The Scaramanga Six

Following their set at Shakespeare’s in Sheffield as part of the Fringe events running alongside this year’s Tramlines Festival, Paul Morriconne, guitarist and singer for Leeds based post punk band The Scaramanga Six took some time out to talk to us about the band’s varied influences, their DIY ethic and future plans.

SF: Paul, thanks so much for taking a couple of minutes to speak to me. I’ll have to be honest and say I didn’t know a ton about you guys before tonight, but I wish I did as you were really excellent!

PM: Thanks a lot!

SF: If its ok with you, could I ask you to give a bit of background as to where you came from and a bit about your early musical influences?

PM: I am Paul Morricone, singer and guitarist in The Scaramanga Six, people keep missing The, I mean have you heard of a band called Who? No! But have you heard of The Who? Of course!

SF: The ‘The’ bit is really important!

PM: People keep missing it out, which is really annoying! We’ve been going for 20 years, since 95, and we’ve just released our 8th full length record The Terrifying Dream, a couple of weeks ago. I should clarify it’s our 8th studio record, there’s a couple of live ones in there. Our influences are really, well just us mainly! We’re influenced by ourselves, as we’ve been on our own for so long, we’re now doing cover versions of our own songs you know?

SF: That’s so cool! One thing that brought me round the loop to you guys is that I know you’ve covered stuff by The Cardiacs in the past..

PM: Well actually we only did that on a compilation album for Tim Smith (frontman and founder of The Cardiacs) because we’ve worked with him before. We recorded two  albums with him producing and we were in the middle of doing our third with him when he became ill (he suffered a combined heart attack and stroke in 2008), so we had to abandon it and completely re-record it somewhere else,  actually here in Sheffield. So yeah, I mean helping Tim was very close to our hearts and those are probably the only cover versions we’ve ever done! (laughs)

SF: Is there a particular reason you avoid cover versions?

PM: Well we’ve got too many of our own songs really. We struggle to fit enough of what we want to do in a set anyway, let alone include someone else’s music. Often these days, if we’re playing a gig, we tend to just play and support ourselves. We just really play the whole night ourselves as we’ve just got too much stuff to play!

SF: Have you guys been involved in tramlines and the associated Fringe Festival before?

PM: We never seem to get on any festivals whatsoever as we haven’t got an agent and that seems to be the way it works. We also haven’t got any backing, so it’s very difficult to officially get on larger festivals like this one. This gig is obviously a fringe event, running alongside the main festival. We are a fully DIY outfit, so we’re never going to get on anywhere as we’re not valuable enough as a commodity to trade if you know what you mean?

SF: Has everything you’ve done through your career been fully DIY, or has there ever been a period where there’s been support?

PM: No, we’ve done it all ourselves, always.

SF: Which is fantastic!

PM: You know, there’s been talk here and there but nothing has ever come to fruition and you soon realise that you and your colleagues can do a far better job of things because you care about it. There a lot of people left high and dry when they are hanging on a promise from a label or some kind of management company because they are kept at arm’s length. In our time we’ve seen bands, friends of ours, who have sat around waiting to release a record and then three years later they’ve done nothing because they have not been allowed to or they are still waiting for it to happen. The thing is you should never wait for something to happen, just go ahead and do it! With that, I suppose we’re probably one of the most punk diy bands you are ever likely to meet because we just go ahead and do it, regardless of whether we sound punk rock , doesn’t matter, the thing is the ethos. Just do it! 

SF: You guys have a sort of post punk sound, how would you describe the sound of The Scaramanga Six?

PM: When we’re live, we tend to just play the loud fast ones, you know just because it’s easier. On record it is much more varied with a lot of bigger sounds and overall it’s quite diverse. It does always sound like us though, we never get away from the fact that we’re a band and this is how we kind of play and sound, you know?

At this point a random stranger interrupts the interview and gives his own view on the band’s sound:

“It’s noise terror man, like the the best bits of The Beach Boys, The Pixies, and everyone else who has been great in the last 30 years. These boys encapsulate it in their own style and rock it up. It’s, it’s wonderful”

PM: Well you mentioned post punk, but I don’t know really. I have been listening to a lot of Magazine, The Stranglers and Siouxsie and the Banshees from about 1981 and I guess if we could pluck ourselves out of 2015 and land in another era, I guess that post punk era in 79/80 would be the most likely destination for us!

SF: Well I really appreciate you taking time out to speak to me, do you have any last words for the punk rock community?

PM: (laughs) Well punk doesn’t have to be about shouting, it doesn’t have to be about making as much noise as possible, even though we do both of those things! Punk is about an attitude rather than a sound, and it’s about just doing something. There are a lot of things I like which are very punk and it’s not necessarily punk rock music.

SF: Well thanks again for your time Paul, much appreciated!

PM: No worries!

The Terrifying Dream from The Scaramanga Six is out now and available direct from the band’s website.