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41. Saw Doctors, Get That Wasp Off My Sandwich (1997)
As with so many bands, it was my dad who got me into them.
We were on a family holiday in France, and he got talking to some guy who was a big fan. On our return, he bought “Sing A Powerful Song: The Best of The Saw Doctors” on CD.
After two weeks of near-constant rotation, my family made a startling realisation: we’d finally found a band that we could all agree on.
The Saw Doctors will never be cool. They’re a bunch of middle-aged Irish blokes who sing jaunty, twangy folk-rock songs about the town they grew up in. It’s all pints of porter and catholic schoolgirls and I-miss-me-mam-and-dad and the occasional tin whistle solo. But there’s an honesty and a timelessness to their songs that more than compensates for their cheesiness.
(As an example, listen to ‘Red Cortina’ on Youtube. Can you really say that that isn’t a great song?)
My dad took me to my first Saw Doctors gig, at The Albert Hall in London. I must have been 16. Sitting up in the gods, I longed to be down in the pit, bouncing along to ‘Hay Wrap’, the frenetic, daft folk-punk song they finish gigs with (sample lyric: “Get that wasp off my sandwich!”).
After the show, Dad bought me this T-shirt as a present. It’s got the wasp lyric on the back.
For many years, the T-shirt only got worn under a jumper. As a navel-gazing indie kid with a wardrobe of Placebo and Radiohead shirts, I felt bashful about advertising my love for a band who sang jaunty ditties about wasps and sandwiches. But I still listened to their records, learned their songs on guitar, and trooped along to their gigs in the company of my dad, mum and sister.
After I left home, the T-shirt was relegated to the back of a drawer. I rarely wore band T-shirts anymore, and this one particularly seemed like a relic from a different time. I had turned into a grown-up with an iPod full of electro and lo-fi; the cheery old Saw Doctors looked increasingly incongruous, nestled between Saint Etienne and Sebastian Tellier. I rarely played them.
Then, at the beginning of this year, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. It soon became apparent that he wasn’t going to be getting better. As he lay in his hospital bed, I wrote him a letter to tell him I loved him, and to thank him for everything he’d done for me. Finishing it off, I added a p.s that I hoped would raise a smile from him: “Get that wasp off my sandwich.”
He died in April. Dad introduced me to so many great bands, from The Kinks to Lloyd Cole, but it’s The Saw Doctors that soundtrack some of my favourite memories of him. Driving to school in the car as they played on the stereo; jointly lamenting the terminal naffness of their later albums; hearing him sing snatches of their songs in a silly cod-Irish accent, as he pottered round the house.
At the age of 29, I’ve started to wear that T-shirt again. Not under layers, but fully on display. It’s a bit faded but it still fits nicely. I hope it stays together for a few more years yet.
Kit Ballantyne
