Old Bands and Such
Now ive been in a fair few bands in my time and I’m sure I’ll be in more as every time i leave or one splits up i tend to find another pretty quick!! for anyone who’s interested in my previous bands this is a brief history!!!
Naked Twister
www.myspace.com/nakedtwister (1999 – 2002 and 2004 – 2006)
NT were my first “proper” band, by “proper” i mean not a bed room, sixth form, bad Nirvana covers band!! This band could also be dubbed my most successful. We had radio play and a single and some ace gigs!! The music is indie pop punk with some Wildhearts hearts style riffs thrown in for good measure!! i think i was lyrically at my best in this period, they are quite bold, unashamed and very confessional without being stupidly teenage and nihilistic!!! Songs like “Art of Falling Apart” and “Suffocate” are great examples of me dealing with a chokingly disruptive relation ship and the first signs of manic depression! Space Age Hero is my fave song we wrote together perfect pop punk with lots of sci-fi references!! The band on a whole had a stable line up, myself singing and playing guitar and those spectacular booze hounds the Hamner brothers providing the rhythm section!!
Our early gigs were chaotic affairs with us drinking too much and smashing things, this was really to mask our lack of playing ability! I think at one gig @ the bull and gate in london most of our instruments were held together by duct tape! We grew up musically on stage because as we got bigger people got more and more unforgiving!! One festival appearance springs to mind where we had no set list, no sleep and I wore a dressing gown to a less than good reception!
The band split up in 2002, due to record company pressures, oh the drama, hahahaha and reformed for a few gigs again be for we finally laid it to rest in 2006!!
The Menace/ Be the Hero
www.myspace.com/xbetheherox (2003 – 2004)
Only together a year but we toured extensively and I ended up with a “Menace” tattoo!! This is without a doubt the most intense band i have ever been in!! After Naked Twister fell apart all I wanted to do is make unfriendly and bitter-sweet music, and so “the Menace” was born!
Our live shows are what i remember most about The Menace, we used to open with a self titled instrumental song that really used to confuse people, and for a three pice we made a hell of a lot of noise! using loop stations and Kaos Pads to augment our sound! Sadly we only recorded 4 songs but we did do a music video for our track “Reborn” which is my fave song!
Yeah! Those Animals
www.myspace.com/yeahthoseanimals (2007 – 2008)
I’ve got mixed feelings about this band! Musically very off the wall and the first time i’d played bass in a band, which is now my instrument of choice! But the mix of people we’re wrong! The drummer was an old friend called ollie and the guitarist a nd band leader was a chap called Simon, Ollie and my self are very laid back and are from the jam around a song till it feels right school of thought! Si approach song writing like a maths problem and inevitably we clashed which consequently lead to a break up!
We only recorded 2 songs and gigged very sparingly as we were busy arguing over silly things like should we play the second chorus a step down!!! still one of my best lyrical moments came out in a song called “Seven days of disgrace” and I must say im a tad pissed off a wasted such a good band name on such a piss poor project!!! id love to reuse it if i do some other left field electro indie thing!!
Ethereal Fire
www.myspace.com/etherealfireuk (2010)
This was a short live but intence band 15 gigs in 2 months and more studio time than i care to count. This was the first band i joined as more of a hobby that a deperate grasp for fame and also the first band where i had no control over the lyrical content! On the music side i guided the band away from there proto grunge sound and tryed to make it sound more up to date ranther than grinding and ploding! Which i think i did songs Like “Oh! Sperfical” had all the hall marks of a song i’d defo had my hand in, an annoying riff that gets stuck in your head, a big chorus lots of stops and starts to jump to and a heavey head bang outro! I left the band when i moved to London…. There still going strong…. I still hate the name tho!!
Honerable mentions
Mavis (1997 – 1999)
First band 2 girls 2 adroganous guy, we used to play punk pop with our distortion pedels up full so you couldnt tell our guitars were out of tune and Greg’s (my life long friend and drummer in Naked Twister) drums we held together with gaffer tape. We got quite a reputation, not because of the music but because of the girls and mine and Gregs instrament smashing!! we did have a few good songs, if you cought us when our guitars were tuned that is!!! “Look inside the T.V” is still a a fave of mine and a bit of a landmark in my writting!!
Last Stand Grenade (2009)
This was a great little project and the best band i was in that never gigged!! This was all of naked twisters line up but every one doing different things! it was great to rework a few old songs like “Apperance” which greg wrote back in 1996! We also wrote a host of new stuff which was really riff heavy and excited all of us! Like i say this is my best kept musical secret!!
