We Made Hay (10 Years Since The Cows Came To Visit)
It was 2009 In Manchester, when I put a record onto my turntable called ‘BBC Introduces, Pennies From Heaven Soundtrack’ and found ‘Make Hay While The Sun Shines’ by Billy Merrin. I was working on an LP of my music which was not going great. Then all of a sudden I had a wave of inspiration. I sampled the track into a beat, but got stuck on the lyrical content. I knew the beat was good, I also knew that this track had to be about my hometown of Church Stretton in Shropshire. After a few weeks mulling it over I called up my pal Will Betts who had previously provided me with some guitar from his own set of songs. As we were talking, the seed was planned. What if this was a stupid video featuring all of us being gangster farmers? The deal was set, this project had the green light. I called around people and set a date to film.
I got my friend from uni Chris Breen to come and run the camera which we did not return after a shared coursework project. I gave him the most detailed brief of ‘just point the camera and press record, we will do the rest’. Prior to filming, I had scouted locations and knew where I wanted to film. I managed to persuade a friend of mine who I worked with at CO-OP if I could use her partners farm for filming. We also persuaded local land lady Wendy who very willingly give up her beer garden at The Ragleth Inn, located in Little Stretton. The rest of the locations were just made up on the fly, shropshire is a beautiful location, so the background did a lot of the work for us.
I remember driving up to meet Will and his brother Jon on the morning of the filming. At this point I felt sick with nerves, I just wanted to film and get it over with, the clouds were gathering and rain was predicted all day. A few weeks before we had all recorded the song and were keen to make the video. The lads were fully keen and into the concept. When I met them, all I saw were flannel shirts, jeans halfway up one leg, pitchforks, spades and a whole lot of 90’s hip-hop attitude all rolled together, It was perfect. The filming was everything it needed to be. We all fully committed to the flavor and let rip. No holding back, no surrender. All my prior concerns about the weather, not being able to pull it off or have enough time, evaporated.
Once filming wrapped I started editing all this stupid shit together. It took form, we all laughed and that was that. We had done it, made a video which we found funny. We laughed about how we were Shropshires ‘Goldie Lookin Chain’ and how if people in the town got to hear / see this they would not be best pleased as some of the stuff in the lyrics are not all roses about our hometown. We put the video up on YouTube and then washed our hands of it. Little did we know that some mad shit was brewing.
After its online release, I kept seeing it being shared on Facebook by friends etc. The usual narrative is that this happens and then it drops off a cliff. To our surprise, people found this thing funny as well. People seemed to be proud to see their hometown and shropshire laid out, claiming ‘I’m From the SY6’ and sharing it with pride. A couple of us went down to the local (Bucks head) thinking we were going to get some heat from the video but instead people loved it, we were small time celebs in Stretton. This all kept going and going, things took a life of their own. One evening I was sat around talking with a few of the boys and someone mentioned they knew a guy who knew a guy that could maybe get us to open for ‘Goldie Lookin Chain’ when they passed through Shrewsbury. Never going to happen, or so we thought. To our surprise...we did, we opened their show! That night I signed a pair of boobs, a task that is a lot harder than TV and film make it out to be. Things were nuts and funny as hell. We were not a band, we had one parody song. The thing is, I made music ‘for real’ and my back catalogue and new music had no DNA of SY6 at all, but to me this did not matter.
Six months after the release of the video, I was at work. I got a call from someone saying ‘did you see it’ I was like ‘no what? What you on about? - ‘They ripped you off?’. Turns out an advert from Yeo Valley Yogurts used the same gimmick as us, rapping farmers. A concept not exactly unique to us, we did not own that idea, so I thought nothing of it until more details came out. They had some shots lifted directly from our video, a lead guy in a red shirt (not as good looking obvs) and some of the same gags. I know it could have been a coincidence but to the conspiracy theorists out there, there is some evidence to suggest this was not the case. I had previously called up Muller dairy before the video was released, I wanted to check that we could used the Muller brand and also try and flog the video to them for marketing. They passed (but sent me £10 voucher).
Now, some people seemed to think that Yeo Valley and Muller were connected somehow, I have no idea, nor did I really care that much. However, people seemed to care a whole lot more than me. There was an online petition that was launched to take the Yeo Valley video down and a rumoured boycott. The Sun newspaper even called me up asking to cover the story because they got a tip off, Shropshire had our backs! None of this actually amounted to anything. One thing is, Muller is not even based in shropshire (probs one of the may reasons Muller passed on the video in the first place), so the Muller lyrics in the video are redundant, we did not know this and thought they were based in Shropshire. Dumbasses.
As the years rolled on, people wanted more of the SY6. We did an ill advised 2nd video for a fruit and veg company which I am not a fan of and then left it as that. People wanted us to do something to mark the ten years. We kicked about the idea of doing something but to be honest I was never fully sold, it’s nice to dream about it but it wouldn't be the same. You need those careless times, and the vibe we all had when we all lived close, the gags were effortless to make, the tone was easy. I look back on this time foundly, I have a video of myself and my friends being idiots, that's all I wanted.
