Alarums and Excursions  (2022)

God's Holy Trousers

1. Dead Man's Hand (4m 30s)

Old West lore has it that Wild Bill Hicock, playing poker, held a pair of black 8s and aces when he was shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall. This combination has since been dubbed the Dead Man’s Hand, although there is no proof that Hicock held these cards at the time of his murder. Such speculation is all by the by; this opening track relates to the occasion Morrid caught his hand in a car door, rendering it completely numb for some considerable time. That he recorded the guitar parts for this number immediately afterwards is doubtless obvious. That he is a man remains open to speculation.

2. Cheapjack (3m 52s)

A cheapjack is a seller of cheap or inferior goods, much like the Trousers themselves, if indeed they know how to sell anything at all. A flapjack is not however a seller of flaps. A blackjack does not sell black, a crackerjack crackers or a skipjack skips. Mokshaman’s uncle Jack did once drink a litre of applejack before he hijacked a steeplejack, but that is another story altogether.

3. Hoodoo You Do (4m 49s)

Wikipedia - that electronic tome of wisdom - tells us that hoodoo is “an African Diaspora tradition created during the time of slavery in the United States, and is an esoteric system of African-American occultism”. The Trousers don’t doubt this in the slightest. Indeed, Mountjoy’s distant ancestor, Professor D’Arcy Plantagenet Douglas Mountjoy, was the first European to study such ancient practices systematically, spending over three decades among slave communities in the Deep South. On his return to England, at a society dinner on December 8th 1861, the Professor casually claimed the ability to hex anyone. ‘Nonsense’, scoffed Prince Albert, looking at him with contempt down his long Teutonic neb.

4. Can’t Get Used To Losing You (3m 12s)

Jerome Pomus and Mort Shuman

The Trousers’ manager, Obadiah Snooks, was unhappy at their recent lack of success. You’d Be Safer At the Back was at that time languishing at 2133rd on the UK funk-pop-prog-fusion charts and he was at the end of his tether’s tether. ‘Maybe you could do a cover version?’ he pleaded, fat head in even plumper hands. ‘That really cool Police track, perhaps?’ ‘Consider it done’, said Mountjoy and Morrid, with smug confidence.

5. Courage and Shuffle the Cards (4m 05s)

Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, better known as Lola Montez, was an Irish dancer and courtesan, a mistress of Ludwig I of Bavaria. The title of this track refers to her favourite maxim, a sentiment the Trousers share, particularly when adhering to Brian Eno’s method of Oblique Strategies. Here, the cards told us to “Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify". And this we have certainly done in good faith but admittedly bad humour.

6. Big Ed Mustafa's Hong Kong Fluey (4m 14s)

Those masochists who have followed the Trousers since their debut album will be familiar with Mr. Edwin Mustafa, former part-time pimp, part-time oboist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, now international gravy terrorist. Purported sightings of Big Ed in Hong Kong in late 2019 have fuelled rumours that he is the criminal mastermind behind the devastating coronavirus pandemic. The Trousers are not so sure, having played five-ball Finnish snooker with him several times in a disreputable billiards hall near King Cross immediately prior to the outbreak.

7. Pony and Trap (3m 46s)

A self-explanatory title, if ever there were one. For lover’s of Cockney lingo, a pony is equivalent to 25 pounds sterling. Lord love a duck, the Trousers would kill for such a sum. Indeed, just pop the name of your intended victim together with a postal order for £25 in an envelope and send to The Fleapit Studio, Overly-Mid-Under, Hindu Kush. We will do the rest, no questions asked.

8. Delhi Cowboys (4m 40s)

On a trip to Delhi to purchase a swarsangum (whose dulcet tones can be heard on this very track), Morrid met a posse of young men longing to live the life of a Wild West cowboy. However, as Hindus, their reverence for these gentle bovine beasts meant that they had instead to round up other humans. That they then branded these hapless fellows with red hot irons remains a matter for the courts to decide, but Morrid to this day sports an unseemly scar on his rump that defies explanation.

9. Quomodo Sedet Sola Civitas (4m 04s)

This phrase comes from the beginning of the book of Lamentations, when the prophet Jeremiah cries over the destroyed Jerusalem. For those lacking a classical education, it roughly translates as ‘how lonely the city stands’. This resonates with the Trousers, who have on umpteen occasions looked out from the stage to the empty theatre before them and wondered what it is all for.

©2022
Can’t Get Used To Losing You written by Jerome Pomus and Mort Shuman
Other tracks written and performed by Morrid

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