Reflections | The Mousetrap Factor

“When I was younger…”

Peter Goddard reflects on the original band A Better Mousetrap, the formation of The Mousetrap Factory and the origins of the songs on the beauty of routine.

In late 1980, I came across an ad for a singer that had been pinned to a Liverpool music shop notice-board. I can’t remember which shop it was (Curly or Hessy’s, perhaps) or what the ad said, but I remember being intrigued by the eclectic list of musical influences that it mentioned. In those days, ads in music shops were the standard means of recruiting musicians for bands. Refreshingly, this one didn’t say ‘Must like heavy metal’.

Musically, Liverpool was an exciting place in 1980, at the epicentre of the post-punk burst of national creativity which gave rise to The Teardrop Explodes, Echo and the Bunnymen and the host of other bands following in their wake. It felt as though Liverpool bands were progressing from obscure John Peel sessions to the singles charts almost every week. As a rather naïve and idealistic student, I had only recently pitched up in the city and found myself instantly captivated by its potent combination of crumbling Victorian heritage, against-the-odds optimism and music. I wanted to be part of it all. I quickly had to adjust my own 1970s musical influences to take it all in.

So I answered the ad. Within weeks, I had got to know Brian and Dave and was learning some weird and complex songs which somehow drew on a range of 1970s and ‘80s styles without quite belonging to any of them. Brian was the guitarist but much more than that – an inspired and generous songwriter, arranger and player, with the gift of making everybody else feel as though their contributions were just valuable as his. Besides that, he was such a good singer that I wondered why they’d ever placed the ad. But it soon became clear that Brian was far too self-effacing to seek the limelight. Instead, he was most comfortable sharing his gifts with collaborators.

Dave was his principal collaborator and it felt as though he and Brian had always worked together. As well as an accomplished bass player, Dave turned out to be a superior organiser. He had rehearsal bookings, rehearsal tapes, song arrangements, band communication, gigs and publicity at his fingertips. Every song had a lyric sheet, and I soon found that if I changed some lyrics during a rehearsal, Dave would present me with an updated lyric sheet when we next met, carefully typed by his partner Christine. In combination, Dave and Brian were formidable. Alongside them were Tony, art student and keyboard wiz, Steve the drummer, and me.

I wish I could remember the next couple of years more clearly. In the glow of hindsight, the sheer number of songs we worked on and the fun we had with them feels extraordinary. Brian seemed to turn up with great new songs almost every week – some of them we kept, developed and added to the set; others – just as good – disappeared for no clear reason almost as soon as we had played them. Dave contributed songs of his own too, while Tony and I added and refined sections and lyrics. We came up with a name for the band – A Better Mousetrap – and hoped that the world would beat a path to our door. Alas, any dreams of stardom that we might have had went unfulfilled.

Nowadays, I imagine we could easily have produced some magnificently recorded versions of the material that we rehearsed and performed so enthusiastically, but home recording was in its infancy and we were skint. Our sole release was a hastily-recorded cassette EP, by now featuring a different Steve on drums. The quality was poor and it makes for an excruciating listen nowadays, although it garnered relatively favourable reviews from Sounds and the Liverpool Echo at the time, as well as airplay on BBC Radio Merseyside (we were so proud!). But I am delighted that the material itself seems to have stood the test of time. Three of the four tracks appear in radically revised versions on The Mousetrap Factory album the beauty of routine.

A miraculous resurrection

We parted ways in Summer 1982 and, besides a promising day’s recording with Brian soon after which I wish had taken further, that was the end of our collaboration. Dave, organised as ever, kindly kept in touch occasionally, but I thought little more of it. I remained involved with the Liverpool music scene in various capacities, and kept an eye on some of Brian and Dave’s subsequent projects. But it was a complete surprise to be contacted by Dave at the end of 2019 with the suggestion that I might contribute to his solo project which became the Days in Corners album. Shortly afterwards, he persuaded Brian to arrange and produce it and, miraculously, we found ourselves working together again after a gap of nearly 40 years.

It was during recordings for Dave’s project – working remotely from each other in the midst of the Covid lockdowns – that we began to consider the possibility of working together on some of the Mousetrap material. Dave and Brian’s experience with Plenty had shown that it could be done, but could any of our obscure, complex and elderly songs really stand up for themselves in new, more up-to-date versions? Unprompted, Brian produced some song-beds for a few of the better-remembered songs. They sounded fresh and inspiring. It seemed worth a try.

And that is how The Mousetrap Factory (where the better mousetraps are made, geddit?) and the beauty of routine album began. Make no mistake though. This is not the album we would have made in 1982, even though some of the tracks are based on songs we played then. These are twenty-first century songs in twenty-first century arrangements rather than mere recastings of old bells. And I should like to think that we are all much better and more experienced at what we do than we were. Nevertheless, much of the same spark that inspired us as a band has survived and it has been enormous fun to revisit and revive old ideas while also creating much that is new.

the beauty of routine track by track

Here are some notes about the individual tracks on the album:

Trivia: For the 1980s band, Trivia was as close as we came to a signature song. We played it whenever we performed and it was the opening track on the band’s cassette EP. Its title and most of its lyrics betrayed our irritation with the banal normality of everyday 1970s mores – a theme present in several of the band’s songs. In its original version, Trivia consisted of three sections, with different opening and closing parts bookending the central song. The new version is relatively faithful to the structure and melodies of the original track, albeit with modern instrumentation and a lot more synths. There are only minor lyrical updates to the central section (‘I wait by the phone’ became ‘I scroll through my phone’, for example), but the spoken vocal in the first section has been completely replaced and the lyrics of the closing section mostly rewritten. Incidentally, one feature of Trivia was that the name of the mundane public figure mentioned in the central section changed each time we performed it. This new version namechecks Alan Partridge.

Distant Man: This was a song that Brian brought to an early rehearsal. It was played through a few times and then never heard of again; we never performed it live. Oddly, it has stuck with me ever since, perhaps because of its brilliantly catchy chorus, and I suggested it might be worth another look when we considered making this album. Besides developing the closing section and updating the overall sound, it hasn’t changed much in the current version.

Space: Space is the band in twenty-first century mode – a happy combination of one of Brian’s song-beds with a lyric I had written years earlier. I wonder what the original A Better Mousetrap would have made of it!

Contradiction: From what I can remember, A Contradiction in Terms was a song which appeared quite frequently on our set-list, with a lyric more obscure even than most of Brian’s. Here it is in an updated version, briefer than before, renamed and with a substantial lyrical rewrite which included removing the original title phrase. Perhaps it now has something to say about speech and meaning, but I’m not sure it is much less cryptic than before.

Humdrum: A Better Mousetrap usually performed a couple of covers of songs we were listening to at the time – choices which must often have baffled our audiences. It seems incredible now that we got away with a version of Dave Gilmour and Roy Harper’s Short and Sweet, for instance. We never attempted Peter Gabriel’s Humdrum, although it is exactly the sort of song we might have tried. This version came about quite suddenly in 2022 and it just worked…

Waiting / Monologue: Like Trivia, this track appeared on our cassette EP and in our live shows. It may once have been two separate songs joined together, hence the title. The ‘Time passes more slowly’ spoken sequence seemed very ‘modern’ to us at the time. Besides being shortened and performed with up-to-date instrumentation, this new version has not changed so very much from the original. Dave was particularly keen to retain his bass riff in the opening section!

I Stand Aside: I Stand Aside is a genuinely new song that went from acoustic demo to finished song in a matter of days, even though a few of the lyrics are again borrowed from an earlier project I was involved with. The finished song features a string quartet which somehow emerged fully-formed from Brian’s imagination.

Mrs. Green: The third song here that appeared on our 1982 EP is Mrs Green, probably another tribute to the mundanity of everyday life (although who knows with Brian’s lyrics?). As with Trivia, this is a song with an episodic structure. Lyrically, it is relatively unchanged, although parts have been rearranged and the overall sound is quite different. Mrs Green became something of a motif for the band, although who she is and what she represents remains a mystery.

The Nineteenth Day: Every album needs a song built around a compelling riff and, although A Better Mousetrap didn’t work on it for long, The Nineteenth Day always remained with me for the power and mystery that it suggests. This arrangement amplifies those aspects as far as they will go, reminding me of a Hammer horror soundtrack and closing with an orchestra in full flow. We couldn’t imagine how to follow this slice of Grand Guignol, so this track had to close the album.

Peter Goddard February 2023