Chocolate Filled Frown


We played one of my old band Big Day Out’s songs on Glyn's and my radio show on Sunday, which has been in my head ever since.

Chocolate Filled Frown was one of the first things I wrote with Mark Smith back in 1999, when our lead guitarist Rich left the group and we became a three-piece. I have a very clear memory of the two of us sitting around a table in the kitchen of my old house in Stotfold, finishing it off. Mark had arrived with the verse riff and the first few lines in his mind, which we fleshed out in a single session, with him on guitar and me on bass. I suggested the bridge (which I sing) and we both came up with the chorus.

It was an exciting time for the group. While we’d had a fair amount of local success as a four-piece (winning the ‘coveted’ prize of Best Band in Hertfordshire 1998, no less), things had started to go slightly skew-whiff. Rich wanted to steer us in an unconvincing musical direction he termed ‘Happy Metal’, which lacked soul. Then all of a sudden, he left. At first, the three of us didn’t know if we could carry on without him, but we soon changed our mind, after working on a quasi-love-song I’d written about the split, called Cheating Heart. After that, we never looked back (except for when turning left or right). We grew stronger and closer than we’d ever been. Mark and I moved out of home a few months later to become flatmates and the band went from strength to strength (and other such clichés).

Chocolate-filled Frown is a simple pop song, but there’s nothing wrong with that. The title and the 'watch the McVities don’t go to your head’ lyric were inspired by the mass of chocolate digestives we devoured as we wrote it. Being in Big Day Out was fun, even if it did bring on type 2 diabetes.

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