the little dog laughed | halcyon days / 100 pipers
phoenix | the random notes
Local heroes around Harlow for a time in the mid-90s, we gigged infrequently around Essex and North London. We started off sounding a bit like Marillion, took a bit of a detour into widdly guitar solos, and wound up perhaps more like XTC or Crowded House. When we had difficulty finding a decent drummer, and our keyboard player moved to Canada, we gigged for the last year or so as a acoustic 3-piece.
I learned bass in a week to join this band at Uni!! Seriously, their drummer quit, and the bass player switched to drums, selling my his bass and teaching me the parts. We played a wonderfully idiosyncratic of proggy, jazzy, poppy rock (from It Bites to Queen to Oscar Peterson... all in the same song!!). We gigged at UEA and around Norwich, and studio tracks appeared on volumes 1 and 2 of 'Shoot the Canary', snapshots of the Norwich music scene. Reunion recordings have had some airplay on BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting Service), thanks to Damian Watson, mad drummer and producer/presenter.
An offshoot was 'The Hassle Faction', whose jazz gigs around Norwich in 1991 are probably responsible for my crappy degree!!!
A 3-piece 'jam band' who never gigged, but could at one time cover pretty much any song by Rush. We also did a mean version of 'With or Without You', but the tapes will never see the light of day... We got together again in 2003, and have continued every few months since - after 15 years, we still have a great time!
A young 7-piece jazz band, playing school fetes all over Essex, and had the dubious privelege of playing at the 1986 Liberal Party Conference!