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Have you ever been in a musical group now before or since and are you willing to tell us all about it?

by 97 Comments

Basically. I just want to hear some great stories.

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  1. I played lead guitar in Paul and the Dynamics, an unpopular beat combo in Sarfend. “Southend’s Rock! Twist! Beat! Combo!” according to our over-ambitious manager. Somehow he got us a gig at a groovy basement blues club standing in for somebody who’d cancelled. By the time we’d got to the end of The Rise and Fall of Flingel Bunt, our first number, bluesed up for the occasion, we’d cleared the whole place. We had to watch them filing one by one up a circular staircase. We didn’t get paid.

  2. We were due to support Gary Glitter on a local gig circa 1982. His road crew showed up and they were full of themselves. Gary needs this and Gary needs that, that sort of nonsense. Gary didn’t show up for the gig. Gary didn’t tell his road crew that he wouldn’t be showing up for the gig. Gary’s road crew didn’t know that the venue had an outdoor pool of North Sea water attached. They soon did.

  3. We had a George, but then had to do with a Richard, a Simon and a James, but, all things considered, we were The Wallands Primary School equivalent of the Beatles. The same sense of adventure and the same instrumentation. Well, all bar the lack of instrumentation. But we gigged every playtime, in the natural amphitheatre that looked out over the railway and the woods where Conrad was caught doing a poo. With a ready supply of Beatlesesque songs ringing from our tonsils, we were Lewes’ biggest coulda shoulda. Having had the honour of a command performance for Mrs Purskey, the headmistress, we peaked, my parents sent me to boarding school and that was that. But the Walnuts live on in the teary memories of many a Lewes pensioner to this day. I wonder if there is a blue plaque?

  4. The Shifting Balance was a six-piece – vocals, lead and rhythm guitars, bass, drums and keyboards – that met every Monday night in a tiny soundproofed dungeon in Kentish Town. Willfully distracted by booze and joints, we developed an eclectic setlist of covers and originals. I had a song called Rumentrude, lamenting the fate of the humble dairy cow:

    You can buy her milk at Tesco
    She likes to eat alfresco
    Her jaws never take a rest
    She knows what she likes best

    The drummer was an arse. Stylistically similar to Animal from The Muppets, he splattered his hyperactive beats over everything. He used to skin up on his snare drum, and I would turn my guitar amp up to max and generate some big vibrations to bounce his joint all over the place.

    We played a few proper gigs, including one at the University of London Union, to a crowd of a few hundred. But we lacked any clear vision of what we wanted to be. Fond memories and a little CD of our efforts remain.

  5. I was bassist in Half Man Half Biscuit’s support act at Harlow Square, c. 1992.

    More recently, I sat in with The Pony Collaboration at my 50th birthday gig, which just reminded me why I stopped performing in public 25 years ago.

  7. I was a drummer in a (mildly) popular Belfast punk band, The Idiots. One side of a Good Vibrations single, the theme tune for the ‘Shellshock Rock’ movie, and goodnight Vienetta. Main claim to fame is being called an orange bastard by one of Derry’s lovable moptop combo The Undertones.

    • The Idiots? You’ll know punk personality Dee Wilson then? I don’t, but I occasionally hear about his literary endeavours from the Kylemeister, Kyle Leitch – one of Belfast’s several godfathers of punk.

      • Did you know Oscar Askin? His given name was Thomas but he was known as Oscar because he was such a grouch. He was in a band called Colenso Parade around 1984 and was my boss for a couple of years in the mid 90s when I worked in Waterloo.

      • Dee was the drummer when I joined (as bass player). After 1/2 hours practice it was painfully obvious I was no bass player. What was also obvious was that Dee had no real tub thumping ability, so we swapped. Not long after, Dee left.
        A few years ago I offered to proof read Dee’s book, which details his theory that Belfast, along with London & New York, was instrumental in the rise of punk music (I know). It took me hours to do the first chapter as grammar & spelling are not really among his strong points, so I bowed out. Still waiting for the boo to be published. Perhaps you can help?
        I know Kyle from his days in the original Caroline Music, which was my destination on a Friday evening with my H&W pay packet burning a hole in my pocket.

        • I think Dee’s book falls outside my area – as I understand it, his idea is that some camp hairdressers in Bangor invented punk. I’m sure he’ll get his ideas out there eventually if they’re important enough to him. 🙂 I speak as someone chipping away at a long-gestating book myself…

  8. Oh yes. Teenage combos with a then girlfriend and later with mates or people we advertised for in the music papers. The thrill of doing a gig at school the week after you have left, to a genuinely packed hall will probably stay with me forever. In the early days I just sang, but later played rhythm guitar as well, having learned a few chords from a Billy Bragg songbook. Think Buzzocks, Jam, Smiths etc and you would have some idea of what we were aiming for but we had way less tunes. It was mostly fabulous fun but chronic stage fright (coped with by drinking a few pints of cider beforehand) and a general lack of talent put paid to any ideas we had about going any further than the local scout hut and pub gigs we actually managed to do. However I can honestly say people have paid to see me. And didn’t ask for their money back as far as I know. I tried to do other things in my twenties but life got in the way.
    I still play guitar a bit when I’m in the right mood but I have never really progressed beyond the 3 or 4 chords you needed to play the type of songs we used to bash out.

  9. Very briefly – just one gig and then “musical differences” foiled wider global acclaim and riches.

    We were called Emil and the Detectives – a four piece – drums/bass/guitar/vocals – and played a set of punk-ish seasonal classics at Sheffield Poly’s Ballard Hall of residence Christmas party in the late 70s. Thankfully no recordings exist as we were truly terrible but everyone was pissed so it was a modest singalong success.

    I was on drums, a chap called Nigel on bass and then the very beautiful punkette Joanne on guitar and vocals alongside a former England schoolboy international footballer called Loz on lead vocals. It didn’t last – sadly a friend of a friend invited himself to our next rehearsal and turned up with a Marshall amp and Les Paul Goldtop and tried to take us in a new jazz-rock direction a la Spinal Tap. Our minimalist musical abilities were shown up and the lovely Joanne packed up and left. And that was it. Just the one legendary gig.

    My lasting claim to fame is that my drum kit at the time was formerly owned by seminal Manchester punk band, The Worst. It was a handsome turquoise sparkle Premier kit with a strange half tom – can just about see it half way down this page.

    http://www.boredteenagers.co.uk/WORST.htm

    I’ve had a couple of drum kits in the intervening years but still as utterly useless as I was back then.

      • Same when I was in the Nightriders (pre Paul and his Dynamics). The drummer was in a Boys Brigade marching band, where they don’t teach you to swing. Try playing Walk Don’t Run with a drummer like that.

        There were two rather good drummers at my school. One was Bob Clouter, the most nominatively deterministic traps man ever, later of Mickey Jupo’s Legend. The other was Dave Mattacks. The Nightriders drummer was neither of these.

        • Clouter & Mattocks (I’m sure he’s fed up with that misspelling by now) – brilliant. Did you have a Marshall Stack and Mike Stand at your school too?

          • Ha! There may well have been a Marshall Stack, since it was before they were a thing. As for Mike Stand, I was blown across the stage by a live one during a rare Nightriders gig. Saved by my rubber-soled chukka boots, luckily.

            Jupp, not Jupo…

  10. Me and the ex, both rather well endowed in the nose department, used to tell people we’d been asked to join a well known 60s band on their reunion tour. The band would then be known as Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Beaky and Beaky.

  11. Blue Lias (don’t ask) was Ned on Gibson SG, me on Shit Bass (because I couldn’t play guitar as fast as Ned), Chris on fall-apart comedy drum set, and Rob on Mini Korg. We played an eclectic and shit mix of Little Feat and Hawkwind, answering the musical question absolutely no-one was asking. We got one paying gig, but had to give the money to the roadie (who told us we were shit). High point: “supporting” the Average White Band at the local technical college, immediately before the AWB made it big and we fell apart. We were so shit even our girlfriends (sorry – “old ladies”) retreated to the bar. I won a Steeleye Span album in the raffle so the evening wasn’t a total waste. Kids today?

    • I know you said don’t ask, H. P., but is Blue Lias anything to do with the pub of the same name near Coventry? Sight of the name brought a distant memory of a pub sign with a blue-ish brontausaus (or similar) on it … a pub by a canal. A school trip, a week on the canals of the Warwickshire ring (as I think it was called), the Birmingham canal basin, Atherton, Coventry and back … 15 years old (me, not those places, obvs), 1979. Later spent 4 years in Coventry (I went of my own accord, rather than being sent), but never went back to the Blue Lias or on any canal.

              • Something that maybe doesn’t come across in my comment was the sheer stupid fun of it all. Being a shit band in no way compromised the fun quotient and maybe increased it. We were too lazy to work out songs, basically. Practise sessions (*derisive snort*) quickly devolved into pre-Spinal Tap “jazz workshops”, with Chris getting his brushes out and everyone cracking up. Having a laugh seemed much more important than learning stuff (which is maybe why I appreciate the Thai education system as much as I do), but inevitably the audience – such as it was – never had quite as much fun as we did. We only played one number which worked – an instrumental which began with a doomy descending chord sequence beore settling into a three (possibly four) note bass riff over which Ned got to “stretch out” and Rob’s MiniKorg at last seemed to make sense. Everything else we did (which I have mercifully forgot) was shit. But jesus, the laughs.

                • This in reply to HP’s post. Absolute nail on the head. It was the most fun ever. We were rubbish, we got a bit better. There was definitely a thrill when we got a bit better but mainly it was a laugh. Our practice sessions usually descended into a kickabout using the polystyrene head of a dummy that had been left in the community hall we “re-hearsed” in.
                  I think mum was a bit worried we were taking it seriously though as she had to stop the Austin Maestro one day after she’d collected me after doing the weekly shop at Fine Fare and asking me if I thought we were going to make it.

      • Ah, the Blue Lias! Happy memories of the long hot summer of 76 when some friends and I used to cycle over from Cov and spend the evening drinking rather more than was sensible considering the long ride back. Remember there used to be a decommissioned RAF Vampire jet in the pub garden.

  12. The band I was in never got out of the rehearsal room (or Church Hall as it actually was).
    Bass player was terrible, so I became the roadie instead.
    They got a couple of pub gigs when they found someone who could do more than an out of time 12 bar boogie.
    My greatest achievement: getting all the equipment in a mark 2 Vauxhall Cavalier, the other half in a Talbot Alpine, and the drum kit in a Mini.

  13. Name: Dandruff Pie 1969-1969
    Gigs:Zero
    Rehearsals: A few, St Lukes Hall, Brinnington, Stockport
    Personel: Bang Em In Bingham, Acoustic Guitar Vocals. Uggy, melodica,err percussion and err bowl of water . Peter Alfred Buck, vocals. Lancs, brand new white Strat, Moz Daniels, electric guitar and piano.

    Songs
    Albatross,
    Little Ole Wine Drinker Me,
    Frankie and Johnny,
    Barges,

    Originals
    Blackpool, St Ives, Blackpool (suite),
    We Went Down To Friday Bridge (On a summers day)

    Drug History…Ten bobs worth of Budgie seed and Asthma Cigarette materials, scored from Oddfellows Pub, legendary Stockport drug pub.

    Break up: Three of the lads became postmen (no not a band, actual postmen), it was time to split man.

  14. I had a brief classic-rock-ish combo circa 1989 with the fabulous Peter Wilson on vocals/keys, later to find fame and his true path in music as Duke Special. Three or four gigs including a washed-out motorcycle event somewhere up the country. We had a fellow known as Horrible John on guitar – because we all thought his trebly, hole-through-the-head amplifier sound was horrible.

    Since then, bar some solo/duo open mics for fun in the past couple of years, I’ve wisely done very little on a stage – a couple of gigs with my near-imaginary 90s studio assemblage/local-music supergroup The Legends of Tomorrow (one yielding a track for a live album) and a blistering, packed-out, semi-chaotic gig on Dec 30 2018 upstairs at a pub in Belfast (the ‘free in’ word on social media might have been to blame…) with my one-off punk-protest supergroup Bourgeois Fury.

    Well, I say ‘one-off’ but… Bourgeois Fury has just risen again, two years on. Video on a thread nearby… 🙂

  15. Four bands in the Eighties; at school it was The Element, a five piece where the guitarist wanted to be Brian May, the singer Bryan Ferry, and the keyboard player Kraftwerk; it didn’t work. The most rock’n’roll thing about that band is that three of them are now dead.

    At college it was Weird Sisters, my only proper go at fronting a band. I learned to play bass like Sting, ie sing bit, play a bit, sing a bit. We came second (or was it third?) at the Southampton University Battle of The Bands in 1984. We made five albums in six years, all original material, and all not actually albums. We just got a rehearsal room for a week and banged them out into a 4-track. I dug them out recently; they’re okay, actually, in a smell-your-own-farts kind of way.

    Then it was bass player in a power trio, the Tony Kay band, for a while. We practiced at a studio in Aston in Birmingham and one evening i dropped in there to pick something up, only to find them auditioning another bass player. Rock’n’roll cuckold! I stayed to watch, of course.

    Late Eighties it was The Quiet Earth, a quirky five-piece led by a Stevie Nicks wannabee who was actually quite good. I stood at the back and played groovy bass lines while she cavorted. Then I moved abroad and by the time I came back it was the 90s and I was too old for that sort of thing. I gave my bass away, although I still have its case. Theses days I occasionally record stuff with the other one who isn’t dead from band no 1, The Element, who no longer thinks he’s Brian May.

  16. I was rhythm guitarist in a covers band for four or five years in the early 2000s along with Scott on lead guitar, Mark on vocals, Andy on drums and Rob and later Steve on bass. We did loads of punk and ska stuff along with plenty of 50s and 60s rock and roll. We’d usually rattle through about 30 songs in two 45 minute sets and we probably had about 80 songs in our ‘repertoire’ at one point.

    We were originally called The Losers but Mark had a lightbulb moment, which came as a surprise to the rest of us, and suggested the name was a bit negative and was ‘holding us back’. Holding us back from what I’m not too sure even to this day.

    So, after a lengthy debate and numerous suggestions (Mike Hunt and the Golden Showers featuring Betty Swollocks etc etc – you get the picture) we eventually settled on Happy Hour. So we’d stick posters in pub windows saying ‘Happy Hour – 9pm Friday’ which, depending on whether you preferred a bit of live music or a cheap pint on a Friday evening, meant it was either a PR master stroke or a disaster. I suspect it was usually the latter for the audience, if indeed there was an audience, but it worked for us and for a couple of years we probably did around 25 gigs a year in various dodgy pubs in and around Nottingham, plus the odd wedding.

    £120-£150 a gig was the going rate, so £25-£30 each, although we did do a New Year’s Eve show once and I think we got £500. I seem to recall at one point doing three gigs in four nights which constituted a tour as far as I was concerned and by the end of which Mark had overdosed on Strepsils.

    Musically we weren’t the tightest by a long stretch but a certain audience seemed to appreciate hearing Jilted John, Too Much Too Young and others of that ilk. Continuous stage fright did for me eventually but I was easily replaced and the rest carried on for a few years after. Some great memories though and great friendships too.

  17. Of course I was in a band at school! 16 year old as NWOBHM hit so we played all the usual covers. I was the steady (“useless”) bass player and we had a decent drummer, a technically proficient widdly widdly guitarist and a musical genius on keyboards and vocals who worked out everyone’s part.

    We were terrible and it was the best fun ever but no names no pack drill.

  18. No is the simple answer. However a few years ago I did convince a young work colleague that I had been a member of 80’s popsters “Big Fun”. He believed I’d been on Top of The Pops even after I showed him some photos from the time.

  19. I was very briefly in a nameless band although I liked Revelation 6 as a name and (cringe) wrote to the NME about what a great new band it was. I had a Marshall amp and a Moog Rogue synth as well as a small white Casio keyboard (the same model used by the Human League in Get Carter). I can’t play – but since when did that matter, right kids? Two good guitar players – a clattery drummer and a confident singer who had a Roger Daltrey type stage presence.

    The idea was that I would do whooshy Silver Machine, Back in the USSR-type noises to add a mysterious edge to the Sabbath covers that my mates performed. There was also an original song penned by the singer. He saw it as a practice song and didn’t rate it at all. I thought it was OK and did a passable synth line to it on the Casio. We had musical differences after the first rehearsal – in reality I was too embarrassed to continue and I think they were too, but too nice to say. They did a very successful school gig at a local community centre as “Snowblind”. A very engaged (drunk) young crowd made for a really good experience.

    That gig was recorded over someone’s C90 recording of U2’s Live Under a Blood Red Sky. A group of us listened to it a few days later, most of the band appalled at how shit it sounded. Presently; the U2 songs underneath kicked in.

    Someone joked that the vocal was a bit off and the bass player agreed that he had really stuffed up his bit. In a classic pre-Spinal Tap moment of exquisite comedy I could see that a girlfriend of one of the band was really getting into it. She wasn’t at the gig. She started to pipe up along the lines of “actually guys, this is pretty good!” . Quick glances were exchanged and a reluctant acceptance that perhaps that Sunday Bloody Sunday song was sort of all right I suppose. She was then in full pep-talk mode saying that they need to believe in themselves a bit more.

  20. Much loved school band called Exit (because the drummer had an old Exit sign we put a lightbulb in and stood on the front of the stage). We did a gig at a crowded youth club which went pretty well but when we saw the pictures taken by a girlfriend using flash in the darkened hall, in every one there is a large poster behind the drummer saying POPPY PATROL. Evidently the Brownies had used the hall earlier in the evening.

    In the late 90s I had a short lived duo with a very self obsessed individual who swiftly displayed rock star tendancies way out of proportion to his insignificant small middle aged bloke status. Our last gig was turgid beyond belief as I phoned it in with barely any battery left. The Sunday lunchtime pub audience consisted of two old soaks at the bar, one regular and a mate and his wife who spent most of it with her head in her hands. Beyond awful. Imagine my surprise when I was told we had a rave review on the local music website. Reading it I quickly realised my ex-partner had written it himself, bigging up his performance, deeply insigful songs and the adoring audience. He flatly denied it but suspiciously a remarkably similar one appeared a few weeks later after his first solo gig, which was equally sparsly attended. To give him his due for brass neck, he wouldn’t admit he was the author but it was clear to me as the first one contained details no one in the audience could possibly have known. Needless to say he remained a solo act to the best of my knowledge.

    I now have a folky bluesgrassy duo which I love and a twin guitar rock band with lots of gratuitous soloing which I also love, both totally dickhead free and currently in dry dock, sadly.

  21. Not me, but back in the 80s four of my close friends formed a serious industrial type band called Sucker Bait. Only one member could actually play an instrument, the guitar. The other three just banged away on pieces of metal and screamed loudly. One of their songs was called Peter Kurten, Dusseldorf Vampire. They never played a gig, never recorded a thing. However I can still remember the pang of jealousy when they used to talk about their rehearsals in front of me. Ah! to have been in a band. Any band.

  22. As a 15 year old me, Oughty and Westie were punk icons “The Thrifty Shoppers”,

    We are the Thrifty Shoppers
    We like the offers
    From down the store
    We go to Serengeti
    For cheap spaghetti
    And tins of beans
    For we are the Thrifty Shoppers
    We like the offers
    See what we mean!

    We didn’t play any gigs and (surprisingly) didn’t get a recording deal.

    • This was the theme song of your Saturday morning cartoon show. It was brill. I liked the way Oughty kept getting rolled down the aisle in a shopping trolley and crashing into a mountain of tins! And as he sprawled on the floor he said “I’m off me trolley!” and everybody laughed!

  23. The place : Portscatho Memorial Hall
    The year : 1964 give or take a year
    The band: The Thoobs
    The members : Chris Pollard on vocals, Trevor ‘Piggy’ Green on guitar plus one or two others who’s names and faces escape me. Oh! I was on drums. I was also terrible. Looking back I think I know what my main short comings were – I had never played drums before and, possibly more important, I am left handed and the borrowed drum kit wasn’t.
    I think we must have ‘played’ with that line up perhaps 2 or 3 times before I left (possibly due to musical differences rather than the fact I was clueless being blamed)
    The Thoobs blossomed on The Roseland during the following weeks (months possibly?!?)
    I am not bitter!

  24. Albert Fish played The Cowdray Hall every Friday night for about a year. I think we got twenty quid a gig. During the week we rehearsed whatever groovy single took our adolescent fancy and added it to our extensive repertoire. After the shambles of the first few weeks we actually got to be not half bad. The crowds steadily grew from twenty or thirty mates to perhaps around a hundred actual paying punters. Our lead guitar, Johnny P, was pretty damn good. Fat Harry on vocals had something of the Frankie Miller about him. Bobby Wishart held things together on rhythm guitar and Jamie K when he wasn’t oot o his heid knew his way to and sometimes around the drum kit.
    The bass player, a moody but strangely compelling figure, at least on his own personal planet, never quite mastered his instrument. Each week he submitted a new song to his playmates, songs which usually contained references to elves or nubile princesses. Each week the rest of the band would smile wanly and move quickly onwards.
    “Do you mind if Jeanie here joins us for a wee jam? We were wondering if maybe you could work the light show whilst we run through a few numbers?” I watched as Jeanie, who seemed to have forgotten to put on her bra that morning, bounced around the stage playing her bass with a panache clearly way beyond my limited reach.
    I left Albert Fish shortly afterwards to pursue my career as a highly talented singer-songwriter. The rest is history.

  25. One of my unexpected thrills of 2019 was the re-release of a single I recorded with a band back in the 1980s. World Series were a jazz-funk band in the period 1982-84, when the so-called ‘Britfunk’ movement was in full swing. We gigged a lot, playing around London at Dingwalls in Camden, the Cricketers at the Oval, the Rock Garden in Covent Garden and the Production Village in Cricklewood. We also had regular weekly gig at the Bull & Gate pub in Kentish Town.

    The line-up at this time was myself on drums, Keith on bass, Mike on guitar and vocals and Andy on keyboards. In 1983, we recorded three tracks at Woodcray Manor, a farmhouse studio in Berkshire. We chose two of the songs from our set, Head Over Heels and Try It Out, for a double A-side single which was released by a small independent label, Baskerville Records. The single was played on Robbie Vincent’s soul show on Radio London and a few other local radio stations, and we did a few promotional appearances with DJs such as Pete Tong. We continued to play live and drew increasing numbers to our gigs, but no major record companies came knocking.

    36 Years Later… and Mike, now living in Greater Manchester, was contacted by French DJs Clémentine & Saint-James from Parisian label Chuwanaga. They said they had got hold of a copy of Head Over Heels/Try It Out and were interested in re-releasing them both. At first we were sceptical, but Saint-James assured us he really liked the tracks and was producing a 1980s Britfunk revival festival and accompanying album. He would remaster our songs and release them as a stand-alone single.

    Since Mike couldn’t immediately lay his hands on the master tape, I sent my test pressing of the 1983 single to Paris, in the hope that they could use this as the source for the remastering. Amazingly, through the wonders of 21st century recording technology, a few weeks later Mike and I received an email with a link to the cleaned-up and newly mixed songs. The results were remarkable given the source material.

    Over the summer, Chuwanaga rolled out a pre-launch marketing campaign for World Series on social media. The single was played at their DJ gigs and festivals during the summer. They posted a clip on Facebook of a beach party in the south of France, with everyone dancing to Try It Out. As the story unfolded I never stopped thinking this is just unbelievable. Mike and I thought what we were doing at the time was good, but we never achieved much recognition beyond our local following. To have it appreciated like this so many years later was just surreal.

    Clementine and Saint-James went to London in June for the Britfunk revival festival. One Saturday night they appeared on the Gilles Peterson show on BBC Radio 6. Gilles devoted an hour of his show to Chuwanaga’s Britfunk revival and during the show, they played Try It Out in full. Our first play on national radio. The single became available on Spotify. My daughter works in advertising and one day she told me they were playing World Series over the sound system in their office. It was just one bizarre thing after another.

    If this were a movie, the ending would have us doing a nationwide tour and getting to number one. But our audience remained selective.

    Back in the day… Our live act was improved with the addition of Pablo Cook on percussion. In 1984 Andy left the band and we recruited Mark Ambler, an excellent jazz pianist and synth player, who had a brief time as a pop star with the Tom Robinson Band.

    World Series dissolved in 1984 just after we recorded a song that was planned as our next single. Although we had continued to refine our live act, something of the original chemistry and camaraderie had been lost. Then the bass player quit and we drifted apart. You throw these things away without proper consideration when you’re young, thinking you’ll just move on to something else. But the reality is it’s hard to recapture the momentum of a band that has worked at building a sound and an audience.

    Of the other band members, I am still in contact with Mike and Pablo. Mike plays live in and around Manchester, working under the stage name Mickey Van Gelder, performing his own compositions, inspired by blues and jazz standards. He is also a lyricist and occasional singer with the French R&B/jazz group The Swinging Dice.

    Pablo Cook went on to great things as a percussionist with artists such as Moby, Pulp and William Orbit. He was a member of Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros, worked with Lily Allen on her first recordings and most recently, he played at the farewell concert for Soft Cell at the O2 in London.

  27. Bellows – quite correctly – gets a damn good kicking for most of his contributions to what no-one is calling the “Flog”, but credit where it’s due say I! How about awarding him a Special Hamper International Trophy for this, the most enjoyable of threads?

  28. My avatar shows me on stage with my last band, Neil Gowans and the Winos, fronted by another member of this fraternity, Turtleface. I was in the band for about 11 years, not a bad effort for blokes in their 40s and early 50s. We graduated from the London and Herts toilet circuit to promoting our own shows, which were money spinning at first but spoiled by a lack of reliable bands. When my mum got sick and I left full time work, something had to give, but it was a great farewell gig.

    In the 90s I’d been in a post-britpop act called the Hansens, with a few good tunes but lack of gang mentality – without that you’re knackered. I went on holiday for a week, asking the others to sort out a rehearsal date in my absence. When they hadn’t I quit and bought a bass.

    After that I was lucky to be in a duo called Trip Fontaine for a bit with a ridiculously talented singer and guitarist who wrote great songs at a frankly terrifying rate. After a year or so he was headhunted by a great band signed to Island who, like most, sadly didn’t make it past the singles stage. He’s now a highly successful YouTuber.

    My biggest claim to fame is my first, school band, playing to large (let’s face it, captive) audiences at school discos. We were a rudimentary blues rock act, but the first singer was a firebrand. Not much of an actual singer at the time, but he was a 16-year-old Bon Scott, a local legend of drinking, shagging and devil-may-care pranks. He had no interest in doing anything other than being a rocker, ‘Never have a safety net’, he once told me, ‘It’s this or the dole for me’. Sadly, he fell out with the drummer and left the school after his GCSEs. Later on I was told he’d formed a band called Reef. Good on yer, Gary.

    • In the uni band I may have mentioned before I had to switch from lead to bass because I sawed a chunk off my left index finger cutting down a pair of Levi’s with a razor blade (so, so, 1966). Guy VDGG Evans and I made a handy rhythm section, and I cooked up a 30-minute medley starting and finishing with James Brown’s Night Train and including the likes of Knock on Wood, Hold On I’m Coming and I Can’t Turn You Loose. The fact that I regularly held it together through that lot tells me I wasn’t a shit bass player at all, with my Burns Sonic bass and my 10’ high bass amp bought from a bloke on the Coventry ring road.

  30. Haven’t done anything for a while, but in the late 90’s I was in a few bands – got close to being being signed on a couple of occasions and played numerous gigs around London, The Garage, Dingwalls, Borderline, 12 Bar, Camden Falcon, Hope and Anchor etc.

    Main claims to ‘fame’ – played in a band for a while with Patrick Duff (who used to be in a band on Food/Parlophone called Strangelove) and one of my songs is on a Blue Aeroplanes album (not one of their famous ones though)

  31. I’ve been in a few. For someone who is not overly accomplished I did alright, particularly in the right place at the right time department. Favourite band name was at college in 1976 when I was bassist / singer with Block Capitals & the Bold Types. Before that, in early Jan 1975 during my trip back home from college in Jan 1975 I sat in with my mate’s new band Foxy on rhythm gtr / elec piano / vcls and played support for Rory Gallagher’s 2 night stint at the Ulster Hall. Our lead singer had announced that he couldn’t get off night shift to do the second date, so we just managed without him with me and my mate sharing lead vcl duties. Later in Belfast I did a 2 year stint as pianist / backing singer with Dino & the Dolphins. I started on rhythm gtr / piano but they quickly and politely steered me way from the former instrument. Our singer was younger brother of Chrissie Stewart, bassist with Frankie Miller and so we got the support band slot for his short Irish tours in 1977 and 78 which were at big venues, for that time. We also opened for Sassafras at Queens University Student Union. They were very nice to us, as were the majority of professional musicians and crews that we encountered

    I moved to England and that was it until 2015 when a quirky little folk-jazz combo turned up at my local folk club singaround and asked if anyone fancied being their bass player. I was in like a shot, and loved playing in that band where I was given complete freedom to play anything. But we never got any gigs and it became apparent that the odds were stacked against us. But I redeveloped the taste for it and when I announced I was leaving to try my hand at open-mics on my own, 2 of the band asked if they could come too. We first played together as a trio on New Years Day 2016 which means we’ll be 5 years old in 2 days time. We play a folk / Americana repertoire but what we really like, and are currently missing like crazy, is hosting our own monthly open-mic which we’ve done for over 3 years

    In the late 60’s I knew a guy at school who was, by our standards, a very good lead guitarist. Some years later when I met him he gave me an excellent piece of advice which was “Never play in bands with people you don’t like. It’s just not worth it”. That sounds so obvious but when you see or hear of mega bands on tour who clearly detest each other you realise the wisdom of his advice. The best thing about my current band is that we regard ourselves as friends first and foremost

    • I second that last point. I’ve been lucky enough to be in quite a few bands, and nobody particularly poisonous in any of them, but have endured many shows with other bands containing at least one arsehole, and feeling for the other band ‘mates’ looking at their shoes.

      The Hansens had one gig with an amazing drummer who was far too good for us. He was traveling light, so asked if he could borrow some hardware (couple of cymbals and a BD pedal at most). The other act’s drummer kicked up a bit of a stink, but relented. Our drummer Marky then soundchecked, playing nothing flash, just completely in the pocket and their jaws dropped. To save face, the singer/guitarist singled me out during their check from the stage: ‘hey man, you can borrow MY guitar… if you can play this!’ He then peeled off a two-handed metal tapping wankfest, oblivious to the fact that he’d heard us check with our Silver Sun/Lemonheads-style power pop minutes earlier. Cue embarrassed shuffling around from his compadres.

      Another memorable tosser insisted on playing his guitar at a Dublin Castle gig at HIS volume through a half stack, despite the engineer mentioning this was impossible to balance with vocals/drums etc in a room that size. He wouldn’t budge, leaving them to play at stadium level sound to an empty room. Their audience, partners and all, sat it out in the bar. Speaking to their bassist after, it would appear this was to be their last show.

  32. No. I can’t contemplate playing anything for anyone in public. Everything would have to stay in E. Even then I’d shit myself.

    Didn’t our late friend James Blaast play bass in at least one heavy outfit in his youth? I got the impression from those here that knew him well he was very good.

  33. Shane Pacey, formerly of this parish, is a very good blues guitarist and singer. He heads a long standing Sydney/Central Coast blues band – the Bondi Cigars. He also has the Shane Pacey Trio. Lots of stuff on YouTube, Spotify etc.
    I never understood why they saddled themselves with that name. A Bondi cigar is a euphemism for a turd, that was spawned when the Bondi sewerage outfall was inadequate resulting, on incoming tides, in the beach being festooned with Bondi cigars. Why name yourself that, especially when you are good puzzles me. I guess they are stuck with it now.

  34. It’s all I’ve ever done. Since I was 14 (60 now), I’ve been in bands. Must be over 20 with around half being formed/lead/MDd by me.
    Nothing of any great mark, like the vast majority of working musicians.
    Enjoying the war stories above.

    • And yes, I was in a band with some mates from work. We were so crap that we couldn’t do covers and so wrote our own stuff. Made our own cassettes and CDs in a very punk way (this was the 90s though).
      Our lead guitar player couldn’t sing but wrote lyrics – I ended up with a huge appreciation for James Dean Bradford being able to fit lyrics to songs when there is no obvious fit in rhythm or line length.
      We had a drum machine that was more successful for us when it played a London showcase (I’m not kidding – a mate borrowed it).
      Ian on Keyboards/vocals, Me on vocals and rhythym, Chris on lead (we shared bass), and the occasional guest musician (they couldn’t stay because they were so much better than us).
      We were rubbish, but we enjoyed it. And that is the point, isn’t it?

      • I completely identify with the comment about being too crap to do covers. Try as we might, covers always sounded dreadful, which spurred us on to write our own stuff, which, unbelievably to us, sounded OK, if not actually that tuneful. But this was enough and it was terrific fun. Thank god youtube didn’t exist back then…

  36. I’ve been in a few bands, on and off since the late 1970s – sometimes playing bass, sometimes guitar, bit of blues harp. But in terms of dodgy stories: I remember playing the Rock Garden in Queen Street, Glasgow, with an outfit led by a keyboard player who was doing most of the writing – although it was the eighties, I recall that he seemed heavily influenced by Camel. I was playing guitar at the time. The rest of the band were students, I was coming straight from work, it was our first live gig.

    Firstly, dress code memo went astray – I looked like one of the Bad Seeds, transplanted into a boyband. Even my guitar was black. I looked like their evil uncle…
    Secondly, I hadn’t had any dinner – so I quickly sank a few pints of Guinness – after all, it’s food, isn’t it?
    Thirdly, I had changed strings too late, couldn’t keep the bugger in tune at all.
    Then my ancient tape echo blew up mid-number…

    One of my friends had come to see us. After the debacle, I asked for his honest assessment – “…like seeing an old friend getting mugged…”. “What, me?!” “No, the tunes…”

    I tendered my resignation the next day…

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