sons of Dennis on two acoustic guitars with Andy (Derek Broom) playing George's Ug part and George (Chuck Palmer) playing the lead. We hope to be able to find and release a decent recording of them sometime in the future. These recordings of instrumentals – or Ugstrumentals – by The Ug Brothers were made at Graham’s flat in Fore Street, Exeter, above the Real McCoy Arcade during the late winter of 1994/5. They are most of the set of The Ug Brothers, including various pieces that were never performed live due to having had no lyrics written for them. There are no vocals as Natalie was not there on the occasions that these Ugstrumentals were recorded. The idea was to have something to listen to and work on with a view to creating lyrics, and also as a karaoke tape for Natalie to sing along to when practising. Few further lyrics were forthcoming as things turned out. These Ugstrumental pieces still sound wonderful and full of interesting musical ideas. The concept of Ugstrumental pieces such as these was later developed by the Flicker project. Copyright (c) Wud Records 1995, (p) Explicit Music 1995