Lepers & Pirates

Throughout 1997 Snow White Likes Curry worked on a substantial amount of material, where I would participate in an ad hoc way, organising sampled sounds or setting up the sequenced material. Much of the time it was, “Hey, sing something on this!” The cheek.

So, we ventured from sci-fi football ‘Robbie’s Boots’ by Special Offer (complete with Mysterons) to straight crazy sci-fi with the ‘Chrysalids.’ [1997] There’s a clip of the latter below.

Even stranger stuff ensued with a rendition of an Etruscan hymn, ‘The Arval Brothers’ [1998] and a ditty called ‘Zero Zone’ [1998] which eerily predated the events of 9/11. All the time the guitarists imitated the late great Mick Ronson on the arrangements. It’s a credit to his enduring ability that it often worked. This was quite exciting.

There was a bit of a hiatus while the bands took stock or whatever else they were consuming. About six months later the Royal Marines returned to produce an odd sea-faring track called ‘Barbarossa’ [1998] about butchery and fish-fingers. They roped me in to do a Captain Birdseye cameo. I’m still not sure what this was all about, with its semi-techno feel. Who cares?

’Leper Seed’ [1998] by Matchstick Canons was introduced at this session, a tune which another collaborator picked up on. Eskallonia Kwiksilva was very much from the school of sampling and electro and he decided to remix it completely- he still insists it was for Peter Gabriel. We laughed a lot.

The Beano Readers returned the compliment by strangling one of Kwiksilva’s moody pieces and transforming it into ‘The Planet Punk.’ [1998] This was grander territory, with six-minute sonic vistas. Veto Veto also committed a power-punk ballad to tape/disc, called the ‘Art Of Punk’ [1998] referencing the ‘Pissoir’ of Duchamps & Hunt Sales. They just sang the lyrics straight from a magazine article I was reading. Nothing wrong with spontaneity. Then they called it ‘The Punk Of Art.’ Keeping up?

The last thing they did was a very rough reading of ‘God Save The Queen’ renamed ‘Camilla The Gorilla’ [1998] after they’d read about Charles’ romantic phone-calls. There were several rough unfinished versions of this.
Then they vanished. Splintered into various other projects, no doubt.