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The Loaf Tells Us About Some Specific
Tracks:
1.) Meaning of W.E.I.R.D.
Ralph Records was running a competition for the best suggestion
for what the acronym WEIRD meant. Rather than send a written
entry we wrote a song. The lyrics were generated by randomly
picking words out of a dictionary, with a bit of selection to
keep the strangest or, to us, the funniest sounding ones. Walk
energetically in rubber dungarees does conjure up an image,
doesn’t it?
4.) 120 Before Zero
The lyrics were generated randomly from a music paper, NME
or something. The title refers to rewinding the backing tape
to a certain point, which was 120 before zero, i.e. –0880
on the tape counter.
5.) Of Bad Teeth
Well, ‘Of Bad Teeth’ was a setting of a Bertolt
Brecht poem, with a Madness influence, the group Madness that
is.
7.) Metro Stomp
‘Metro Stomp’ is the only piece from the ‘Swinging
Larvae’ era. Metro Stomp is an anagram of Post
Mortem and the basic track is the slowed down backing track
to ‘A Medical Man’ copied out of phase with itself
with some improvised guitar and clarinet overdubs – shades
of a Henry Cow influence here.
9.) Fluorescent Showboat to Tangier
This is a song about the pub we used to drink in after a hard
day in the surgery. The title comes from the fact that the pub
was called The Tangier and in the lounge bar was a tank of tropical
fish. In the fish tank was a sunken paddle steamer or showboat,
painted in rather lurid colours. So I think you can put the
title together from that. As for the lyrics, each line is an
observation about the pub, which I read out to Brian, backwards.
He then had to translate it back to ‘English’. So,
Frosted glass in the ladies door becomes Throsted glas in ledis
dor. Fancy carpet on the floor becomes Fanky farket ol te flor,
or something like that – you get the picture.
The vocals on 'Showboat' are interesting in that we used 'prepared
voice' to modify the sound of Brian's singing. As I recall Brian
put an elastic band around his head so that it went around his
mouth a bit like a horses bridle. This pulled his mouth out
of shape and altered the sound of his voice.
12.) The Kimbolton Gnome Song
The room that was now ‘Sneff’s Surgery’ over
looked the gardens of Kimbolton Road in Portsmouth. One of these
had a large number of garden gnomes and the song is just a fantasy
about the owner’s obsessive care for his gnomes.
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