'So there's two of you, and you're both ginger t*ssers..'
So began the sentence which would indirectly name us. But hold on a while, there is so much more to say. This story did not begin in a Stocksbridge pub in 2001. We must rewind another 20 years, another 20 years.another 20 years.ano..
The chimney stack. It once stood proudly overlooking the Greenway flats1. It was a sad day when the chimney stack tumbled, into the valley below the Glenn2 , like a drunk coming out of Lowood's Working Men's Club3 on a Friday night. That symbol of Deepcar was pulled down forever as if it represented some Tower of Babel like identity of our home and some jealous god wished to collectivise these streets and gennels into just another suburb of sunny Sheffield.4
The chimney stack, the chimney stack (sigh).
Aye, if that stack had ears, a voice to express its troubles and still stood to this day, it could tell you something. Like the year of 1981 when our headmaster, Mr Chadwick, was swept aside from the front of St John's School morning assembly, rudely interrupted from his contemporary parables that would instruct us to be such good little children, by the prodigious sound of SJ Sounds.
Red Threat evolved from the band weary experiences of two jaded old-timers. They were scarred by the naff practise rooms, truculent singers, Marillion loving keyboard players, unpunctual drummers and the albatross of 80s hard rock musical 'taste'. They had grown deaf to the spiritual call that had led them to pick up a guitar in the first place. They had been deaf for many years and had almost forgotten what it was like to be frustrated by an annoying hum coming from a lead, the kind that stops when you adjust it, but returns as soon as you take your hand off, ('That's earthing dear' says the voice of Simon in my head). Years later, as they grew into maturity, obscurity and financial security, they decided the time was now right. It was time to push the music in their heads out through their mouths and fingers into an unforgiving outside world.
In 1980, a skinny, freckled, 9 year old ginger lad, possessed of a deep seated need to answer the teacher's questions, was disturbed from his football by two friends. Robert Willis (for 'twas he) side-footed the ball over to Jason and asked Simon and David what they wanted. Simon Warby5 - first-born of the first family in the area with a microwave, a dishwasher and a computer. Simon Warby - a boy who dressed as JR Ewing at the Christmas fancy dress. Simon Warby - guitarist, equipment owner and practice room provider, the type of lad beloved of many a fledgling band. Simon said he wanted another singer and the second half of a stanza.
Here we are
At the Disco Bar
I don't know where we are
I think we're in Deepcar
Red Threat is a joke. Red Threat is a hobby. Red Threat is a passion for music. Red Threat is a pain for Warby when he's got plenty of ironing and pottering around to do. All of these statements are true. But more importantly Red Threat is a way of reaching into the office (where most of us now do our hunting and gathering) and picking out the joy, the frustration, the laughter and the anger that lies within you.
When preparations began to breath some life into old songs, songs written when Megadeth and Black Sabbath seemed the pinnacle of sonic beauty to these ears, I wouldn't have believed we could be here, now in 2004, halfway into recording an album's worth of new songs.
Work began on re-animating Huddersfield Blues back in 2002. A song which was already 10 years old and which reflected a lost love, aspirational hopes for a band going nowhere and ears beginning to listen beyond the recommendations of a Kerrang review. But just rehashing the past didn't seem enough. Somehow that need to express a message within a melody began to return.
1992 was a bad year for Mr Willis. As he was informed of the break-up of his beloved band under the A57 beside the Octagon, he must have known that this wasn't the end, but if he did, it was buried deep inside. He struggled on, looking for the next move. He studied the works of James Jameson by day and wandered the rock and alternative (to what?) clubs of Sheffield by night, alone and, it must be admitted, lonely, living as if Morrisey's words were evangelical self-improvement guides.
At this time Mr Warby was in no better shape to help. Nocturnal, jobless, directionless. Sharing a house on a road where throwing lightbulbs at you from the fifth floor of Hyde Park flats was acceptable entertainment. Sharing with an obsessively melancholic Motown-loving bass player and with a student of accountancy, an accountant who even accountants found boring. Displaying accountant-esque behaviour, he would lock his room, switch on his electric heater and let everyone else feed tokens into the meter. Can we be surprised when Simon fell asleep amongst his own burnt vomit, pining for the drummer who had betrayed him?
At that time, Simon and I began a painful and prolonged goodbye to thoughts of bands, writing songs and trying to work out the chords for Def Leppard's Photograph. Playing on stage, dreaming a stupid dream, it didn't seem important anymore. It would take ten years for those musical feelings to re-emerge.
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