A friend of mine that used to play in a synth pop band with me in the early 80s ( called "the name" ) put some pics from then up on his facebook page. I am the bass player on the right ... omg ... what a baby I was 30 years ago. Scary stuff.




And here with post punk spiked jelled hair looking like I was playing with The Cure ... along with Steve Dillon having his nightly psychotic episode .... entertaining stuff. The song was Figment Of Imagination ( this has just been lifted from a live cassette but gives you an idea ).



To give you some idea of the size of the sound systems we were using back then, the mixing desk you see in the foreground of the photo below is not the PA FOH desk as that is way out in front of the PA. This was the desk side of stage just for the monitor sytem and had a dedicated audio engineer just for that job.




We played 100% original music and wrote some great pop songs. We used to open for INXS quite often. This was before synths had patch memories so all patch changes were setup on the fly. Ken Stephenson the keyboard player was using a Roland Juno 6 and a Fender Rhodes and a minikey Casiotone keyboard ... dunno how he managed to completely reprogram an analog synth in the break between songs .... but he always did. Steve Dillon is the lead singer who expertly projected his mental health problems on stage while singing . Frank Tayla is playing the very unique lead guitar parts ( sorta like Steve Howe crossed with Andy Summer ). While we had a few drummers over the years ( I think they all self combusted like Spinal Tap's drummers ) the live tracks feature our last drummer Andy Majewski who laid down a really great groove for us to work with.


Here are MP3s of some of our original songs.

Turn The Radio On

Girls Can Swing

Beat Basic


Now we never recorded the following songs, they have just been lifted from a cassette that was recording one of our live gigs so bear that in mind the sound quality isn't great and obviously there were definately no overdubs here .... it is as it was warts and all. We did have a decidely "Split Enz"-ish manic side.

Action Stations

I Don't Have The Time

Cinema Show

Gotta Getaway

Old Fashioned Girl

Parttime Paradise

Cinderella In Blue Jeans

Cold Outside

Is Anybody Here



[This message has been edited by Nigel (edited 05-11-2010).]

Nigel, I think YOU were really the inspiration for a very famous (think Spinal Tap)character.

(HOT...HOT...HOT)!

Got a few of mine like this....puffy sleeved shirt...double neck Mosrite painted in peace signs and hippie colors.

What memories!

(Lookin' good, "young" Nigel)

Old Russ

I always love this Spinal Tap quote ...

On Ian Faith's duties as manager:
David St. Hubbins: "It's not your job to be as confused as Nigel."

Cool Pic Nigel, and great tune as well. Loved it!

Paul

Hi Nigel,
Just ran into the above mentioned keyboard player, Ken Stephenson, in Melbourne, Australia a couple of days ago
Even though he seemed slightly disturbed at the re-emegence of this material, he was philosophical, simply asking "what were we thinking".
As a bit of a completionist, he wished to set the record straight about this pre-preset pre-MIDI synthesiser era (and if you can't do it on SynthZone, where can you do it).
He mentioned that there were in fact two more crucial elements to the keyboard setup not mentioned above. Along with the Juno6, Fender Rhodes and Casio something or other, there was:-
- a Roland SH-3A Monophonic No-Preset Synth that would never stay in tune and eventually fell apart under repeated smashing once he realised that it could make a white noise sound that could rival the loudest snare drum, and
- a Stuffed Parrot gaffa taped to the aforementioned SH-3A. He wasn't sure what its purpose was. Apparently, it just seemed to be right at the time.

So thanks for posting this. I'm sure Ken will sleep better knowing the record has been straightened.

cheers
silvadaws

[This message has been edited by silvadaws (edited 05-27-2010).]

[This message has been edited by silvadaws (edited 05-27-2010).]

Well I think the reason should be obvious. Ken was trying to turn it into a "Polly"-synth

good one. That comes under the heading, "wish I'd thought of that".



chas