History
Saint Jude’s Infirmary , Sometimes are Peter Pan, Sometimes are Vampyres. They have cheated adulthood. They have martyred child-hood. They are genuine artists, they are base and stuff their rider in their guitar cases and drink it in bus shelters. They are as tight as a terrorist cell. They despise each other with a cold hearted passion. They want to play as soft as falling snow. They want to make bang like Neanderthal. They read Dylan Thomas for his grace. They read The Daily Record for the football.
They are from Edinburgh Scotland and play slow and brutal poetry. The songs are of sad eyed remorse sung by throats cried hoarse. The girls sing sweet and the boys sing coarse.
Risen from the ashes of an under-fourteen football team. Saint Judes Infirmary were formed in Kirkcaldy, Fife around the song-writing of twins Ashley and Grant Campbell and the velvet voice of their cousin Emma-Jane. Early reviews compared their embryonic sound to a first untrammelled howls of the Velvet Undergound mixed with a primal sixties girl-group beat - a comparison that neither time nor wisdom has shaken. Since moving to Edinburgh via Amsterdam and Texas they have released their first album `Happy Healthy Lucky Month` this year to critical acclaim.
Saint Jude’s Infirmary are –
Ashley Campbell – music, vocal, guitar & cello
Grant Campbell – words, bass, vocals
Emma Jane – vocals, percussion
Mark Francis- guitar, vocals, percussion
Alun Thomas – drums, percussion, vocals
…and our debut album featured the skill, enthusiasm and hard work of Andrew Dempster on keyboards and hammond.
The Church of John Coltrane (SL Records) released November 2005 (see cover)
Track Listing:
1. The Church of John Coltrane
2. TB Eyes
3. Ostrich
4. Jacob’s Ladder
Christmas EP (SL Records) released as promo December 2005 (see cover)
Track Listing:
1. Home Made Christmas Card
2. Saint Jean
3. Blue Christmas
Happy Healthy Lucky Month (SL Records) Released January 30th 2006 (see cover)
Track-by-track guide to our debut album - `Happy Healthy Lucky Month`
The album – an explanation, a track–by–track apology. We were asked to explain ourselves in front of class and feigned deference as we played to the gallery…ach this is all vanity, vanity, vanity, standing up on stage, how ridiculous are we all….
Track 1
The Church of John Coltrane
We believe that John Coltranes saxophone is as much a vessel of the sacrament as any Priest or Minister. Its about the power of friendship and comrade-ship and music to lift your soul out of the gutter and into the heavens. All great music is Gospel music no matter how base or immature the intent. Rock and Roll was born in the cradle of Gospel and will be buried in the grave of Gospel. Written in Utrecht, Netherlands in the winter in 2002, caned and in retreat with a filthy cold and with filthy ambition, wanting to skip round Cohen, Spector and the Jesus and Mary Chain like a young Cassius Clay.
Track 2
Remember Dresden
It’s about Dresden; its fire-bombing and annihilation during the Second World War and how the hidden pain of geography or a city can cut keen and deep in communion with the knife of our own pain and secret, deepest agonies.
Track 3
Saint Jude’s Infirmary
It’s about sitting in the gutter, reading a book on the lives of the saints, listening to Kraut Rock. It’s about the place where the band gets its name from to say any-more would give the game away. Once the song is out of your head it’s already compromised.
The song came to my sister and I in the same dream delivered by a horseman, a Norseman and a wing-back on a Bosman. Really can’t remember anything about this song but it seems to be good sound-track to treacherous hypnotism. Most of all its a reminder to never forget Dresden and all the little Dresdens that every-day slip off the pages of history. Recorded in Glenrothes, Scotland trying to get the guitars to sound like Christmas.
Track 4
Saint Jean
Is about the hounding and sacrificial demise of Jean Seberg the American actress who was plucked from obscurity to play Joan of Arc in Otto Preminger’s 1957 film of the Maid of Orleans. Life was to sadly mirror art with a CIA smear campaign turning into a full scale witch-hunt over her links with the Black Panthers which led to her suicide. She is our bands second patron saint & eternally our leading lady.
When things are falling apart on stage I play the bass riff like a mantra, like whispered Hail Mary and this song pulls us through. The band make will continue our crusade until we have made our pilgrimage to Montparnasse cemetery to pay our respect to our Saint Jean.
Track 5
All My Rowdy Friends Are Dead
It’s about Religion, friendship and library books. It’s another bar-floor requiem for lives lived and lost falling down. A small sad whisky tumbler raised to this grave yard of ambition that we, with teary eyed and proud hearts call home.
It used to be the last song of our set, a tumble-down race to see when the sound-man would pull the plug. Names have not been changed to protect the guilty. None of our friends are overt successes. Recorded on the last piece of reel in one take with the taxi meter running and sounding like a drunk crashing from happy to morose to suicidal in the space of the one sad drink, this song finds a space on the album at the expense of better songs by way of our lazy spite. A desperate truth, desperately told.
Track 6
Good-bye Jack Vettriano
The enfant terrible of Scottish Art is like us from Kirkcaldy and he is a star. We and all right minded Langtonians are eternally in debt to him and Jocky Wilson for undoing the poison of Adam Smith…
It’s a country song and country is in our blood. It’s a sea shanty for all the sailors that have fallen from grace with the sea. Recording was fraught and torrid and the producer Liam had to dive and swim hard against the tide to bring back this bright little pearl of misery and devotion.
Track 7
Montreal
A sailor in a bar in Utrecht told me Utrecht, Edinburgh and Montreal were the only cities that ever won his heart. In a moment of good natured bonhomie I swore to write a song for each. Once the gin had settled I had a love letter to a city I’d never seen. It’s also our song for Montreal’s greatest son - Leonard Cohen. A small and timid token of thanks. A note passed in class from an awestruck child.
Track 8
Happy Healthy Lucky Month
I met a girl and I was so sure that we would get together than I wrote song about us breaking up.
Track 9
VVVampyre
I went to a party once and I was only there to say sorry but I drank too much and when I opened my eyes everyone had fangs and piercing red eyes and they were vampires and that’s not a word of a lie.
Recorded the day after we wrote it, sprawling, incoherent and vitriolic - the final stake through the heart of the album. It’s about death and the end, an euphoric death and an euphoric end. Now close the book and turn the cover…
