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The Scaremongers' Blogger-in-Chief, Neil Sentance - Forest Fan In Exelsis, the West Country's Adopted Son - was in London with his stupendously talented wife Kate Scott to catch up with old pals. One of the old pals they caught up with was the stupendously pleased-to-see-them Scaremonger, Craig Smith:
Photos from the Scaremongers gig at Ilkley Literature Festival:
Armitage and Smith have told how they had to wait till, well, middle youth, to realise the dreams of their pomp and form a band. In a not dissimilar way, I’ve waited 20 years to become a slavish band follower, adoring fan and vicarious pop-thrill-seeker…
Thursday 8 May 2008, the Gramaphone Club, Shoreditch, London. Been in a state of giddy anticipation for some time. A rare visit to the steaming capital to see our old mate and his new band — the Scaremongers. We walk out of sweltering evening streets, city swallows dipping round the lampposts, and into the dimly lit, crypt-like rooms — an updated image of the Cavern for sure, the walls sopping with the sweat of a hundred upstart bands. Immediately, there’s Smith, calm, authoritative, his smile as broad as the portico of Huddersfield station. He welcomes us and thanks us for coming in his ever-charming manner. He’s sticking to a solitary pint. Like Keith Richards someone says. My wife notices Armitage in the corner but she is uncharacteristically shy and gets into drink-ordering at the bar. I’ve already had a couple of pints; Smith introduces me to his chief bandmate, who’s understandably a touch nervous pre-gig and feeling laryngeally challenged; luckily he won’t have any registered any of the nonsense I spout at him. A fine fellow, worthy of Smith.
In turn we meet other members of the Scaremongers in toto, all top guys and wait for the support act to wheel through its numbers.
9.45 pm: the seven Scaremongers are ranged across the stage, averting their collective headlight gaze from the expectant eyes of their new hardcore fans in the front rows, and the angling BBC camera. The first number, Cardigan Girl, an instant classic, and all is well. Smith has them marshalled and adept, quashing nerves, soothing qualms, fixing errant amps. Armitage proves himself a king in yet another arena, his north country timbre finding a perfect counterpart in Sue’s skylarking support. Seven or eight songs breezed through, and then the great finale, You Can Do Nothing Wrong in My Eyes. The music and lyrics, it’s the whole thing, the synchronization — it’s self-evident, an everyday miracle maybe, but how they do such things, so well, are beyond my envious grasp. Gaping Gill. I remember someone told me you could fit the whole of York Minster inside it. York Minster would be small-time for this band I reckon, but then I’m smitten.
It’s over, cheers ring out and another band has the unenviable task of following. We all drink more beer and talk of the night we’ve been a part of as if it’s already a grand memory.
In the 1980s, the sounds of the Smiths and others with their enchanting disenchantment rarely reached my bedroom door deep in rural Lincolnshire; Peel was only half-heard in stifled snatches. The musical tribal divisions in the small town where I went to school were archetypal, arrayed on the bus every morning: desperate grebos, balding-but-bequiffed rockers, disaffected remnant punks, a smattering of sullen goths (are there any other kind?), the odd mod, a phalanx of menacing soulboys with their aggressive suits and perfect hair. School rucksacks with band names inked inexpertly across the canvas. One lad even had a Mötorhead logoed jumper his mum had knitted him. At the time I liked to think I’d taken the road less travelled, back into past, to eras through which my folks had lived but from the sound of it hadn’t really been there at all. When I finally escaped to university, I found many such like minds and lost souls, refugees from the 80s demonic chart sounds of SAW and their ilk…
Spring 2007 and I’m listening to Mark Radcliffe’s late night radio show. With him is his oft-times guest Simon Armitage, poet, author, unhurried wit, a man I unwittingly spooked after a reading in Devon in the 90s by running up to him in the dark street as he left — I can still see his don’t-mug-me expression. Now he’s ruminating on the possibility of achieving a long-cherished dream — his own band. He mentions his old mate Craig …
I first knew Smith on the playing fields of Eton. Well, the five-a-side court in the crumbling concrete Fusion Centre in Elephant & Castle, southeast London, to be sure. A doughty opponent, solid in defence, incisive in attack, possessor of an old-fashioned shot seemingly learnt at the feet of Peter Lorimer. After pretending to be other such 70s heroes for an hour (most of the famed Forest team of that time in my case), many times we’d retire ruby-faced to the Hampton pub, sink a few ales and talk about the football and music, what else. Some years pass. I’ve left London but start to hear faint rumours about the nascent Scaremongers and their first tentative gurgles in the world. Of course, these rumours are from Smith himself. That first wonderful double A-side appears, another appearance on Radio Radcliffe, an article in the Weekend Guardian. All they needed now was a first gig. They’ve done it now, and they should be proud.
Neil S.
If the rate we blog on this site is anything to go by, it's no wonder we were 20 years between coming up with the idea of The Scaremongers and actually doing anything about it. We've been ridiculously lax, and we are duly ashamed of ourselves. I've been getting into a little bit of bother for not posting on here, (sorry, Maria!) so knowing that I'm not going to get any more diligent at it, and knowing the Lad Armitage is somewhat bewildered in the face of technology, we've chosen to ask a couple of pals to help us out.
First up is the great Neil Sentance, a man who knows more about the Scaremongers than I do! He was the chap who emailed me last April to tell me that, according to what he'd heard on the Mark Radcliffe show, I was in a band with a renowned poet. Since then, Neil and his wife, the great poet Kate Scott, travelled from Devon to see us play our first gig, which is a herculean effort by anyone's standards.
Check out his gig review - it's so good, I wish I'd been in the audience watching!
We got a message on MySpace that I'm sure is OK to share with you, which was triggered by Armitage's article in The Guardian. It came from Richard of Dolphin Music, and the the subject was Woods Music Shop - if you've read the article, you'll know it finishes with the following exchange:
A month or so later, I'm on the internet searching for Woods' Music Shop. If you live in Huddersfield and you want an instrument, you go to Woods'. That's how it works. Everyone knows that. Pianos. Drums. Piccolos. Sheet music upstairs. Plectrums, flageolets and kazoos in the glass cabinet. The bloke with the limp. But the worldwide web hasn't heard of Woods'. Neither has the phone book, or Yellow Pages, or 118118. In the end, I phone the only person I can think of who knows everything there is to know about Huddersfield.
Me: "Where's Woods'?"
Mum: "Where's what?"
Me: "Where's Woods'?"
Mum: "What's Woods'?"
Me: "Woods' shop."
Mum: "Woods' what?"
Me: "Woods' shop."
Mum: "Woods' music shop?"
Me: "Yes."
Mum: "What about it?"
Me: "Where is it?"
Mum: "It closed down. Or it got taken over."
Me: "Woods'? When?"
Mum: "Years ago. Why?"
Me: "I need to buy an electric guitar."
There's a long, contemplative pause, then she says, "No. It's gone. You're too late."
To which, Richard replied:
Hi there...Richard here from what was Woods music shop in Huddersfield.
Just seen your article in the guardian mag. Woods did indeed close and now internet supremo's Dolphin Music now run the shop.
We are aiming to keep the same standerd of stock but at better prices than the Woods days, even some of the same staff are here.
The downside is that the man with the limp (Barry) has now limped off in to retirement.
Come down and say hi to us all - you are more than welcome.
hope to see you soon.
Richard.
Woods was the place that I first bought a record, Snoopy Versus The Red Baron by The Hotshots. The shop was a Huddersfield institution on New Street back then: I bought the single for 45p on the day Princess Anne opened Huddersfield Sport Centre, and somehow all these facts seemed significant back when I was seven, and frankly they still do now. I've bought thousands of records since then, but the circumstances don't stick in my head like they did that day. I've still got that 45 in with my other vinyl, probably bent out of shape through years of woeful storage and I haven't played it for donkey's years, because I haven't played any vinyl for donkey's years. I tried to download it once from Audiogalaxy, but it couldn't come up with the Hotshots version - the original was written by Phil Gernhard and Dick Holler and recorded in 1966 by the Florida-based rock band The Royal Guardsmen, (bless you, Wikipedia). Holler went on to write Abraham, Martin and John. The Guardsmen's version is OK but it didn't take me back to that February stood outside the Town Hall, clutching my new purchase in a brown paper bag, giddy as anything. My music tastes have moved on but there's still a huge place in heart for that version of that song.
And as for Woods, it's good to know it is still alive in one form or other, and it was good of Richard to take the time to let us know that it's still around, albeit in changed state, (as we all are!)
Because we'll never be a real Sunday night run-down, Gallup poll-style chart band, for our own amusement we've invented our own screwed-up version. For us, where we are in the charts is dictated by the radio station we're being played on. So when we appeared on Marc Riley's Brain Surgery, we were on Radio 6, which is a glorious place to be and we're still indebted to Marc and his team for that. Then this Thursday, that great arbiter of taste, Mark Radcliffe, and the writer of the greatest book about the north published this year, Stuart Maconie, played and discussed The Scaremongers on their show on Radio 2. So, like seedings in a tennis tournament, we joke that we have moved up four places.
I'm sure we'll never reach the coveted Radio One spot, but when I think about it, it's only because I'm a child of the seventies that makes me want to be on there. Back then, Radio One was pretty much the only place to listen to music on the radio, and though you might have had to timeshift your listening patterns to pick up the music you really liked, you still ended up listening to Radio One all day in cafes, school playgrounds and the workplace, and pretty much knew what was where in the charts of the time, by osmosis as much as anything. Back then if it wasn't on Radio One, it was nowhere, and nothing could redeem it but to get onto the hallowed airwaves of the Breakfast Show.
Radio is different now, and I'm glad to say that the focus of the whole panoply of pop music isn't focused on the charts or on Radio One anymore. You can make a respectable name for yourself yet never get anywhere near Radio One, what with the many other quality stations that abound and the wonderous wonderland of the World Wide Web. I wouldn't sulk if we ever got played on Radio One, obviously, but I'm ever so proud that Marc was the one who played us first, and I'd be thrilled if he ever decided to play us again. And I'm giddy that Mark and Stuart played us on Radcliffe and Maconie, (and gave me my first namecheck!), and I'll forever be glad that they did. I'm very pleased to take a stand next to these fine broadcasters, and if that's where we prove to remain, I would happily settle for that.
Anyway, I did the usual of shoving a microphone (which itself is hidden in the aluminium of my Powerbook) to the speakers of my PC, and recording the Listen Again function of the BBC Radio Player. Once again, I hope they don't mind us steal a little bit of their show. There's some glorious bits where they discuss the song, culminating in:
Mark: Now he's officially a recording artist, Simon can come on the show and do a Show and Tell.
Stuart: He can come on and do a set.
Mark: Hang on a minute, we've only heard one song. The rest of them might be bobbins. Let's not get carried away.
Thanks to Mark, Stuart and their team, and to my pal Neil who emailed me to tell me we were on!
The magnificent Lyndon Hayes, the painter of the image that The Scaremongers used as the cover of The Scaremongers' First Double A-Side, is in The Guardian today, page 28 if you have a copy to hand. He was asked to come up with a series of designs for adverts the Guardian are to run about themselves, and as usual he did a particularly glorious job of it as you can see for yourselves below, with the first installment:
