September 2008 Archives

With characteristic modesty and grace comes news of the Scaremongers’ potentially ‘difficult second gig’.

As a kid growing up in the 1970s, Saturday evenings would mean waiting for the Football Post, the weekly sport supplement to the Nottingham Evening Post. Its unwavering hub of attention was, quite rightly, the fortunes of Forest, County, and maybe Mansfield Town and Lincoln City. But in the gutter margins would be the late kickoffs and scores wired in at the eleventh hour from the turbid realms of the non-league, a litany of lyrical names: high-born Shepshed Charterhouse, Ilkeston (sang out to the tune of Glen Campbell’s Galveston), remarkably unremarkable Alfreton Town, sodden-sounding Borrowash Victoria, folksy Brigg Town of the Midland League or the Northern Premier’s Hyde United, South Liverpool, Gainsborough Trinity. Waiting to hear of the Scaremongers’ adventures last Saturday night in the land of the poetic Thomases (Dylan, Edward, R.S., Mickey) conjured a similar childlike thrill. But maybe I should get out more.

Anyhow, Smith reports that the Presteigne audience was very appreciative, to the point of not rebuffing the band’s offer of playing two encores! Supported by silver anniversary-celebrating The Mood Index (author and friend of the Scaremongers Ian Marchant on vocals), the set list (surely itself now an object of veneration or an Ebay item) included the standards we know so well: Cardigan Girl, Less Is More, You Can Do Nowt Wrong In My Eyes; and rarer gems, airing in public for the first time: Cricketer’s Delight, Grouse Beater’s Boys Club, Derailleur (can you tell this band is the invention of wordsmiths?).

Next on the never ending tour: Ilkley with engineer/producer Steve Whitfield standing in for Glen on bass. News of that gig won’t be limited to the gutter margins.

After a suitably extended laurel-resting period following the triumphant Shoreditch debut in May, the Scaremongers are to reconvene on stage once more. On Saturday 13 September they breach Offa’s Dyke to play the British Legion Hall in Presteigne on the Radnorshire/Herefordshire border, with support from The Mood Index and DJ-ing from Everything's Pointed At Now. Presteigne sits aptly for our purposes on the River Lugg – so all of you in the Welsh Marches with an ear for great music, etc., etc.

And a few short weeks later, on Saturday 18 October, Armitage, Smith & Co. play their first (already sold out) Yorkshire gig at the Ilkley Literature Festival (http://www.ilkleyliteraturefestival.org.uk/user/index.php), amidst such luminaries as Louis de Bernieres, Lionel Shriver, Graeme Garden, Barry Cryer and Kate Adie (oh, and also Cherie Blair and Chris Patten). Rendition of local folk song about headwear-eschewing fell-walkers is unlikely.