Alright you twisted freaks! I had to jump through hoops of fire to try get hold of this stuff. Here's the low-down:
Swamptrash were a Scottish bluegrass/psychobilly band formed in 1987 in Edinburgh. They split in 1990 when several of the members went on to form the wonderful Shooglenifty.
Swamptrash only released one album and a six-track EP during their short career. Fronted by vocalist and banjo player Harry Horse (real name Richard Horne), the band came up with an innovative way to bypass all the bureaucracy of having to phone or send tapes to clubs and pubs in order to get bookings. Basically they spun a wonderful yarn about them all being brothers from Missouri, and Horse - who was really from Coventary and a successful political illustrator for many major UK broadsheets - fitted into the hillbilly role impeccably by turning up at venues under the name Billie Joe and asking them to "pass the hat round". As the routine proved to be quite successful it began to get incorporated into their performances and it wasn't long before Horse was drawling on between songs about "daddy getting his leg bitten off by a gator" or "how mamma had gotten sunk in the swamp".
After Swamptrash split, Horse continued his career as a successful political cartoonist. As well as having his work appear in books as diverse as a centenary edition of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde and children's book Magus The Lollipop Man, his illustrations would also regularly appear in The Observer, The Independent and The Sunday Herald. In 1993 he wrote a cult computer game for Time Warner called Drowned God - a graphical adventure game with a plot involving human history and the belief that "everything you know is wrong".
For Harry Horse the story ends tragically and somewhat mysteriously with the peculiar circumstances surrounding his death and that of his terminally ill wife Mandy in 2007. What was originally reported as a Romeo & Juliet style suicide pact later turned out to be something more grisly with Horse allegedly stabbing his wife over 30 times before turning the knife on himself and subsequently bleeding to death from multiple slash wounds.
Clearly distraught by his wife's rather aggressive form of multiple sclerosis, it is assumed that the incredible stress Horse was under manifested itself in bouts of deep depression and disturbing fits of rage.
Today, the recorded work of Swamptrash is exceptionally rare and difficult to come by, however, here at the Media Underground Nerve Centre I've managed to get hold of both their album and EP in mp3 format. Whilst I would love to acquire higher bitrate versions of this material, these recordings are available nowhere else on the internet. Appreciation and thanks go to Lesley Robertson for sending me this stuff and for going to the trouble of asking former Swamptrash members for their permission to do so.
Note: To download these mp3s you'll need an account with our BitTorrent tracker. If you haven't got one yet, you can sign up for free here.
Swamptrash - Bone (torrent).
Swamptrash - It Don't Make No Never Mind (torrent).
Additional resources:
Swamptrash on FSD
Swamptrash on Halfway To Paradise
Lazy Pict's History Of Acid Croft
Times Article: The Man Who Loved His Wife To Death
media-underground.net