Annotations: Graffiti On The Cenotaph

This was written in response to events pretty much as detailed in the song, just after the May Day demonstrations of 2000. I got EXTREMELY worked up and angry about it, discussed it in pubs a LOT, and read several articles (Most Notably Barbara Ellen in the Observer, and Tom on Freaky Trigger) where other people were similarly amazed about quite how much the pictures on the telly that night had affected them. It made me bloody angry anyway, and the writing of the song took longer than it should have because every time I wrote a new line I got angry all over again and had to stomp around the flat for a bit, being IRATE.

It was one of the first songs we recorded for This Is Not A Library, and I remember getting very excited about how it'd come out - it was learnt at the first practice we had when The Validators was nearly at their CLASSIC lineup, with everyone apart from Emma in their current places, and it felt GOOD to be getting a little bit inventive and GROOVY with what we were playing, especially when Tom started switching between PIZZICATO and BOWING. Oh yes!

When the sessions started going on a bit longer than hoped and we decided to put an EP out in the meantime there was some debate about whether this should be kept for the album or not, but I reckoned that it'd needed to come out as soon as possible before the events it described fell too far into the past. When it DID come out I was amazed by how many other people felt the same way, and how many of them would come up to me after gigs and NOD FURIOUSLY. It's lovely when that happens!