This one goes way, way back --over 35 years, now. I wrote it August 8, 1979, just over a year after getting my first guitar. My first band started in early 1979 when I'd taught myself enough guitar to jam with Jon, who was borrowing his first drum kit from his drum teacher. He soon bought an old Rogers kit, I got an electric guitar, and then basically taught Freebus how to play guitar and Tim how to play bass, and they got some gear. From the beginning, we focused on originals. We collaborated on all our stuff, doing most of the music writing during our weekly Saturday night pizza jams in Jon's basement. (This led to our name during the college years: Everything But Anchovies, a special on the Domino's menu.)

Recording notes: Voyager's eponymous first album was recorded on March 14th and 19th, 1980 by Aram Tabackman on a stereo cassette deck from two Realistic 4-channel mixers live with 8 cheap microphones. Freebus' guitar is clean and towards the left, mine is distorted and towards the right. There were no overdubs.

Freebus made a killer re-make of this song in 2010 with a really cool video! I made a little self-reference to this song in the lyrics to "here today": "don't you know we gotta live it up while we can". When introducing "here today" these days, I sometimes mention how I think that the attitude in the words comes from having grown up during the Cold War, when the threat of a "nuclear winter" was enough to make me really quite certain I'd never live to be as old as I am now. I remember getting under my desk in school to practice kissing my ass goodbye. I'm so happy to still be here!

Thanks for listening!

Andy

Live It Up

The world is full of one night stands
But me I'm in for some real romance
I'm gonna love her on the beach in the morning sun 
She's gonna be the only one
	
You gotta believe in love
If you want to get some love in your life
Take a few chances and just live it up 
Get some love in your life

Gonna take her dancin' groovin' fast or slow
There'll be real romancin' everywhere we go
And we'll be anywhere we want to be
Livin' it up  my baby and me

Love's the only thing that brings you down
But don't be discouraged cos once it's found
You'll find that love's the only thing that's on your mind 
Love is the greatest thing you'll ever find

Andy Wyatt -- 8 August 1979
©1979 by Voyager