Andrew Fryer, the very decent chap who produced and engineered the Violent Nun EP and the first 2 Stoops albums, has his own MySpace page. Drop in and say hi.

Like the Frankfurter EP before it this album was recorded at Redwood in Camden by Alan Scott. Redwood is owned by members of the Monty Python team and was the Stupids first experience of a ‘big’ studio (outside the BBC sessions).

The band was pretty happy with this release, but it wasn’t received very well in the press. The Stupids were just leaving the ‘let’s build them up…’ phase and were heading straight into ‘…so we can knock ‘em down again’ country. Ironically the press had loved ‘Van Stupid’ - a record the band felt was far inferior.

The cover was again painted by Barry Lee Thorpe. It’s based on a famous painting (Renaissance period?) by a famous artist (Italian?), but as you can see, I’ve forgotten the details. Polaroids were taken of the band and then Barry worked them into the painting. Tommy was heavily involved in the cover concept.

Although I co-wrote some of the tracks, appears on the cover of this record and am credited on the insert as playing on it, I actually did no studio work at all on ‘Van Stupid’ - Marty and Tommy pretty much did the whole thing themselves.

On the other hand, Sean Ridgewell from London band, God Told Me To Do It (who is hardly mentioned on the credits), was hanging out in the studio for most of the sessions and he co-wrote and did some of the rapping on ‘Stoopie Boys’.

Talking of ‘Stoopie Boys’…we were listening to a LOT of rap music back then (Run DMC, Schoolly-D, Kool Moe D., Beastie Boys etc.) and Tommy decided to try his hand at a bit of Hip Hop; hence ‘Stoopie Boys’ was born. At the time of recording it was considered by Tommy to be the ‘most important track’ on the album (I actually remember him saying that), but he and Marty weren’t happy with the way it came out and it was actually taken off the Australian and French versions of ‘Van Stupid’.

Talking of foreign licenses…this record was licensed by Waterfront Records in Australia and by someone weird in France (I think they were called Bondage). To the best of my knowledge both versions had ‘Van Stupid’ (minus the rap song) on one side and the Frankfurter ‘Eat’ EP on the other. Vinyl only in Aus and I think vinyl and cassette in France.

The cover was painted by Barry Lee Thorpe. Alain Schnozz took the photo of the band and Barry superimposed it on a cityscape that he and Tommy dreamed up. Tommy’s mate, Vince did the label drawing and other bits and pieces. The photo on the back cover is of British serial killer Patrick somebody - famous for once trying to drown himself under a tap in public toilet!

The debut release by the band, this is still their most collectable. There were 2 pressings of 500 each. The first came with a photocopied lyric sheet, the second didn’t. Not many people know that…even fewer give a damn!

The session at Treetop was originally conducted to record a demo tape - ‘Leave Your Ears Behind’. The tape got out around the country and Tim from COR Records in Bristol got in touch to say he wanted to release it. He’d been blown away by the band when he caught them live in Leeds (or maybe Bradford). 8 tracks were taken from the tape and repackaged as ‘Violent Nun’.

Pete Dee from Ipswich’s (until then) most famous punk band, The Adicts, sat in on the session and helped with production. His ‘can we have a bit more top on the bass drum?’ kept the band endlessly amused. In the end he got in the way and kept trying to slow things down and clean them up.

On the record sleeve Wolfie is credited w/ playing the violin although there’s no violin to be heard. The violin playing is on the original tape, but was left off when the tracks got transferred to record.

Cover design was supplied by Tommy. The photo came from a newspaper report on the Pope’s visit to the UK. A nun is being helped to her feet by a policeman, but it looks like she could be attacking him instead. Used entirely without permission in true punk rock style.

All the artwork and design for this release was originally done by singer and cartoon god, Bobby Jones, but at the last minute we realised we didn’t have lettering for the front cover and Bobby was unavailable - so a dipsomaniac medical student called Iain was asked to help out. He came up with the lettering shown above (Tommy had drawn the logo and the face earlier). This was the 2nd time that Iain had stepped in and helped out - Ed was at college with the guy and he’d previously been co-opted as driver on the Stupids’ week long Scottish tour early in the year. He acquitted himself superbly despite being asked to leave at literally 15 minutes notice and wasn’t actually seen asleep by anyone for the whole tour!

That clever Ian Glasper (author of two great books on the UK punk scene) is at it again. He’s busy writing a third book about the bands who were selling their souls on the HC circuit between 1985-1990. Apparently he’s doing pieces on Bad Dress Sense, Stupids & Sink (hurrah!) so I’ll be contributing material here and there. We’re currently trying to set up a face-to-face meeting to kick things off.

While we wait for the book to hit the streets you’d do a whole lot worse than go out and buy his first two forays into documenting that elusive little beastie called punk rock:

• Burning Britain
• The Day The Country Died