Paul May, who wrote Final Curtain fanzine years ago, got in touch via MySpace recently and sent me rather a nice photo of myself playing at an early BDS gig (back when I still had hair). A nice gesture to be sure and one that deserves a deed in return. So, Mr May, here are the tracks from the BDS 7″ that you wanted to hear. Nothing special, but probably a nice trip down memory lane.

The first 2 tracks were recorded at the same time as the mini album Goodbye…It Was Fun (in fact Cynical Smile is taken directly from that release), 11:59 is a cover of the Blondie classic and the other two are re-workings from our very first demo, Gothic Monstrosities.

The single had blank labels, no cover and never received a proper release. It was part promo and part merch. BDS split up very soon after it was released however (actually, very possibly before it was released!) so not many copies were shifted as merch and I ended up with quite a few boxes lying around in my room. At this time I was also playing in the Stupids and we’d sold out of our own equivalent 7″, Leave Your Mark, so nothing to sell at gigs. Ever the opportunist, Tommy Stupid, decided that because there was no band name printed anywhere on the BDS record, we could get away with selling it at Stupids shows because no-one could play it till they got home and even then most people wouldn’t know the difference. He was right and it was only £1, but still….

For the 2 tracks not taken from the mini album sessions, Nick and I got hold of the original multi-tracks from the first BDS demo and re-recorded the guitars and vocals. I’d changed the title and lyrics of, Never So Funny, and it was now called, It’s All In The Mind. I also wanted to re-do the guitars on Dark Night because Marty from the Stupuids had played them on the original demo. The short solo is still him, but the rest are me. The drums and bass are the same as on the Gothic Monstrosities cassette release.

This just popped into my head; the guitar intro on Never So Funny/It’s All In The Mind was stolen from the bassline of No More Pain by Embrace.

• Cynical Smile (5.8MB)
• 11:59 (3.5MB)
• It’s All In The Mind (2.9MB)
• Dark Night (4.5MB)

Vocals: Nick Norris - Guitar & B Vox: Ed - Bass: Paul Condon - Drums: Jason

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.

Warning: This post is for Big Ray anoraks only. No-one else will give a shit….I promise you!

Mefloquine Dreams was always going to be a weird one to record, but I had no idea just how much of a pain it would be to mix. Roop and I tried to nail it on about 10 different occasions during the immensely drawn out process that was The Making of Business Class and in the end we had so completely lost the will to live that I think we probably just went with the one that was closest to hand when it came to compiling the final running order. Definitely one of those occasions when you appreciate the skill of the professional mix genius.

Anyway, I recently came across 3 of the alternative mixes and thought that I might finally exhaust even Andy Sandall’s gratifyingly intense interest in all things related to Business Class if I posted them along with the original for your delectation. If you’re only going to download one then I would strongly suggest Trippy Mix #1 as it’s the most different. Both it and Trippy Mix #2 are more spacey than the one that ended up on the album and have none of Michael Hampton’s nasty guitar-work, but they do showcase his keyboard skills instead; so for him it’s a win/win My only problem with the 2 trippy mixes is that a lot of Dave Derby’s backing vocals are gone which is a shame. They’re back in full effect on Another Bloody Mix though…as are Michael’s electric guitars.

• Original version (4.0MB)
• Trippy Mix #1 (6.5MB)
• Trippy Mix #2 (6.5MB)
• Another bloody mix (6.5MB)

The photo above was taken at Bark studio in North London at some point during one of the Business Class sessions. Not exactly glamorous looking is it? If you didn’t know already let me assure you that the majority activity involved in making an album is standing around getting bored.

Chocolate was a band that I started sometime around 1993 with Wolfie & WJ. Over the next 4 years we did a great Euro tour supporting the Dambuilders, released a respectable number of vinyl and CDs (on Dirter and Out Of Step) and went through a whole load of line-up changes. In fact so many line-up changes that by the time 1997 came round and we started recording what was to be the final album I was the only original member and even I’d lost half of my responsibilities when Clive took over lead vocals sometime in 1995.

The final line-up change happened about a week before we were due to start recording. Our drummer, Chris Turner, decided he couldn’t carry on due to work commitments and so guitarist John Hannon managed to get his old Understand band mate, Andy Shepherd, to come along on the first day of recording, learn all the songs and get them down on tape there and then with me supplying a guide guitar and vocal and John adding comments and drummer short-hand speak from the control room. I know it’s only punk rock and therefore not exactly complex stuff, but the songs came out really well and the lad done good.

However, the headline story was that we’d lost our drummer so Chocolate pretty much overnight moved from band to project and it took another 2 years before I finally finished the songs. By then we’d added some lovely lead guitar from James Allen (Elmerhassel & Big Ray) and I’d moved to London and was about to form K-Line. So these songs just sort of dropped off the map. I was going to release them through Boss Tuneage, but I was skint after paying for the 3rd Big Ray album to be recorded and released and I just never got round to doing anything with them….which is a shame because I honestly think they’re a great set of tunes. They rock, they’re played well, they sound good, the singing’s great. Definitely up there with the best punk stuff I’ve done.

To my mind the songs I wrote for K-Line were the logical continuation of the ones on this (non) release. They should also sound a wee bit like Sink. So all you Sink fans out there, get yer ears round this lot.

On this recording Chocolate was: Clive Watling (vocals), Ed (guitar, backing vocals & bass on one song), Paul (bass), John Hannon (guitar), James Allen (guitar) and Andy Shepherd (drums).

The whole thing was produced and mixed by Roop with Ed lurking. Roop did the majority of the engineering (certainly all the hard stuff), but John Hannon and Ed also did their share of knob twiddling. Studios used were No Recording in Southend (back when it was still called Mushroom) and Purple in Norwich.

• Information Age (5.6MB)
• Customer (2.5MB)
• Stubborn (5.8MB)
• Circular (3.7MB)
• Waiting (5.0MB)
• Compartmentalize (5.9MB)
• I Can’t Free You (8.6MB)
• Smalltown Song (6.6MB)

For the sake of completeness I’ll dig around for the lyrics and post them here.

Part 2 of this post will feature 4 other songs - recorded by yet another incarnation of Chocolate. Together with this lot they’d have made up the final album.

Just so that you don’t all get the impression that Old Man Shred has hung up his strumming fingers for good, I thought I’d post a couple of tracks from the current band,You Disgust Me. Actually, it’s more of a project now that we’ve been drummerless for 12 months, but I live in hope that one day we’ll play a gig somewhere. Any drummers please get in touch. We’ve had a serious problem getting these tracks finished….it’s almost a year from when we started, but we’re now one session away from being able to get them mixed.

Here are a couple of tasters for you. They’re unmixed and unfinished, but you’ll get the idea I’m sure. The first one is by us, the second is a cover of one of the best 7″s ever released My Pal by Aussie band, God.

You Disgust Me is:

Ed: Vocals & guitars - Rich Matthews: Guitars - Paul: Bass - James Sherry: Drums

• End Time Gospel (4.4MB)

• My Pal (4.1MB)