Andrew Fryer’s notes from the 1990’s Clay reissues CDs: Disc 1

I first spoke to Tommy Stupid sometime in October 1984, when he rang to ask me, ‘Do you do Punk? We’re called The Stupids, can we come and record at Teardrop Avenue?’. ‘You can come’ I replied ‘just so long as you don’t smash the place up!’. So they came - and smashed the place up. (In fact the ceiling fell down after several sessions of Tommy’s drumming, and anyway, as the Captain had already broken the bathroom sink trying to wash both feet at once, I was getting good at D.I.Y.)

The Stupids arrived at 10am on a Sunday morning (24th Oct), with a guitar, a bass, and a borrowed Marshall 100, and proceeded to try out every instrument in the studio. Wolfie (went on to form Perfect Daze, Lovejunk )reckoned he could play the violin, and Marty the Maltese percussion (check out the intro to Elephant Man), but they eventually got round to playing their own instuments. A few sessions later they were to swap instruments completely and record 17 tracks as ‘The Coolest Retards’ (sadly, unreleased).

There is arumour that Tommy learned the drums playing along to Motorhead Lps at 45rpm, but what amazed me about the Stupids was the ability of Marty and Wolfie to keep up with Tommy, and actually land on the same chord at the same time. Peter Davidson (from The Addicts) who had come with them for their first session, kept saying ‘You’re playing too fast, try it slower’. But they wouldn’t listen. If they couldn’t get it right they just played it faster and faster until it was right.

For the second session a week or so later (3/4th Nov) my parents (whose house the studio was in) locked themselves in the living room with the telly up loud, while the remaining tracks for the ‘Leave Your Ears Behind’ cassette were ‘committed’ to tape. This cassette was mainly used for swaps through fanzines such as ‘Punk Lives’ but it was quickly discovered by Children Of The Revolution who released it (minus 4 tracks) as the Violent Nun E.P.( So called because of the sleeve photo of a nun pushing a policeman during the Pope’s visit to Ireland), this was descrided by John Peel as ‘tolerably brief’, but later as ‘tolerably collectable’.

Two months later the Stupids were back to record a flexi disc, the ‘Feedback Session’, and the 1st track of the Coolest Retards - and it wasn’t until a year later (12/13th Oct 1985) that their 1st album ‘Peruvian Vacation’ came to be produced. By then there was a fourth member in the band, Ed Shred (went on to form Sink), who I first saw trying to skateboard up the stairs to the studio, Ed played guitar, wrote lyrics and wore shorts.

The best track on the album for me is ‘Always Never Fun’ which uses an electric drill instead of a lead guitar solo. This was also noticed by the music press. Peruvian Vacation was reviewed in Sounds (3rd May 1986) as ‘a torrent of audio abuse’ (4 stars) and in Melody Maker (7th June) as ‘a hardcore classic’. It reached number eleven in the NME indie charts. The Stupids were no longer merely stupid - people actually liked them.

Andrew Fryer 1993

Andrew Fryer’s notes from the 1990’s Clay reissues CDs: Disc 2

After a peaceful interval of eight months, I received another telephone call from Tommy Stupid, ‘Yah dude, ride the ramp, we wanna record another album’, he said (or words to that effect). I informed my parents - who immediately booked a holiday and quickly put the finishing touches to the plasterwork on the studio ceiling.

Retard Picnic was recorded in two sessions. The first, on the 8th June 1986, was a marathon 24 song thrash - all completed in 12 hours. Of course, four were released as the ‘Stupid Flexi’, two actually made it to the final album (’All I Wanna’ and ‘Yah Dude’) thirteen were for the (unreleased) ‘Coolest Retard EP’ and five were (until now) consigned to the dustbin of music history - my bedroom.

The second session took place three weeks later (on the 29th of June) and gave me time to try out the new mega digital reverb unit I had just bought. The album opens with a group of geeks and retards going on a picnic, and ends with them joining the Sesame Street song - an effect achieved by putting the voices of Tommy, Marty, Wolfie and Ed through the reverb unit and pressing all its buttons at once. This technological leap meant also that the drums could be recorded with two fifferent types of reverb! a major advance, giving the overall sound an extra clarity and punch. The down side was, of course, the necessary increase in recording costs - I mean we were into double figures here!

There is a lot of talking (and shouting) on ‘Retard Picnic’ and I am sure this was due partly to the increasing presence of the irreprssible Ed Shred. As well as singing (backing vocals) he plays bass on a few tracks and in fact took over as bassist when Wolfie left to join Perfect Daze. The talking in the gaps between tracks had become a kind of trademark of The Stupids. The best examples are the so-called ‘Feedback Sessions’. This was recorded before ‘Peruvian Vacation’ (3rd Jan 1985) and was intended to be an album (never released) ‘Mr Adult’ The multitrack tape for this session had already been used to record a funk band from Chelmsford (who shall remain nameless) and we were wiping as we went along. This meant that at the end of each Stupids’ take, the funk band started up. Tommy and Co. just pretended thet were at a disco and improvised silly disco scenes on the spot.

‘Retard Picnic’ was greeted by music press with critical acclaim equal to that of ‘Peruvian Vacation’ ‘a smouldering bomb - fire of white noise!’, said Sounds and gave it four stars. A certain London based record label also took notice (Vinyl Solutions) - The Stupids were about to break out of Ipswich and hit the big city…

Andrew Fryer 1993

Here’s some misc stuff that I put together for some of the Stuipds releases: 

Violent Nun
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.

Stupids Present Frankfurter

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!

Van Stupid
Although Ed Shred co-wrote some of the tracks, appears on the cover of this record and is credited on the insert as playing on it, he 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 God Told Me To Do It (who is hardly mentioned on the credits) was hanging out a lot at the time and he co-wrote and did some of the rapping on ‘Stoopie Boys’.

Talking of ‘Stoopie Boys’…the band was listening to a LOT of rap music back then (Run DMC, Schoolly-D, Kool Moe D., Beastie Boys etc.) and so decided to try their hand at a bit of Hip Hop themselves and so ‘Stoopie Boys’ was born. At the time of recording it was considered by the band to be the ‘most important track’ on the album, but they weren’t happy with the way it came out and actually took it 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. 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.

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!

Jesus Meets The Stupids
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 were pretty happy with this release, but it wasn’t recieved 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.

Like any other good story the Frankfurter story is a long one. Here’s how it goes:

Ever since about 1983-84 Tommy had been writing to a couple of guys in DC, Stuart & Bobby, who did a little fanzine - DScene - and played in a band, Stuge. When they said they wanted to come over the pond for a visit in the summer of 1985 Tommy offered them his parents’ basement as a crash pad and soon the whole place was overflowing w/ Yanks. We got to hear first hand stories of all our DC heroes (and John Stabb!) - they got adopted by the then pretty vibrant Ipswich punk scene and spent hours watching Tommy and Ed trying to skate. We all ate way too many doughnuts and and played the ‘Pile On!’ game till we were covered in bruises. Oh yeah, Stu also came complete with an advance tape of an album by a band called Rites Of Spring that had only been recorded about a month before he flew out and was quite a way away from hitting the streets. Back in DC they might have been experiencing Revolution Summer - but in Ipswich we were going to Extreme Noise Terror rehearsals and learning first hand from the experts (i.e. Americans) how to ‘hang out’ - have you noticed how bad us Brits are at hanging out?

In the end they actually stayed for about 9 weeks and we all got on so well that a regular exchange service was born.

By the time summer ‘86 had come round Tommy had been out to stay w/ Stu in the States, had caught Dag Nasty, Beefeater, Marginal Man, Rites Of Spring in concert, met a load of people, skated a bit and got Pete Murray a parking ticket! In the meantime Ed had moved to London to go to college and was spending his summer working in a part of the college that rented out rooms to tourists. Word had started to get around in DC that there was finally somewhere cool to crash in London and the next 3 summers saw a procession of DC’s finest through the hallowed halls of Campbell House, London, WC1. Even Nirvana/Foo Fighter Dave Grohl slept on Ed’s floor one time when he was on tour with Scream in 1988. Ed finally made it across to DC himself in 1986 (for the Stupids’ US tour) and again in ‘87.

Anyway, the point of this all is that we’d become 100% best buds w/ Stu and Bobby who were - after all - the ‘DC to UK’ trailblazers and it followed that since we were all in bands already we’d end up jamming together at some point. It finally happened in Tommy’s parents’ basement (where else!) in the summer of 1986. Stuge was represented by a singer (Bobby) and a bassist (Stu). The Stupids drummer (Tommy) was in the house and Bad Dress Sense had loaned their guitarist (Ed - he hadn’t joined the Stupids by this time) for the occasion. Frankfurter - the first (and last) Washington DC/Ipswich punk supergroup was born! Bobby’s friend, Gina Pala (dubbed Veruka for the occasion), was also hanging out. A bunch of original songs and a couple of covers (Iggy’s ‘I’ve Gotta Right’ and the garage punk classic ‘Good Guys Don’t Wear White’) were thrown together and Ippo punk godfather, Jim P, was asked to come along and record them on his trusty 4-track. It was a real collaboration with everyone contributing lyrics, riffs and ideas. It was probably the most fun session ever in a ’studio’. Since everyone loved it so much plans were made to release it somehow - for a 4-track it sounded damn good - but since the Stupids weren’t as big at the time as they would be within a few months, no-one was interested. We all dubbed copies for friends and left it at that.

Over the next year Bobby left DC and his band, Stuge, to go to college in Glasgow. They got a new singer and became, Shudder To Think (now I bet you didn’t know that!). The Stupids recorded and released ‘Retard Picnic’, started getting some serious national UK press and went across to the States to tour with NYC metal punkers, Ludichrist. Minus a bassist they asked Stu from Shudder to fill in for the tour - those sessions in the basement the summer before paid off! It was an awesome fortnight and the band rocked.

Skip forward a year:
Ed has joined the Stupids full time and they’re the biggest hardcore band in Europe. All’s going well, but Tommy is bored and frustrated. He needs something to occupy his time and so starts writing a bunch of new songs. Vinyl Solution aren’t keen to put out another Stupids record so soon after ‘Van Stupid’ and so Tommy resurrects the long-forgotten ghost of Frankfurter. As luck would have it BBC Radio 1 are on the phone the same week that V.S. agree to the idea of a Frankfurter mini album asking for a new Stupids session. We suggest Frankfurter instead and they go for it - John Walters was a star as always! A quick phone call to Glasgow to check that Bobby’s able to take part and it’s all signed and sealed. Stu couldn’t make it over from DC due to Shudder and college commitments, but 3 out of 4 is better than none. Like any Tommy Stupid project, this one’s been left half finished and so Ed and Bobby get busy writing lyrics and adding a couple of extra tracks.

I can’t remember whether the Peel session or the album recording came first, but it doesn’t really matter. The were both completely chaotic and 100% fun. At one point during the Peel session the assistant engineer - a woman called Fred - suddenly shouted, ‘I get it! I finally understand what you’re doing. This is great.’ and ushered the producer and the other engineer out of the control room. She wanted to do the whole thing by herself and the others were more than happy to get the hell out and go have a cup of tea! The band covered 7 Seconds’ anthem, ‘We’re Gonna Fight’, but changed the words to ‘We’re Gonna Eat’ for Radio 1 and on the album recorded a tribute to Jerry’s Kids and their classic’Raise The Curtain’ - renaming it to, ‘Raise The Breadknife’ for the occasion.

In order to confuse the public as little as possible the album came out under the name of ‘The Stupids present Frankfurter’ and to be honest, it was more a Tommy Stupid solo project than anything else by then anyway. Bobby did some awesome cartoon artwork (as he had done for the tape release of the 4-track two years earlier) and we made sure that Stu and Veruka got name-checked. Also included in the gang was Bad Dress Sense vocalist, Nick Schnozza, who’d hung out and joined in on the Peel session.

And that, by way of a very long-winded explanation is how the Stupids came to release a mini album under a different name.

The ‘Eat E.P.’ came out in France and Australia as part of a repackaged ‘Van Stupid’ release. The two mini-albums were combined to make one full length LP release. Hard Ons bassist, Ray Ahn, contributed some additional artwork to the Australian release (on Waterfront Records).

As this was supposed to be a budget release Frankfurter went with the generic white sleeve look for the first pressing and whacked a sticker on the front (see above). The second pressing was a little more upmarket with proper printing on the actual sleeve.

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.

Some crazy person’s gone and set up a Stupids page on MySpace. Fool

There’s not much in the way of new content, but it’s as good a collection of photos and info on the band as there is anywhere online (I should know because I worte a good portion of it a few years ago).

A real bonus is the inclusion of a couple of tracks that haven’t yet made it onto CD, “Bug Blood” and “Mega-Zombie”. Worth a visit just to hear them. I hadn’t heard either for well over 15 years and it was fun having a listen.