Compared to everything else we ever did, we rather fancied that this sounded as though it had a chance of being a 'hit' of some sort in a chart of some description on a planet of some kind. The oxide is falling off the tape, and the xylophone is endearingly approximate, but 'a certain charm', etc

Careless Talk

This is us trying to channel John Barry. I shouldn't have thought we posed any threat to him, but I still rather like this, considering how incalculably young we were

The Apartment Song

When my Catholicism lapsed for keeps, when I was about 15-16, I was still too scared to tell my parents; so when I was supposed to be going to church on Sunday mornings I'd secretly go for a walk instead, and would often end up sitting on the step of a dock building in Clarence Street, rocking backwards and forwards at the thought of the amount of mortal sins I was racking up by not attending mass

Clarence Street

I was 17 when I wrote this and 18 when we recorded it. I'm now 58, and I still don't know what on earth influenced it

Theodolite And The Himalayan Tank Commander

I still like this one also: an attempt to depict the feigned jollity and grinding misery of most UK seaside holidays

Deckchair

Everything we recorded at Heavenly Sounds Studio in Greenock was pretty much first-take, and overdubs were generally regarded as too time-consuming for our meagre budget. However, we apparently still found the time to overdub a piano and harmonica on the noise breakdown in the middle of this

Baritone Foot

The idea here was to see how fast we could play it by the end of the track. There were no winners

Growing Tomatoes

Hundreds of time-signatures! Middle bit inspired by the horror double-bills that used to be on every Saturday. (On the telly, although arguably also enacted in the town centre)

Who's This?/What's This?

This was our habitual set opener: my Catholicism had lapsed so hard by this point that I had developed a determined fascination with the tritone, the 'Devil's interval', so I evidently included as many as possible in this track. Serious tape degradation in this one, unfortunately: one channel is almost entirely lost, but you hopefully get the general idea. (Make lots of noise.) Iain hits a bass note near the start which fills me with delight every time: a big, blobby E which almost sinks to an E-flat as the note rings.

Cybernetics

We tended to wheel this one out as an example of the 'jazz-punk' (cough) fare we sort of thought we were doing at the time. I always meant to add a top line of sorts, and never did. The breakdown in this was, I think, inspired by what I thought the Strand cigarettes advert from the 1950s would have been like. (I'd read about it, but had never seen it. Sigh.)

SWASB (Sealed With A Stink Bomb)

And this was our habitual set closer: eight-and-a-bit minutes of, probably, eight-and-a-bit bits which we mashed together over Christmas 1978. Seemed like a good idea at the time, as did literally everything.

The Dandruff Sonata

Mr  Thomas Hughes and Marco Rossi exploring the many moods of Yakety Sax

Popular tracks by Gothic Chicken