Wednesday, 9 February 2011

THE SCROTUM POLES ROCK FAMILY TREE

The line-up of Glen Connell (Burt Spurt) - Craig Methven (Smeg Pole) - Colin Smith (Stripey Sleep) & Steve Grimmond (Sid Gripple), was the last and most well known of the Scrotum Poles unit.
As you can see in the Scrotum Poles family tree, this is referred to as SP3, which is dead centre of the layout.
I thought it was interesting finding out how the band reached that stage and discovering what happened when the lads all branched off afterwards.
Steve joined SP2 from a band called Tinned Atmosphere, who had Johnny Walker and Brian Anderson in the line-up.
Glen went straight into SP3 after his time playing in Carnoustie based bands.
When the Scrotum Poles time was up, Steve joined AAGA, a band who've been well covered on Retro.
Colin moved on to the Arbroath band, Synthetic Dreams, who have been described as a cross between Ultravox and Talking Heads.
Craig formed Pigs Are Cute, again an act who's had a few mentions here.
After that, when Craig moved to London, he was in a band called The Summerbees, which included bassist Ali Friend who later worked with top acts in the 90's such as Red Snapper, Beth Orton, Chemical Brothers and many others.
Glen, who was also in Pigs Are Cute, joined a band called Twice, who were on a bit of a disco-punk/Pet Shop Boys kind of trip.
He then became a member of cow-punk act Boonie Rats, who released a single at some stage.
Glen got involved with the Hodge twins, Les going on to form Coco And The Bean, and Simon concentrating on DJ work.
The tree could probably be extended even further if you saw it through to the present and included what all the other musicians went on to do, but as it is, this is a neat pollarded version of the Scrotum Poles segment covering approximately the 1978 - 1989 period.
The graphic is quite large, so you can click onto it, zoom in, and have a wee journey along all the connections.
Thanks to Craig for the history lesson.

4 comments:

  1. I remember there was Tinned atmosphere graffiti around Douglas still on show well into the 80s

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  2. try SYKES for graffiti . LEGEND ,

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  3. Glen Connell fronted this band (and the Boonierats) not long after (or a wee bit) the Scrotum Poles'

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8l1yshvg_s&t=2s

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  4. Hi, The Boonierats played Inverness. I recall there were two bands that night, with the members mixed up or shared. Is that possible?

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