This page is dedicated to the actual music of the scrumpys. We hope to share with you some of our inspiration and inform you of all the hard work that goes into writing music for the scrumpys!
The writing process
It has been suggested, in the past, that the scrumpys musical genius is completely natural and that little work has to be put in by the members to craft such moving pieces as "Bailey is a fisherman" or the upbeat, shoe-tapping, finger clicking "tribute to the greatest girl in the world". This couldnt be further from the truth. The scrumpys are constantly working at maintaining the bands trademark musical style and quality. From drinking alcohol to working out string arrangements, practising harmonys to learning to play guitar, the band rarely find themselves lacking some vital task to perform within the band! In fact I can't remember the last time we all took a break just to chill out and relax with a bottle of fine wine and a meal prepared specially by our live-in chef, Jamie Oliver.
The first step to creating a musical master-piece in the scrumpys style is to think up a title which inspires you enough to want to write a song around it. This is perhaps the most rigorous part of the process and can take anything from a minute to 2 minutes to complete. Many songs dont make it past this stage, songs such as "bollocks to quad biking" and "cheese flan is for faggots" are never likely to see the light of day due to rejection on one or more scrumpys parts. After creating the songs title we move on to the lyrics, this part of the process is best performed while under the influence and is largely a task which others may find difficult to emulate. The combination of alcoholic beverages which go into the scrumpys create an environment which is perfect for lyrical inspiration. Sweetpea with his cider, Stebbsy with his real ale, Benae with his fine wine and Rupert with his trusty bottle of meths...nothing can go wrong. Then, the morning after, the simplest part of the process takes place as stebbsy bashs out a few random chords in a hungover daze and yells the lyrics un-tunefully, before turning to the others present and saying "that'll do, won't it?". Everyone nods, Roo vomits, and the song is completed!
The songs in question
The song which most of you will have heard, probably on lad station Vibe FM or the underground radio norfolk, is "Bailey is a fisherman". This was the first ever scrumpys tune and one that earned us much attention from NME, who quite rightly announced that we were the bestest new band ever since andrew wk, we have since been replaced by lost prophets, who were replaced by Bad Manners who are NMEs current fave new band. This song is an objective and well-informed study of the Vietnam war and the effects which it had on the saudi arabian economy of the time, it is also a chance for stebbsy scrumpy and Benae scrumpy to reflect on some of the experiences they had while in the Nam.....or something like that. The song is a meloncholy little number which still retains some of the hard rocking, satan worshiping ethos which has so influenced the scrumpys since tenacious d were formed. We are currently working with Alex from noise rock band, cheesegrater, to try and achieve a through and through over-produced sound on this record, aswell as all of our other numbers.
Tribute to the greatest girl in the world is a song about somebody who we hold very dear to our hearts. A girl who re-affirmed our faith in perfection at a time when we had all become disillusioned with life and were finding it hard to belive in anything. A girl who's pure existence proves that there is a god and he is kind, for surely a being as divine as her must have been lovingly crafted by a deity as a gift to the world. This song is all about you Beana.
