Full Biography

A chance meeting in the Paradise Club, Boston MA in winter led to the pair forming WhiteTrashParty with drummer Gavin Turner who was introduced to the pair by mutual friend Paul ‘O’ Ganly. The band rescued the diminutive skin thrasher from the boredom and routine of a Tesco Metro shop floor. The plan was to combine Greg Dulli’s sex, violence and guilt; Buffalo Tom’s heartbreak and sentimentality, the everyday agony of unrequited love and alcoholism of the Replacements and the Cold War politics of the teenage Manics.

When they returned to London a few days later the Party pulled together 13 songs, writing and recording their first album over the next 13 days. The band paid for a limited run of 200 copies of the album and gave it away to music fans wherever they could find them. No press. No labels. Just fans. The Party then set themselves to playing in sweaty music clubs in a haze of drinking, fighting and love. What is past is prologue.”

So goes the legend. There’s another story that says we were the only three on the banks of the Silarus to claim not to be Spartacus, in order to carry on the fight rather than be nailed to a cross on the via Appia. 

Whatever.

How three people of similar musical tastes and ideology (and conflicting personalities) are thrown together is often a complicated web of paths taken and not taken, corners turned and not turned, a pint drunk instead of a night in.

Matthew Street was born on the 8^th November 1974 on the same day that Richard Bingham, 7^th Earl of Lucan disappeared and Japanese manga author/artist Masashi Kishimoto was born. In the same month in 1974, Democrats made significant gains in the U.S. Congressional midterm elections, as the Republican Party suffered losses over the Watergate scandal, and Ron Defeo Jr murdered his parents and four brothers and sisters in their family home in Amityville, Long Island, NY. In November 1974 in the rest of the world, the United Nations general assembly granted the Palestinian Liberation Organisation observer status; terrorist bombs blew up pubs in Woolwich, London and in Birmingham in the English midlands and Amnesty International founder and former Chief of Staff of the I.R.A Sean MacBride won a Nobel Peace Prize. 'Everything I own' by Ken Boothe was the UK number 1 single.

Matthew's first years were in the winter of Discontent in Middlesex, on the outskirts of London. His first memories were of green fire-engines, blue busses, broken Labour promises, punk, bins that weren’t emptied for months, strikes, the coalman coming to fill the family’s bunker under the lean-to in the yard, of a happy childhood. “The first thing I remember…” he said “…was waking up in my pram in the garden. It’s summer, and I’m alone…just staring up at the blue sky…the fluffy clouds…I can hear people talking somewhere, but I’m not really interested in them. I’m just totally happy and contented being on my own…I was then and I am now. I love being around people but I’m also capable of shutting my eyes and letting the world drop dead. I think I’m really, really lucky that my first conscious memory is such a happy one.” Matt spent many happy years in that garden, using the garden hose to make rivers for his toy soldiers to cross; chasing the family’s chocolate brown Labrador Coco with a squeaky toy; scoring penalties in the rickety goal that his father made for him and his older brother John out of wood and old netting; finding hedgehogs under the apple tree; nursing injured starlings until they could fly again.

As he grew older, two things began to fascinate him – painting and music. “I was quite lucky in that the music I was exposed to as child was for the most part helpful in developing my musical taste for the better. My dad was always, always listening to Fleetwood Mac…the first music I can remember is Fleetwood Mac. Namely “Rhiannon” and “Say you love me” from the 1975 album. I was brought up on Rumours, Tusk and later Mirage…but Tusk…Tusk is the one”. In addition to Fleetwood Mac there was of course The Beatles and less typically the Hollies…and his dad also loved Buddy Holly. Inevitably his brother John (five and a half years his senior) got into music in his early teens and took over the torch for Matthew’s musical exposure.

“My brother’s record collection was quite diverse. He had a beautifully kept Denon turntable and a LOT of vinyl. He had Madonna, but he also had Led Zeppelin…Whitney Houston and Def Leppard…rock, pop and disco…Diana Ross and the Commodores…AND ‘Tarzan Boy” by Baltimora, still one of my favourite songs”

Matthew eventually fell in with the wrong crowd. He’d like to pretend he spent the mid to late 80s listening to The Jesus and Mary Chain, Mission of Burma, Husker Du and the Pixies. But it was unfortunately – as was the case for many -  Def Leppard and Guns ‘n’ Roses that were his first live music experiences. “One of my best mates at secondary school Kerri was always pointing out what a cock I was…she was into Ride, Catherine Wheel, Thousand Yard Stare, Depeche Mode…I owned a cassette version of ‘Slippery When Wet’…”.

School, both primary and secondary had been a mixed experience for Matthew. "My mum tells the story whereby she's terrified I'll hate school and dreads having to say goodbye to me on my first day when I'm about three years old." Matthew says "What actually happened, apparently, is I snatched my school bag off her and ran in without even looking back. The trouble came when she came to pick me up that evening and I informed her I would not be attending the following day...'it's not really worth me going back there mum' I told her 'they haven't taught me to read yet...' I was most displeased that my classmates were content with playing in the sandpit and not learning to read and write."

Matthew attended Hillingdon Primary School on the Uxbridge Road at Hillingdon Heath, and was twice, between the age of five and seven, moved up classes to learn with older children. He rebelled by simply getting all the questions wrong in his tests, so that his teachers had no choice but to move him back to his own year-group where he could be with his friends. These included future Premier League footballer Neil Shipperley, with whom Matthew spent long hours drawing football players before they progressed through to Junior school. "Our school football team was awesome" Matthew remembers "We had some great players at U12 level, not just Neil...I just sort of watched them from full-back as there wasn't much for the defence to do..." Matthew remembers "We went through our final year not just unbeaten...we won every single competitive match, with the only blot on our record being a draw in a friendly...we won the league, the league cup and the borough cup."

Matthew moved on with most of his friends to Bishopshalt School in Hillingdon Village. The work and the exams he found easy, girls and taking notice of his teachers he found hard. “I was overweight from about 12 to about 15…the girls loved me because I was funny…and then would disappear off with the football players at school discos when it came to slow-dancing and kissing. I got myself banned from school discos for fighting. I did it deliberately so I didn’t have to go through the agony any more. I actually liked the other guy. His name was Kristian Lee, I think he owns a skate shop now...”

Although he found all of the subjects easy, he later admitted to wasting a lot of his talent: “I have no regrets, but I didn’t really care about the academic side of school…it was enough for me to make jokes and paint well to make myself (fairly) popular and to make friends…I got 6 As and 3 Bs without trying…I didn’t work and I didn’t revise. I broke my wrist the night before my first GCSE paper because I was out playing football instead of revising. I spent the night in A&E and did all my papers with my right hand in a cast. Now I look on knowledge and education as an amazing thing and wish I’d worked harder…but when you’re 16…there are just more important things to worry about. Things never work out quite how you planned – just ask Kevin Arnold.” Matthew was studying for 3 A-Levels (although he ended up with 5) at Bishopshalt School in Hillingdon in the Autumn of 1991 when everything changed.

“The school had provided a stereo for the 6^th Form common room, at break times there would be a rush to get to the common room to get your tape on. Martin O’Leary was often there first with his Black Sabbath collection. If you were unlucky Mark Kinch would be there first and you’d be subjected to Queen. One September morning – I had only been in the 6^th form a few weeks – someone put on a track they had recorded from the radio. It was ‘…Teen Spirit’…the whole room hushed, rabbits in headlights…everything, everything had changed.”

Matthew was studying Art (as well as History and Maths) and music was also allowed in art lessons that often lasted all afternoon. Martin Gibbins (who was later to play bass for The Nothing) had built up a brilliant music collection (once he’d got over Steve Clark) and Matthew’s art lessons turned into a music forum. Nirvana, Suede, Pearl Jam, Dinosaur Jr, The Lemonheads, Smashing Pumpkins, Alice in Chains, Sonic Youth, Mudhoney. “…and REM…REM were everywhere…even the people that eyed Grunge with suspicion liked ‘Out of Time’ and ‘Automatic for the People’. Suddenly you didn’t mind watching 45 minutes of bollocks on The Word (shocking early 90s yoof magazine TV show) because there would be 3 bands on live every Friday night. Grunge was the last youth movement. It wasn’t just a style of music…you dressed it, you lived it…you hung out at the Angler’s Retreat in West Drayton watching bands called ‘Need’ and ‘Slick Dogs’ with other people that liked the same music. I’m happy I lived it and it was a massive part of my formative years because there may never be another youth music movement…publicists have got better things to do these days haven’t they.”

Matt had been playing guitar from around the age of 15 when he used to rush home from school and sneak into his brother’s room to play his Epiphone Strat copy. For the last year of the 6^th form he spent his Sunday evenings in Ram studios in Hayes (now a freight depot) – opposite the Ram pub (now sadly a vacant lot – a victim of the Labour government’s war on the social meeting places of the working class) trying real hard with an embryonic band with bass player guitarist Marco, Jody Moroney on drums (now of the High Priests) and Marion Clarke (now a happy mother) on vocals. He should have known they’d never get far, but for week after week the (un-named) band got more people to watch them practice than many bands got to their gigs.

Unhappily Matthew left the band to go to University…the Grunge bands gave way to the more melodic alternative bands. He said later: “I don’t regret going to University for one minute (to study Mathematics)…I was a lazy brat at home and moving out at 18 and going to another city (albeit one not that far away) was good for me. I had to learn to cook and fend for myself, to make new friends. I loved Guildford and I still do…to visit anyway. Gradually Buffalo Tom, The Lemonheads, The Manics, Afghan Whigs, Therapy? and Madder Rose took over. University was good times, late nights, drinking, drugs, laughing, new experiences, girls, music, nightclubs, sport, long sunny afternoons on the grass by Chancellor’s Bar with the best friends in the world…but again I didn’t work at it…they tried to make me into an actuary and I was having none of it. After my second year exams, I was sitting in a Burger King in Guildford and they had MTV on the big screens (they used to play music back in the 90s). A break-up song came on by Crowded House called ‘Better be home soon’….and there’s a line that goes: “I know I’m right for the first time in my life…’. I decided there and then to ditch University…just like that. I walked out and never went back… no regrets.”

Matthew built up a CV of nothing jobs. Temping, labouring, working in a plant nursery, working for the National Lottery. In the spring of 1997, while temping for Office Angels in Uxbridge at the arse-end of the Metropolitan line, Matthew was offered an interview as a Commissions Accounts Assistant at Lincoln National, a large American financial group. He started a week later at The Quays on Oxford Road in Uxbridge and struck up a friendship with Greg Wise on his first day.

Greg Wise was born either at the end of winter or the beginning of spring (depending on how you look at it ) in 1978 in the same month as Ivorian striker Didier Drogba was born and the same year as Keith Moon died. In March 1978 Charlie Chaplin's remains were stolen from Cosier-sur-Vevey, Switzerlandand and American pornography publisher Larry Flynt was shot and paralyzed in Lawrenceville, Georgia. A month beforehand, serial killer Ted Bundy was captured in Pensacola, Florida and Roman Polanski skipped bail and fled to France after pleading guilty to charges of engaging in sex with a 13-year-old girl. That year Argentina won the world cup and the Yankees won the World Series, defeating the Red Sox 5-4 at Fenway on the way to clinching the AL East after being 14 games off 1st place only 2 months earlier. 'Take a chance on me' by ABBA was just about to be replaced as the UK number 1 single by Kate Bush's 'Wuthering Heights'. 

Greg was born in Northwick Park, Harrow in his own words: “…a fat baby, then a skinny child…”. As is the case with most people, Greg’s first memories of music came from his parents. Greg remembers: “They had a massive stack of vinyl LPs in the back bedroom, I would sift through and pick the ones with the most interesting sleeve and stick it on the turntable... mum had lots of Elton John; James Taylor; Neil Young; Crosby, Stills & Nash (&young); Beatles; Simon and Garfunkel. Dad was more into the Stones, Hendrix, Led Zep, Lindisfarne, The Who, Dire Straits and The Police…luckily, they both had a pretty decent taste in music, as parents go…”

His parents had been to the Isle of Wight festival in 1970.  The ‘Last Great Event’ as it was billed was the last of three consecutive music festivals to take place on the island between 1968 and 1970 and is widely acknowledged as the largest musical event of its time (until Summer Jam at Watkins Glenin 1973), greater than the attendance of Live Aid, Woodstock and Rock in Rio. Greg’s parents absorbed performances by The Doors, The Who, Joni Mitchell, Procol Harum, Supertramp, Chicago, Free, Sly and the Family Stone…and Jimi Hendrix. “They probably weren’t cool enough to go without tickets…” Greg muses “But they were there.”

Greg went to Vaughan first and Middle School in West Harrow until 1989, when he remembers that he was “…ripped away from my good friends and made to go to a poncy, stuck up private school on Harrow Hill. School never agreed with me, I just wanted to have a laugh, but the faculty never looked too kindly at that and I would be in detention a fair bit.” Musicians - Matthew would later point out – have a natural instinct to either blindly follow or openly disobey. “A lot of musicians are followers…re-writing and restructuring their music to ‘fit in’ with whatever happens to be fashionable, they then have to try to cover up the fact that they’re sheep with futile, childish displays of rebellion in other areas such as wearing clothes they see as defining that often, just amount to uniform; doing drugs; getting drunk and swearing. True artists are just happy with creating for its own sake, it’s not about money or fame. Slap-bang in the centre of a contradiction…that’s where the heat is…that’s the place to be. You can tell from one meeting with Greg that he must have been an absolute nightmare to teach.”

Greg recollects that he “...rarely finished homework. I just kept my head down when stuff was being collected or asked about. I can't even begin to work out how many times I got away with not doing any homework or having to blag it on the spot. I – for the most part -  did well in the subjects where I could get on with the teachers, so in 3rd year French, I was awesome. Then in 4th and 5th year French, I was rubbish.”

In his pre-teens Greg admits that he was more into football and girls “In that order” than music. He had ransacked his parents vinyl collection in order to listen to The Beatles and Neil Young then moved to on Zeppelin and The Stones (the latter after hearing ‘Paint it black’ on 80s TV show Tour of Duty). He owned some ‘Now’ hits compilations and Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ but it was coming across a CD in his elder brother Barry’s record collection that changed his life. “It was Christmas 1991. It was Nevermind…and THIS was MY music…er…literally in fact as I slyly relieved my brother of his copy!” For almost everyone at the time, the Seattle sound was polarising people and changing lives. “This was my introduction to what music should be about – a feeling. The fact that you couldn’t understand a word he was saying didn’t matter. It was primal and instinctive. The fact that he would fuck up live didn’t matter, the fact he was a junkie didn’t matter…It was all about the music from this point on.” Greg circled a black, Encore guitar in the Argos catalogue. He was fifteen or sixteen. “The guitar sat in my room for a year, I was frustrated that I couldn’t just pick it up and play…I would lose patience quickly…but (my playing) started to come together slowly. I got to the stage where I could play adequately and write songs by the time I was 17 or 18.”

Greg got what he refers to as his “First proper job” at Lincoln Financial Group in Uxbridge in 1996 at the age of 18. He had not gone to University and was dropped in at the deep end of the real world. “In hindsight…I loved that job…the flexi-time was great, you would type out a timesheet which would be the greatest piece of fiction ever written - it was awesome. I got away with murder there. The people were good fun, even the cocks. My manager, Sean (McGovern) was a great first boss, (he was a) funny guy, always quick with a joke. He would end up covering the work I wasn't doing and not complain about it – not directly to me anyway. So I would coast around, singing out loud in the office and having a joke, going home at 4, it was almost like school!” Of his first meeting with Matthew, Greg recalls “Everyone felt sorry for him; Sean was on holiday and he spent his first week in that job sitting across the room with Kim who was our jobsworth, exacting senior manager. When he wasn’t there, he was at his desk, reading the employee handbook, trying to appear interested by it, I can’t believe he came back after lunch on his first day…only Matthew’s determination to not kill himself after three hours with Kim stopped this band from never happening.”

In the spring of 1997 Greg had been working at Lincoln FG for almost a year. When Matt started in May – his manager Sean was on holiday and Matt spent his first days being trained by senior manager Kim Chamberlin. Kim was so boring during this period that Matthew later commented to his colleagues that: “the paint in Kim’s flat watches him dry…” Feeling a little sorry for Matthew, Greg struck up a conversation, about music of course. “Greg was the first friendly person I’d met there..” Matt said. “I think my CV had the fact that I was a musician on it, Sean must’ve mentioned it to Greg and I guess he was testing the water. We ended up exchanging mix-tapes like boyfriend and girlfriend. Within a couple of weeks we were drinking buddies and planning to take over the world, the world wasn’t interested but we enjoyed the drinking…”

Slaves in white collars. The Lincoln years were long, boring and not particularly well paid. The pair shared a lot of the same taste in music and at one point booked into Absolute studios behind the Aldi in West Drayton to play each other their songs, smoke and hang out. They wrote a number of songs together but both wanted to play guitar and they could find neither a bass player nor a drummer. “I don’t remember when it was, but Greg’s brother Barry had sorted him out some basic recording equipment. A couple of microphones and two tape decks which he could literally bounce tape to tape, layering tracks down one at a time.” On the top floor of Greg’s house in Sussex Road in North Harrow the pair – with the help of a Zoom Rhythm Tracker drum machine – laid down two basic tracks. The songs “Honey” and “Only over you”…now almost certainly lost in an attic/garage somewhere. They were the first songs an embryonic band recorded. People listened to the two tracks along with a bunch of acoustic material and liked it, but the pair had no money and no prospects of making any, certainly not enough to record a proper demo, and for four long years they went nowhere fast.

As it was to do again later, in February 2001 redundancy reared its ugly head and both were laid off by Lincoln. “One good thing that came from it…” Matthew said later, “…was that I ended up with about three grand in my pocket, Greg chose to take some time off, I chose to get a job and spend the money like it was a big monetary bonus.” Matthew went to Digital Village in Acton (coincidentally Greg now lives opposite) with a wad of cash in his pocket. “The staff thought it was Christmas…I spent £1200 on a 12-track HDR and mixing desk, mics, leads, phones, speakers and a pre-amp compressor…I went to Rose Morris on Denmark Street and bought a Korg Triton keyboard with £1600 cash. The shop assistant was so happy he paid for a cab to take me from Charing Cross back to Uxbridge! I went back a week later and bought a stand-alone CD writer...”

With all the equipment they needed the pair started to lay down demos using a drum machine. Calling themselves The Loved (“It was meant as past-tense”) Greg and Matthew laid down early versions of ‘Beauty Uber Alles’; ‘Ventolin’; ‘Anywhere but here’; ‘Love me’ and ‘Kiss me fuck me’ and covered Smudge’s ’18 in a week’ and Sparklehorse’s ‘Happy Man’…along with lost classics ‘Superhero’; ‘Anti-thought’; ‘When we parted’ and ‘Fourth Reich’. They made two demo CDs, one with the tracklisting: Anti-thought; Kiss me fuck me; Anywhere but here. And one with the Tracklisting: Fourth Reich; When we Parted; Superhero. The demos were rough and obviously recorded with a drum machine, they were sent to some indies such as Fierce Panda and Beggars Banquet to a deafening silence. Not even a “fuck off”.

 

Band pic taken in Loz Vegas Studios the week before the band met Gavin Turner. L-R: Greg, Daniel Martin, Matthew

 

  

2. ...Out of Blue Sky

  

The exact date has been lost in time like tears in rain. But at some point in the summer of 2003 Matthew recieved a phone call at his parents' house. “My home phone rang and it was Ganly…I didn’t have a mobile phone then…Ganly said: ‘Mate…I’ve just remembered, my mate Gav plays drums…he’s listened to some of your demos, likes them and he’s interested in playing with you guys…you wanna meet?’, I spoke to Gav briefly on the phone (he said we sounded like Feeder!) and we agreed to meet the following week for a pint.”

 

Gavin Turner was born on 7^th March 1982 in Ickenham, Middlesex. “Ickenham is the area you want to live in if you’re from Uxbridge and you make some money” Matthew points out. “The houses are bigger, the streets leafier…the schools are better…”

 

Gav was born in the Chinese year of the dog, on the same day in 1982 as Japanese gravure idol Erika Yamawaka was born. Actor John Belushi and American science fiction author Philp K Dickand had died the week earlier and Ozzy Osbourne's guitarist Randy Rhoads would die 12 days later in a plane crash. In January that year unemployment in Britain rose to a post war record of 3.07 million and a month later the Delorean car factory in Belfast was put into receivership. In 1982 the Falklands War would start and finish, Italy would win the World Cup and for the first time - Time Magazine's Man Of The Year Award would go to a non-human. The Computer. The Jam’s “Town Called Malice” had just been replaced at number 1 by Tight Fit’s “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”.

 

“To be in WhiteTrashParty you have to have been born in a World Cup year" Matthew observes "end of story...and if you want to read more into it...the artistic beauty of the Dutch was stifled in the years that Greg and I were born...by the machine-like corporate monster of the Germans in my case and by an over-physical Argentinian side in 1978 (Greg's year of birth) that reached the final due (allegedly) to corruption. Gav was born in 1982 the year Italy won it…and has an Italian heritage”

 

Gavin's first exposure to the music was Top of the Pops and the sadly missed pre-MTV Saturday morning pop show ‘The Chart Show’ although he was also subjected to “some seriously suspect 80s music my mum would play me and Russ (Gavin’s older brother) in the car.” His mum - he later recalled - would have to make up pretend swear words when he was very young to stop him using real swear words in public. “I can well believe that…” Matt ponders, “Gav has a kind of imaginary Tourette’s, whereby he feels the need to say the offensive stuff  you’re thinking but wouldn’t actually say out loud yourself.” He went to Breakspeare nursery and then infant school and wore chunky fat NHS specs until the age of 10. “Nobody in my immediate family played any instruments.” He remembers “I liked Art at school but was really rubbish at it. I hated music lessons and was always good at History…” and then digresses “…I preferred the clear cola to proper cola…Tab clear I think it was called.”

 

Like Matthew, Gavin was influenced mainly by his brother’s taste in music as he grew up. “I guess I was lucky enough that my bro was just that little bit older than me so (that) got me into music a little earlier than most kids. The Prodigy was the first thing I was really into. I loved the single version of ‘Wind It Up’. I Think I wore out the cassette me and Russ had. I had what I considered at the time to be this amazing portable cassette player with a radio and headphones, and it could fast forward AND rewind. Like a Walkman… (it) went everywhere with me.” Gavin went on to Vyners secondary school where he met Jay Ramji (later of Thumb and sometime bassist with WhiteTrashParty) and Alex Powell at secondary school. “I guess we all learnt about and how to play music together. We certainly shared influences, and ideas on life and the universe!”

 

When it came to playing drums, Gav considered himself to be quite a late developer: “I was about 14 by the time I finally stopped playing air drums and decided to play for real. My bro had this drumming magazine because it contained a piece on Dave Grohl, I was 11 or 12 at the time. I read that magazine a lot and learned about all the different bits of drumming equipment from it. That started my interest I suppose…”

 

When it comes to his first major musical influence Gavin is much more certain. Like many musicians (and both other members of the band) he can tie it to a single song by a single band. “I heard Nowhere by Therapy? and totally loved that tune. Then I found Troublegum in the local Our Price record store, I listened to it again and again and it was a massive inspiration…that’s what made me want to play drums.” He continues: “I spent the next 2 years driving my family mental by tapping on anything that came to hand.” (This is a characteristic Gavin still has today) “A PS1 joypad was my favourite thing to tap because it sounded a bit like a really tight snare when you tapped it!…I finally got my folks to agree to let me buy a drum kit out of some savings I had. I told them it wouldn’t make much noise and they believed me.”

 

Gavin had drumming lessons for 12 months. His teacher wanted to put him in at grade 3 but he quit lessons before he took the exam. “I guess from having listened to some diverse music from an early age I had developed an ear for detail so I took naturally took to drums. I was very intrigued by sounds, as well as songs. The first Therapy? drummer, Fyfe Ewing, was the most influential person on my early playing.”

 

Gavin’s first kit was a PP Percussion drum kit which ‘died’ within 6 months of him getting it. “I remember having to gaffer tape a snare to a tom after 3 months because I killed the snare drum trying to make it sound like Fyfe’s, which is one of the reasons why I play with just the one rack tom now.  The cymbals all cracked too, I feel sorry for my neighbors…they must have had to put up with what sounded like a load of boxes and dustbin lids for like a whole year!”

 

On leaving Vyners Gavin attended what was then called The University of North London to study Politics. A lover of London he had no desire to leave the city and so stayed living with his parents while studying, and took the 40-minute or so tube journey from Ickenham to attend lectures. “I was based at a site off the main campus, and as a result I didn’t get involved in the whole ‘uni’ way of life. Instead I watched lecturers being beaten up by the locals during cigarette breaks, and skag heads doing what they do best. I met some interesting people, but no one I would want to call a friend.  University fitted in well with my music shopping addiction - as before the internet, Tower Records, Virgin Megastore, Selectadisc, and HMV were still the places to get your music...and there were always plenty of gigs to go to as well.”

 

Gavin enjoyed his studies but later recalled that they pretty killed off his active interest in politics: “ you can get so entangled in trying to make sense of the world that you forget to want to change it…plus halfway through university 9/11 happened. Politics seemed to change, it seemed to became more like fashion. Everyone jumped on the band wagon with their opinions formed based on one event...I jumped off.” Gavin did however complete his course thus becoming WhiteTrashParty’s only founder member with a bonafide degree. “It’s official…” Matt says “Gav is our best educated and most intelligent band member. It’s quite worrying really.”

 

 While at University, Gavin got a job at the Tesco Metro in Uxbridge, where he amused his colleagues with his comedy customer service announcements. Here he met Paul Ganly, the guy that would later introduce him to Greg and Matthew, and for Gavin, Tesco provided more of a social outlet than University. “It was probably more akin to the student lifestyle if anything, most of the staff were young and/or students…I certainly learnt more there about life in general there than university taught me. Good times, bad hangovers.”

 

Gavin saved up his wages and bought his second drumkit. A Pearl Export select, which he still uses today. One spring evening, Gavin  was having a quiet post-work beer at what was then the Hogshead bar in Uxbridge when his friend Paul Ganly mentioned that “he might know some guys that wanted to form a band.”

 

Matt, Greg and Gavin agreed to meet up at the Gate, a pub in Northwood at the bottom of Duck’s Hill where Greg and Matthew often went to win pub quizzes. Matthew didn’t drive and although Gavin had a licence he didn't have a car, so Paul said he’d pick up both Gavin and Matthew and drive them to the pub. Greg would meet them there. “Gav was funny” Matt said “funny and maybe a little stoned. But he knew his bands and music so I liked him straight away.” They met Greg about half an hour later to sort out a time for a rehearsal…and then they started to relax and have a drink or two. Gav says: "I think I was plastered before I arrived, my only certain memory was that Matt said he was into Husker Du and the Deftones. I think I fell asleep outside the house I was staying in that night." Matt remembers: “To be honest we just got wankered…I think Gav had been on the wagon for a time and the drinks went straight to his head, I was on the Caffreys, Greg was on the lager. Gav was wasted after about 45 minutes, to be honest I now have no recollection if Dan was even there or not…I’m guessing he probably was. I’m not being rude I just don’t remember.” Greg can't remember much about it either: "Gav got drunk on weak shandy" he says with a smile..."And Ganly never felt quite so much part of the band!" However it was accomplished, The Loved agreed to get together the following week at a run-down rehearsal studio in West Drayton sandwiched between the River Colne and the flooded Donkey Lane gravel works.

 

Greg does not have fond memories of the place or of getting there: “I remember driving up a dirt track and nearly beaching the car on the driveway up to this old, run-down shack, with 4 people and a load of equipment in the car. Fuck knows how we all fitted in that old tin can Hyundai. When we got there we couldn’t get in, Matt had to phone up the guy who owned it who gave him directions to where the key was (badly) hidden in the electronics box.”

 

 “It was an absolute shithole to be honest.”  Matt adds “I’d phoned and booked it from a mate who’d given me the number…it was probably Martin Gibbins or Jody Moroney, someone local I knew from being in bands. The guy didn’t want us to pay up front or even to be there when we showed up. He didn’t care when we started or finished…and asked us to leave £20 on the side when we left. It didn’t look like much from the outside, like something from the movie Southern Comfort complete with unfriendly locals. I definitely didn’t want to be leaving there late at night.”

 

Gav remembers it being damp inside to say the least: “It had obviously been flooded recently…there were standing puddles of green water where the whole floor had subsided in one corner.” Then something else hits him: "When we arrived...there was a fucking peacock on the roof...we sounded shit, the room was horrible, but it's not every day you see a peacock."

 

“The carpet was soaked, water oozed out from everywhere you stepped, I didn’t really want to plug in my AC30 in case one of us got electrocuted.” Matthew says, “But we struggled through it…just the once, I’ve no recollection if we left the money…but it was the kind of area where the owner probably would have tracked us down with a shotgun had we crossed him.” The rehearsal proved to be a struggle. Not least because, although Gavin had learned the songs from the rough-tracked demos he’d been given - it was clear that Dan had not. Greg remembers having to explain the basslines to Dan for every part of every song: “Rehearsals with Dan were mainly saying a fret number and string to him as he didn't know the notes. It was like: 4^th fret on the E to 2^nd fret on the A…it was fucking long winded... so we started writing out the tabs for him.” Further rehearsals with Dan proved more fruitful, but although Matthew, Greg and Gavin all got on well with him. Dan was not to spend much more time in the band.

 

Greg thinks about it for a while but can’t clearly recall Dan’s departure: “He just disappeared...I think he might have sent a text to say he didn't fancy it anymore, I could be wrong though...” Matthew can’t remember either: “It was weird ‘cos we used to go out drinking in Harrow at the weekends with him…we had a couple of weeks when we couldn’t rehearse and then Greg just couldn’t get hold of him. It was irritating because things were really coming together, Gav was getting better and better, we were changing songs to make the drumming more varied…we were beginning to sound like a proper band and then suddenly you’ve got no bass player again. It was really disheartening because you've got to start again and get someone new up to speed. I seem to remember me, Greg and Gav being in the Trinity (gothic/rock/indie hangout in Harrow) on a Friday night and he just blanked us and left. He could have just said he didn’t want to do it and that would have been fine. I do know that his Grandad had died in Jamaica (Dan was half Jamaican) around the time he left us, I don’t know if that anything to do with it but he was pretty upset about it. He started to wear his Grandad’s old cloth cap and was always wearing it whenever you saw him.  I have no idea where he is now.”

 

Soon after, in late autumn - one of Matthew and Greg's best friends Scott was due to leave the country to go travelling. They planned to play their first gig as a farewell party. "Me and Greg drove down to the Angler's Retreat in West Drayton...it'd been a part of my late teens as it was the only place near me where live bands played every week." Unfortunately for the band (then still called The Loved), the venue had ceased to be a venue on the 'toilet circuit' and the live room had been sanitised into a large pub function room with the mixing desk and the sound rig sold off and removed. However the stage was still there and the landlord had no problems with The Loved holding a rock gig in the room. “He was a really sound guy” Matt recalls “He didn't even want to charge us, he took a £100 deposit for damages (which he gave back in full with no arguments) and the deal was we could charge what we wanted on the door. That was for our pockets. He kept the bar takings.” The band arranged a date in late October 2003, about 4 weeks away. They still didn't have a bass player.

 

3. 2004: The Year that Spunk broke (early gigs)

It was early September 2003 and the band had committed to a gig the following month. In reality they were desperate for a new bassist to complete their four-piece line-up. Alex Powell - a school friend of Gavin's stepped up. “I knew he was a good guitar-player...but wasn't too sure about his temperament. He had - shall we put this diplomatically - a few addictions” Matthew says “But we had only a matter of weeks to get back up to speed and he was at least someone that we all knew….” Alex gave the songs his all for the next 3 weeks, but for his own reasons decided a week before the scheduled show that he could not/would not play. “We all felt a bit let down” Matt says of the situation, “…but it was his choice, Gav was the most distraught...he told Alex that we probably wouldn't let him play drums without him and that me and Greg would do the show acoustically...I don't think we ever would have!” Gav simply says of Alex: "A good friend missed, I'm not sure he was the type of person who wanted to play live or whether he was happy to just jam in his room.” The band were considering possible solutions when a friend came to their very late rescue.

Charlie Reay Smith was born on 6th September 1976 on the same day that Frank Sinatra would bring Jerry Lewis' former partner Dean Martin onstage, unannounced, at the 1976 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon in Las Vegas, Nevada, reuniting the comedy team for the first (and only) time in over 20 years. A few later in September 1976, Michael Ballack, Francesco Totti, Andriy Shevchenko and the real Ronaldo were born. ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’ was number 1.

Charlie was a veteran live performer and played with his own band Circus. The band were days away from the show when Charlie cheerfully offered to play the show with them. “It was the easiest thing in the world” Greg remembers, “I met him for a drink one night after work, gave him a CD and some rough notes and that weekend he came to Survival (Studios) in North Acton with us, and he'd actually learnt all the songs...more or less anyway, and for me it was the easiest bass transition we had. Someone who went away and bothered to learn their part so we didn't waste so much time in the studio...the only thing was his dancing!”. “Charlie was awesome” Matt adds “He showed up with all the songs in the bag already, I don't know how he did it 'cos Gav could get pretty excited in the studio and play pretty fast...but he pulled it off in two practices.”

The day of their first gig arrived. Greg's brother Barry had arranged the hire of the P.A. equipment and the microphones and the band hired a van for the day. Greg remembers the day being hectic: “I just remember a lot of running around with Baz on the day of the Anglers gig, picking up equipment/people/forgotten drum stools... don't remember being nervous or anything...I probably didn't get time.” “We soundchecked ourselves” Matt recalls, “I remember we played 'Faded' in the soundcheck and it got a fairly loud cheer from people that were already in the venue, we'd never played it in front of anyone before...”

The band had planned for Matt and Greg to do a handful of songs acoustically, then play a full band set then finish with a few more acoustic songs. The band also showed their lack of understanding of all things business-related. “I had this fear that we would get a dozen people through the door and we'd play to no-one” Matt says, “So we decided to make it free on the door to encourage people to come and cover the cost of the van and P.A. ourselves...in the end my Dad said he counted at least a hundred people in the room at one point...if we'd have charged £2 on the door we could have covered the van, the PA and our beers for the night!” The night was a success, the full band section of the show being the surprise hit of the night considering it was on the back of just two rehearsals, a grand total of six hours rehearsal time. “The only complaints we had about the sound we'd done ourselves - with a portable PA I might add - was that the cymbals were a bit loud and that the bass drum shold have been mic'd up" says Gavin, Matt agrees: "Considering we knew nothing about sound at all - well Charlie knew a bit - I think we did pretty well...I mean no-one asked for their petrol money back." 

 Greg and Matt played acoustic versions of the Bill Janovitz song 'Red Baloon' and the Springsteen song 'No Surrender' (a favourite of Scott's) before the band returned for a shambolic but energetic version of The Lemonheads' 'Bit Part'. "The gig was fun" Gavin says “A fun gig...very fast, very loud.” From an uncertain and somewhat indifferent start, the band seemed to have formed a bond. It was just the start.

At around the same time they were sending out demos to the indie labels. The Nothing were also sending out demo CDs to live music promoters in central London. The very next day (by sheer coincidence) Matthew received the first of two voicemails in response to these demos. “The promter from the Bull & Gate had left a message for me” Matthew says. “Me and Greg happened to be working at the same place again (Advance Security in Hillingdon) so I was able to tell him straight away…I phoned Gav and gave him the news that Phil (Avey) had phoned me and had booked us to headline on Monday 5^th January…we got very excited about a proper gig at a proper venue. Three weeks beforehand we’d watched Seafood and My Vitriol there.”

Once a Launderette, a snooker hall and even a small theatre, the Bull & Gate is and was a very well known poplar music haunt for new, developing and sometimes famous bands of all styles. Phil Avey the promoter of the venue has been booking bands for the venue for 10 years which has earned him a great reputation on the London music scene. “The Bull and Gate is a great little venue in the shadow of the Forum Theatre” Greg says “a little bar – complete with moody Irish Landlord – and a separate live room with a really good sound system. We couldn’t wait to play it!”

The band rehearsed all over Christmas at Survival with Charley deciding to stay on on bass guitar for the foreseeable future. Matt had some flyers printed and the four band members spent the evenings of the next few weeks at the Bull & Gate handing out flyers and free CDRs to gig-goers in the hope to entice some music fans down on the 5^th.

“Early January is a notoriously hard time to get people down” says Gav “everyone’s in a financial hole after Christmas, the fact it was a Monday just added to our difficulties…but we worked our arses off for two or three weeks’ worth of evenings handing out flyers and CDs…saw some great bands too. Some great bands AND The Rifles.”

    

A selection of flyers from the band's first show at the Bull & Gate

 

Luckily for the band, when 7:30pm on the 5^th Jan 2004 came - the venue was very busy. “There were three bands on the bill, the other two were from Reading and St Albans respectively” Greg remembers “so we were worried that they wouldn’t have any fans at all and it would just be our people…but both had brought coaches from their hometowns and the room was buzzing when the first band came on.” The official capacity of the live room at the Bull & Gate is 150, although legend has it that both Oasis and Coldplay have crammed in close to 300 people into the room. All three bands had bought between 30 and 40 people so there were between 100 and 120 people in the venue when St Albans’ New Jacuzzi opened up, “a great post-rock/electrojazz NOISE band” Matthew says of them. “I loved the CD they sent to me and I loved them live…Greg didn’t like them as much because they were about 75% instrumental. But they finished with five minutes of feedback. You can’t argue with that.” Next up were Psirens, an electro, post-rock five piece from Reading. “They took about 3 hours to soundcheck” Gav remembers “They had a standard drumkit, then some electronic drum pads, keyboards…all of which they insisted the sound engineer had to the exact volume they desired.” Psirens delivered a set of belief and energy though that would end up being the highlight of the evening. “They looked like they realy wanted it” muses Matthew. “They’d spent a long time on their image…then a long time doing their make up… and there’s not much room in the dressing room at the Bull & Gate, in fact it’s normally full of equipment. They were wicked though…our trouble was that we had no interest in our image, no interest in looking exactly the fucking same as every other fucking band in the NME…and I think that Psirens dreamed of looking like every other fucking band in the NME. The Nothing looked like exactly what we were, four white collar slaves that fucking hated our motherfucking day jobs and got half an hour of onstage escape. We weren’t interested in throwing the same tired rock and roll shapes, it was quite literally what Richey (Edwards) called the geometry of contempt.” Matt came onstage wearing a pink feather boa and Gav wore a plastic tiara before the band launched into a feedback-laced version of ‘Faded’. Over the next 35 minutes the band thrashed their way through the set at 100 miles an hour. “We had no choice but to play fast” Gav says “…in order to get all the songs in”. As the feedback to ‘Beauty uber alles’ reached a crescendo Matt ‘put his guitar down heavy’ and Greg thanked the crowd as his guitar wailed against his amp. “It wasn’t a particularly accomplished gig” Matthew remembers. “But it was our first proper gig…” “And it felt GRRRREEEEAAAAT Greg adds with a Tony the Tiger growl.

Another promoter - Bugbear promotions - then booked the band to do two more London shows in quick succession. Firstly at Islington's Hope & Anchor. Tony Gleed one part of the double act behind Bugbear promised that if the show at the Hope & Anchor in February went well, then the band's reward would be a headline show at the legendary Dublin Castle in Camden. Although the sound was poor, The Nothing crammed 60 friends and fans into the dark basment on upper street near Highbury Corner. "There were also people left in the basement that were there to see the other bands…" Greg recalls "with 50 people in the live room at the Hope and Anchor it's a little…tight…shall we say. With nearly double that it's hot and uncomfortable". The stage in the Hope & Anchor is so small that with the drum kit on and three amplifiers there's barely room for the band members, Matt and Charlie repeatedly bumping headstocks and tangling cables but the band rocketed through a 50-minute set. "I think we started with 'Jenny K' and finished with 'I just wanna give up'" Matt says "Tony gave me about £85 and told me to expect a call in the next few days about the Dublin Castle."

 

Although ecstatic about the prospect of the Camden gig the band weren't totally happy with the performance. "It was only our third gig so we shouldn't have got sulky really" Matt recalls "But in the excitement we used to try to play too loud and too fast…people were complaining they couldn't hear the vocals which at the time was probably a good thing! At the time I was getting a bit funny about the fact that every other band we played with had an image that we didn't have…ie they all dressed exactly like the Stokes all exactly the same. Looking back I was being a twat, I'm ecstatic that we didn't wear the indie uniform either in sound or dress, but at the time we used to get looks from the other bands as if to say 'mmmm I wonder when they're getting changed into their stage clothes' and it used to piss me off that we didn't care."

 

Bugbear called back within 48 hours and booked The Nothing to headline on the 27th May, a Thursday night. The band came on late due to the overunning of the soundchecks and the sunsequent late finishing of the 3 support bands. "I don't understand it..." Gav points out "Our soundchecks take about 10 minutes start to finish including the bit that should take longest; the drums. After that the other bands don't need to soundcheck the drums again so why everyone else seems to need 40-minute soundchecks I really don't know." The gig however was masterful, fans and friends maintain that it was still the band's best ever gig. "We played brilliantly apparently…it's just that none of us remember it. We soundchecked at 5 and came onstage at 11. In between we just drank and hung out with our mates, it was a glorious balmy summer's evening in Camden, with the people spilling out of the pubs and into the street. I had a stand up argument at the bar with my girlfriend of the time because she thought she wasn't getting enough attention…all in front of Brett Anderson from Suede. It was sureal." Matt remembers. "It was just a pain that some of our friends who were getting the tube home had to leave 15 minutes from the end to ensure they got home" Greg adds "We were still playing after midnight…"

 

For the rest of 2004 and the first few months of 2005 The Nothing were regulars on the London live scene playing some awesome and some not so awesome shows at venues such as the famous and now sadly demolished Metro Club on Oxford Street, the Buffalo Bar in Islington and The Comedy in Piccadilly. Posts on the XFM message boards had started to bring in new fans, some of them travelling from well outside London to see the band live. In late July Matthew received an e-mail from Smalltown America records asking to use the track Lovesong for Jenny K on their Public Service Broadcast compilation. Smalltown America were (and still are) a way cool British Indie label partly run by the band Jetplane Landing. The band considered it quite an honour since they'd sent out what they considered to be only a 'dodgy drum-machine' version of the song. A updated version of the song was re-submitted and released on the compilation in September 2004 with other notable artists such as Fighting With Wire and Dive Dive.

 

Charlie was replaced on bass by firstly Jay Ramji who played the Buffalo Bar gig (Jay being an old schoolfriend of Gav's who would reappear later) and subsequently by Martin Gibbins who was an old school friend of Matthew's. "It wasn't that we were unhappy with Charlie" Greg recalls "He got on great with everyone…he was a great musician and we loved having him around, but he had another band that sometimes made rehearsing and playing live tough if two gigs were close or clashed, and we were striving towards a more straight ahead, simple bass sound". "Martin was an old friend and it was great to have him in the band even if it was only for a very short time (Martin only played 3 or 4 shows over about 3 months with the band)." Matthew adds. "I'd known Martin since we were about 11. We shared a love of painting…which also developed into a shared love of music as we grew out of Faith No More and Guns 'n' Roses. Mart always got the new music first…he'd argue with our friend Kerri (Laver) about which bands were cool and which were not and in the 6th form he would play his tapes in art lessons…just to upset the chavs who wanted to listen to The Power by Snap. My memories of Martin in the band are all good ones, him standing in the corner of the rehearsal room strumming his black Explorer bass with a cigarette dangling out of his bushy, bearded mouth. Driving in his car on a late summer's day to a gig in Devizes. Windows down and the Stones on the stereo…"

 

The Nothing finished the year with triumphant gigs at the Metro and Bull & Gate. Surreally at the former being approached post-gig by an A&R man from Ray Parker Junior's record label. The Nothing signed nothing.

 

 4. Five Days in Winter - Recording the first album

A week before the February '04 gig at the Hope & Anchor. The band booked themselves into Oilville Studios in Holloway, North London for the first of '5 days in winter' over which their debut, eponymous album would be recorded. What follows in italics below is Matthew's studio journal of this first day which kind of typifies a day in the studio for WhiteTrashParty - this was orginally posted as a Blog in 2005 on the band's Myspace site.

All of my favourite records are winter records. I’ve kind of convinced myself that “Let me come over”, “Black Love”, “Diary”, “Panic On”, “Tim”, “The Band”….all the rest…were recorded in an old church in Woodstock in some long-past December. All soundtracks to bleak snow, wind and bare trees. For the most part I know this isn’t true, just a feeling about music that I get in my head. But it’s why I feel like I’m the only one that’s happy that we’ve chosen to record in the winter as we sit in traffic on the slushy A40….Replacements on the stereo. It had still been blue-dark when we left my house at 8am, Greg had already picked up Gav and had managed to get his whole kit into the back of his Hyundai, Gav was squashed into the remaining 18 inches of space clutching his drum pedals and bag and moaning about the window being open as it was way below zero outside. I was still warm from seeing the Twilight Singers the night before, we’d only just made it since the whole of the London transport system had groud to a halt with the first snowfall of the London winter.

We’d been up to check out Oilville Studios (and the engineer/producer Tom Aitkenhead) in Holloway, North London a few weeks beforehand while we were scoping the basement of the Hope & Anchor for a gig, but we hadn’t seen it – or found it - in the daytime. Pulling off the Holloway road and onto the service roads of the old railway yards, we drove past the building site where the new Arsenal stadium was to rise up and shadow the whole area, crushing small businesses in it’s wake.
Oilville was well named. As we drove up past the railway arches, there was a strange mix of snow, ice and oil on the ground. Blue shadows and wet rainbow reflections in the crisp sunshine. Mechanics with accents shouting instructions to soundtrack awkward reversing manoeuvres.

The studio itself is in a railway arch, the last of a dozen or so that sit under the bridge that takes the Piccadilly trains over the Holloway Road. All the other arches are garages and mechanic’s workshops of some kind. Eventually the increase in Rates and Council Tax and Arsenal Football Club will force them out. They’ll most likely be replaced with a Gunners superstore inside which you’ll be able to buy a red shirt with corporate advertising space on the front and the name of a foreign mercenary on the back.

I take some pictures of a pile of wrecked cars and scrap dusted with snow and get moaned at as I should be unloading. Inside it’s still cold enough for our breath to steam, and I take in the room for a few moments. The ceiling is high and arched (as you’d expect from it’s location) which makes for great acoustics and the chipped and pointed old brickwork supposedly makes for good reflections. The place has amps….a lot of them - mainly from a friend of Tom’s who works for Orange - there are originals and prototypes here that you simply couldn’t buy. Me and Greg check out a few while Gav gets on with setting up his kit and trying to take up as much room as possible.

We chat for a while with Tom about the amps and then me and Greg set up. I go for an old Fender Vibro-King. It’s crystal clear when clean and dirties up nicely when driven without getting muddy. I go for my usual set-up, my old Epiphone Strat dry into the amp save for my faithful old DOD overdrive. I’ve got newer guitars, I’ve got prettier guitars, but the epiphone just sounds fantastic. I’m not sure if I just got a factory fluke as I’ve never seen another, but the pick-ups on it are amazing and I’ve never heard anything that sounds quite as aggressive. I inherited it when I was about 15 from my brother John. He’d bought it years before but had never learned to play it. It gradually spent more and more time in my room until eventually he just gave in and let me have it.

Greg goes for a heavier, more rounded option. He sets up his Fender Jaguar through a combination of a Boss OD3 and a Big Muff and into a 2x12 Orange Combo. It sounds earthy, chunky and over-driven and should beef up under the single coils of the lead guitar once we get started. We have a bit of a play around and then leave Tom for about 2 hours so he can set up the room mics and the pre-amps. We enjoy a dirty breakfast in the Titanic café round the corner and wander the streets of north London for a while. We buy a Barbie camera…we buy water…Gav looks at girls….we buy a ten box of CD blanks from Argos…we see an actress from the Bill.

We’d chosen to record “Faded” and “Dust” as the two tracks. Mainly as they were both new (or at least we had only just worked them out as a band) and had no other versions of them save for a bootlegging of a Bull & Gate gig that Barry taped. The plan was to lay down the songs live in as few takes as possible as we wanted to leave at 6pm with two finished songs in our hands. Though we knocked out each track 3 times, I’m pretty sure that both were first-takers….and by 1pm Tom was cleaning up the drums and EQing the guitars, making the backing tracks ready to lay down the vocals. We wanted the tracks to sound as live and as under-produced as possible. Raw like early replacements, the first Buffalo Tom record, like Exile on Main Street with the snare rattling between beats and the audible hum of amplifiers and mics.

I growl my way through a couple of vocal takes of both tracks with my voice cracking up as I go and Greg adds a lush vocal under me on both. We sit for the afternoon on the battered sofa in the control room watching Tom stare at a computer screen while “compressing the vocal to fuck”. The boys smoke, we sink a bottle or so of beer, Greg says no to a Babysham. By 10 past six we’re loading the gear back into the cold car, the air is freezing and it’s dark, but we have 2 songs done in a day, not such a bad start to the album.

The roads are still wet as we follow the tacked orange chain of streetlights back west up the A40. The shop signs and the neon of takeaway houses make long glossy reflections, there’s rainy stars on all the windows. Black cabs cut us up, Greg jousts with them, slows up and blocks them at the lights. Serves the fuckers right. We text girls now long forgotten, Faded and Dust are on constant repeat on the CD player. Gav falls asleep as we approach the tunnel where in a few weeks time he’ll be violently sick on the way back from the Comedy. The quiet hum of the world outside turns into a rush of air we can’t feel as the tunnel flashes by in the wrong direction, upside down in the back window…nearly home.

"A day in the studio for me normally starts at some stupid, sparrow o'clock hour as I have to be up early to pick up the other two non-driving motherfuckers that comprise my band" Greg points out. "A day at Oilville starts at 10am so I have to drive from Harrow to Uxbridge then to Ickenham and then back to Islington up the A40 in what by then is rush hour. By the time I get to the Titanic for breakfast I sure fucking need it." The band all (usually) fund recording by working 'soul destroying' day jobs, which means that they usually have to save £200 between them, record for a day, then come back six to eight weeks later and record for another day ironing out any problemns with previous recordings at a subsequent session. In this fashion the band recorded 12 songs over 5 days for a little under £1,000. What follows is a breakdown of these tracks in the order they were recorded and not the order they appear on the finished record.

Session one - Faded & Dust

Faded had been the first song the band had written as a full band. Although Matthew had played an embryonic version of the song to Greg back in the West Drayton days, the version they ended jamming and writing in Survival with Gav had changed completely except for - in part - the chorus. The song had come together pretty quickly and had nostalgically been both the opener at the Anglers Retreat and the song they'd soundchecked to. The song is driven along by dirty minor chords over an aggressive shuffle beat. Greg playing his Jaguar through an Orange 2x12 overdriven with a Big Muff. Matthew playing his Epiphone Strat through an ageing but beautiful Fender Vibro King with a DOD overdrive. Feeling like it was perhaps unfair to bring in Charlie for the session (although splitting the cost four ways would have been financially better for them) Greg and Matthew shared bass duties for the session but for most part stuck to the basslines Charlie had written. Matthew recorded the guitar solo while Greg and Gav went for a walk (probably to the pub) with the Epiphone through a prototype Orange amp made of plywood via the Big Muff. "Instead of volume, Gain, and presence knobs the knobs were marked in biro as: beef, mustard and onions" Matt recalls. "Tom had a mate who designed and built amps for Orange and then just gave him the odd prototype when he was done. The amps all had stupid things written on them so that only Tom really knew what all the controls did." The vocals were recorded relatively quickly and in one or two takes for both the lead and backing vocals, partly because the band needed to press on quickly with the mixing to ensure they got both songs finished. "The words to Faded are a bit of a mish-mash really" Matt points out. "The opening line (I was born with) Angel wings and Lead Weights is partly stolen from the first line of The Manics' Of Walking Abortion. It's just a take on my own happiness and unhappiness. It's a line which would today probably get me diagnosed as bipolar." The rest of the song veers from themes such as smart bombing of middle-eastern civilian targets, domestic violence and British middle class apathy. Typically diverse, typically WhiteTrashParty.

Gavin had come up with the riff to Dust at home in about December 2003 (the band had not played it at the Anglers that October so it was unlikely that the song was written then). The riff was - as Matt pointed out - Kylie Minogue's Love at First Sight played sideways. In Survival Gav had played the riff to Charlie who had laid down a bassline for it over Gav's drums before Greg started to add guitars. The song took on a Pixie-esque quiet verse, loud chorus dynamic and Matthew dropped in an e-minor change to the main riff before Greg and then Matt started to work out melodies for the song. "Me and Greg kind of write in the same way" Matthew says "We kind of know how the song goes in our heads and the rhythm and the phrasing of the melody is there before there are any words…we then just sing utter gibberish over the top that fits the phrasing…we then have to do the words later…occasionally some of the gibberish stays!" Although large parts of the song invovle clean guitars the band kept the same set up as they used for Faded, later Matthew added some backwards guitars and some low in the mix distorted strings to the song in his studio at his parent's house in Uxbridge. "The lyrics are written in character" Matthew points out "…just something I often do, partly beacuase my life isn't that interesting…the guy in the song is an angry, white male, lonely and self-obsessed, progressing from destruction of property to a sense of belonging in religion and then supremacy groups. The historical referrences to Andersonville and Fort Pillow are there for whoever understands but have no special meaning to the song really. There's a touch of Stevie Nicks in there ('I'd like to leave you with something warm')  but with a totally different and menacing meaning. The best line in the song is probably the last one that Greg sings in the backing vocals - 'I rot in happiness'. When you write songs as another character, you often get people close to you, often girlfriends obsessively reading your words and trying to glean hidden meanings as if they were some kind of passport to your inner self. It's kinda sweet  and endearing but I also find this a little worrying in the same way that you would a person who doesn't know the difference between a movie and real life. I can only assume that somewhere in the American countryside Steven King's wife sits him down on occasion and repeatedly asks him where his big, red, self driving, bodywork regenerating car is. I bet Bono never gets this trouble…although rumour has it that his wife writes his lyrics."