I love this photo, it manages to capture a whole era in one image. My mate Ian thinks it was taken at a Darlingheart gig in Edinburgh, sometime in 1991. The story of Darlingheart is a long and complex one, and this entry is not about them. There are vague references to Darlingheart on the "All Days Fade" and "Amused" pages, on www.kirkcaldybands.com. I think I'll tell the Darlingheart story in a blog entry sometime, it's a great Scottish dreamtime rock n roll story. However, this blog entry is about another giant of the Scottish Music scene, The Pooheads.
The Pooheads were born in this gorgeous Edinburgh street, Manor Place at Haymarket, in October 1991.
Really, it was just my friends Craig, Ian and I, experimenting with a 4 track portable recording studio. Ian was the only one of us who owned, and could work a machine like that. 4 tracks had been around since the '80's at least, but for us in our early 20's, they were horribly expensive. So October 1991 was our first experiment. Ian came round to Craig's flat in Manor place. As I remember it, the idea was just to play with the 4 track and see what happened.
I totally loved that flat in Manor Place. It was also a nice time in our lives. We all lived about 10 minutes walk, at the most, from each other's flats. We were all young, up for having fun, and more importantly for this story, making music.
Craig's place was indeed historic. The plaque above is beside the front door of the place. He only had one room in the flat, but what a room! It was packed with different musical instruments, in various states of repair, and hundreds of CDs. I thought that place was great. It was in a lovely building, in the heart of Edinburgh and it had a great atmosphere to it.
If Sophia Jex-Blake got a plaque in Manor Place, the Pooheads didn't! But that first session with the 4 track was the birth of the Pooheads. I now have no clue where the name came from. But it could be that the picture of Craig and I at the top of the page was the inspiration. Craig was, in fact wearing a Lemonheads T shirt (remember them?). I think we just thought it was funny to think that, as you can only see the "heads" part of the Lemonheads name, that you could imagine that Craig was wearing a Pooheads T shirt.
That initial recording session was a revelation, in many ways. I'd only ever recorded straight to tape on domestic cassette recorders. The highest quality we had ever achieved was recording straight to hifi cassette machines. As we began to use this 4 track machine, that only Ian could work, I was totally amazed by how we sounded.
The second revelation was that I realised I could write songs. I had only ever managed to get one and a half songs into the Surgical Wars set (this blog entry is not about them either, but their story is also at www.kirkcaldybands.com). I don't recall that we had any clue about what songs we would do at this first session, I'm sure we had no plan.
What actually ended up happening, was that we recorded two songs. The first song was a very simple riff, that I think I made up on the spot. I had a lyrical idea that had been knocking around in my head for about a year, which was, in part, inspired by a song called "It Wasn't Me", by Lou Reed and John Cale, from their Warhol tribute, "Songs for Drella". I wanted a song called "It Wasn't Me", as I always thought that phrase was funny. It remind me of naughty children, who, whatever they were accused of would say, "it wisnae me". But I wanted mine to be about natural, or otherwise, disasters. I'd read the disaster out and then sing, "It Wasn't Me"!
When we tried to do that, it didn't really work out in practice. So, typically of Craig, he helped me improvise, and it ended up me just repeating over and again "it wasn't me"! The big selling point for this song was Ian's wonderful screechy lead guitar which he layered over the rhythm guitar. Craig's bass playing was great too.
We actually managed to do TWO songs in that first session! It sometimes takes me 4 years to finish one song now! The second song was the one where I realised I could actually write lyrics, and that, maybe, that was what I was really good at. We had wanted, for reasons that completely escapee me now, to record a version of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain". But, we had no clue what most of the lyric were. So, as Craig worked out the chords, I wrote some new ones. I ended up really loving those substitute Carly Simon lyrics. I've always enjoyed doing "attack" song lyrics and I was particularly unhappy with a mutual friend at the time, so the lyrics are about him. Mean spirited I know, but every one needs a muse.
Another revelation, was actually playing with other musicians that would let me sing! Now, I have no illusions that I am a singer, and I don't really like my own singing voice. But I got pissed off in other bands at fellow band members who would not even let me try. I remember with the Surgical wars, the singer turning off the spare backing vocal mike that I was next to, as I sang into that one on stage, it did no good! As I remember that initial Pooheads session, there was a bit of a disagreement about who would sing, as I didn't really want to do it. But I think the logic was, that as I had written the words, I had to sing them. I remember feeling a complete prat, siting with the mic and singing into it, but when I heard it back, it was not too bad. Craig had to be sent to stand in the toilet for a bit, as he was making me laugh so much. On the original copy of the 4 track master to cassette tape, Ian started the tape a bit early, and you can hear me saying "oh my God, he'd gone", Craig had been sent to the toilet. Ian did some very funny double tracking of my vocal on "You're So Vain" as well.
Having done this initial session, I seem to remember listening to almost nothing else for weeks! Craig said, that it'd be good to figure out a way to have the music directly injected into our veins. Hearing the Pooheads material again, there are some horrendous technical blunders. Apart from the 4 track machines that were pretty good, a lot of the other equipment was borrowed or crap, or both.
But the initial session was such a revelation. I realised that, up to a point, I could write songs and sing and, with some help from my friends, I could bring them into life. Craig was so enthusiastic about the session we did using Ian's machine, that he bought a 4 track about 2 weeks later.
We recorded a load of material between October 1991 and around March 1993. The songs are of variable quality, but they all have a great improvised, enthusiastic feel to them. The three person line up of Craig, Ian and I only lasted for about 5 songs, which I always thought was a shame. Craig is a wonderful musician, with a great sense of humour. His bass playing on both the tracks we recorded in Manor place that day really helped make them. Ian is really the only person who can really help me bring my ideas into life. We first played together in January 1985, and we are still occasionally working together, so we kinda just understand each other musically. He also still does great guitar solos.
The Pooheads then continued as a weird duet, either Craig and I, or Ian and I. It became too difficult to co-ordinate getting everyone together for our frequent sessions. The way my ideas came out were really quite different, depending on who I was working with at the time. Craig's last input to the three person line up was on one of my favourite songs, "Frying Pan". Ian wrote a great riff for that one, but I wasted loads of time when we recorded it, as we had to record on a Saturday morning (a really bad time when you are in your early 20's!) and I was so hungover, I couldn't get the vocal right. So Craig was only able to record the biscuit tin drum that day, the very basic drum machine that we used in the earlier sessions, having been given back to Andy. Craig's biscuit tin drums was the best we ever did though, it really held the song together. I had to improvise a, pretty dodgy bass line for the song a few weeks later.
I've been calling whatever music I've been writing and recording "The Pooheads" ever since. But, in truth, the spirit of the Pooheads was really left behind in the early '90's. So, death to the Pooheads - with many fond memories and good wishes! Hello Andrew Crescent, the man who killed the Pooheads!
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