Yardman was a project that I started in around 1990 with Clive Watling (Elmerhassel) taking bass and vocals and James Kermack (Sink) on drums. In all we recorded 3 sessions-worth of material. The combined output from the first 2 sessions was released on 3 7″ EPs by 3 record labels on the same day…more about those songs in another post. The 3rd session took place a few years after the first 2 in November 2004 and saw a line-up change due in the main to the fact that James had sadly passed away sometime after the second recording.

I’d been in touch with David Hancox for a couple of years by that time. He was a Sink fan from back in the day and had been bassist in Kerosene a Manchester-based band who’d been signed by a major and had a certain amount of success. I think I heard about them because they released a song or an EP called Sink and someone saw the video on TV and noticed that the bass player was wearing a Sink t-shirt…or something like that; the details blur after a while. Somehow or other David and I got in touch and started talking regularly on the phone. At some point I floated the idea of doing another Yardman recording and asked him whether he’d like to play bass. I may also have suggested he bring his drummer, Chris, along to fill in for Kermack….drummers are never easy to find.

Clive was interested and was happy to switch to guitar seeing as how David was on bass duties. Clive also wrote two of the songs. If memory serves, we borrowed some rehearsal space in a friend’s basement in Ippo Rock City. Clive couldn’t make it until after work so Chris, David and I ran through 3 of the tracks a few times during the day. Clive popped in later on and taught us the 4th song, Aged & Crippled, which involved a switch to bass for yours truly with David taking over on guitar.

The next day we went to Purple Studios near Norwich and recorded these four tracks over a weekend. All things considered, they’re really pretty good. Previously unreleased. Enjoy.

I haven’t posted any MP3s here for ages, so I thought I’d bash out a quickie post and get the first Big Ray album made available for download/streaming.

Windfall - 5.0MB
Treat You Right - 5.0MB
Free Range Flesh - 3.6MB
Missing A Train - 4.6MB
Evergreen - 4.6MB
Open House - 5.2MB
Spaces Inbetween - 4.0MB
Watch Me - 3.6MB
Richer In Body & Soul - 4.8MB
Feeling Tired & Useless - 3.3MB
Carousel - 5.7MB
Squirrels & extras - 29.5MB

Alternatively you could stream the whole album instead of downloading the individual tracks.

Some quickie notes (lyrics to follow eventually)

• The album was recorded by Sink, but we decided on a name change before it was released.
• It was the first time I’d recorded with Roop (Rupert Coulson). He was awesome. I’ve not recorded without him in the intervening years unless I was really short of cash. He the man.
• It was released on City Slang. It was their idea to do an acoustic album (not that we needed much encouragement). They wanted us to break from Sink’s punky image (cough!) and wanted ‘Naked’ to be similar to Yo La Tengo’s ‘Fakebook’ album which they had released the year before.
• This is the last album that you have to endure my fake American accent. Not sure how it got there in the first place, but it took me years to shake it. It had gone by the time the next Big Ray album was recorded.

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!