A Study in Scarlet - a Rock Opera by Nutmeg Album

A Study in Scarlet - a Rock Opera by Nutmeg
Sleeve notes by Bosun Hardflank
In my 40 odd (and I do mean odd!) years as an audio-architect, as a sonic-sculptor, if you will, the most rewarding work I have been involved in by far has been the time I’ve spent working with Clive, Benji and Wendy on restoring and remastering the lost Nutmeg albums.
Keen Nutmeggers out there will be more than familiar with the ‘Arrow’s Rest’ project that was released in 2021 following my extensive ‘de-gravying’ efforts. The (relatively) huge success of this release led to Clive asking me, over a pork pie platter, if I’d be up to the job of curating the entire Nutmeg Archive. Would I?!! Yes, I would, I told him.
Imagine being given access to hours upon hours of unreleased material by your favourite artist - I’ve been like a pig in a sweet shop! When Clive gave me the keys to his lock-up (it was locked up) and I first let myself in, I had no idea just how much material the Nutmeg gang had been sitting on - quite literally as it turned out as Benji had fashioned a small armchair out of master tape boxes that he had sat on whilst doing his daily crossword puzzles!
There were hundreds of tape boxes. It took several trips back and forth in my Nissan Micra before I’d moved all of them from the lock up to Sunnyside Studios where the work was to be done. So many tapes - where to start?!
Clive had told me a tale of a night out that Nutmeg had had on his 32nd birthday on June 2nd 1988. The intention had been for the four of them (Clive Masters, Mahatma Coat and Benji and Wendy Wendle) to go and see a Tommy Cooper tribute act in Bournemouth that night, but Benji had become confused when buying the tickets and they had ended up going to see a Who tribute band perform Tommy instead. Nutmeg were blown away. Benji, in particular, had his socks knocked off by the experience and floated the idea past Clive that they write their own rock opera. Clive had readily agreed and suggested they adapt the Sherlock Holmes story ‘A Study in Scarlet’, which both Clive and Benji had recently read.
The band spent the next couple of days holed up in Clive’s lighthouse in Tintagel writing and recording the album. All was going well until the question of how to pronounce the name of the character ‘Stangerson’ came up. Clive was sure it was pronounced ‘Stangerson’ whilst Benji insisted it was said ‘Stangerson’. This argument went on for a fortnight, after which time Clive asked Benji and Wendy to go out to buy some soup and locked them out. For the rest of that summer Clive and Mahatma continued to work on the album in the studio while Benji and Wendy recorded their contributions on a Tascam Porta 05 4-track in the back of Benji’s van.
Autumn came and Clive relented, letting B and W back in to the studio, but the difference in recording methods can be clearly heard on the finished album and is largely responsible for the resultant sonic flavour (as I like to call it).
None of the band can remember why the album wasn’t released at the time. It could be that the murky copyright issues that would have surrounded the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at the time put them off - it could have been a profound lack of record company interest or support - I suspect a mixture of the two.
Either way, the fruits of my labours are presented here for your listening pleasure. Fully remastered, tidied up and edited to within an inch of its life, ‘A Study in Scarlet - a Rock Opera by Nutmeg’ is a very fine piece of work indeed, straddling that difficult line between The Wall and Jesus Christ Superstar, thankfully doing away with all the mind-numbing boredom of the former whilst embracing the toe-tapping appeal of the latter.
That’s it from me, for now, time to see what’s on the next lot of tapes….
Bosun Hardflank,
August 2023
Cornwall
https://idiotica-archive.blogspot.com/p/nutmeg.html

Clive Masters

Clive Masters