The making of "Make Some Noise"

For 2004 got off to a lively start with two blinding gigs. One at The Dirty Water Club on my birthday supporting my childhood heroes The Barracudas and the other playing in front of hundreds of pissed up snogging teenagers at the Hammersmith Palais. We knew it was time to get our album recorded. We'd been talking about it since Acid Jazz took an interest in us and got us to record a They've Only Gone And Done It! for their Exile On Hammond Street compilation (AJXCD 158). So we embarked on an odyssey of discovery but what should have been a simple trip to a studio to lay down a few tracks turned into a journey up a sometimes hostile river with a very slim chance of ever finding the fat bloke .

Before a note could be played Alvin hung out in Cuba with Omar Puente for a few weeks and came back fired up and refreshed. I packed in my job at a sausage factory. Paul McMc emersed himself in his acting. Bob and Paul Freeman did the sensible thing and held down their dayjobs!

We chose a studio in genteel Shoreditch . All flip flops and fins. Close enough to Tommy's crusty rolls but miles from our spec. So we lost our deposit and found a cowshed in Bounds Green . We enlisted the help of the politest man in rock Richard “Diamond” Searle to co-produce the album. We'd worked with him on They've Only Gone And Done It! and found him really easy to get on with. There was only one adjustment we needed to make - the drummer. For six months previous we had been rehearsing and gigging with Smiler 's replacement Paul ‘Rylo' Rylance – a competent drummer and likeable bloke – but he wasn't Smiler . By that I mean he wasn't as explosive. We'd all missed Smiler 's violent, showy style since he'd defected to The Jamm and so two days before we started recording it fell to me to give Rylo the bad news. He took it really well and wished us every success. If you get a chance check out his other band The Lanes .

For the next three months, on and off – but mostly on, a wiry Antipodean by the name of Joe Leach sat clicking a mouse , drinking Piast and eating enough pizza to feed a stouter fellow. Richie became Dick and shook everything. He took a very hands off till someone needed strangling approach to production and knew the right moment to drag an ego into the pub and give it a gentle rub or kick it in the balls. Joe avoided so much sleep that his cat ran away. Thankfully he still has his beautiful wife Biba – and her lovely carrot cake .

So what of the music? It's all there. Alvin on a stand up (don't do comedy mate!) Bob blowing a reed (usually in one or two takes), Smiler being Smiler – must upload some of the studio outtakes, me going slightly nuts, Paul ‘Organ' Freeman playing like the nicotine stained old blue noter we always knew he was, Paul McMcMc came over all thesp and dropped in and out between filming episodes for The Bill and some stuff for a Danish naturist website ( www.hotmeat.co.dk ). Sang like a canary he did – top vocals. We had a parliament of brass in the shed with us. Arranged, organised and cajoled by Nicki Hutchins. Low end – high end big bold brass. Vegas period EAP meets S&G to keep the punters satisfied. Savour it my friends - not a sampled note in sight!

The backing tracks were recorded on the first two days. We experimented quite a bit and a couple of tracks failed to make it onto the album. It'll Take Time was one such casualty – it just didn't kick. Perhaps we'll remix it later.

The opening track Picking Up The Pieces wasn't sitting right for ages so we stripped off the original Welleresque guitar line and replaced it with a nod to The Pelvis . It still needed something so we called on Robin Wills of The Barracudas to lay down a 12 string Rickenbacker part. It really brought out the feelgood vibe we were after. There was a version with a harmonica solo but it made the song a bit too long so we cut it. Richie and Joe steered us towards the harmony parts on the chorus. Check out the original version on the website to see the differences .

The real bastard to record was Substitute . We knew early on that it would probably be the first single and so we spent ages getting the backing track right. There must be twenty mixes of it lying around. The vocals took a good couple of days to get right. Layers of increasingly higher woo hoos and as much guitar violence as we could fit in. The intro was 8 bars longer but was cut to make it more immediate. There was also an extra 45 seconds of free form noise at the end that was quite groovy but a bit self indulgent so the Aussie hippy and Shaky Dick replaced it with what became known as the ‘gay' ending .

Is It Her? was nailed in two takes. The first time the whole band had heard it so we're chuffed with that one. Adrian Revell‘s rasping jazz flute was exactly what we were looking for. I think the bossa drums really add some punch to the proceedings.

London Swings always brought a smile to Richie's face. He said it reminds him of Bugs Bunny Goes To London ! I checked it out and I can see what he means. Cheeky sod!

Shake Your Hips is a new recording of They've Only Gone And Done It! with a Fishbone mass chorus. The three way jazz work out at the end is an edited version of a three minute jam. Alvin 's time drinking rum and smoking cigars obviously paid off. There were two takes and both cook in their own way so maybe a different version will surface later.

Peggy nearly didn't make it on to the album because we couldn't decide where to put it. It was really important that it didn't bring the mood down too much. We experimented with cutting the intro altogether but in the end the busker intro gave it a more subtle lead in. We went to great lengths to get the reverb rolled off at just the right point as the main part of the song kicks in. Brother Bob 's harmonica part really lifts the song. I'm pleased it turned out as well as it did. It was a fixture in Major Flood's set back in 1988.

Our Neil Diamond cover, Thank The Lord For The Nighttime , should really have brass on it like the original but we went instead for a paired down gospel feel. It gives the Hammond more space to shine. Listen out for Paul McMcMcMc's Leslie Philips impression.

Our salute to 9 Below Zero , Circles , originally had a lot more piano on it but grew into a guitar driven thing as time went on. Bob played a couple of blinding harp solos and we pretty much flicked a coin to choose one of them.

Be Here Now became the ska'd up Don't Try So Hard and was actually constructed from a rehearsal take. If you listen carefully you can hear double guitar parts and dropped notes aplenty. This was the one that gave us asthma suffering Guynan brothers the most hag!

The brass section came into their own on Glad To See The Back Of You, another old Major Flood favourite written with John ‘Jonk' Crane . The monsterous ending was a combination of feedback, compression and lungs the size of the Goodyear blimp ! It was originally going to be the last track on the album but it was like telling the listener to sod off ! Paul McMcMcMcMc usually dedicates this to “ex wives everywhere” at gigs.

The middle eight of One Of Those Days features the sound of birds singing – a tried and tested way to suggest summer – but with Smiler's manic outbursts (captured between takes) supplanted over them it sounds like Syd Barratt going bonkers in the garden.

Sammy Bostik was the song we were most excited about recording. We saw it as the flagship tune of the album with its ‘ Make Some Noise! ' refrain. Creation guitar legend Eddie Philips and Ocean Colour Scene' s Steve Cradock had both said at some point that they would play on the track but their busy schedules meant that in the end we had to make our own noise collage – 32 bars of drum driven Smiler frenzy . If you listen really carefully you can hear a Roberts radio being tuned into a conversation about Victoria Beckham settling in Madrid (`cause you can't take the city from the boy!), the strings of a Victorian pianola, a zube tube , tons of feed back, a vintage echo machine being dropped on the floor, and trumpets distorted to sound like migrating ducks. Joe Leach really got into this song, throwing his beloved Space Echo machine across the room. The feedback track was recorded with a 1950's valve Watkins Copycat and Matt Evans from Vincent 's scary Marshall JCM800 (there's a full list of the equipment used in the recording of the album below). We recorded a spoken word version that may well surface as a B side at some point.

A lot of thought went into the track listing with at least half a dozen versions of the running order being tested before settling on the final one.

The final track listing is:

Make Some Noise! was never meant to be a concept album but it does have a broad theme. I had the idea of linking the tracks with pieces of incidental music and soundscapes. There were some pretty avant garde segues including a walk along Oxford Street taking in the various music from the different shops mixed with the Hare Krishnas and overlayed with distorted trumpets (see Sammy Bostik middle 8) and feedback. It interrupted the flow of the songs so only an excerpt from Jonk's Teabreak At The Sawmill between Don't Try So Hard and Glad To See The Back Of You survives. Elsewhere the incidental passages make reference to London. The grandfather clock at the start is playing the chimes St. Mary at Bow (Bow Bells). Before London Swings there is a montage of the ghostly but uplifting sound of the London docks in tribute to my father, the old East End and the values of an earlier time. I remember, as a child, hearing the sound of dozens of ship's hooters going off at New Years eve.

The album was mastered three times to get the right balance. Twice at The Cowshed and once by Richard Searle. So, with a finished set of masters, we did what all bands must do and touted our wares. It's no news to anyone that the record industry is in the doldrums and advances are rarer than poultry orthodontists but despite this we have been in discussions for a couple of modest deals. London 's greatest DJ and national treasure, Gary Crowley , has already been playing Substitute and initial reactions have been good.

So that's pretty much the story of the album. We're proud of it and we hope you like it. Check out the photos from the studio and see us hard at work making noise.

Jim Guynan

For the trainspotters here's a list of the gear begged, loaned or borrowed to record

Make Some Noise!

PREMIER GEN – X DRUMS
PAISTE CYMBALS
PROMARK STICKS
BERNIE GOODFELLOW 6 STRING BASS
BERNIE GOODFELLOW ELECTRIC UPRIGHT BASS
SWR BASS AMPS
RICKENBACKER 330
DANELECTRO DC59
EKO RANGER 12 STRING
SAXON 6 STRING ACOUSTIC
SHAFTSBURY 33O
FENDER SQUIER "57" STRAT
VOX, MARSHALL , LANEY AND TECH 21 GUITAR AMPS
WATKINS VALVE COPYCAT
ROLAND SPACE ECHO
BOSS TREMELO PEDAL
JHS WAH
LEE OSKAR AND HOHNER HARMONICAS
HAMMOND B3 ORGAN
FENDER RHODES '79 MK2
MOOG PIANO BAR
STECK PIANOLA
ROBERTS REVIVAL RADIO
TIBETAN FINGER CYMBALS
ZUBE TUBE
VARIOUS TAMBOURINES AND SHAKERS
BRASS A'PLENTY
OUR BIG MOUTHS