Singled Out: Flipron's The Coolest Names in Showbiz

So I placed the riff in between a nice European sounding minor-key chord sequence & played it in a two-tone, ska style with a warm, fat, friendly Labrador of a chorus. Then worked out a darker, more complex instrumental section to contrast with the cheesy sing-along stuff. So what's it about? Well, it's about ignoring your inner voice, ignoring the calling we all have to human kindness & patience & generosity & warmth. The calling to do things really well, to care. You know, the Good Stuff. Not wilfully ignoring it. Not with any malice�But in that everyday way in which you just temporarily put these instincts aside for an easier ride through life, just to get to work quicker, just because this morning you're too tired to bother. & then realising that you've been doing this without thinking for years & years & you've become a lazy, good for nothing half-wit hedonist with the moral sensibilities of a hyena whose greater potential was left in the gutter years ago & who uses any lame excuse & encouragement to prop up the half-baked lie your life has become..... So how can I put it? A self portrait of sorts! & the sacrifice bit? Well letting go of all that isn't easy, almost impossible once it's deeply ingrained & it feels like a major sacrifice even to try. But I hope the song is still friendly, still encouraging.

The Flipron boys felt happier playing it much, much faster than I'd imagined. It's also much meatier than the lazy, sugar light ska I'd heard lolloping round my brain. But that's the fun & the horror of being a songwriter in a band, hearing the way the others trample all over your pride & joy before turning it into something completely different & eminently more exciting than what you had planned. Joe really ramped up his Two-Tone ska rhythms on the organ. As well as being in Flipron, he's been a mainstay of Specials frontman Neville Staples band for years, so we get the benefit of his super-ska organ workouts whenever we venture into the territory. Working with Rat Scabies as producer was illuminating as ever. He stripped down the "why bother?" sections just to Joe's old pub piano & my vocal. He cut the song down by about 45 seconds & tweaked the good bits until they were even better bits. He brought in Namalee & Shirani to sing backing vocals for a warm, sort of "churchy" sound on the word sacrifice. He's good company too. Lots of funny stories from the epicentre of English punk & from his investigations into various dark alleys of medieval history�.

Then the video. We'd used up almost all the budget for the single on the recording, which left us with �80 left to record & edit a video. That's a bit like trying to provide catering for a wedding party with a 4-pack of cheap beer & a picnic blanket. So we rented a village hall nearby with a lovely na�ve style painted pantomime backdrop of trees & fields. Then, having set up the one proper light that we could get hold of, & as our friend Alex filmed, the boys roped me to a chair & cut all my long curly hair off "just for fun."