The Scaramanga Six are an English rock band. Originally formed in 1995 and based in Huddersfield, the band currently consists of multi-instrumentalist founder members Paul Morricone (vocals, guitar, etc.) and Steven Morricone (vocals, bass guitar, keyboards etc.), plus Julia Arnez (guitar, vocals) and Gareth Champion (drums).
The Scaramanga Six are noted for their aggressive live act and their flamboyant and theatrical songs, which have made them a significant band on the Leeds rock scene. Entirely self-managed and self-releasing (via their own Wrath Records label), their independent business practices and active promotion of other artists has seen them hailed as "the closest we'll see to a British answer to Fugazi"CD Times review of "Walking Through Houses" by Theo Graham-Brown, retrieved 11 October 2008 and described as "working entirely outside the indie scene, let alone the actual industry."Drowned In Sound review of Strike! Up The Band by Toby Jarvis, retrieved 11 October 2008"The Scaramanga Six - Fengende galskap" – interview by Eirik in Metal.norge.com, 16 April 2008"Wrath of the Mighty" – article/interview in Vibrations.org by Sam Saunders, 6 May 2008 The band also have a distinctive visual identity and style thanks to Paul Morricone's self-directed promotional films for the band, via his own Poison Pen Films and Thunder & Lighting companies.
Nominally and originally a sextet, the actual band lineup over the years has varied between four and six members. The ten former Scaramanga Six members include Stephen Gilchrist, multi-instrumentalist Chris Catalyst and James Kenosha.
Sound, influences, themes and visuals The Scaramanga Six play a tuneful and carefully arranged mixture of heavy rock, vocal pop, rockabilly, garage and crooner songs described as "intense-yet-aloof rock operas" (Drowned In Sound) and "B-movie chic combined with real musical muscle" (Kerrang).various reviews of Cabin Fever stored on history page on Scaramanga Six homepage, retrieved 11 October 2008 They have also been described as "a British Queens Of The Stone Age.'Drowned In Sound' review of "Horrible Face" by Toby Jarvis, retrieved 11 October 2008" Influences cited by the band themselves include The Stranglers, Cardiacs, The Cramps and Tony Bennett. Their song lyrics are characterised by themes of dark humour, desperation, tongue-in-cheek self-aggrandisement, criminality, "the drudgery of everyday life, work and office politics", and human/animal behaviourism.
The band has a strong visual sense reflected in their use of video and release artwork, which is all handled in-house by Paul Morricone. Paul cites this aspect of the band's work as being partly down to his own "day time job – working in television as a director/editor. So naturally I am interested in the visual aspect of things. It's not just about creating an image to sell the band though. Our video to "The Poison Pen" doesn't even have us in it – just an insane psycho rabbit man. I've always enjoyed the total package that is an album. I like looking at sleeve notes and photos and design and imagining what the band were doing at the time. It's all part of the mystique and fascination, don't you think? It's why people will always buy records rather than download them.""The Scaramanga Six: Paul Morricone of ireallylovemusic's fave band The Scaramanga Six! tells us all bout the gore and horror that is the band's new album Cabin Fever" – interview in ireallylovemusic.co.uk The band's visual stylings extend to their onstage presentation. They perform in a Mafia-style "confrontational family" mannerDrowned In Sound review of Strike! Up the Band by Toby Jarvis, March 2003 (as reproduced on Scaramanga Six homepage) wearing suits and ties and staring out their audiences.
History Prehistory Fraternal twin brothers Paul and Steven Morricone were born in Weston-super-Mare, UK in 1973. They spent their formative years absorbing a mixture of The Stranglers and Tony Bennett, resulting in the discovery that "there was much fun to be had in crooning and shouting in equal measures." The Morricones have been a creative hub since childhood, with Paul Morricone commenting "Steve is my brother and therefore we stick together. If there are any decisions to be made, we thrash it out between us. It was like that at school – if you've got a problem with him, you'll have me to deal with too."
Circa 1988, while still teenagers, Paul and Steven (both singing and playing saxophones) joined a band called The Silent Zones which included their drummer cousin James Agnew and guitarist James Parsons. Following lineup changes (and a spell as Phobia) Paul, Steven and the two Jameses recruited bass guitarist Fraser McAlpine to form Roger's Trout Farm, a band with a strong Cardiacs/Bonzo Dog Band influence. McAlpine would later admit "listening now, it seems that none of us could play anything without making it fiddly, and a smidge too fast. I love that about us.""A Brief History: Everybody Wants to Kill Roger's Trout Farm" - post by Fraser McAlpine on commemorative Roger's Trout Farm blog, 4 March 2010
During this period Paul began to learn how to play guitar, insisting that the songs he wanted to write couldn't be written on the saxophone. Not to be outdone, Steven learned bass guitar and began to develop his own abilities as songwriter and organizer (as well as his talents as "a born entertainer.") In 2011, James Parsons would recall that "in what seemed like no time at all, (Paul) totally eclipsed our song writing abilities, both him and Steve churning out great song after song... Paul has developed the envious skill of being able to place the listener in the song, making them feel connected, like they are being sung to.""Paul Morricone: Saxophone, Vocals and later, Guitar" - post by James Parsons on commemorative Roger's Trout Farm blog, 15 October 2010"Steve Morricone: Saxophone, Vocals and Later Bass" - post by James Parsons on commemorative Roger's Trout Farm blog, 15 October 2010
Roger's Trout Farm played for a number of years around Somerset and recorded several demo tapes including SpitTreeDogLove."SpitTreeDogLove - The First Demo" - post by Fraser McAlpine on commemorative Roger's Trout Farm blog, 6 October 2010 Following the departure of McAlpine in 1991, Agnew and the Morricones briefly backed a local songwriter friend (singing guitarist Julia Arnez) in another band, Spawnmate, which recorded a demo tape but never played live. Agnew and the Morricones then reunited with Parsons under the name of Supersaurus (with Steven on bass) until various members headed off to university. Nominally, Supersaurus continued to exist during the first half of the 1990s, but with Agnew and Parsons now studying in London (and Paul and Steven Morricone studying in Yorkshire and Leicester respectively), opportunities to work together became rare and the band gradually and amicably dissolved.
Many years later, in May 2011, Roger's Trout Farm would reunite for three commemorative gigs."Huddersfield, London, Weston-super-Mare: Everybody's talkin' about Trout Music" - post by James Parsons on commemorative Roger's Trout Farm blog, 23 May 2011 All of the band's members had continued to work in music - besides the Morricone's work with the Scaramanga Six and others, Fraser McAlpine had become a web content editor working on the Top of the Pops website and BBC Radio 1's ChartBlog while James Parsons had become guitarist for Spearmint, and reunited with James Agnew in tELLEy.
Scaramanga (1995–1999) The Morricones reunited in Huddersfield after graduation and in 1995 formed Scaramanga with Paul on vocals and guitar and Steven on vocals and bass, completing the lineup with guitarist Bill Bailey, keyboard player John Gulliver (alias "Chester Valentino") and Emma Calvert on vocals, percussion and drums. The band played a debut gig at Dr Browns in Huddersfield in June 1995, in a double bill with a short-lived jazz-fusion project called The XJ6 (in which the Morricones played saxophones alongside drummer Pat Fulgoni and bass player Rob Watson). With the addition of drummer Jem Bowden, Scaramanga went on to record the demo cassette Tetsura (two of the songs on the tape, "Choking" and "Ladies And Gentlemen" would later appear on subsequent recordings). Both of the Morricone brothers also played saxophones for the band, providing the opportunity for overdubbed brass sections.
When Emma Calvert left the band in late spring 1996, she was replaced on vocals and drums by the Morricone's former Spawnmate colleague Julia Arnez, with whom the band recorded another demo tape called Big Themes And Incidental Music and another recording called Stereo Car Chase.
In late 1997, the band recorded a split single for Double Plus records with Slot Jockey (the Scaramanga contribution being "Vamp", co-sung/screamed by Arnez and Steven Morricone). Scaramanga gigged in Northern England for another year and a half before renaming themselves the Scaramanga Six.
Early Scaramanga Six – The Liar the Bitch and Her Wardrobe & Strike! Up the Band (1999–2002) At this time, the Scaramanga Six formed a partnership of mutual respect with two other bands from the Leeds area, Landspeed Loungers and Chest. Several triple-header gigs in Leeds and London were played, one of which was commemorated with a rare sold-on-the-door cassette release featuring the three bands covering each other's songs. This alliance would eventually lead to the foundation of the Scaramanga Six's record label, Wrath Records.
The debut Scaramanga Six album—The Liar the Bitch and Her Wardrobe—was released in spring 1999 on Trinity Records (the band's quickly-assembled precursor to Wrath Records). Mostly recorded as a live-in-the-studio session, the album also included "Vamp" and several songs which would later be improved and re-recorded for later releases ("Poison Fang", "The Coward" and "Horrible Face" on the Cabin Fever album and "Singer Of Songs" for the …Continuing Saga EP). At this point, Julia Arnez wrote songs and sang almost as many lead vocals as the Morricone brothers. On subsequent records, by her own choice, she would switch from drums to guitar and concentrate on harmony vocals, and would not participate in the writing.
By summer 1999 the Morricones' old Roger's Trout Farm/Supersaurus bandmate James Agnew had replaced Bowden on drums. Former Chest member Jenny "Jet" Harris joined on guitar and keyboards a year later in summer 2000. In April 2001 the band released the Are You One Of The Family? EP (the debut release by the newly launched Wrath Records). This began to gain the band attention in underground publications across Britain, and featured a re-recording of "Ladies And Gentlemen" from the band's first demo tape. However, by this point the band had parted company with Bill Bailey, who left during the EP sessions. John Gulliver would also leave and rejoin the band several times between 2000 and 2002, becoming something of a "floating member" (although he would play on all of the recordings during this period).
In January 2002, the band released another EP, The Continuing Saga of the Scaramanga Six with the driving "Pressure Cage" as the lead song. The EP featured several inventive video clips directed by Paul Morricone, whose day job was as a film and television director/editor."The Scaramanga Six: Paul Morricone of ireallylovemusic's fave band The Scaramanga Six! tells us all ‘bout the gore and horror that is the band's new album Cabin Fever" – article in ireallylovemusic e-zine (He had helped to establish Poison Pen Films—affiliated to Metro Films in Leeds—which would handle all future Scaramanga Six video work). In September 2002, the band released a split single with Les Flames, contributing the song "You Do, You Die".