I saw Therapy? again at The Leadmill on the so much for the ten year plan tour. I attended with my friend Lee supported by Dog Toffee.
I have taken the next bit of information from Andy Cairns on their official site https://therapyquestionmark.co.uk/about-us/
1999
This year got off to a bad start with drummer Graham Hopkins breaking his arm after a bad fall. With no label, no drummer and a crappy drum machine, Andy, Michael and Martin holed themselves up for weeks in Ritz Studios in Putney, London. Fucked off, they started writing songs for the bands seventh album. Having been disillusioned with the world of corporate rock that they had found themselves in, they began pounding out riffs, noises and feedback as if their life depended on it.
Graham joined the fray in March and in June they headed off to Great Linford Manor Studios in Milton Keynes, England to make their new album with P.J. Harvey’s producer, Head. Working furiously round the clock for nearly six weeks, the band lived in a world of their own, listening to everything at full volume. By this point they had signed a worldwide deal with ARK 21 Records run by former IRS boss Miles Copeland. October saw the release of Suicide Pact—You First.
There was no single and the album charted in the UK just outside the top 40 but the band were playing with a born again fierceness and determination which saw a ferocious European tour with many unforgettable shows. The uncommercialness of the record meant that sales were down and radio wasn’t playing it but that didn’t stop people from turning up and having their heads fucked. In fact, on this tour some of the theatres they played got bigger.
The album made many of the rock papers’ end-of-year polls. Visions Magazine in Germany even went as far as to include Suicide Pact—You First in their top 50 albums of the ’90s. Even Rolling Stone gave it a great review.
2000
This year saw the band releasing a ‘best of’ as a way of getting out of some money still owed to Mercury. So Much For The Ten Year Plan—A Retrospective 1990-2000 had various tracks from the bands ‘career’ and proved an excuse to go on a lengthy tour playing whatever the hell they wanted from the last ten years.
The band toured continuously and had a few prime festival slots including Bizarre in Germany, Pinkpop in Holland and Witness in Ireland. In August they played the only sold out show of the weekend at the South By Southwest (SXSW) event in Austin, Texas and had a blast in Europe with their good friends Clutch in tow. November saw the band in Ritz Studios, Putney again preparing for their next album.
I never bought the album Suicide Pact-you first I had heard samples from kerrang! on a taster cassette tape free with the magazine and I wasn’t impressed. The album is noisy and acerbic and has dated quite well.
The album was a move away from the pop sensibilities of their previous album, Semi-Detached, and was considered a dark and twisted effort, seemingly as a retort to the conditions and restrictions imposed upon them and other bands on major labels. Although the album garnered very little radio airplay and only reached number 61 in the UK Albums Chart, it received mixed reviews in the press.
NME gave it 2.5 stars out of 5 https://www.nme.com/reviews/reviews-nme-1476-337346
I was happy to see them live and play some old hits which in the year 2000 the fans wanted songs from their earlier material.
Here’s the setlist:
1. He’s not that kind of girl
2. Church of noise
3. Knives
4. Little tongues first
5. Bad karma follows you around
6. Stop it you’re killing me
7. Trigger inside
8. Joey
9. Die laughing
10. Nowhere
11. Diane
12. Evil Elvis
13. lonely, cryin’, only
14. Breaking the law
15. loose
16. Potato junkie/Pretty vacant/Paranoid
17. Screamager
Pretty good setlist with two tracks from Suicide Pact-you first and Joey off their soon to be released album Shameless.
The year 2000 I was unemployed after working at KFC and Gunstones in 1999 but got a placement at SIF (Sheffield Independent Film).
I was on placement at nacro through New Deal.
Poster design via Procreate.
Took an old photo of a glass pane and lowered the opacity.
Drew an outline of the band and the album cover Suicide pact-you first! the logo and an excerpt from Potato junkie “James Joyce is fucking my sister!”
I like this poster I think it fits the aesthetic of what Therapy? are about with their DIY punk attack and homages the old cut and paste style of zines and posters despite being created digitally.
When I think of the year 2000 I think about a place called SIF which I had a placement at via New Deal Labour government.
Previously I worked at Gunstones bakery in Dronfield and KFC at Woodseats.
Like the track nowhere I wasn’t particularly motivated and depite a passion for music and films my love of art had dissipated somewhat after attending a signwork course for two years at Parkwood College that I didn’t enjoy.
I did enjoy Sheffield Independent Film on Brown St and it’s no longer there.
Rusty'sArtWerk 