August 2007 Archives

The Great Pete Ashton made The Scaremongers' Combined Days when he wrote the first online review - in fact, the first review of any kind - of The Scaremongers. Pete has always been a Diviner of the Zeitgeist and an Online Legend in my book, and he further wrote himself into The Scaremongers Story by also winning The Glorious Scaremongers' Facebook Group First Friend Challenge, for which he wins a bespoke t-shirt.

And The Scaremongers entered the national media for the first time in an interview Armitage gave to The Guardian Travel Section. To quote:

I've always been as interested in music as in literature. I'm just putting the finishing touches to a book called Gig, which is about growing up listening to music. I was a punk, a mod, a new romantic. The basic premise is that I became a writer through failing to become a rock star. I formed a band with an old school friend, Craig Smith, about two months ago, called The Scaremongers. Our single is out next week. That's given me the opportunity to live out some of these daydreams.

In this case, 'old school friend' is shorthand for 'a bloke at met at Peter Sansom's Poetry Workshops who was on the dole at the same time as me so we dossed about in the Merrye Englande together'!

In other news, Matt Padmore, Forest Fan and Darling of All Osaka, has become the first person to do The Scaremongers' MySpace/Facebook Friendship Double, an achievement of which even his hero Brian Clough would have been proud.

The CD which will heretofore be known as The Scaremongers' First Double A-Side has gone to the pressing plant! We should get it back within the next week. This is exciting stuff for us - we're finally real!

There are two songs on there:

You Can Do Nothing Wrong (In My Eyes)
Nodding Dog

Both are Armitage/Smith compositions, and both are released under a Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike/Derivative/Non-commercial license, which means you can do what you want with them as long as you aren't making money from them, and you give us credit as the creators of the songs.

The cover image is taken from a painting called Mum Takes Photograph by the great Lyndon Hayes, and should look something like this, provided we've got the artwork right:

We're printing 1000 copies, which seems like plenty to me. Our friends at Vinyl Tap in Huddersfield are going to distribute the CD for us, which is very kind of them.

Personally, I can't wait to hold a copy in my paws! I've been making music for 30-odd years, if you count playing the recorder at primary school, and the only thing I have to show for it is a contribution to the choir on a Middle School LP. This is the first time something tangible has come from anything I've significantly helped make, and the fact I'm doing it with my long time pal is just the best!

Nodding Dog

So it all went to pot, girl,
when you talked to the shop-girl,
about white Rolls Royces and mobile disco vans.

And you opened the page, girl,
full of page-boys and cakes, girl,
and honeymoon retreats and wedding dress meringues.

So let the disco play
Del Shannon’s “Runaway”
then picture us two looking naff
inside a wine-glass photograph.
Someday soon we’ll live as one
but something tells you something’s wrong,
I’m a nodding dog but God I’m not fooling anyone.

So your mother’s cut up,
so your dad beats me up,
and your brother’s playing clackers with my knackers and my knees.

Now you want all your records back,
and your books and your Apple Mac,
and the Love Heart we licked when we just sixteen.

So let the disco play
Del Shannon’s “Runaway”
then picture us two looking naff
inside a wine-glass photograph.
Someday soon we’ll live as one
but something tells you something’s wrong,
I’m a nodding dog but God I’m not fooling anyone.

Sod the sarnies and seating plan,
sod the aunties and vol-au-vents,
sod the strangers queuing up to shake my hand.

Let's just hit Las Vegas, girl,
in t-shirts and trainers, girl,
and we’ll walk the aisle in that dumb and distant land.

So let the disco play
Del Shannon’s “Runaway”
then picture us two looking naff
inside a wine-glass photograph.
Someday soon we’ll live as one
but something tells you something’s wrong,
I’m a nodding dog but God I’m not fooling anyone.

You Can Do Nothing Wrong (In My Eyes)

(Boy)
Like all the rest -
you weep at sunsets in the west.

(Girl)
Like all the least -
you sleep through sunrise in the east.

(Boy)
You’re a daddy’s girl -
he buys you dresses and you twirl.

(Girl)
You’re mummy’s boy -
in snake-belt kex and corduroy.

(Boy)
But like Humberside is Yorkshire still
and Lancashire is over the hill
and loneliness is Gaping Ghyll,
we never fought and we never will…

(Both)
‘Cos you can do nothing wrong in my eyes.
You can do nothing wrong in my eyes.
(Boy)
Some go mental for pills and smokes,
(Girl)
and some go sleeping with other blokes,
(Both)
but you can do nothing wrong in my eyes

(Boy)
You took me in -
with pillow talk and Bombay gin.

(Girl)
You walked me home -
I woke up naked and alone.

(Boy)
I plucked a rose -
and strew the petals on your clothes.

(Girl)
That rose was dead -
It passed away behind the shed.

(Boy)
But like Humberside is Yorkshire still
and Lancashire is over the hill
and loneliness is Gaping Ghyll,
we never fought and we never will…

(Both)
‘Cos you can do nothing wrong in my eyes.
You can do nothing wrong in my eyes.
(Boy)
Some go looking for tabs and wraps,
(Girl)
and some go loafing with lesser lads,
(Both)
but you can do nothing wrong in my eyes

(Boy)
You watch the dawn -
and talk about the earth reborn.

(Girl)
You watch the dusk -
like watching iron turn to rust.

(Boy)
If looks could kill -
they’d find me slaughtered on the hill.

(Girl)
The day you laugh -
I’d frame it in a photograph.

(Both)
But like Humberside is Yorkshire still
and Lancashire is over the hill
and loneliness is Gaping Ghyll,
we never fought and we never will…

(Both)
‘Cos you can do nothing wrong in my eyes.
You can do nothing wrong in my eyes.
(Boy)
Some go hunting for thrills and flings,
(Girl)
and some find fault in every little thing,
(Both)
but you can do nothing wrong in my eyes.

The Scaremongers – Nodding Dog

Personnel:
Vocals: Armitage, Speedy Sue
Rhythm Guitar: Geoff Bird
Bass: Glen Smith
The Rest: Smith
Engineer: Jason Salisbury

Recorded at HD1 in Huddersfield, June 26th/27th and July 26th 2007

Smith says:

Another song from the cavernous back catalogue of tunes that were clogging up shelf space in our house. It was originally called The Day Lady Died, and as I recall it was about euthanasia! A badly written song about euthanasia, at that! When I send songs to Armitage, unless there's something in there that I really want to keep, I make a point of writing the most terrible lyrics I can come up with, so he can come at it without any pre-conceptions about what it should be about, but nothing I have sent him has been as bad as the euthanasia lyrics.When he sent back his first draft, he'd made a couple of twists to the melody that I just didn't get, so I did my own draft, loosely based on his, and sent it to him. Then, when we finally sat down and compared the two versions to a musical backing, it turned out he was right and I was wrong. He took a couple of lines from mine - Let the Disco Play Del Shannon's Runaway was mine - but the rest is all his.

Recording it was easy. Mixing it was even easier - there's hardly anything to it. Geoff's choppy rhythm guitar dominates very satisfyingly, and the handclaps were great fun to put together: four lads in the vocal booth larking about. I'm not sure about the guitar solos - as one of Armitage's confederates said, 'tell your guitarist to get down off his amp stack!' That was me, living out my Angus Young obsession.

Lyrics

Nodding Dog

So it all went to pot, girl,
when you talked to the shop-girl,
about white Rolls Royces and mobile disco vans.

And you opened the page, girl,
full of page-boys and cakes, girl,
and honeymoon retreats and wedding dress meringues.

So let the disco play
Del Shannon’s “Runaway”
then picture us two looking naff
inside a wine-glass photograph.
Someday soon we’ll live as one
but something tells you something’s wrong,
I’m a nodding dog but God I’m not fooling anyone.

So your mother’s cut up,
so your dad beats me up,
and your brother’s playing clackers with my knackers and my knees.

Now you want all your records back,
and your books and your Apple Mac,
and the Love Heart we licked when we just sixteen.

So let the disco play
Del Shannon’s “Runaway”
then picture us two looking naff
inside a wine-glass photograph.
Someday soon we’ll live as one
but something tells you something’s wrong,
I’m a nodding dog but God I’m not fooling anyone.

Sod the sarnies and seating plan,
sod the aunties and vol-au-vents,
sod the strangers queuing up to shake my hand.

Let's just hit Las Vegas, girl,
in t-shirts and trainers, girl,
and we’ll walk the aisle in that dumb and distant land.

So let the disco play
Del Shannon’s “Runaway”
then picture us two looking naff
inside a wine-glass photograph.
Someday soon we’ll live as one
but something tells you something’s wrong,
I’m a nodding dog but God I’m not fooling anyone.

The Scaremongers – You Can Do Nothing Wrong (In My Eyes)

Personnel:
Vocals: Armitage, Speedy Sue
Bass: Glen Smith
The Rest: Smith
Engineer: Jason Salisbury

Recorded at HD1 in Huddersfield, June 26th/27th and July 26th 2007

Smith says:

The melody for You Can Do Nothing Wrong (In My Eyes) was floating around my back catalogue of unfinished pop songs for many a year. I mean, probably twenty. It had a couple of lines here and there - something about Simon Bates being over the hill, and the You Can Do Nothing Wrong hook, but it wasn't about anything. It needed shoring up, some structure, a lyrical idea to tie it all together. This is where Armitage took it and ran with it, gave it some personality, a point.

It was the first song we worked on, passing it backwards and forwards over the internet. The original vocals on the beta version had myself and my better half duetting, and I'm still extremely fond of that version. When it came to be recorded in the studio, the female vocal was performed with great aplomb by Speedy Sue, a singer of the Old Skool - putting in a masterly performance as the other part in the song's duet. The bass is played by Glen Smith, formerly of the Dez Lawrence Soul Explosion - the finest soul band to ever grace the Bradford University Hall's Balls circuit. It's important to let people know that the spirit of Geoff Bird runs through the whole track - that lad is an inspiration, even though the guitar lines we'd asked him to play were not what the song needed - sorry, Geoff!

We'd had a couple of days in the studio working on this and Nodding Dog, and once we got the thing home, we realised it wasn't right - it didn't move like the demo did, and the vocals were too far down in the mix. So we booked another day and came out a lot happier.

Lyrics

You Can Do Nothing Wrong (In My Eyes)

(Boy)
Like all the rest -
you weep at sunsets in the west.

(Girl)
Like all the least -
you sleep through sunrise in the east.

(Boy)
You’re a daddy’s girl -
he buys you dresses and you twirl.

(Girl)
You’re mummy’s boy -
in snake-belt kex and corduroy.

(Boy)
But like Humberside is Yorkshire still
and Lancashire is over the hill
and loneliness is Gaping Ghyll,
we never fought and we never will…

(Both)
‘Cos you can do nothing wrong in my eyes.
You can do nothing wrong in my eyes.
(Boy)
Some go mental for pills and smokes,
(Girl)
and some go sleeping with other blokes,
(Both)
but you can do nothing wrong in my eyes

(Boy)
You took me in -
with pillow talk and Bombay gin.

(Girl)
You walked me home -
I woke up naked and alone.

(Boy)
I plucked a rose -
and strew the petals on your clothes.

(Girl)
That rose was dead -
It passed away behind the shed.

(Boy)
But like Humberside is Yorkshire still
and Lancashire is over the hill
and loneliness is Gaping Ghyll,
we never fought and we never will…

(Both)
‘Cos you can do nothing wrong in my eyes.
You can do nothing wrong in my eyes.
(Boy)
Some go looking for tabs and wraps,
(Girl)
and some go loafing with lesser lads,
(Both)
but you can do nothing wrong in my eyes

(Boy)
You watch the dawn -
and talk about the earth reborn.

(Girl)
You watch the dusk -
like watching iron turn to rust.

(Boy)
If looks could kill -
they’d find me slaughtered on the hill.

(Girl)
The day you laugh -
I’d frame it in a photograph.

(Both)
But like Humberside is Yorkshire still
and Lancashire is over the hill
and loneliness is Gaping Ghyll,
we never fought and we never will…

(Both)
‘Cos you can do nothing wrong in my eyes.
You can do nothing wrong in my eyes.
(Boy)
Some go hunting for thrills and flings,
(Girl)
and some find fault in every little thing,
(Both)
but you can do nothing wrong in my eyes.