The Lloyd Pack – Itchy Gnomes – Amish Records

I heard this on the Tom Ravenscroft show the other week. It’s lo-fi in the best way, a bit afro-beat, the keyboards reminds me a little bit of the Blue Orchids, and it has some well-mad lyrics too. “Spring has sprung, itchy lungs” and we love the sample of someone talking about a scrabble set. Say children, what does it all mean? Who cares, as we love it here!

Talking of the Blue Orchids, one Saturday years ago, myself and a good mate hitched it from the Midlands to Manchester for a gig of theirs.

After the gig we spent most of a cold night stuck on a motorway junction just outside Stoke-on-Trent. Come dawn we were picked up by a chap who had a dashboard full of boiled sweets; packs of barley sugars, humbugs and butterscotch amongst many others which littered the leatherette. While he wolfed down boiled sweet after boiled sweet, he told us he was on his way to the Birmingham marathon and was in need of a chat after driving for hours on his own.

In that lovely warm car we both nodded off straight away and came to just as he angrily shouted we were approaching the junction for Birmingham. He was well fed up with us, but you know what, we were more fed up with him, as he never even offered us a sweet, the tight git!