GOING FOR A SONG

I waited till August 4th to write this article because if I'm being honest, it is only today that what happened on the 10th July became real.

In June I received a letter from a small record company (Cherry Red Records) asking if we could help them find songs recorded by Hearts players as they were putting together a CD of Hearts songs. I explained to them that they might have problems filling a whole CD, but would they like a group of Hearts fans singing some favourites chants? Great idea, they said. Do you think you could get a group of Hearts fans together to sing a few songs for us they said? Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?

What I didn't realise was that the guy meant was that I was to arrange, record and deliver the final product myself while he sits back and awaits my tape. That was problem number 1. What is a DAT machine anyway? Where do you get one? A few weeks after the cup final, could I get a group of Hearts fans up to my house to sing Hearts songs? It's bizarre.

Here's the weird bit - any self respecting Jambo would walk over hot coals to gather at someone's house to sing Hearts songs, but this guy actually offered me £100 to do it.

If you shop around, you can get a LOT of beer for £100!

I agreed, and went about contacting ATB as i didn't want them to feel they'd been left out. It was handy that we'd just brought out a songbook, so I set about finding some suitable songs which we could sing that were worthy of being placed in the public domain. Here there was a problem. There are only about sixteen songs which don't include swearwords or don't mercilessly slag off hibs or individual players. So no "Hello Hello", no "Seasons in the sun", no "In your Easter Road Slums".

We hired the required equipment from the Warehouse in Leith and after a lot of hard work my wife and I managed to get the thing working in time for the troops to arrive for our wee singsong. In all there were 15 from NIT and 3 from ATB (I've never seen all their contributers in one place before!) Seriously, we were glad of their input to the evening, even though there was £100 of free drink they still brought their own (maybe they don't trust us).

After some false starts and confusion over the positioning of the microphone we murdered sixteen "songs". I've listened to the CD they made for us and for a bunch of drunks, it is pretty good considering there was no musical accompaniment and the musical director (me) has the musical ability of a buffalo.

The party went on till four o'clock in the morning when the conversation turned to Hearts tattoos. Four of our guys were going to get one before the new season starts (they all did!).

The CD is available from 24th August and there should be an advert in this issue. At this point I can't say where they will be available, but if you want one and you can't get one, just give a NIT seller your name and address and we'll see what we can do.