A Birth of sorts
On the 21st of January, 2002, a Glasgow post-punk band that had passed swiftly through the dark tunnels of indie pay-to-play hell to find itself in the city’s welcoming DIY scene, launched their debut e.p. with a show at the 13th Note Cafe/Bar in Glasgow. The band’s name was Troika. Its guitar player was a short fellow with a love of Fender guitars and post-rock music. He, for his sins, was me.
That evening was notable for several reasons, not least that someone mugged me shortly before I took the stage – though that’s a story for later. Primarily, though, the evening was important as the launch of Troika’s Missing Passport e.p. gave birth to a small organisation that was to take over my life for many years to come: my record label, too many fireworks.
anniversary
The 21st of January 2027 will see the 25th anniversary of the show, the e.p. and the label, which came to an end during the pandemic when I returned to the camera. The last, and most likely final, too many fireworks release was the Without You b/w You Are The Summer single by Pop-up Books.
With 32 catalogue numbers, one shared release, a club night, a film music event series, a short-lived TEDx clone for the DIY music industry, several collaborations and artist features, and one tattoo; too many fireworks had an exciting life funded almost exclusively by a succession of day jobs through the years.
Over the next 32 weeks, I’m going to share a catalogue number from the label, my memories, and I hope those of the artists that made it happen, whether from Scotland, England, Iceland, or Poland.
As I’m waiting for pictures, memories, and other bits and pieces from some of the artists, I decided to start with one of my own records from over the years, the 2018 e.p. Singing As You Leave.
Singing As You Leave e.p.
I wrote and demoed the title track of the record about two years earlier. David Cameron had resigned after his gamble to quell the Eurosceptic rebellions within the Tory party with an in/out referendum on the EU. As he finished his statement outside Downing Street, and still mic-ed up, he turned, made his way back to the iconic black door, and infamously sang a little ditty to himself before the microphones caught him saying, with some sense of washing one’s hands of something, right.
I had been listening to a lot of Superchunk, so I think a little bit of that crept in, in both the righteous anger and the arrangement. Still really enjoy listening to that guitar solo, but as I recorded it on a Vox AC30 in an apartment block in central Warsaw, I can’t imagine my neighbours loved it.
This wasn’t the earliest song written for the record, though, by a long way. I wrote Bridge Will Burn after a break-up around 2015, when I was playing in the Frozen North. This song appeared elsewhere later, but this version was recorded direct to tape in the band’s rehearsal room. Talking of the Frozen North, the band’s violinist, Aga Olek, played violin on Bird Sanctuary. I remember the only note I gave her was that it had to be scratchy.
Local Fan
My favourite song on the record is my earnest thank you to my dad. Growing up in Airdrie in the 80s, rather than Rangers or Celtic, my dad brought my brother and me up to support his first love, our local team, Airdrieonians. I’m a die-hard fan to this day. I wanted to write my dad Local Fan in the way David Scott from the Pearlfishers had written his dad, My Dad the Weatherfan. The song opens with one of my favourite childhood memories of supporting Airdrie, Stevie Gray’s superlative goal away to St. Johnstone at McDiarmid Park on a beautiful, sun-scorched day.
Not long before recording the 4 demoed songs, I’d bought a Rickenbacker 330, and while the Jaguar and Telecasters were the main guitars on this e.p., the Rick makes an appearance on all songs recorded at my place, even if found lower in the mix. Talking of the recording, this was the first record I used the JHS Colour Box with the EMI Neve chip, giving the overdriven sound of the Beatles’ Abbey Road desk.
The record came out on digital download, streaming, and on cassette tape on the 14th September 2018. It had the catalogue number 2mf029, and I straight-up nicked the Cooper font that the Beach Boys used for Pet Sounds. The cassette came bundled with a small button badge bearing the simple but direct message, Fuck Brexit.
You can listen to the Singing As You Leave e.p. here