Paul Shearsmith came to London in 1972 as a listener but through John Stevens, Trevor Watts and improvisation began to play the trumpet. Playing at the Little Theatre Club, various upstairs rooms in pubs around London and The London Musicians Collective in Camden. In 1983 he returned from Bali with a musical instrument played by the children there, using a 35mm film canister, a piece of rubber balloon skin and some plastic tube. Back in London on meeting the sound sculptors Echo City, the baliphone was developed. He then entered the world of sound installations, which he still pursues with Echo City. Touring the USA, Canada, Singapore and Europe. Installing permanent sound sculptures in Winnipeg, Canada; Perth, Scotland; Bruges, Belgium and several sites in England. So far he has appeared on 12 albums with bands as diverse as Echo City, The Killer Shrews (John Langford - Mekons, Tony Maimone - ex Pere Ubu, Gary Lucas - ex Captain. Beefhart), ORang, (formally Ha Ha) and the free Jazz group THE ONE KING POETS. Other bands include Ya Basta, No Money No Detail and Kerb Drill. His latest project is A Lad from Tad, which at the present time has written IRAQATTACK and recorded it with the Train Crash Shakers. www.echocity.com

**Click on song title to hear MP3 IRAQATTACK The lyrics are conscious of world politics, a truly revolutionary song. The track has an incredible backing sound, an insane whirlwind of noise that makes Pink Floyd seem tame. It is a great blues and rock number about the lies and deceptions of politicians. It shows world leaders for what they are, a bunch of con-men and con-women. In the background we can hear the chaos of war. Kerba Victor YS paper music review Recorded by A Lad from Tad and the Train Crash Shakers On Gramophone Records DR101CDS <www.gramophone-records.co.uk>   Fiction is your diction Fiction is your fact LIES and Deception These are your craft   Bush Brown and Blair Don’t you dare You give us lies for truth Bush Brown and Blunket You’ve gotta JUNKET. Lies are your new truth.   Tell me Jack Straw What use are you for Two JAGS Prescott YOU’re a disgrace a captain’s steward That is your space   Fiction is your diction Fiction is your fact LIES and Deception These are your craft IraqattackIraqattackIraqIraqIraqattack AttackIraqAttackIragIraqIraqIraqattack   Geoffrey Hoon You’re a hot air balloon Howard you’re a COWARD Fred Astair  Alistair dance you  bastard DANCE   BUSH You’re a shite You think might is right Tel me Tony Blair How do you sleep at night With Iraq in plight Putin you’re still shootin' in Chechnya   Fiction is your diction Fiction is your fact LIES and Deception These are your craft IraqattackIraqattackIraqIraqIraqattack AttackIraqAttackIragIraqIraqIraqattack   Rumsfeld What’s that you say Everything’s OK in Guantanamo bay. condeleeca rice You’re not very nice You’ a pudding   Charles Clark The voice of reason Charles Clark The man for all season Be carefull sonny That’s treason He’ll lock us in the dark With laws From the Ark   Fiction is your diction Fiction is your fact LIES and Deception These are your craft IraqattackIraqattackIraqIraqIraqattack AttackIraqAttackIragIraqIraqIraqattack   Abrams –Bolton - Cheney – Gonzales-Negroponte – Perle – Powell – Poindexter – Rumsfeld – Rice – Reich - Wolfovitz You are the unacceptable face of the unacceptable. © Paul Shearsmith

 

Interview with Paul Shearsmith

Q: Tad the Lad and the Train Crash Shakers perform Iraq Attack.  Who are they? How did they get that name?

Tad is the town Tadcaster where I grew up. It’s a brewing town in Yorkshire near York. My father was the local blacksmith. When I think I’ve done something unusual for somebody from my background (Tadcaster in the 50s) like travel across the Pennines to Blackpool for my holidays I’ll say, “ not bad for a lad from Tad”.

On Monday nights I rehearse with a group of friends in a studio in Hoxton London. Chris Grayson, who runs the studio, has a recording project called the Mongo Shakers. He wanted a chaotic ending to one of his pieces and asked several players to record a train crash to a drum bass backing. When he played it back I sang my IRAQATTACK over it.
A week later I recorded my rant over the whole train crash and Chris mixed the finished IRAQATTACK. Hence The Lad from Tad and the Train Crash Shakers.

Q: You’ve done a lot of instrumental soundscapes and experimental work. Why did you decide to write a strong song like Iraq Attack and in a rock mode at that?

I wrote this song out of ANGER. ANGER at what is being perpetrated in my name by my government of small-minded lawyers and bureaucrats. Originally the song was called Lies and Deception, which merged with another idea for a title IRAQATTACK but which had no words only its own rhythm. As I thought of new verses they would be constantly buzzing around my brain developing and developing. I had never written any lyrics before and I couldn’t stop thinking about lies and deception. Since recording IRAQATTACK I have come up with two more verses, which still need some work, and a couple of unrelated text. The rock mode came by accident (see above) although rock has been part of my life along with Jazz since my youth.

In the fifties, influenced by my elder brother, I was listening to Rock and Roll (Elvis, Eddie Cochran, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly) and Traditional Jazz (Kid Ory, Hot five, George Lewis and Bunk Johnson). The first two records I bought, in 1959, were Forty Miles of Bad Road by Duane Eddy and The Battle of New Orleans by Lonnie Donegan. By the time I left school in 1964 I was listening to Bob Dylan, Sonny Boy Williamson, Chuck Berry, Duke Ellington, Cannonball Adderley and Thelonius Monk.

At architectural school I discovered Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Jimmy Guiffre and Jack Johnson by Miles Davis.

When I first came to London in 1972 I used to go every Friday to the Plough Inn in Stockwell to hear Stan Tracey. Every Friday I would get drunk and shout at the band. The drummer John Stevens must have thought my alcohol fuelled enthusiasm needed channeling and invited me to music workshops he ran with Trevor Watts. These workshops, using improvisation, were the basis of the teachings, which became known as Search and Reflec¹, and now standard practice at London based Community Music. I was now an improvising trumpet player playing experimental music. The scope of music I listened to was now widening from New Orleans Jazz, Big Band Jazz, Blues, Rock, Modern Jazz to take in the likes of Albert Ayler, Sun Ra and the Spontaneous Music Ensemble.

Later bands of John Stevens and Trevor Watts (Away and Amalgam) became very rocky so opening up the idea of free improvisation over rhythm. Ornette Coleman was exploring a similar path with his Prime Time band.

In 1983 I returned from traveling in Indonesia with a musical instrument played by children in Bali made from a film canister and a short plastic tube with a rubber balloon skin reed. I believe they call it a trompet and we renamed it the Baliphone. It has the sound of an Arabic reed instrument. Later at a party I met David Sawyer a musical instrument inventor and builder who at that time was part of a team building two sonic playgrounds in London. He encouraged me to make a bagpipe out of the Baliphone and also replaced the short plastic tube with a longer piece of garden hose. This changed the sound from a high pitched shrill to a low didgeridoo sound with the added ability to use the Doppler effect by twirling the hose above ones head. Armed with this piece of equipment I joined the aftermath of the sonic playground builders and we became Echo City. Echo City combined my two interest architecture and music.

The Children’s Museum of Manitoba in Winnipeg has a sonic playground that we installed in 1992. We used to have an agent in Montreal and have toured in Canada and the US. While playing in Seattle we discovered, at a yacht chandlers, a commercially made Baliphone for use as a ships siren. It was called a hornblower. In an Echo City performance we have always used a rhythmic approach to our music. The drummer Guy Evans is better known for his work with the 70s band Van der Graff Generator.

So relating to IRAQATTACK rock has always been part of my musical landscape.

Q: With Iraq Attack it seems that politics and music can stand together and deliver.  Can you name other notables that do it for you?

Politics has always been part of folk music. The railways, mining and seafaring disasters provided the basis of many a song. The Coal-owner and ThePitman's Wife of 1844 and The Gresford Colliery Disaster of 1934 are two examples.

There are also several blues I remember. Big Bill Broonzey wrote and sang Black Brown and White. J B Lenoir wrote several songs ­ Born dead, Eisenhower blues, Korea blues and Vietnam.

Then there is the music of Woody Guthrie, early Bob Dylan and Ewan MacColl who wrote Dirty Old Town. Being a teenager in the 60s I saw Woodstock with what for me was the most memorable song on the film I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die-Rag by Country Joe and the Fish. Then in 70s I heard Gil Scott Heron’s The Revolution will not be Televised. On moving to London I discovered the dub poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson with Sonny's Lettah being very pokey and also recently the poetry of Benjamin Zephaniah. In the 80s there was The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Later I came across the lyrics of the punk band from Leeds The Mekons.
In Jazz there are many instances of political thought. Probably the most powerful being Strange Fruit written by Abel Meeropol and sung by Billy Holiday. Duke Ellington’s Black Brown and Beige. The album Oh Yeah by Charlie Mingus contains OLord Don’t Let Them Drop that Atomic Bomb On Me.Nuclear War by Sun Ra with its refrain “you better put your head between your knees and kiss your arse goodbye”. Finally the whole New Thing with Albert Ayler at its forefront.

Q: What is your philosophy to music?  Have you got an ideology?

I believe music belongs to everybody and can be made by anyone.  Don’t let technique get in the way.  

Q: Where’s Echo City now and what is it doing?

We played recently at the Royal College of Art but an Echo City gig is a rarity. We all have other projects. I still make the instruments for sale and play in other bands. I have recorded two albums with Fuji a Japanese blues singer. He plays a National Steel Guitar with a bottleneck and sings his own songs in Japanese. I play tuned gas main, Baliphone and Pocket Trumpet. As for other members and former members - Giles Leaman also makes musical instruments, plays with various bands and a puppet theatre. Giles Perring plays in several groups and composes music for TV sountracks and radio. Guy Evans teaches recording skills in a private school and has recently been back on tour with the reformed Van der Graff Generator. A new recording is to be released this Autumn. Rob Mills composes music and works with adults with learning difficulties. Recently he has just released a CD of duos to very good reviews. Susie Honeyman still plays with the Mekons and composes. Julia Farrington runs a music project in London putting on large-scale gigs. Dave Sawyer is still inventing new musical instruments down in Exeter.

Q: What’s been your latest musical discovery?

That I can write lyrics and I can sing!

Q: Was Tad the Lad a one-off happening or are they out there still shaking trains?

I have written other things but don’t hold you breath.

Q: If President Bush asked to play the castanets in your band would you let him?

Yes. To keep him out of harms way. From time to too time I would piss on or beat him about the head with a bible for good measure.

Q: Anything else you’d like to say?   Any of the above you’d rather ignore?

Don’t get me started on religion!

You’ve gotta say nope to the Pope
And Tish to the Archbish
Life’s a lot dullah with a mullah
For Religion does your muja heed een*.

*In a Glaswegian accent