"GRAIN-AID!"

Going 'official' - press clipping from the trade journal, 'Music Week'

Released on 2nd July 1988, "Grain-Aid!" (MMATT 19, the numbering following on from our earlier demo cassettes) was finally issued as a benefit for Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital. The 90 minute compilation cassette came in a plastic seal-top bag with the tenth and final issue of the zine, aptly titled "The Last Grain". The opening page was the script of a conversation between Dr. Magic and Professor Quest (I gather the part of the latter had been written in character by me, as I hadn't seen Chris for three months by this point), an eccentric farewell, as it were. This was followed by a couple of pages of information about all the bands that had been involved, reprints of all previous Grain covers, a fan letter from someone signing himself 'Satan E. Wheelchange' accusing us of never publishing fan letters (to be honest, we hadn't) and the track information on the back page. The 90 minute cassette, well, it still makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck nearly three decades later. I'd really wanted to capture the spirit of The Grain and figured the best way to do that was through its most glorious moment, the festival. Side A opens in that mode with "We At Grain Festival" by Ehrlich Bullet, which I was in complete denial about at the time, but later confessed to being the man behind it. I'd declared Ehrlich Bullet as an 'anti-music' noise band and constructed the track accordingly, using a barraged and distorted mix of extracts from the 7+ hour live recording of the festival (which I so wish I'd kept), plus drum machine and processed vocals (well, I didn't want them to be recognised!) chanting "We at Grain Festival and we see...", then working through everybody (including "Fat Comic", for which I can only apologise, Gary), making some kind of comment about them ("we like The Charles, we clean their fucking furniture") and playing a few seconds from their performance on the day. Between tracks, I used clips from the day as links; Fat Comic... um... I mean Gary Pym introducing bands, said bands shouting profanely at TC, that kind of stuff. Then it had just been a question of getting tracks from everybody. Clearly The Charles, along with any of our own projects, were never going to be a problem, but that wasn't the case with everyone. I didn't know anybody from The Visionaries to ask anyway (easy these days, just looked them up on Facebook), but think I probably didn't use anything from the live recording because they hadn't had anything further to do with The Grain after the festival. As it turns out, they don't have a recording from that line up anyway, but I'm hoping to get one from slightly later, so at least everyone who performed will be 

Lethal Dose, L-R: Martin Dyson (bass, tragically lost to an overdose in the 80's), Rob Anderson (guitar, and whose dad's shop I bought my 12 string guitar from), a 16 year old Chris Carter (vocals) and Gary Fisher (drums, and whose mum and mine are never off the bloody phone to eachother!)

represented on the Soundcloud page. Momento Mori were another problem, I hadn't seen any of them since the festival either, but as they had been a member band for a while, felt they should be included. I listened though their set on the live recording and picked the track that had come out best, took a stab that it was probably called "Colour Me", based on the lyrics, and duly included it. Without getting consent from the band, something which would rather come back to haunt me. I knew Slack Bladder were okay with me using one from the live recording, but did have to do some careful listening to find one TC hadn't made a complete hash of. To round the side off, I thought it simply had to be The Charles and ourselves performing our joint encore of "The Grain", the only recording I had of which was from the camcorder videoing of our debut gig. Not the best of quality, but like I said, it simply HAD to be there, didn't it? Side B included earlier stuff from Chris' and my archives, along with tracks from the bands that joined post-festival and the debut recording by our latest (and rather short-lived) post Jay Time trio incarnation, The Psychotron. Deep breath - Ivor Sickmiend: What can one say about "Tarts"? The flak I've had for that song over the years, honestly! It was never meant to be an anthem for the misogynists of the world to unite behind, just a spoof of the old Moments & Whatnauts hit from 1975, "Girls", done a-la Judge Dread. I can't say it's one I'm proud of, but a lot of people (mostly blokes, ho hum) seem to find it funny, so it got included by popular demand. "The Eddie Irwin Song" was just Nick Morgan and me larking about. Misogyny and taking the piss out of mental patients, and that's just the first two tracks, political correctness gone mad. I should stress here that Eddie was our friend, it was never intended in a nasty way, we had just thought it would be funny to take all his little sayings and put them together in a song. He took it in good spirit, bless him. It's kind of a fitting tribute that his name is so well known because of it, as he's the guy who introduced Jay and Kate to Shona and I, so was responsible for the formation of MMATT, and if an old diary is to be believed, I think it might have been him (and not Nick) who took me to The Charles gig that lead to The Grain as well. Honestly, there's times I think I've forgotten more than I ever knew. Eddie died from a combination of drugs and alcohol some years ago now, drowned in his own vomit, very rock and roll death, he'd have liked that. Remember his name, this website would have been empty without him. Rock on, Eddie! And say hi to John Peel for us. Next up is a couple of tracks by Chris' late 70's punk band, the mighty Lethal Dose (pictured left). Including those two songs got me billed 58p by MCPS, based on royalties for the first 100 copies. I trust they spent it wisely. Cyanide Scenario were an earlier incarnation of Internal Autonomy, which also included Slack Bladder's Martin Crook on bass and The Visionaries' Shaun Jackson on drums. And there ya go, 90 minutes of Grainy Magic for a mere £1.99 (about £4.50 equivalent to today).