This song consists of three notes, two screaming children and one word. In the beginning was the word, and the word was 'rodent'.
The first genuine 'classic', about bitter regret and lost love. Contains an early indication of my sense of rhyme: "Sally...I wanted to buy you a chalet". Quite a bit later someone at school happened to mention that they knew a person called Sally, who was a hairdresser. This song was put on a tape and sent to her anonymously.
About how the aforementioned nun differed from the leader of the Third Reich.
A parody of a really crap comedy duo. Unfortunately no irony was intended.
'Snide' was my favourite word for a while, and to me it meant the ability to do things in a smooth and cool way (much like Tom Cruise in Cocktail). Then came the Golden Grahams adverts featuring the wondrous 'Golden Boy'. The song was meant to be an ode to this great icon of snide, but it ended up being about a woman going to Spain....with Wayne (?).
Completely random words set to some bastardised classical music. Both these features would become abiding conventions in our songs.
Half the song played normally, then the other half played really badly.
This one was a remnant from the days when we used to record our own radio show, 'Radio Mallard'. It has, like so many of the things we've done, no worth.
For a long time I was obsessed with Arnold Schwarzenegger and sub-machine guns. This song included the entire gun-shop scene from Terminator, and not much else. If I remember correctly someone actually released a single when Terminator 2 came out called 'Uzi 9mm'. I was quite gutted at the time, but I don't think anybody actually bought it apart from Scolar.
A song about Tampons. Not that I really knew what they were back then.
Those first history lessons have a lot to answer for. Not only did they inspire this turgid spoken-word account of 1930s Nationalism (set to Beethoven I believe), they also led to an unhealthy preoccupation with all things fascist, which has persisted, undiminished, to this day.
Another piece of classical music forever ruined for me. More a result of the fact that 'pope' rhymes with 'rope', than with any anti-Catholicist message.
An awful rap song eulogising warfare. Contains some truly terrible lines about 'suffering' and 'Russians'. (I used to think these words rhymed.)
Me and Mr Pump used to play chess quite a lot, in our garden, on the tow-path behind our garden, on the mud-flats of the river beyond the tow-path. During each other's turns we would keep ourselves focussed by trying to imitate distorted guitars with our mouths. For some reason we thought it would be a good idea to record it.
A sing-along pub chant about the old Liverpool defender, Gary Gillespie - and how he was always getting injured during the 88/89 season. This never really came across, however, because the lyrics consisted of the same number of words as the title.
This sinister number was inspired by one of Mr Pump's school friends. Although only about 17 at the time he was over 6-foot tall and heavily bearded. He was known for following girls around, standing close behind them for the entire lunch break, and saying nothing. He has changed a lot since then, so will remain unnamed.
