I Was a Swivel Chair - Part 1

 Part one of a “memoir” detailing the trials and tribulations of being in an unpopular comedy band.

Warning: adult/offensive content

I was never supposed to be in a band. There are many reasons for this: I cannot claim that I have ever been “cool”. I have never learnt how to play an instrument properly and singing is not my natural forte. This is why I ended up in a band called Swivel Chair.
Swivel Chair started as a joke. And it remained as a joke to everyone but the two remaining members of the band. After 4 years, being a member of Swivel Chair nearly gave me a mental breakdown.
This is why.

Prologue

It all started with my first job after college with HMV Princes St. I was given the job before the new store opened. There were a lot of characters who started at the same time, people with vast music knowledge who would almost all end up involved in making music some way or another, if they weren’t already. I was out of my depth, and not just because of my naïveté and relative lack of musical knowledge. This was my first full time job and it was torture. I couldn’t cope with the sheer boredom of the job and quickly became embittered with the incompetent management and the jobsworth “supervisors” they had promoted to be their mouthpieces. This dissatisfaction, coupled with my disillusionment of being back to square one after wasting four years at college, led to me joining equally pissed off colleagues in the pub after work every night for a number of premium lagers.

My drinking companions and I shared the same kind of evil humour and we gleefully engaged in assassinating the characters of the majority of management and some of our other, more arse-licking colleagues. On my part this was done more to have a laugh than because of any real hatred towards them, although my immediate “superior” was an exception to this; a Geordie with no sense of humour and very few brain cells, who delighted in terrorising me daily about the state of the chart wall at front of the store (sample quote: “Milo! The chart wall looks like it’s been bum-raped!”). He would later inspire Swivel Chair’s most popular track and video, Teenage Supervisor.

Craig Low was one of these drinking companions. As he worked on a different floor I didn’t work with him directly but got to know him through our frequent after work drinking sessions. We got to talking about making films, something he already had experience of through doing an HND at Glenrothes College, and I had dabbled in with less than brilliant results. We decided to do something together, and we bandied various ideas around in the pub but at first we didn’t put it into action.

One day Craig brought in a CD. It was of various tracks he had made, consisting entirely of samples which reminded me a bit of DJ Shadow in places, although far more bizarre. The one which stood out was called “Ventilated Solvent Abuse”. It featured, over a loop of Led Zeppelin, the voice of our new store manager (the first one was so incompetent he was sacked) which Craig had surreptitiously recorded on minidisc while she was engaged in giving him a bollocksing about being a bad influence on younger members of staff. I was impressed. This was the first time I heard Swivel Chair.

Hear Ventilated Solvent Abuse

I Was a Swivel Chair (Part Two)

As mentioned in part one, the sheer misery of my experience working for HMV was to lead to my joining Swivel Chair, and was a major influence on the Swivel Chair anti-work ethos. Now for (probably) the first time, I can reveal some of the horrors involved in music retail.

Slave Labour

We were hired before the Princes St branch re-opened after a refurbishment, and were used as slave labour to fit out the store. This involved a large amount of heavy lifting, the repetitive peeling off and reapplying of promo stickers to CDs, and the unenviable task of filing the massive A-Z of albums. All this while the smug management, most of whom were barely out of school and had only got the job because they were willing to suck cock for a living, took great pleasure in abusing the little power they had by ordering us around like a van full of refugee workers. Thus by the time the store was opened the majority of staff were already bitter and cynical and fed up to the back teeth of working there.

Pete Loaf

A celebrity was roped in for the grand opening: Meat Loaf. A few desperately out of touch fans turned up, including his number one fan, the even fatter and hairier Pete Loaf. I had to stand beside Meat and hand out signed CDs to the gimps who still thought he was a relevant musical force. When Pete Loaf (who actually had his name changed by deed poll) turned up the 80s rocker obviously recognised him and not with joy- he blanked him, which suggests he was not pleased with this excessive fan worship, and being reminded of his hairy fat era (now he had lost a couple of stone and had a no.2 haircut).

As they were snapped together by photographers from local newspapers (must have been a slow news day) our manager who will simply be referred to by his nickname “Bell-End” was asked by Meat Loaf how he felt. “Very nervous” he said in his broad Hull accent. His voice was to become a much imitated one, with the staff shouting his various catchphrases at each other throughout the day, although not as much as the Geordie team leader Pilchard (see prologue) He would always greet any group of male staff with the hilarious “Hello ladies” and frequently referred to Pilchard as “Beavis” in a way which would have undermined the little fuck’s authority, had he had any in the first place.

Getting on with the Management

My motivation was nil and the full time hours were killing me, after four slothful, drunken years at college with only the odd part time job. I was admonished by Pilchard for regularly turning up late and, horror of horrors, unshaven. I was told never to turn up again without having a shave. I laughed this off, realising what a pathetic power hungry twat he was. He also began to make the odd reference to me being a stoner, presumably because of my lack of energy and enthusiasm. I rarely smoked but he had me labelled as a heavy consumer of the mari-joanna.

I pissed off Bell-End too. He was a real prick who did nothing whatsoever to help the shop floor staff in the running of the store as far as I could see. He repeatedly refused my requests for shelves in the back room rather than having CDs piled up chaotically on the floor, making life hell for the staff. Eventually, about 6 months later, shelves were put in there as if it was management’s idea.

Then I called in sick on Boxing Day. We didn’t know what days we would get off at Christmas until it was announced by Bell-End. He posted the days up in the staff room and to my delight I had been given Christmas day and Boxing Day. I made plans to visit my mum in the Borders. A week before Christmas Bell-end announced he had changed his mind and altered these days off. I was now expected to work on Boxing day. I told him this wasn’t possible as I had already made plans but he wouldn’t budge.

However Christmas day was a disaster and I ended up having a barny with my mum. Tired from over-work during the hellishly busy Christmas period (HMV earns most of it’s profits in the four weeks leading up to Christmas) and the stress of family arguments on my only day off for weeks, I called in on Boxing Day morning and said I couldn’t come in as I was physically exhausted. Perhaps understandably, Bell-End thought I was taking the piss because I’d made a fuss about getting the day off. He used the example in staff meetings, admonishing staff for taking unnecessary sick days and using me as an example, saying I had called in because I was “too tired” to come to work...

Probation

We were on a 6 month probationary period, after which we would be made permanent members of staff. I assumed this to be a mere formality, and despite my hatred of the job, I did work relatively hard and was good with customers etc, and besides, you’d have to do something really stupid to get sacked from such a menial job. So imagine my shock when I was told I was being let go due to my lack of enthusiasm. Obviously Bell-End had held a grudge from the unfortunate Boxing Day incident. I was told I had 2 weeks to shape up and turn over a new leaf or I’d have to get out. I was horrified. I had a degree for God’s sake, how could I get sacked from a Sales Assistant job in an overpriced music store? Okay, it was a 2:2 in Communications Studies, probably the most useless degree ever dreamt up by the academic world, but it was the principal. I couldn’t let it happen.

So for two weeks, I had to pretend to give a shit. I sucked up to the little fucker Pilchard and went about my work with a new vigour and determination. I was kept on- just. I was taken in the office and told that I had completely turned myself around to the extent that I even appeared to be “standing up straighter”. I would be kept on, but I’d better not let them down. The fools.

Coming up soon: The Man Who Listened to Planes

I Was a Swivel Chair (Part 3)- Witness No.1

One night after work and a couple of drinks in the pub Craig and I walked home along Fountainbridge. We passed a group of neds hanging around a car who shouted something at us but we ignored them and carried along the road. Craig lived on Viewforth whilst I lived further along on Bryson Road so he took a left. Strangely, given what was to happen, he asked me if I wanted to walk the long way, due to the presence of the neds. I was blasé though and insisted I would be fine going my normal route.

I continued along but the neds were gaining on me. There was quite a big group of them, girls and boys. They didn’t look that old and I was completely oblivious to any danger they might pose. I had the illusion of youthful invincibility, increased to overconfident stupidity after a couple of premium lagers. After all I had never gotten into any serious trouble prior to that, despite a few close scrapes. I decided I wasn’t going to let them change how I would ordinarily behave and so I popped into the phone box and called home to check if we had any milk. The neds circled the phone box. They slammed their fists against the glass and shouted some abuse. I remember saying to Mel something like “there are some wee idiots banging on the glass so I’m going to go now, see you soon”. I still didn’t feel the necessary survival signal of fear which would have made me act sensibly and run away.

I emerged from the phone box and the little bastards danced round me making unintelligible taunts like a cross between the thugs in a Clockwork Orange and the monkeys in 2001. Then I made the fatal mistake, although whether anything I did at this stage would have made a difference to the final result I don’t know. I turned round and shouted at them to fuck off. I only remembered that part later on and can still barely remember the next few minutes but I remember them coming towards me. The rest I only know for sure as it was later told to me by the Police, as reported to them by someone who was watching from the safety of their flat several storeys up, and by the Fountainbridge brewery’s CCTV cameras which were whirring silently and recording the whole thing. Two of the blokes whacked me round the head, and I must have fell to the floor. (needless to say, I was never a fighter). Then at least two of them kicked me in the head repeatedly and with great gusto until my jaw broke in two places.

I came to a while later. I was lying outside the Fountainbridge pub- how come no-one had seen what was happening and come out to stop it? I could barely see for the blood, and even then only out of one eye. I managed to get up and staggered along the road to my flat. I rang the buzzer and Mel let me in. She was obviously horrified by the sight of me, one eye completely closed over and blood everywhere. As far as I remember she called a taxi and I was taken to hospital.

I was eventually taken to St. John’s hospital in Livingstone where I had to have an operation on my jaw, and two metal plates were inserted. The incident gave me a massive kick in the arse creatively. I’d been scribbling lyrics for a while and other bits of writing but I’d never dared to share them with anyone. Now that I’d randomly faced, if not death, at least, unpredicted pain, I felt my own mortality for the first time. I had to do something with all the ideas floating round my badly battered head.

I Was A Swivel Chair (part 4)

The Man Who Listened To Planes

March 2000

Swivel Chair had started as a joke by Craig and a friend of his, Dave, 6 years before. On discovering the music software Acid, Craig had resurrected the project and recorded some bizarre tracks with another pal (also called Dave) including ‘My Dog Has a Cold’ and the genius ‘Last Night an At-At Walker Fell on My Head’. When I expressed enthusiasm for these and the aforementioned ‘Ventilated Solvent Abuse’ (see part 1), Craig set me a challenge: to come up with lyrics to the title “The Man Who Listened to Planes”. This was inspired by a friend of his who spent his spare time tuning in to conversations between aircraft pilots on one of those special radios. I went away and inspired by the title, I wrote the following from the imagined perspective of such a person:

I Just want to get high
I Just want to get high
I don’t want to see the world
I just want to see the sky
I don’t want to talk to a corpse
A living corpse living a lie
My thoughts are just routine reports
And a high altitude collision once in a while
So you don’t understand me, well neither do I
I just want to get high

I then dusted off the four track I had bought a couple of years previously and recorded myself singing this over the badly looped bassline to the A Team theme. Then I shouted the chorus which consisted of “I don’t wanna fly on no plane with no fool” repeated ad infinitum over the main melody of the same theme tune. I presented this poorly recorded tape to Craig who proclaimed it genius. He added it to Acid and made it into a finished track by adding beats and some other ridiculous samples including “everybody dance now” from the CC Music factory hit of the early 90s.

I had recorded my first Swivel Chair track.

I Was A Swivel Chair Part 5- Just One More Thing... The recording of Columbo & Coffee

Around the same time as I recorded my first Swivel Chair track, I also collaborated on another TV series related project (this was before the endless nostalgia TV programmes we have had since). I had shown some lyrics  I had written to my friend Dougie from college (who is now a TV and radio presenter), for a possible song called Columbo & Coffee. I also had in mind a chorus melody, but I was too self-conscious to sing this in his presence so in an excruciating moment he had to leave the room and stand in the hall until I’d plucked up the courage to sing it.

The concept of the song was not really to celebrate Columbo, as much as to describe my experience of watching it whilst slumped in inertia on the sofa drinking copious cups of coffee, completely immersed in the programme as an attempt to avoid doing anything for as long as possible. However I did also have an apprecation for the unique aspects of the formulaic detective show and liked to think I had something in common with the shambolic, shabbily dressed yet genius Lieutenant as portrayed by Peter Falk.

Happy Clappy

Despite my eccentricities in putting the song across, Dougie was enthusiastic and went away with plans to add music to these raw materials- and he did, crafting a fine song out of it. In an experience akin to being on Jim’ll Fix It, I then accompanied Dougie as he orchestrated the recording and production of the track. First of all his friend Andy who was an accomplished producer recorded a guide version of Dougie singing and playing the song along to a basic beat in his home studio. Then we headed to a “proper” studio, located outside of Edinburgh in an old cottage, where the parts were re-recorded. We were joined by Dougie’s other friends, John (aka Bird of Prey) and Kev Roe (DJ who runs club night Cuts n Strings) and we all donned headphones for the recording of the handclaps, made difficult by the fact none of us could hear ourselves or each other clapping over the backing track meaning that we resembled a room full of retards on a day trip, our hands flailing in an attempt to clap at the right time and collapsing in fits of laughter.

Then I got my chance to add my own backing vocals to the track. In my defence, I had never done anything like this before. The vocal booth felt like a very lonely place with a group of accomplished musicians looking on through the other side of the glass. I put my all into it and yelled the lyrics as loudly as I could into the mic like Shaun Ryder without the subtlety. The experience was an overwhelming blur, yet I emerged from the booth convinced I had done an amazing job. However I was met with an uneasy silence and a marked lack of eye contact from the poor buggers who’d heard the reality- I had been appallingly out of tune as I realised when I heard it back later. Luckily Dougie also recorded some additional backing vocals so my attempt was buried deep in the mix in the final version, but hey, I know it’s there.

The process was then finished in a late night session back at Andy’s, where John added an excellent bass-line to the verse and Dougie even came up with a bass part for the chorus. Andy made up a beat with a variety of samples, added some 70’s style noises to the beginning of the track and some keyboard parts. Then the Columbo sample from the pilot episode of Columbo was added (which Dougie and I had found after extensive research of many episodes). It was from a rare moment of straight talk from the famously sly detective, and to my mind, it summed up Columbo’s technique of unrelentingly wearing down the person who he instinctively knew to be the killer and so I felt it was the perfect sample.

"I hope you understand that this is only the beginning.In a way I feel sorry for you because from now on I'm going to do everything I can to break you down, do you understand? Doctor Fleming made one mistake and you're it. You're the weak link Miss Hudson. You surprised me today because you were strong. But there's always tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, and sooner or later you're going to talk to me. Until you do you're going to be questioned, you're going to be followed, and you're going to be hounded, and Dr Fleming can't do anything about it. You're on your own Miss Hudson, and I'm going to get to him through you. That's a promise..."

Thus, with a final sample of the famous "Just one more thing.." added to the fade, the track was finished. It probably remains the most popular of any track I’ve been involved with, and due to it’s lack of unpleasant language or dodgy subject material, one of the few that I’ve been able to play to the older generation of mums and dads and relatives etc all of whom have expressed how much they like it. This is probably because it has the proper singing of Dougie rather than the jarring McLaughlin vocals which graced many a Swivel Chair track.

The next step was the filming of the video. Remembering Craig’s video experience I asked him to help us film it. Dougie and I already had a vague idea of what we wanted to do, partly attempting to recreate the formula of the show but also giving Dougie an opportunity to harrass members of the public in the guise of Columbo. Craig then helped us give the whole thing structure and took care of the technicalities, given mine and Dougie’s incompetence in all things practical. He also came up with the idea of using masks to make it clear who we were and so Dougie became Columbo and I became the murderer, using the face of an obscure actor who had appeared in several cult tv shows.

We hired a now prehistoric S-VHS camera from the Film and Video Access Centre (now called Edinburgh Mediabase). The filming was a success, with one particular sequence working well when Columbo appears to harrass the murderer as he plays golf, travels on the bus, drinks in the pub,. and in the funniest moment during filming, Columbo chases after the Murderer to the bemusement of a group of joggers- something which Dougie and I improvised when we saw the joggers in the meadows, and decided to run along with them complete with our silly masks and outfits. Craig had to run after us with the camera and we could hardly run we were laughing so hard. The scene lasts all of 2 seconds in the finished video, edited by Craig (with mine and Dougie’s creative input) on now obsolete linear editing equipment at the highly unglamorous FVA editing suite.

Download the song here

Coming next: The first Swivel Chair album- "in the can"

IWASC Part 6- SPECIAL POWERS AND MANEOUVRES

After my foray into the world of proper musicians and proper production with Columbo & Coffee, I retreated to the fucked up world of Swivel Chair. With it’s comparatively basic, quick recording techniques and use of random samples rather than instruments, it was more suited to my minimal talents and there was also the chance to get an ego boost by hearing my own voice on CD (however unpleasant this was to everyone else).

CD-R technology was just becoming affordable and as a luddite I was mightily impressed that Craig had a CD burner. As opposed to waiting several weeks for a track to be finished, I could pop round to Craig’s flat of an evening, provide some vocals to which he would add samples or vice versa, and I could go away with a rough track on my very own CD the same evening. Craig might work on the track for a few days and then the track would invariably be finished, warts and all. We didn’t care about having something polished, we just wanted something entertaining.

Therefore the rate of production was high and the first “album” which featured a number of different contributors, was already almost finished by the time I got involved.

The first track, Bully Hook was to result in Craig as good as being sacked from HMV some time later. Spending a lot of time in the store room of HMV , he had taken the ingenius step of registering the album on the HMV database as a real release. This not only meant he could print off loads of official HMV price stickers and that the album appeared on the HMV web-site for several years (alas, it has now been removed) but also that despite no copies actually existing in the store room, it could be ordered over the phone. So he got his friend Marlon to phone up HMV and order a copy, and the resulting conversation with one of the store’s enthusiastic trainee managers was immortalised on the track (albeit with the voices distorted considerably). Marlon later made a hilarious remix which made liberal use of the track ‘The Launch’ by DJ Jean.

There was also Pickin Up Burds which featured Craig’s then flatmates Paul and Rory aka DJ Past Tense and MC Pastiche, now of the X-Vectors (who recently brought out a single featuring a brilliant cover of Frankie Knuckles’ ‘Your Love’ and are currently supporting Bloc Party). They enacted a phone conversation between two neds, one of whose sexuality is being brought into question over the course of the conversation. Although it could perhaps be misconstrued as homophobic by some (which I am resolutely not) if you could instead see it as taking the piss out of pig-ignorant neds/chavs, it's one of the funniest tracks ever recorded by the Chair and Paul’s line “I’m not saying you’re an arse bandit, I’m saying you’re an arse bandicoot!” still never fails to amuse.

'Fried Egg Roll' consisted entirely of the sounds of a fried egg roll being prepared, but cut up to sound like one of the noises Rolf Harris inexplicably makes with his mouth. Thus we discussed performing it on stage with one of us dressed as Rolf Harris, digging entrails (bought from a butcher) out of the stomach of a torn open toy dog whilst someone else, dressed as a chef, served fried egg rolls to the audience. When I explained this idea to a later flatmate who was a chef he said "no wonder you got beaten up".

As well as the Man Who Listened to Planes I was involved with two other tracks on the first album. Both involved me acting completely out of character in order to obtain the vocals.

1.Get Sean Connery Involved

The concept of this track was a mysterious phone call to what was supposed to be Sean Connery offering him the chance of a threesome in order to hopefully get an interesting/amusing reaction. Following the quite possibly illegal theme of recording people without their knowledge, we decided to pick someone at random from the phone book with the name S. Connery and make a prank call. Unfortunately it came down to me to do the talking, something I didn’t enjoy in the slightest. Craig had a nifty microphone which attached to the telephone handset and recorded the conversation, as used in Bully Hook. This is the transcript of the call:

Milo (before connection) I don’t like this.....
Milo: Hi is Sean there please? Hi Sean?
Mr. S.Connery: Sorry?
Hi Sean?
Nah, I think you’ve got the wrong number mate.
that’s Sean isn’t it.
Nah, it’s not, no.
I was just about to ask you a question.
What?
I was gonna ask you a question Sean. About a bit of extra curricular activity, as they say. It’s just, you know what happens between a man and a woman after a certain amount of time. It all becomes.. a bit pedestrian, as they say. I mean, there’s room in the bed for three, as they say.. I was just wondering if you were interested...
I think you’ve got the wrong number mate.
It’s just a question.
Who is this like?
Is that Sean?
No its not.
I thought you were a friend of the family like, as they say.
A friend of who like.
Of the family like.
What family?
I thought friends stuck together.
who is this, like?
It’s Michael.
Who’s Michael like?
Obviously I’ve got the wrong number.
What number are you looking for like.
Sean’s!
Aye, what number is it
Is it not 5536853?
Nah, its not that number, eh. Is that what number you’re looking for?
Aye.
Nah, I think you’ve dialled the wrong number like.
Sorry then Sean, see you later
No, hauld on, what number are you lookin for?
See you later.
No, hauld on, hauld on.....

2. New Advances in Scientology- Folder People

There are scientology offices on the bridges where sometimes freakish greasy haired girls hang around outside asking you if you are interested in a “personality test” in a thinly veiled attempt at initiating you into the sinister cult of Scientology. Third member of the Chair Dave called these people and others of their ilk “Folder People” after the clipboards or ringbinders they clutched in an attempt to appear official. There are also signs up outside the building advertising supposed job vacancies.

Most ordinary, sane people would walk hurriedly past such an establishment and it’s folder people. We, however, decided we could make another track out of it so we went up the sinister stairs to the sinister office to “inquire” about a job. Craig was secretly miked up. I didn’t enjoy this subterfuge one little bit, feeling like an undercover cop or a mafioso who was wired up by the Feds and risked discovery of this betrayal at any moment. I thought the evil Scientologists would discover our hidden microphone and take some kind of sordid revenge on us. We hadn’t told anyone we were going in there- perhaps we would never come out alive.

As it was, they looked at us suspiciously, as expected, and ushered us into a smelly little cinema where we were subjected to half an hour of big budget, low intelligence propaganda featuring at that time unrivalled special effects of meteorites hurtling towards earth and John Travolta and Kirsty Allie describing how they would have been dead by now if it wasn’t for the wonders of Scientology. At no point did it give a description of what was involved in the “religion”. We sat through this tortuous attempt at brainwashing and then took an application form as we left.

When we got home the recording had picked up most of the soundtrack featuring choice phrases from the propaganda such as "you will live in shivering, agonising darkness or in triumphant light- the choice is yours. You could also jump off a bridge or blow your brains out- that is your choice. The choice is yours" but it was too quiet to make out once added to music. There was no way we were going back to sit through that ordeal again so Craig made a decent attempt at making a track out of it but the samples were still inaudible.

The application form though, was priceless, featuring questions such as "are you here to disrupt the organisation" "have you ever sold drugs" are you related to intelligence agencies" "are any of your family members antagonistic to the organisation" "have you ever been involved in prostitution, homosexuality, anal sex or any other sexual perversion. Give who, what where and how for each instance" (no kidding). Craig got MC Pastiche (or was it DJ Past Tense?) to read out some of these lines, thus creating yet another track for the first album: ‘Rabid Antagonist’.

The cover art was lovingly drawn by Dave. The following is an extract from Craig’s “press release” as written at the time:

Swivel Chair is Back!

After an absence of almost 6 years the groundbreaking band “Swivel Chair” is back with a follow up to the highly acclaimed “CD-ROM Food mixer EP”

The new album sees a new line up. From the original members only Craig Low and Jaggy Nettles survive. New additions are McLaughlin, Marlon Coupar who puts his solo project “Suck Dogs Nobs” on hold and self pronounced Swivel Chair fan and archivist, David Robertson.
This album, entitled “Special Powers and Manoeuvres”, is a fresh projection from early classics like ‘Ejector Bed’, ‘Stretchy Men’ and ‘Mirrored Bottle Top’ while still retaining the essence of the band. Milo McLaughlin provides some outstanding lyrics while David Robertson takes us down darker and more bizarre paths.

1 month after the release of the album it was instrumental in bringing about the end of Craig Low’s career with HMV. The album has met widespread acclaim amongst industry insiders only coming up against critics whose taste is in their arse.

Coming up next: What is Your Life? An attempt at gangsta rap...

I Was a Swivel Chair Recap- The Story so far

You've heard my version of events so far. This is the story of Swivel Chair as far as I've told it from the perspective of founder member Craig Low. It is something he wrote a long time ago which I've just found on my PC. It fills in the blanks as to what happened prior to my involvement (used without permission but I'm sure he won't mind)

1994 CROLL/ LOW
Guest JAGGY NETTLES
Swivel Chair is formed.
Consisting of Craig Low and David Croll.
The band is formed as part of a practical joke which the pair hope to play on Mr Croll’s friend Gary Russel.
“The CD-ROM Foodmixer EP” is put together using a guitar effects unit a child’s sampling keyboard and a four-track recorder.
It is possible that Croll originated the name Swivel Chair as he came up with the majority of the track titles for this EP.
Jaggy Nettles provides guest vocals.

CD-ROM Foodmixer EP
-Sheepskin Jeans
-Mirrored bottle top
-Stretchy Men
-Full Body Kit
-Ejector Bed
-Rust Rimless
-GM Tarkin Is Dead

1995 LOW
Low on his own and completely misguided, decides to make another recording with absolutely no inspiration or direction. The 5 tracks that result from this recording are unlistenable and the tape is chucked in the back of a cupboard only to be rediscovered in 2000 and then discarded again.

1996 COUPAR/ LOW
To coincide with Dundee Football Clubs progression into that years Coca-Cola Cup final, Mr Low dusts off the effects unit keyboard and 4 track, and embarks upon a short revival. He and Marlon Coupar create Pervy Goal to celebrate Dundee’s performance in the Semi final against Airdrie. The track contains a sample from the commentary of the winning goal.
Also recorded was Pish A Pint.

1999 LOW/ ROBERTSON
Mr Low acquires music sampling and sequencing software from a colleague at HMV. Realising the potential, he decides to revive Swivel Chair. An early version of Neckboltstare is created and showcased to David Robertson. The two decide to collaborate on several tracks; Last Night An AT-AT Walker Fell On My Head and My Dog Has A Cold.

2000 1st half LOW/ MCLAUGHLIN/ ROBERTSON
Guest COUPAR---JAGGY NETTLES---MC PASTICHE---DJ PAST-TENSE
Mr Low challenges McLaughlin to compose lyrics for the track The Man Who Listened To Planes. Low is suitably impressed and McLaughlin joins the band. The first album is completed. Robertson and McLaughlin never meet during the recording of this album. Marlon Coupar and Jaggy Nettles also make guest appearances.

Special Powers And Manoeuvres (08/06/00)
1/ Bully Hook (COUPAR)
2/ I Left Home To Think
3/ Dog Shit Fling (COUPAR)
4/ Pickin’ Up Burds (MC PASTICHE/ DJ PAST-TENSE)
5/ Last Night An AT-AT Walker Fell On My Head
6/ Fried Egg Roll
7/ Permeable Fusebox (JAGGY NETTLES)
8/ Folder People
9/ Milky Petrol Cap-Holder
10/ Get Sean Involved
11/ Introduction To Finance
12/ Rabid Antagonist (MC PASTICHE)
13/ The Man Who listened To Planes
14/ My Dog Has A Cold

I Was a Swivel Chair Part 7- What is Your Life?

Photo: Bonski Beat

Several copies of the first album were distributed on home-made CD-Rs to friends and HMV colleagues. Some appreciated the creativity and humour behind it but some had a dramatically negative reaction seeing it as an affront to music and good taste, not least colleague and drinking buddy Old Gravy who although we asked him to contribute was quite critical of what we were doing as being unlistenable and pointless.

Perhaps it was because he featured on the CD whether he liked it or not, as a phone call he made to Craig in which he let off steam about a crap party, calling one colleague a "fucking prick" and Swivel Chair's music "dance bollocks", was sampled on one of the tracks (Neckboltstare) without his knowledge. He was, understandably, p*ssed off about this.

As the first album was doing the rounds, Craig called me and played me the first version of a new track down the phone. It was the This is Your Life theme tune looped to resemble a John Barry Bond theme and I thought it sounded great. He said it was to be called ‘What Is Your Life’ which his then girlfriend mistakenly thought was the name of the long running TV programme featuring tedious sycophantic accounts of minor celebrities’ past histories.

Eminem was then at his creative peak and as a wannabe comedy lyricist I thought some of his rapping and lyrics on the Marshall Mathers LP were great, although the majority of his output is admittedly dross. I had also been listening to the Dr. Dre track “The Next Episode” which opened with a barrage of mother-fucker this, mother-fucker that from Dre and Snoop Dogg which I found highly amusing. Therefore when I heard this new track I just knew it had to be a rap and Craig agreed. I quickly came up with a p*ss-take which went like this:  What Is Your Life?

Okay, so nowadays we have Goldie Lookin' Chain and even local lads the Fountainbridge Collective who have stolen our thunder in the comedy rap stakes, but it was funny at the time.

I enjoyed recording my lines but getting Craig to add some guest vocals was more of a task as he was reluctant to put his own voice on a track- something he had not yet done. However I managed to persuade him and I thought his additions sounded perfect- just like a Dundonian Snoop Dogg.

A ‘What Is Your Life’ EP was hastily assembled featuring my earlier tracks and some pretty pish-poor remixes as b-sides plus as cover art my drawing of Mr. T. This EP was merely for our own self-indulgence though and nothing was ever done with it. However What is Your Life was to be the opening track of our first ever genuine commercial release....

Next- People start paying real money for Swivel Chair’s music....

I Woz @ Swivel Chair Part 8- Executive Tunnel

After my unceromonious beating I had been off work for some time on extended sick leave which gave me the opportunity to get another job and escape HMV. Unfortunately for me this was a job in the call-centre hell of HSBC at the barren wasteland of the Gyle Business Park. I had been attracted by a substantially higher wage, the thought of not having to deal with annoying customers in the flesh (particularly the neds who’d attacked me) and not having to work Sundays, and at first it was a refreshing change mainly because the first 6 weeks were devoted to training so very little actual work was involved.

However once this honeymoon period ended we were forced to actually take calls. And more calls. And more calls. All day in fact, one after another, each call introduced with a life-draining beep in my ear. We had two fifteen minute breaks and an hour’s lunch break which gave me the opportunity to drag myself morosely round the artificial lake or join the single mums at the Gyle shopping centre.

Toilet breaks were only allowed to be for at most 1% of the day and if you went over this it was flagged up on the weekly reports. This happened to me a few times and my “team leader” called me over for a “friendly” conversation which went something like this:

Team Leader: “So Milo, I notice that you spent 8% of last Wednesday on a comfort break, and it isn’t the first time. Is there anything you want to tell me? Do you have a medical condition that I should be aware of which justifies this outrageous use of the company’s time?”

Milo: “It just tends to take me ages to have a sh*t”.

So I had to start going to the bog on my morning break instead to avoid these kind of discussions. The four blokes who had been on my training course who I got on with pretty well all left, broken by the misery of call-centre work, within a few weeks so I had very few people to socialise with at work. The women tended to spend all morning talking about annoying calls they had taken that morning which just about drove me to distraction, hence why I went out for my thrilling walks.

So although some conditions and pay were better I was probably even more depressed working here than I was at HMV. This state of mind gave me plenty of fuel for more Swivel Chair tracks and I continued to record stuff with Craig on a regular basis, some of which was quite good and some of which was pretty appalling. Craig also continued to collaborate with other people, resulting in some superb tracks, most notably Dave Robertson’s hilarious Theme from Swivel Chair which featured a guest vocal from a famous Dundee crooner who asked not to be named as his record company would consider it breach of contract, and Rory aka DJ Past Tense’s ‘Gritty Wholesome Management Individual’ – the title of which was the phrase used by the HMV Manager to describe Old Gravy. This track, which kicks off with a Bill Hicks sample, was so far above my efforts and talents that I was insanely jealous.

Apologies to those whose faces have been used in vain for this video

Probably the best track I recorded in this period was The Three Drink Rule. I had been trying to write a novel ever since I left college and my concept for this was of an everyman type character called Anthony Steadman, a bit of a loser who drank too much and worked in shit jobs (yes you will have noticed it was autobiographical). When his drinking affects his work one time too many, he is forced to attend counselling or he will be sacked. The counsellor suggests he follows a new regime known as 'The Three Drink Rule' and makes him take a pledge to follow it. However when Steadman is unable to stick to the rule the consequences are dire.

The track consisted of an extract of some dialogue I had written for this novel over some strange music which I played on the rubbish bontempi keyboard I had got when I was a kid (I had wanted a Casio). Again it was recorded on four track with beats added later by Craig. It was the first original track we had made, in that it contained no samples.

It was suggested by someone, most likely Paul aka DJ MC Pastiche who had also left HMV and now worked in Fopp, that we make an EP of the best Swivel Chair tracks so far which we could then sell in Fopp. So the most recent tracks plus the best from the first album were selected:

1. What is Your Life
2. Bully Hook
3. Three Drink Rule
4. Gritty Wholesome Management Individual
5. Ventilated Solvent Abuse
6. Pickin' Up Burds
7. Theme from Swivel Chair
8. The Man Who Listened to Planes

Craig did the honours with the cover, using a Godzilla lamp he’d bought and we came up with the title Executive Tunnel for the EP which would later become a track in it’s own right.

We put 20 copies on sale in Fopp for the bargain price of £2. We figured this might actually persuade people to buy it as they could easily buy a classic album for a fiver they were unlikely to take a chance on an unknown band for that amount. We advertised the CD with issue 1 of Ejector Bed, the official Techno Jazz magazine. This featured the first ever Techno Jazz Top 5 and the news that Craig had finally been sacked by HMV- someone had told the management about him putting Swivel Chair on the company system and he had been left with no choice but to leave hastily- for a call-centre job at the Gyle (not HSBC).

Due to Paul’s involvement on ‘Pickin Up Burds’ the CD got heavy rotation in Fopp with one of his colleagues, Smiley, being particularly enthusiastic, and to our surprise people actually started buying it. When we heard that we had sold 20 copies within a few days, we were ecstatic. Apparently CDs by unsigned artists rarely sold more than a couple of copies in the store, and here were we, who were only playing at being in a band- who had never imagined we would ever be in a band, selling CDs to people who had never met us. We celebrated by dancing around like idiots and collected our earnings which bought us a couple of pints each.

Next week: The filming of a classic: Arse of Darkness

I Was a Swivel Chair part 9- Arse of Darkness

Whilst we were recording the tracks that would end up on the Executive Tunnel EP, we were also busy filming another video project. After Columbo & Coffee I decided to make a video for The Man Who Listened to Planes. I saw the annual Air show at some airfield outside of Edinburgh as a perfect opportunity to get some original footage of airplane action combined with me and Dougie arsing around pretending to be the A Team. I was desperate to be BA Baracus as he was my all time hero plus with my slight frame my attempts to look like a huge tough black guy couldn’t help but be amusing, and I knew Dougie could pull off the mammoth task of playing the remaining members, Hannibal, Face and Murdoch (we ignored the existence of Amy, the dull but attractive token female who seemed to feature only in later episodes). Craig was busy that weekend so Dougie, Mel and I were faced with the task of filming it ourselves, although Craig did provide the masks of the four characters.

We filmed some footage at Dougie’s flat to “set the scene” in which we recreated the A-Team’s domestic life outwith their trusty van. Hannibal and Face, having just got up and still wearing their dressing gowns, meet in the kitchen in the act of pouring a bowl of Sugar Puffs for breakfast. Alarmed that BA isn’t up yet, Hannibal goes to wake him up but BA knows a plane is involved in the proceedings so he disappears. At this point in the finished video the music kicks in with a toy A Team van filmed scooting along the pavement, cutting to footage we filmed at the air show of Army trucks and an army helicopter taking off (See previous post)

At the air show itself, I was a little over eager in my new role as director, given the absence of Craig, and I got impatient with Mel and Dougie as I tried to persuade them to film impossible shots combining both me as BA on the ground and planes flying above, too far away to be captured successfully. Luckily though we eventually got some great footage in particular when we managed to board a passenger jet which was on display and film ourselves onboard for the video’s main set-piece.

However when I showed Craig this footage afterwards he was less than impressed, particularly with my camera work at Dougie’s flat in which I managed to cut off people’s heads by mistake (Mel had done a sterling job with the remainder of the camera work). He suggested that something more was needed to make this a watchable piece of entertainment.

Craig had recently shown me the brilliant documentary about Apocalypse Now, ‘Hearts of Darkness’. Aware that the stresses of filming had brought out a less than pleasant side of my personality, I came up with the idea of filming a mock documentary based on this called ‘A*se of Darkness’. This would involve interviews with Dougie, Mel and Craig describing the hell of working on the Man Who Listened to Planes’ and ‘Columbo & Coffee’ projects. I had little more than a vague idea of what this would involve and Craig had to impose some kind of structure on the idea in terms of suggesting a number of different locations etc. What really made it work though was the interview with Dougie, in which he came up with all the strands which we then referred to throughout the piece such as his tendency to take long baths in the morning thus delaying filming, his use of drugs on set, and my abuse of “not only the cast and crew on the set, but also the planes flying ahead”.

We also improvised some scenes in the Botanic Gardens which we rechristened ‘Cambodia’. In one scene I threaten Dougie with a cardboard cut out of a large gun. Another improvised scene was the one where I ask Mel for her opinion on the track Man Who Listened to Planes and she finds it hard “to pretend to like the song” at which point I get upset at her lack of enthusiasm. This was based on real life scenes in our flat every time I finished a new Swivel Chair track. Everyone commented on how convincing Mel’s performance was throughout the finished video.

It was Craig’s idea to combine the two pieces of filming into one extended music video/mock documentary which ended up, thanks to a mammoth editing session in which Craig worked his magic and Dougie and I had an advisory role, as the epic video ‘Arse of Darkness’. It’s still the video of which I am most proud out of all the ones we did probably because it was so enjoyable to film. Unfortunately due to FVA’s prehistoric S-VHS equipment the picture quality wasn’t great but the entertainment value more than makes up for it.

Finally was the artwork which was a collage of helicopter photographs, a photo of myself after I was beaten up with suitably Brando-esque puffy face and lots of paint. Craig then digitised this and tidied it up.

Post-script:

Imagine how surreal it was, a couple of years after this, to get up one morning for work and watch Dougie on the Channel 4 breakfast show RI:SE, heralding, along with Iain Lee, the arrival of one Dirk Benedict aka Face from the A Team onto the set. They then carried out a hysterically funny interview in which Dougie and Iain couldn’t hide their excitement at meeting one of their heroes- to the point that Dirk seemed to think Dougie was a viewer who had won a competition to meet him rather than the presenter of the show..

Hear the track Arse of Darkness which features additional dialogue which was recorded during filming but was not used in the final edit.

related Ejectorbed story

I Was a Swivel Chair Part 10- The Phat Sportsmen Debacle

So the first SC release had been a minor commercial success. However I was to be left out in the cold when it came to plans for the next release.

There were, at this time, as well as a number of other sporadic collaborators, three official members of Swivel Chair. These were, Craig, Robertson and myself. Robertson and I did not have much contact with each other. In fact, a story had featured in the first issue of Ejectorbed, written by Craig on how Robertson and I were in a band together despite never actually having met.

This was not far from the truth (although we did eventually meet, the fact still remained that we never collaborated on any tracks together). Robertson’s reaction to the Executive Tunnel EP was muted. Perhaps this was because only one of his tracks was included and he had not had a lot of say in what went on there. He also saw more value in the full length album format and obviously enjoyed an element of control over this, particularly in terms of the cover artwork.

So it was decided that we would put together a second full length album which we would also put on sale in Fopp and various other places. Craig and Robertson decided this would feature everything we had recorded since the first album regardless of quality including some of the same songs on the EP. I wasn't so sure as I wasn't keen on us repeating ourselves.

Phartwork

The one input I did have was to contribute to the album title which Craig and I decided would be “Phat Sportsmen”. Craig even came up with a great cover featuring the obese snooker player Bill Werbenuick, behind whom we were going to add pictures of babes in bikinis toting machine guns - but this was not to be as Robertson decided he would draw the artwork himself. I thought he was a great cartoonist but I couldn’t help but think that the Sportsmen he drew weren’t quite fat enough.

Above: Robertson's final "gatefold" artwork

Below: an artist's impression of what the album cover could have looked like, by Craig Low

Robertson also decided to record the title track for the album. Although hidden within the track was a very funny mid-section in which we hear the thoughts of an overweight runner and someone shouting from the side-lines “run, you fat bastard” the rest of it was a sample of some ridiculous rock guitar from a poor quality copyright free library CD which Robertson had made skip like the CD was broken. I thought this was a test too far for the patience of any listener who would abruptly turn the album off.

In retrospect this was the beginning of my tendency to take the whole thing far too seriously, no doubt because I had tasted the very minor success of having sold a few CDs. It was a bit rich of me to complain when several of the tracks I’d been involved with on the album were also utterly dire, particularly Sound of Fear which used a sample of the old ballroom dancing song used in the Shining “Midnight, The Stars and You” which started out with samples of my favourite Jack Nicholson lines from the same film. Craig wasn’t keen on it being a Jack Nicholson tribute so he removed them and suggested we double-track the vocals so as to make the lyrics completely indiscernible.

There was also Manarak which was Dougie’s one and only musical collaboration with Swivel Chair and which unfortunately never reached the heights of our Columbo and Coffee collaboration. His voice is so high pitched on the song that when we recorded it Craig’s flatmate Paul came running in to the room to see what the matter was as he thought someone was in pain. Musically it was a blatant rip off of one of Leonard Cohen’s worst tracks, ‘Jazz Police’.

It also featured a ballad I had recorded when stoned out of my mind called Moment Gone which was me singing about being made an arse of by a girl over a repetitive deep soul sample which lasted about 10 minutes and degenerated into a silly Dylan piss-take.

There were however some brilliant tracks on the album which didn't appear on any of our other CDs. Namely, these were Robertson’s Lonely Crotch Blues and MC Pastiche’s Everybody's This, Everybody's That which he improvised and recorded in about five minutes as Craig and I watched in awe. Craig later added rain in the background which makes it difficult to claim this as a bonafide Swivel Chair track (it's too good), although the title was originated by Craig.

Collector’s Cards

In a final measure of excess, Craig and Robertson went to great lengths to design the cover. Each was to be hand-made and consist of a gatefold cover which folded into an envelope containing “collector’s cards” one of each member and one advertising fictional Swivel Chair merchandise.

These were superb but I fear that the only people interested in collecting them were ourselves and this bumped up the price of the album to £5 in Fopp meaning far less sales. Amazingly though we did manage to sell some in Fopp, but one was brought back for a refund with the customer telling the Fopp staff that it was crap. A copy also ended up on Ebay earlier this year with bids starting at 50p. No-one bid.

Despite this we did get some amazing reactions, notably from Kenny aka King Creosote at Fence Records who sent us the following message:

dear swivellers, sorry to take so long to reply. many thanks for the album - we made the mistake of pushing your music onto one of our regulars, who borrowed the thing for a few weeks together with the wee magazine (hilarious by the way), and i only just got them both back today.
my favourites are, after only three listens mind, "theme from swivel chair", "lonely crotch blues baby" and "arse of darkness"( for the title - in fact, there are a few great titles here ). don't know what to send you in return, 'cos our stuff sounds somewhat safe and boring alongside this. i think the lone pigeon has a few moments worthy....
ehrr....what now?
huge respect from all @ fence.

A few months later we also got a mention in Holly's Demo Hell which was now part of the NME after the Melody Maker folded.

I Was a Swivel Chair Part 11- Bastard Son of Politics and the Afterbirth Match

"It's not easy to grow up beaten into submission by a Government run by your own mother"

Bastard Son of Politics was one of the better tracks from the aforementioned Phat Sportsmen (see previous instalment). The "lyrics" consisted of random, meaningless statements said in the arrogant voice of a politician over a nice punky bass-line and various vocal samples from the Houses of Parliament e.g. the familiar cry of "hear hear" from the back benches.

The vague idea was that the UK and it's inhabitants are all the bastard product of a sexual-political liaison between Thatcher and Reagan (actually I just made that up). The BSOP was represented visually by a toy baby which Craig "customised", disturbingly giving it facial and pubic hair and a pair of shades with huge eyes printed on.

Dougie had got himself a job at BBC Scotland co-presenting their new music show Air with the girl out of Bis (it's now presented by Vic Galloway). He very kindly gave the producer a copy of Phat Sportsmen who decided she would play BSOP on the show. He even showed me the playlist for that week and it was definitely listed as one of the tracks. I even met the producer of the show when I was through in Glasgow with Dougie and she told me she'd never heard another track that was anything like it (being an eternal optimist I took this as a compliment).

Craig had gone back to Dundee as it was his birthday and he had told his parents about the historical moment when the track was to be played. He gathered round with his parents to listen to the show. However, embarrassingly something had gone wrong and the track was not to be played. Dougie did not have control over the playlist and was never told why it was taken off so it remains a mystery. Had I offended the producer in some way when I was out on the piss with Dougie in Glasgow?

Around this time another major character in the Swivel Chair story was to be introduced- Burnett. Craig and I had gone to the Traverse bar for a pint when he met Reidy, an actor who had performed in some of Craig's college films. Reidy was now based in London and was a fairly successful actor and was up in Edinburgh as he was appearing in a play. After hearing about Swivel Chair, Reidy told Craig to get in touch with Burnett who had also been at their college (along with Steve Mason from the Beta Band) and now lived in Glasgow where he had just completed a course in music production.

Burnett was duly sent a copy of Phat Sportsmen and not long after he rang up Craig declaring "youse are gonna be massive!" We decided to rope him into filming of the video for BSOP which was to take place in Glasgow Green as the idea was to hijack an antidrugs march organised by the Daily Record for our own purposes- we would march with BSOP masks on and banners with the absurd lyrics printed on.

Our attempts to hijack the march turned into a bit of a damp squib due to the very real threat of having our heads kicked in by the humourless anti drugs protesters who without irony were holding aloft disturbing pictures of a baby injecting itself with heroin. We did get some good scenes though. We also filmed a number of other scenes back in Edinburgh including the Thatcher/Reagan sex scenes, Thatcher making her baby smoke fags in the womb, a disgusting insemination shot and other bizarreness based around a loose plot concerning selling babies on the internet for a profit.

This was the first video which truly showcased the fucked up Swivel Chair sensibility. Not only that but after editing it Craig also filmed a backwards version off one of the monitors in the editing suite being played which became the even more disturbing, pretty much unwatchable "Backwards Son of Politics".

Finally we made up a CD as a gift to those people who'd been kind enough to sell the Phat Sportsmen CD for us, Smiley at Fopp and Kev, an old HMV colleague who worked in the CD shop which used to be at the bottom of Victoria Street (now the brilliant Analogue Books). Kev's song 'We're Too Cynical' is nothing short of a classic tune). The CD included BSOP and some new tracks which had just finished. It was called 'Afterbirth Match'.

watch the video (if you are not easily offended)

(try to) watch "Backwards Son of Politics" video (if you are a masochist)

Coming soon: Another pile of self-indulgent old wank about Swivel Chair

I Was a Swivel Chair Part 12- The Trial

Throughout this time I had the prospect of having to attend the trial of the two neds who'd been mostly to blame for my attack. I was filled with dread as the trial date approached even though I wasn't the one on trial, as I was told I'd have to take the witness stand (I was witness no.1) and as I couldn't remember what happened very clearly. The thought of having to come face to face with my attackers was also filling me with The Fear. Due to bureaucracy it had dragged on for over a year before I was summoned to the court. Craig had also been summoned as a witness as he'd seen the neds before we parted company on the night so he came with me to the sheriff Court.

We went in and were directed around the labyrinthian building a Kafka-esque nightmare filled with corridor after corridor and door after door, all leading to rooms filled with mindless bureaucracy of some sort. We were ushered into a waiting room and told the trial could be called at any point during the day- all we could do was wait.

A couple of excruciating hours passed. I was grateful for Craig's company but in no mood for having a laugh. Then they announced we could go out for a couple of hours over lunchtime and come back- so Craig suggested we head back to his flat and work on a new track.

When we got there we raided his flatmates DJ Past Tense and MC Pastiche's record collection- trying new samples out. The glut of new musical ingredients revitalised us and Craig soon put together the music for Executive Tunnel, as although we had already used for the name of an EP we had never actually recorded a track. We then co-wrote and recorded the vocals, based around the idea that once you got to a certain stature within your work, they gave you the keys to a high speed tunnel which took you directly to work and back home again without having to deal with traffic. We were later told that a very similar idea featured in an episode of the Simpsons but we weren't too bothered as the track turned out so well.

We then went back to the Court and waited some more, only to be told that one of the other witnesses hadn't turned up so the trial would have to be postponed until a further date. The "witness" who didn't turn up was a schemie girl who'd been part of the gang of neds.

Anyway eventually the date was rescheduled and the same farce began. At this point I had to walk past the offending neds to get to the waiting room. Luckily I think they had forgotten what I looked like. this was bad enough for me but imagine the same scenario in a rape case. After some more waiting, the policeman involved in the case came in and said that the accused had pleaded guilty therefore I wouldn't have to testify. I was very relieved. We were told we didn't have to stay for the court proceedings but obviously we were interested in the outcome so we joined the policeman in the public gallery and listened to the case unfold. It was like having an out of body experience as I was being referred to throughout as if I wasn't there, and no-one knew what I looked like so I might as well not have been.

The judge was a rum old boy who seemed to see his role as more of a court jester, but then the argument put forward by the defense lawyer weren't difficult to ridicule. One of the neds claimed that having smoked a joint was to blame for his violent attack on my person, to which the judge reacted with blustering incredulity "surely" he said, in his Michael Winner style voice, "marijuana is renowned for having the opposite effect". Anyway it was a fairly cut and dry case as the whole thing had been captured on cctv and there were a few other witnesses (who noticeably hadn't tried to help me at the time).

I had to wait a while to find out what sentence was doled out to the perpretrators. Although found guilty they basically got off scot-free with a postponed sentence or something. I was just glad that the whole thing was over.

Executive Tunnel - the video

I Was a Swivel Chair Part 13- What Are You Gonna Do, Sack Me?

With a successful template established by Executive Tunnel, Craig and I worked on several more tracks featuring both our vocals and a mish-mash of samples. We soon had enough for another EP. The name for the EP came from a story Craig told me of an old colleague who, once he had handed in his notice, did as little work as possible and responded to any criticisms from his superiors with the retort "What are you going to do, sack me?". This was a freedom of speech which I craved.

The cover illustration was taken off a manual at my work which came with the headset I had to use when taking calls. As we were both still working in call centres this seemed entirely appropriate.

As well as Executive Tunnel, the EP featured several ridiculous tracks including Craig's frightening Dog Turd Sacrifice (which sampled a conspiracy theorist rant),Put Radio in the Title , Contemporary Novelist  and my production debut Your Friendship Is Up for Review. Craig gave me a chance to produce a track and I hastily added a few random samples which he just happened to have on his PC together including the sound of explosions and the Van der Valk theme tune, then over the top we repeated all the things people had said to us as to why Swivel Chair was rubbish, hence the fact that their friendship was up for review.

The sole contribution from Robertson was his track "Marrow" which was about the fact he didn't like smoking joints but using the metaphor of being at a party where everyone was eating the large vegetable of the title. It consisted of two different versions spliced together, one which was produced by Robertson and one which Craig had produced.

The most popular track though was 'Penis on a Hairtrigger' which opened the CD. It was all samples but Craig had become somewhat of an expert at disguising their origin and it sounded quite original. The original vocal sample (a ridiculous voice complaining about the weather) was judged too tame though so we then sat down and wrote dialogue for a morally dubious scenario which involved a man with little control over his own genitals entering a room and "firing a couple of rounds" at a poor unsuspecting woman. The dialogue featured witnesses to his crime and the judge's verdict as to his behaviour. There was a distinct Woody Allen style to some of the dialogue.

This track was to get us our first and only airplay when Dougie played it on his last ever show on BBC Scotland's Air (although he couldn't say the full title). He had decided to move down to London where he felt he would have better chance at getting TV work, and on his last show he was able to choose a couple of tracks to play, including ours. After it was played we received a single e-mail from a listener which said: " Heard the 'trigger' track on Radio Scotland . Outstanding originality with a contemporary feel.....nice." (Hear Penis on a Hairtrigger with radio intro.)

We put the CD in Fopp again and it sold well, and this time we sent quite a few out to the usual people and a few more. King Creosote's reaction this time was:

dear swivellers,

you guys are a crazy crazy bunch, and the playing of that new cd cleared the shop on more than one occasion.

big respect from kenny @ fence.

We also got an e-mail from a record company called Lockjaw Records. They wanted to include the song on a compilation CD which would be sold in HMV and Virgin etc nationwide. All we had to do was pay £160 and we would get 20 copies of the CD to sell ourselves for a fiver (which they said would allow us to make our money back) as well as the CD going into the shops. I was probably more enthusiastic than Craig about this and persuaded him to do it, thinking it might get us some press. So we ended up on a CD with a load of appalling death metal bands called "Helping You Back to Work Vol. 7". We sold zero copies of this to our friends cos it was shite and it received no press whatsoever.

Then there was the following from the head of A & R at Glasgow 's respected dance label Soma:

Hi Swivel Chair, Just getting back to u about the cd's you sent us
recently. What can I say, you guys are completely fucking insane. I was pissing myself through all the trax. What fucking drugs have you been
taking, I wouldn't mind some. Needless to say I think your stuff is unreleasable by ourselves (and
maybe anyone), but you may find a niche market if you put them out yourselves.But please send me stuff in the future as it brightened up my day no end.
Good Luck Glenn

A while after we finished the EP I had left HSBC bank - I managed to stay there for 18 months, God knows how. Near suicidal, I handed my notice in without having a job to go to, but because I had received a bonus I knew I'd be ok for a month or so. I went to Pertemps agency on the day I left and they got me a temporary job with the Scottish Executive for the following Monday in a department called the Accountant of Bankruptcy, based on George Street. Compared to working in a call centre in the Gyle it was heaven as I could spend as long as I wanted on the toilet and lunches could be spent looking in decent shops, plus I rarely had to use the phone, plus although I was quite busy I could surf the internet whenever I got a chance.

One day I checked the Swivel Chair hotmail account and there was the following e-mail with the subject header "We Like!"

hi can someone please call adam evans at food records re:the band
swivelchair.

Download a zipped copy of the full ep

Next: Record Company Interest, Egomania, change of personnel, Fear of the Instrument

I Was a Swivel Chair Part 14- Egomania

So I'd been sitting in the office, bored out of my skull when I saw the e-mail from Adam Evans. I couldn't quite believe we had interest from Blur's record company. Overexcited, and without any preparation, I went to Princes St Gardens on lunch and rang him on my mobile. First thing Evans asked was "how many in the band?". When I replied "three" he seemed unpleasantly surprised. In hindsight, given the number of members in Goldie Lookin' Chain I don't know why he was upset that it took three of us to create the EP. It was his next question though, which drove fear into my heart. "When are you playing live?"

Up to now, despite our obvious obsession with making Swivel Chair CDs and videos, we were all in it for a laugh and hadn't even considered live performances or any chance that it could be a serious proposition. I was thrown by his question and didn't even have the presence of mind to lie and say we were already gigging which might have gone down better. Instead I admitted we hadn't played live yet but told him we would be soon and I would let him know. I threw in that we made our own videos in a desperate attempt to impress him. "Have you made one for Penis on a hairtrigger" he asked. "er.. no.. " I admitted but he asked me to send him the videos and any other tracks we had done.

I reported this disastrous conversation back to the others. Craig and I went for a pint up at Montpeliers in Bruntsfield (where Mel and I were now living, sharing a flat with two other couples in very cramped circumstances). We sat on one of the outdoor tables and basked in the glory of our own genius (or so we thought). Here was us, a joke band, attracting record company interest while so many bands with talented musicians strived for years, playing gigs etc and getting nowhere.

In the following week an argument ensued about which tracks to send to Food and we got Burnett's help in choosing the tracks. I argued that "Pickin' Up Burds" wasn't a good choice, mainly because the vocalists weren't actually members of 'the band' but also cos of the subject matter in case Adam Evans was a raging homosexual. This was vehemently argued and in the end my argument won out due to my sheer stubborness - it was a very unpopular decision. The first track on the CD we sent was "What Is Your Life?" which Robertson thought was a bad mistake- and he was probably right. Not only that but we also included the appalling outtake "Recommended Daily Annoyance" which consisted of some annoying vocals by me and Craig and a sample of a "mad crazy ape" (taken from a sound effects CD from the library) jabbering in the background. We had decided it was too rubbish to go on the EP itself but somehow our critical faculties deserted us at this critical juncture. The video was also duly posted.

We heard nothing from this and we didn't chase it up. Instead we further invested ourselves in sabotaging any chance of turning the interest into success. Instead of, say buying a laptop, and adding live vocals to our backing tracks as a quick solution to the live problem, Craig and I decided that we would have to learn instruments and play live properly.

At the same time, the differences with Robertson were coming to a head. He was a part –time member at best by this point mainly due to geography- he lived in Dundee. Also, he had not reacted in any way to the Sack Me EP, choosing to ignore it and concentrate on the production of another full length album called "Someone's Fucking with the Controls" for which he suggested we "pack those 75 minutes to the max", mainly of his own tracks. He'd come up with a few classics such as "Jimmy the Chair Groupie", "Swivel Chairs From Outer Space" and "Want Women" but some of which were pretty abstract, especially "Twonk", the apocalyptic instrumental that was 21 minutes and 46 seconds long which he suggested for the end of the album. These were actually really good tracks but just didn't fit in with what we were doing. It was clear from his e-mails that he would be in control of the album tracklisting and artwork again which we thought was a bit of an insult to both me and Craig after all our efforts in putting the EP together and all the good reactions we'd got.

Robertson was an old friend of Craig's and Craig didn't want to confront him with any of the problems. I didn't really have a lot of contact with him so didn't feel able to speak to him either. Instead, it was decided that his input would be ignored and the password to the hotmail account would be changed so that Robertson couldn't send any more e-mails.

Craig and I both admitted later that we regretted this underhand way of dealing with it. I think Craig came to regret Robertson leaving the band as well, especially when, as time went on, he began to feel that we were moving away from his original concept of the band. Robertson was more in tune with his concept of the band as a "bad joke" whereas I was projecting my fantasies of being in a more conventional band on to what was happening.

I Was a Swivel Chair Part 15- Bush

With a possible live gig still somewhere distant on the horizon, we were distracted by the tragic events of 9/11. I'm sure you remember where you were when it happened- the chances are that like me, you were at work... I was still working in my first temp job for the Scottish Executive, in the Office for the Accountant for Bankruptcy (or bureaucracy as I preferred to call it). I would spend endless afternoons in the filing room downstairs, ingesting century old dust mites as I heaved huge files, containing the lives of people caught up in devastating levels of debt, onto the shelves. Here is a photo I took of the filing room:

Anyway, I would spend the rest of the time on the PC doing various mindnumbing tasks and it was at one of these points that the day was enlivened by a co-worker shouted "A plane has flown into a New York skyscraper!" we all gathered round his PC to watch the first piece of footage on the BBC news web-site. The footage was so dramatic that a buzz went round the office that rarely, if ever happens. It was all so bizarre it seemed like something out of a film rather than reality. We still didn't know it was an intentional attack, thinking it was a bizarre accident.

That weekend Burnett and I were round at Craig's new flat in Inverkeithing. We were trying to persuade Burnett to be our new guitarist and help us play live. He seemed to be considering this, but he was not committing himself to anything. In the meantime the telly was on and it was 9/11 24/7, with endless reruns of the footage, reducing it to the level of mindnumbing pornography, plus endless speculation and footage of George W. Bush threatening violent retribution to various small countries that might have contained Bin Laden, the alleged ringleader of the atrocities.

In reaction to this media saturation we jokingly discussed the idea of releasing a cover of Queen's appalling theme tune for the film 'Flash' but retitled Bush in reaction to the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Craig pounced on this idea and decided we should record it, after all, our vocals up to this point were all spoken word so with its samples of dialogue it was the perfect cover version for us, we would just rewrite the dialogue to make it relevant e.g. instead of "Gordon's Alive!" it would say "Bin Laden's Alive!"

I did have fleeting doubts as to the tastefulness of the whole thing but then one of Craig's aims with Swivel Chair was to offend as many people as possible and being the only other member of the band after Robertson's departure I was now fully committed to the cause. We recorded the whole thing in a couple of hours and then we discussed a possible cover. Craig put together a rough version in record time.

We decided to rush release the track as a single. We could have it in Fopp within a day once we burnt a few CD-Rs off and got the covers colour photocopied at the printers. We decided that the B-side would be a track that was recently completed called "The Powerful Way to Buy and Sell". The track came about when we found an advertisement for a second hand swivel chair in the local trade magazine, for a fiver! Craig called up the woman and recorded the conversation. I suggested he not mention the word swivel chair so that she would say it for the track. She played right into our hands because she actually forgot what the type of chair she was selling was called so she tried to describe it "it's got wheels on it, it's a computer chair".. all of which was used on the track. Craig later made this into an intro video for the live experience. We did actually go round to her house and buy the chair, complete with what looked like a vaginal stain.

There could also have been a second b-side on the CD. I had recently attempted to "produce" a few tracks myself and the first of these was called 2 Explosions. I had recorded the track well before 9/11 but Craig noticed the (totally coincedental) link to the Twin Towers. He thought it would be perfect to go on the EP but for me it was a little too close to the bone. Plus, I had liked the track because I thought it was a bizarre idea and wasn't actually about anything in particular. Craig was disappointed but he accepted that it wasn't going on. However this meant the track never appeared on any of our releases.

Within a few days of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers the Bush single was in Fopp, proudly displayed at the front of the store. We were informed by our contact in Fopp that when it was played instore it attracted an angry complaint by a customer who found it highly offensive- mission accomplished. But we were no closer to playing a gig.

Next Fear of the Instrument

I Was a Swivel Chair Part 16- Fear of the Instrument

Contemporary Novelist

After the trial I was finally awarded compensation money. However in my infinite wisdom I decided instead of putting it aside for something sensible, I would stop working for three months and attempt to finish my attempt at a novel, The Three Drink Rule. The compensation money quickly disappeared and yet I barely wrote any of my supposed magnum opus, because I couldn't work out a convincing plot-line that explained how a total loser became a success guru overnight.

Instead I quickly slipped into a lifestyle of sleeping in until mid-afternoon and then staying up all night drinking beer and watching random TV nonsense, with an increasing feeling of guilt and self loathing for failing to do the task I had set myself. To alleviate this somewhat I threw myself into more Swivel Chair activity.

Techno Jazz Top 5

In another attempt to avoid the issue of playing live, Craig and I set about filming our most ambition project yet, the Techno Jazz Top 5 . This was based on a small feature in our Ejectorbed flyers which listed the five most ridiculous and abstract Swivel Chair tracks. We felt that a fake chart would be a good showcase for the shorter videos we had made so far.

Burnett had started working in Banana Row studio so after hours we were able to use it as the Techno Jazz Top 5 Studios. We staged a live performance for the segment where the inappropriately "mature" competition winner Lizzie Tatum wins the chance to meet Swivel Chair. I roped my mum into playing her and she was perfect for the role, but little did she know the unwholesome content of the rest of our oeuvre when she agreed- which made me feel a bit guilty for involving her. As well as playing ourselves in the segment Craig and I also played the disturbingly cheesy hosts, Norman Shand and Mark Webb whose names were taken from the most popular lads at our respective primary schools. Mel played the pouting, raven-haired presenter of the Techno Jazz news, Suzy Ball.

To enliven the chart countdown, which would inevitably be won by Swivel Chair, we invented a rival band, Rota-Arm and asked Burnett and his mate Tony to play the members of Rota Arm, who we named Alexander Chromatic and Simon Kurage. Tony, who had been in a band with Burnett, was also a professional actor who'd starred in several TV dramas as well as the film The Trench and later Once Upon a Time in the Midlands- and unsurprisingly his performance was brilliant. We had the most fun we'd had in a while recording the Rota-Arm track, "Pair of Tits and a Bag of Coke" which consisted of the INXS track "I Need You Tonight" plus backward samples of Meatloaf and Bon Jovi and some ridiculous speeded up vocals with the improvised lyrics:

"Rota Arm are dirty fuckys, legs on fire, legs on fire, we don't like the Swivel Chair no more"

Swivel Chair learn instruments

Around this time we wrote a script for a short film called, appropriately, Fear of the Instrument. Some of it was based on Craig's experiences at having unsuccessful music lessons when he was younger – which I related to as I had similar experiences. The story reflected how we were feeling about playing live. The premise was:

A man who was forced to learn an accordion as a child and hated it is left with a strong phobia of all musical instruments but is forced to confront this when given a banjo and is persuaded by his girlfriend to attend a therapy session to cure his phobia.

I even made aFear of the Instrument theme tune theme tune for the idea which featured Mel on vocals, reading out some of the dialogue from the script.

One of Mel's colleagues was selling their bass guitar so to kickstart our attempts to use real instruments rather than samples, I bought it. I messed around with it for a while but came up with nothing of note, so I passed it to Craig. He immediately came up with a brilliant track featuring a Peter Hook style bass-line. I was amazed at how good it was given it was his first attempt. I added some very basic keyboard to it and we also added vocals and christened the track The Rules of Cool By this point we had accepted we were never going to be part of the cool crowd and so we decided to do what we did best- slag off anyone who was cooler than us.

That New Year's Eve we did our first live performance. Our performance consisted of us playing our respective parts of the track but of course we were unable to do vocals and play the instruments at the same time. Mel, the only audience member, must have wondered what she had done to deserve such a New Year's Eve.

Later we attempted a rehearsal in Banana Row. Burnett, who was rehearsing some other tracks with Tony, heard the track and agreed to add lead guitar. He improvised something which to me and Craig was awe inspiring. The final track features a later attempt by him to replicate this which is good but not as brilliant as the first time he did it.

Craig bought the bass off me and with help from Dougie I purchased my first electric guitar. We resumed our speedy work ethic and soon had several more tracks.

Burnett agreed to add guitar to the new tracks and him and Tony agreed to join us in rehearsing them live. They seemed to have difficulty finishing their own tracks due to their perfectionism and were happy to help us out in the meantime. We were delighted. Craig spoke to someone at his work who was a drummer and he also agreed to attend a rehearsal. I was unbelievably excited- here was my chance to be in a real band.

Next: "Cower Away From Your Gods"