In 2010, Britain’s centre and centre-left sent a clear message to Gordon Brown’s Labour by voting for Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats in their droves. That electorate certainly didn’t want David Cameron’s Conservatives, and the expectation was that Clegg would enter into a coalition with Labour, in the public’s eyes, setting the country on a moderate path. Clegg, of course, knifed his voters in the back and joined a coalition with the Conservatives, and he is partly responsible for everything that came after, Brexit included.
In the 5 years the Tories shared a coalition with the Lib-Dems, those forced by circumstance of ideologically driven cuts to services and welfare had to turn to food banks to feed their families, and in fact, in 2015, the year of the next general election, over 1 million families were being fed through the food-bank charities. Newspapers told stories of people dying after the government took away their disability benefits, leaving them unable to feed themselves or heat their homes. A disgrace.
On 7th May 2015, Scotland voted overwhelmingly for the welfare-protecting, migrant-welcoming, NHS-defending, Trident-abandoning Scottish National Party. The majority of the UK, however, voted for another 5 years of Conservative Party austerity – a sickener for Scots already heartbroken at 2014’s Independence referendum. With Clegg out of the way, Cameron, now with no guard rails (such as they were), announced plans for an in/out referendum on the European Union—and we know how that turned out.
For the next term, Chancellor George Osborne laid out plans for another £8 billion in welfare cuts, and the Tories clearly had no plans to curtail austerity, even while the richest got richer, and people in dire need of support and care were left without it.
How on earth does this relate to Too Many Fireworks, or this release?
At the time, I was playing guitar in the prog-post-rock band, The Frozen North. I had collected an embarrassing array of effects pedals, and in my Mogwai, Godspeed, MBV obsessions, I loved nothing more than spending some time in our rehearsal room alone just making noise.
The evening following the election, I stayed late after rehearsal and expressed my sheer frustration, disappointment, and anxiety with noise, feedback and effects while recording some of the improvising. From the 37-minute session, I cut the best 13 minutes, called it Shark, and released it as a single on the label to raise money for the food bank in my home town of Airdrie.
While of course attractive to only a very niche audience, I nevertheless felt strongly about doing something, anything, that I could do. In the end, we raised £143 from the single across its various releases and gave it to the food bank. Given the abstract noise of the track, I imagine some of that was donation.
Still, I’m quite proud of it. It feels like a different life, when I had 2 huge cases of pedals and some other bits and pieces, and a room in which to destroy my hearing. In the “liner notes” on the label’s website, the single credit read: rage, anger, disappointment, disillusionment, hope, optimism, belief and guitars: Neil Milton
Trussell continues to raise money for food banks in the United Kingdom.
Shark was released on digital download on May 15th, 2015, and we gave it the catalogue number 2mf019. You can listen to the single here
