Smart Cookies
[Dream target date 1982]

By the summer of 1982 the original five piece line-up had developed a very strong sense of identity. Songs were arranged collectively through live rehearsals and the Smart Cookies had by now established a very distinctive sound: Our versatile guitar player, Chris Richards (Riff) held everything together with his strong 60's guitar riffs, keyboard players Russ Fisher and Rose Macpherson added a swirling wash of sea-shanty strings and electropop melodies. Bob Smith contributed his campy basslines and I overlayed the whole lot with lyrics culled at random from notebooks and newspaper cuttings.

Since my first year, I had looked after what was left of the Fine Art recording studio. This fell into disuse after lecturer John Darling resigned, taking his 8 track recording desk with him. I always made sure that we block-booked the studio for rehearsals at the end of each term, when Riff would travel over from Liverpool with his guitar. And locked together in that sweatbox, we all had great fun putting together the Smart Cookies sound.

Amazingly ,'8 Dazzling Jellies' was composed, performed and recorded live onto cassette tape over a six day period. The recording technique was simple; we put our Hitachi Stereo Cassette in the middle of the room, turned the amps up and went for it. Everything was recorded on those little condenser microphones, though the air. Riff used to call this technique our 'Ed in the middle, mix' and we thought the results sounded more authentic than our early attempts at multitrack recording, when we were always at the mercy of a recording engineer.

Using the 'head-in-the-middle' method, we'd record a couple of bars, play it back, then adjust the volume on our amplifiers and record again until we were happy. It was a very spontaneous way of working and the resulting sound, although not technically perfect was at least full of life and people seemed to like it.

The tapes were duplicated in their hundreds. We sold some to friends, we gave them away in nightclubs, and mailed them to radio stations and the like. Some were also sold at Jumbo Records, an independent record store located in Leeds' Merrion Centre. And back home in Nottingham, in the hands of loyal supporters like Paul Walker, Adam Fisher and Chris Cooper, 8 Dazzlers gave the Smart Cookies a devoted following of teenage fans.

 

The Smart Cookies have been remastered on CD
Please email for availability

Copyright - Paul Fillingham
Last update - 19 August, 2001