SDC were always a bit more talked about than talked to, let alone actuallly seen or heard. 'Scary, ugly, good to shag to, self indulgent, boring, car crime, charity soup kitchens...'

Our first gig was arranged by mutual outcast and style guru Richard Bloodbath [of punk-jazzers Halon 1301 and The Compsey Tribunal fame]. The bar staff threatened to resign if any of us were invited back.

TAR plan to release a live double CD as their first Stray Dog Issue [the first and last gigs respectively] and me and ade intend to really go to town on the self-indulgent 'pipe and smoking jacket' style reminiscing sleeve notes.

I'm steadily assembling a set of out-takes and one offs - just the best tracks from the entire back catalogue of recordings. I'm going over this stuff and I'm totally at a loss as to how half of it is coming from [who played that bit? Why didn't we play this live? I only know it's me doing the guitar because I remember playing it on that one - but I don't know how I came up with those patterns?! And why can't I do beats like that anymore!?]

I can look back on it now and realize how lucky we were to be able to make this stuff so easily - and how that kind of situation will almost certainly never happen to me again. The things we are doing now are not the same - and that's a good thing, but I know that I'm still making stuff that is as much influenced by this time as a development of it. I'm listening to tracks like Heatwave [I promise an mp3 extract soon!] and they just seem to be exactly the kind of thing I need to hear now - although at the time we were just playing - no discussion, no rehearsals.

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