Through a fairly convoluted process I managed to get my hands on a load of old photos recently and have started scanning them and putting them on Flickr. Most of them are Sink & Stupids and there are some really decent shots on show. Worth checking out.

And while we’re on the subject, I’ve had a ton of other Sink photos on Flickr for a long time already. Starting to build up Big Ray and Stupids snaps too, but nothing to show just yet.

Sometime in late 1988 just before going our first European tour with the mighty Instigators we got word from Ray Ahn of the Hard Ons that waterfront Records in Australia was putting together a Kiss tribute album; no promises, but if we recorded a song he’d do his best to get us on it.

Our latest drummer, John “Memphis J” Howie Jnr (a native of North carolina, USA and now lead singer for the very, very cool Two Dollar Pistols) had recently joined and thanks to his mad drum skillz we were most definitely ready to rock. Although he would leave soon after this recording and we’d go to Europe without him, Laurence Bell, was still lead singer and Paul and I were doing what Paul and I always did.

• Sink - Cold Gin (4.47MB)

We recorded this one evening at a studio in North London called Von’s (I think it was on Liverpool Road); Martin Hawkes (aka Marty Tuff from the Stupids) was the engineer. This was the middle of 3 sessions at Vons. The first produced what was going to be a flexi disk which never happened and is now generally referred to as The 1988 Demo and the 3rd session was the one where we recorded the songs that became our 2nd EP, On The Tracks, Feeling Blue.

Not sure why we decided on Cold Gin…maybe Laurence chose it? Anyway, it came out pretty well, especially since we’d only rehearsed it a couple of times and it was our first recording with John on drums. We did the obligatory speed-it-up bit in the section near the end and I suppose it sounds a bit weedy, but I like the way it goes back into the last chorus. This version was recorded off a dodgy old cassette so please excuse the odd wobble on the longer notes and a drop-out near the top.

My man, Andy Sandall, has asked to hear Grandma’s Kitchen by Sink. Interesting choice indeed because there are several different versions of the song floating around and a couple of interesting stories as well, but there isn’t time for all of that now.

Since Andy’s long been exiled to the distant shores of New Joisey it’s only fair to grant his wish, so here (I hope) is the version of the song that Andy asked for plus an earlier demo recording we did in 1988.

Yes, that is Tommy Stupid playing drums on the 1988 version. He was never a full time member of Sink, but he recorded this demo with us and played a few gigs that year after our original drummer, Pete, left the band. The 1988 version is faster and more tinny, also check out the crazy snare towards the end, “More gated reverb, Vicar?”

I think I played the slide solo on this version, but John Ruscoe wrote it and taught it to me so he may well have played it, but something tells me it was me. He certainly played the slide on the 1990 version as he had joined the band by then.

There was yet another version of Grandma’s Kitchen (I think) that we recorded for the first album, Another Love Triangle, but it never made it on. If I can dig that up I’ll add it to this post. What the hell, I’ll even add the Perfect Daze cover version too at some point.

BTW, the spoken intro the the 1990 version was added from a live cassette for inclusion on the Sink DVD that I put together last year….more on that some other time.

• Download the 1990 version (4.65MB)

Recorded as part of the Vega-Tables album sessions.
Ed: vocals & guitars - John Ruscoe: Guitars Paul: Bass - James Kermack: drums - Laurence Bell: vocals

• Download the 1988 demo version (2.97MB)

Recorded in North London (with Marty from the Stupids engineering).
Laurence Bell: vocals - Ed: b. vox & guitars - Tom Withers: drums & vocals - Paul: bass

OK, so the first candidate for Behind The Song is one of the Sink songs that I’m proudest of, Big Red Car; taken from the debut album, Another Love Triangle.

• Download the album version (5.17MB)

Recorded in 1989
Ed: vocals & guitars - Paul: Bass - Memphis J: drums & vocals

• Download the live version (5.63MB)

Recorded live in Otwock, Poland in 1990
Ed: vocals & guitar - John Ruscoe: guitar & vocals - James Kermack: drums & vocals - Dave Turner: bass*

Big Red Car stands out for several reasons; the tune is bouncy and catchy, but still interesting and not just punk-by-numbers as there are several layers going on, the words take me back to a time and a place and when I bother to think about what they mean I’m right back there scribbling down the lyrics on a piece of scrap paper at 7AM in a German service station (but more about that later), it’s a tour song (more about that later too) and finally, I like it because the recorded version is deliberately different to the way we played it live.

Music

I can’t really remember where the music for this one came from. I think I wrote most of it by myself, but the album credits ‘Sink’ with writing the music so I can only assume that we arranged it as a group (i.e. myself, Paul & Memphis). The swirly middle section definitely has that DC thing going on (Rites of Spring, One Last Wish, Embrace…the bands that I shamelessly pilfered from for years), but the rest I’m not sure about. The Senseless Things had a track out around that time with a chugged riff looping over a descending bass line (I think it was called Too Much Kissing) and I liked that a lot, but Big Red Car may have been written first so I doubt it was a direct influence. The chorus has the inevitable Husker Du feel that all of us Ipswich boys had beaten into us at Rock School. One thing I remember is that the Replacements’ Don’t Tell A Soul album was knocking about at that time I nicked a production tip or two from there when we came to mix Big Red Car. OK, you can’t really tell all these years down the line, but the delay on the lead guitars and the chorus effect on the acoustic (something I generally steered clear of and have never used since, but it kind of works here) is straight out of the Don’t Tell A Soul playbook.

Lyrics

In early 1989 we had the massive good fortune to be asked to tour Europe with the Instigators. It was a very formative time for me as I’d recently left the Stupids to strike out on my own with Sink (little did I know that my ‘career’ in the music biz had already peaked at the age of 23!!). Whilst the Stupids had toured the UK, the US and even Australia we’d only managed a few shows in Europe and I’d always wanted to tour there properly; this was my chance. Throughout the mid/late 80’s and very early 90’s the scene in Europe was awesome. It was massive, it was scary, it was fun, it was chaotic, it was dangerous, it was organized and disorganized at the same time, it was full of amazing people (most of them insane), it was tiring and it was fucking hard work, but the crowds were enthusiastic and seemed to like Sink which was great. Above all it was an education and provided very good raw material for songwriters with a diaristic bent. That first tour in ‘89 lived up to all my expectations and as a result we came back from Europe with a fresh crop of songs ready for Another Love Triangle which we recorded a few months later; Hard As Hate, Backwater, On The Tracks and a few others were written on or about that tour.

I think all of Big Red Car was written on the Instigators tour. It’s a standard ‘Ed song’ of that period in that it’s not about a single subject, but is instead a series of loosely related verses all thrown together. My deal at the time was that I’d rather have a song where each verse was well written and interesting - even if they were about something different - rather than a song that stuck to one subject, but ran out of steam creatively and resorted to repetition or just got boring. A lot of Sink songs have this mixed subject matter approach to lyric writing. These days I’ve learnt to write better lyrics, but at the time it was a good way round a problem.
Anyway, whilst on the tour I’d had a dream about how my girlfriend of the time had driven off in a flashy American car with none other than Milo of The Descendents. I called her and told her about the dream and she said she’d had a one that same week about how she and I had been locked in prison together, but that every time she went near me, I magically turned into Henry Rollins. She, being a big Rollins fan, probably didn’t object to that one little bit, but it was weird coincidence since neither of us made a habit out of dreaming about punk rock singers.

A lot of Sink lyrics also contain a reference to something that was going on at the time I was writing the song. In the case of Big Red Car, we’d stopped early one morning at a service station on a German motorway and I noticed a bloke having problems getting fags out of a ciggie machine; it reminded me of home and how in London people were always losing money in the chocolate machines they used to have on the platforms in the Underground. Since I was sitting at a nearby table working on the song, the cigarette man made it into verse 2.

The chorus I’m not so sure about, but I think it’s probably a bit of youthful defiance thrown in for good measure. A sort of, “we’re poor and scruffy, but we’re nice people really and anyway we’re young so the future is ours”….that sort of thing. Oh yeah, and it fitted in with the car theme from verse 1.