Does This Hurt?

Martin's notes: I remember writing this at the same time as the ‘Boo Up!’ songs. We used to rehearse in a squat on Seel Street in Liverpool where Rob used to live. His drums took up most of the room so the rest of us would play sitting on his bed. I can’t recall the inspiration for this but I was quite proud of the repeating chords (maybe it was Dylan’s ‘Positively 4th Street’?). When we first visited the Columbia offices in New York I was introduced to a girl whose name was Caroline and this was her favourite song. Somehow I don’t think she had listened to the lyrics. I don’t really like this version; there are too many effects. I think I had wanted more of a Buffalo Tom sound to it. Poor Ed, he was a bit older than us and was trying to be healthy with his salads and his exercise. We thought he was a bit of a twat because we were young and indestructible and not above a bit of twattery ourselves. Ed was a good producer but we wanted to produce only we weren’t quite ready. He had this idea of how we wanted to sound, the problem being that we didn’t want to sound like that anymore. This record would have sounded completely different if we had done it ourselves, it also wouldn’t have sounded as good as it does. I think we learnt a lot from Ed but we would never have admitted it at the time. I remain his friend.