Ben Parker(Superman revenge Squad,Nosferatu D2 ) has sent us a track-by-track guide through their cult classic album ‘We’re Gonna Walk Around This City With Our Headphones On To Block Out The Noise’ (which was later released on Audio antihero). It was loosely written as an anniversary to their formation and split(both in June). Enjoy:
Broken Tamagotchi:
We used to open Nosferatu D2 gigs with this song quite often, and I think we wrote the beginning of the song in a way that would sound good at the beginning of gigs – the way it stops and starts was meant to get people’s attentions, and make it difficult to talk over. Maybe this comes from too much experience of being in bands that people do talk over, I dunno. I loved playing this one live more than any of the others I think. The only other fact that springs to mind about this song is that the opening lyrics “the only place I feel alone is in your arms” were originally “the only place I feel like me is in the sale section of HMV”, but I thought it sounded a bit silly and changed it; in a way I wish I’d kept it as it was.
A Footnote:
When we had the first practice as Nosferatu D2, I think I only had one song, or one set of lyrics, ready, and that was A Footnote. The lyrics in the chorus that talk about an album being a grower came from the way that me and Adam would call an album that wasn’t very good a grower; in my experience, albums that you initially think are really average remain really average. The main concept of the song comes from the fact that we’d probably never be famous enough to have a rock biography written about us, but maybe one of the bands we’ve played with a few times will one day get massive and there might just be a quote in the book that has a footnote that, when you look it up, references me; and maybe that will be enough. Maybe.
Colonel Parker:
Another song about being desperate to be a big rock star or something, wanting to be Elvis, but being ashamed to feel like that. And that maybe all this need just comes from insecurity. And another song that started out as a good way to stop people talking through our gigs: Big noisy bits followed by silent bits.
Flying Things and Pests:
A strange song. The title comes from a dream I had where I was in a band called “Flying Things and Pests” – I can’t remember anything else about the dream but thought I’d put the name in because it sounded good. I hate wasps so it might come from that. I honestly don’t know where the rest of the song comes from now – it’s quite angry though.
I Killed Burt Bacharach:
The title came because the song started with me singing the words to “Take It Easy on Yourself” by Burt Bacharach over some random jamming and it sounding quite good. It’s about a girl I knew that was in a terrible relationship with a terrible man and would talk to me about leaving him sometimes but never did. And this is a song willing her to leave him.
2 People, 0 Superpowers:
I still really like the lyrics to this one: “a heart with no soul is just offal”. And I mention one of my art teachers from school: Mr Lacavarer was the art teacher that would sometimes get carried away helping kids with pictures and so, at the end of the year, children’s pictures of people would be up on the wall and the other teachers would point out bits that Mr Lacavarer had helped with and once I heard one say that many of them clearly had “Mr Lacavarer noses”. Generally, the song is about feeling sorry for yourself but quite enjoying wallowing in feeling sorry for yourself. At one point, I had the idea of the album cover being me and Adam as a top trump card showing attributes like: People: 2, Superpowers: 0.
The Mojo Top 100:
A bitter rant about people Mojo write about, about the fact that Alanis Morrisette was on Jools Holland when I wrote it, and about Phil Collins being the devil. I then thought I’d put something in about Thom Yorke as well, as all the others seemed like very soft targets. There were a lot more lyrics but we shortened it quite a bit: I was trying to get a whole narrative about children being conceived to Phil Collins albums that then grow up as the devil. The chords to the beginning of the song came form the opening chords to Metallica’s One, I think.
Springsteen:
At one point, I had the idea of looping a bit of “My Hometown” from Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA and playing underneath it – but it sounded a bit rubbish, so we got rid of the Boss loop and I started singing over the music that we’d created for it and that turned into Springsteen, and that is why the song is called Springsteen. The lyrics derive form the fact that I couldn’t imagine writing a loving song about my hometown of Croydon.
We’ll Play The Power of Love By Frankie Goes to Hollywood a thousand times tonight:
Well, the title comes from a memory of something a friend told me at school: he had a teenage girl that lived next door to him, and every time her boyfriend came round and her parents were out, she’d play the power of love over and over again, whilst they were, presumably, enjoying the power of love. Other lyrics in the song that might need explaining: “Barbara Windsor, you’ve got so much to answer for” – about the highly conventional attitude to sexuality that comes from a childhood watching carry on films; “in the twilight, with just a flashlight, I felt afraid” – I think comes from a memory of being at a festival as a teenager where me and a friend spent the night helping a group of girls find one of their friends that had disappeared, and when we eventually found her she was in a very bad way – we then stayed up in the dark and felt like something in the world had changed and died somehow. We never played this song live because the
guitar sound was made by me turning my guitar amp up and hitting the guitar with a drumstick – after we recorded it the pick-up stopped working, and I thought I couldn’t really risk breaking my guitar at each gig. The guitar is still scarred by this. I refused to use any guitar effects when we started Nosferatu D2; this seemed very important indeed, so I was a little annoyed when some reviews of this song talk about me using effects pedals.
It’s Christmas Time (for God’s sake):
This was never meant to be put on the album. We wrote it to play at a Christmas gig we played. But, although that gig was packed, it was packed with people that didn’t want to listen to us. So, we felt we had to include the song or else no-one would ever had really listened to it. It started as a cover of River by Joni Mitchell, but it grew away from that. It felt important, when we were deciding what went on the album, that there were some slower songs, to make the whole thing a bit more rounded. And the last two songs offer that I think.
