Racecar Is Racecar Backwards

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Racecar Is Racecar Backwards is the debut album by the British rock band, Reuben.

Tracklisting

No-One Wins The War
Horror Show
Stuck In My Throat
Oh The Shame
Fall Of The Bastille
Freddy Kreuger
Tonight My Wife Is Your Wife
Eating Only Apples
Our Song
Let’s Stop Hanging Out
Missing Fingers
Song For Saturday
Moving To Blackwater
Wrong And Sorry
Parties Break Hearts
Dusk

Personnel

Jamie Lenman - Guitars, vocals, piano
Jon Pearce - Bass, vocals
Guy Davis - Drums

Also:

Nic Slack - Piano on 'No-One Wins the War'
Neil Lancaster - 7-String guitar on 'Moving to Blackwater' and 'Freddy Kreuger'
The Galaxy Quartet - Strings

Trivia

(From [the band's site])

The main riff from Song For Saturday was made up on the spot by Jamie when the band's manager asked to hear their new song in soundcheck. The new song they were supposed to play was Eating Only Apples, but their manager was disappointed that the joke riff wasn't part of it.
Eating Only Apples was originally called 'Tonight My Wife Is Your Wife', but Andy Ross from Food records was so upset when the name of the song was changed to something more relevant to the subject matter, the band promised to call another song 'Tonight...'
The single version and the album version of Stuck In My Throat are exactly the same tempo and can be played in perfect unison side by side.
Only 1000 vinyl copies of the album were made, each one signed by all three members of the band whilst watching a live Metallica video at Guy's house.
Two tracks that were meant to be recorded for the album but weren't completed after the drums and bass were laid down were 'Approaching By Stealth' and a new version of 'Alpha Signal Seven'. The tracks have now been lost.
Also lost in the recording process was a potential b-side, provisionally entitled 'Hell', which was produced by slowing down the song 'Oh The Shame' to half speed from the string section onwards to hilarious effects.
The band had gone into the studio a few weeks previously and recorded every song they had (some 40 tracks) in two days for consideration for inclusion the album.
The album's 'hilarious' name came from a conversation with Caretaker bassist Seb Carey about palindromes.
Although the lyrics hadn't been finalised in early performances, the 'Hell Is For Heroes' line in No One Wins The War was actually written a few weeks before the two bands toured together. The line was subsequently changed to something new about HIFH on most nights of the tour, and in fact most nights after that tour.
All the strings on the album were recorded separately by the band's friend and Guy's former teacher Rupert Christie, who then sent the recordings on CD to the studio where they were integrated into the tracks.
The members of the album team took it in turns to buy a loaf of bread each day for use with the studio's most important piece of equipment - the toaster.
The line 'party hardy marty' in the lyrics to Parties Break Hearts was lifted from the last scene in the classic film SCROOGED, probably one of the best films ever made, starring mother-fuckin' ghost-bustin' Bill Murray.
The title 'Fall Of The Bastille' has absolutely nothing to do with the lyrical content of the song. Although many other tracks on the album do appear to have cryptic and perhaps even irrelevant titles, they all do however have some kind of link, however tenuous, with the subject matter.
The first 3000 copies of the album went on sale with flawed covers - the inlay artwork didn't meet up in the middle, and they were printed on gloss instead of matt finish paper. These mistakes were corrected, and a serial number was added to the spine for all subsequent pressings.
The guitar tuning on most of the songs on the album can be achieved by tuning your guitar to simple drop-D tuning and then tuning each string down one note, so the strings go C# G# C# F# A# D#. Horrorshow, Freddy Kreuger and Oh The Shame are in the down-tuned equivalent of normal E tuning.
The artwork on all the singles released from 'Racecar was done at different times and put together by different people on each occasion, hence the slightly different style of each cover.
The photo featured on the cover of the album doesn't feature Guy at all, it features Jon, Jamie and their old drummer Mark Lawton. The photo was from an old shoot and had appeared previously (minus skellingtons) on the inlay of their first EP, Pilot.

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