Nyah Fearties

Home Town: Lugton, United Kingdom
Genre: Alternative
Albums: Callugula, Music for Tea Time

Similar Artists
Nyah Fearties, Junkman's Choir, Pogues, Ivor Cutler.

Group Members
Mr Luggs and anyone else who's around...

Instruments We Use
Drums, Vocals, Guitar, Banjo, Fiddle, Spoons, etc

Musical Style
Far-Out, Folk-Punk! Scottish traditional Jigs with a punk rock twist...

Influences
All Celtic Music. The Residents, Butthole Surfers, Leonard Cohen, Hank Williams, Conway Twitty, Dick Gaughan, King Tubby, Gregory Isaacs, Dead Kennedys...

Wow.

http://www.nyahfearties.co.uk/
http://www.myspace.com/nyahfearties

It's too bad more people don't know about them because they are one of the most extraordinary bands to come out of Scotland. Though they worked really hard, put out tons of records and gigged constantly, they never really found any peers. They were always opening up for bands who had nothing in common with them like the Jesse Garon and The Desperadoes or the Shamen. The Pogues connection is a claim to fame but they were 10 times wilder than the Pogues, with a liking for 10 minute long solos on oil drums and would have found little support from Pogues fans I think.

The other scene that might have supported them was the Dawson/Stretcheads/Dog Faced Hermans crowd. They kinda fitted with them as they all doing this confrontational mish-mash with lots of yelping. But most of those guys were younger urban types with a middle class background, influenced by the Fire Engines, bIG fLAME etc whereas the Fearties were from darkest Ayrshire, formed about 5 years earlier and were homeless buskers doing a Scottish version of Half Japanese with equal doses of punk, folk and although a lot of their stuff doesn't really show it, I'm pretty sure they were heavily influenced by the first couple of Foetus albums.

The "Blatter Cage" and these weird industrial grooves they would occasionally get into were just so intense. I'm think they would just look around in alleys near whatever venue they were playing, gather up a bunch of junk and just jump up and down on it as they played. Either that or batter it into the stage with clubs. They did have a drummer for a little while but that wasn't the same.

A copy of "A Tasty Heidfu'" should be in the Royal Museum in Edinburgh.

By the way, "Darkest Ayrshire" is just an expression. If you're from Ayrshire, it all seems dark.

Maybe I saw one of them wearing a Foetus t-shirt once?

Lugton is a nice little commuter village now. In the Nyah Fearties universe it's the wildest outpost of Scottish civilization.

TS: The Wiseman Brothers vs. The Wiseman Brothers
http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0003/944/MI0003944817.jpg?partner=allrovi.com
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3d/Nyah_Fearties_Band.jpg/1200px-Nyah_Fearties_Band.jpg

I thought they'd only put out one album, didn't realize they'd lasted so long. LOLing at some of their song titles, e.g., "Puddocks In The Mist", my dad being the only person I've ever heard use the word 'puddock' - proving my theory that people from Paisley once used to sound more Ayrshire than Glasgow.

I'm listening to them now for the first time. This is good raucous demented fun

Yeah, a really strong Ayrshire accent - that was part of their mythos which kinda was that their life in a Lugton barn was halfway between Straw Dogs and The Wicker Man. Did they hang around in Paisley much? Other than at actual gigs I used to see them in Kilmarnock and Ayr a lot, busking or at parties. But they traveled around.

I don't remember tbh, but Lugton's like 10 miles from Paisley - I know I know, it seems like another world from the bright lights and sophistication of Paisley...

XXXP -

I was brought up in N Ayrshire (Dalry) but all my immediate family are Paisley born and bred and there's definitely a Paisley way with certain aspects of speech and sentence construction that I don't really hear in Ayrshire or Glasgow.

Fearties lyrics are the best kind of brutal poetry.

Even just the elegance of:

Made her eat a pun o' cheese
Until she had a fit

Does anybody here know anything about a very early Nyah Fearties appearance on an Ayrshire comp cassette called something like "Free Fall"?
Would have been around 1982.
I'd love to know more about the cassette (if it existed!). Bands, song names, label, date. A scan would be a godsend...
Working on a Scotland discography 1977-84. I had just assumed the earliest NF was a couple years later. But I'd love to get them (the most Scottish band...) in.

Free Fall Vol. 2. Fearties track is called "Rubdown". I don't have a copy.

Davey Wiseman's son's band
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsTuiaqkyFk

Everything—Thanks for the confirmation/lead. Would you possibly have any info about the label or year of release? Interesting that there might have been a "Free Fall Vol. 1" or even 3, 4, 5...

Send me an email via the ilx system and I'll get back to you.