October 1992 - Rip it up magazine

Have to laugh about this now, but at the time we weren't too impressed!

So what happened?

The magazine asked to interview us, but were reluctant to nominate a time.

They finally settled on a time mid afternoon, which didn't suit any of us as we all worked/studied.

Wayne made himself available to attend the interview, but then they postponed it at short notice.

Wayne was pissed off, and made it known that this was an inconvenience to him. Hence the reference to our "lack of social grace"!

I remember at the time being pissed off with Wayne that the whole band was tarred with lacking "social grace" tag because of his behaviour! But this was representative of my general feelings of disillusionment with the band (and especially Wayne) at this time.

And I have since used the fact that it is stated in print that I lack social grace to my advantage many times since......though I'll leave it to your imagination to decide how I may have done that!

September 1992 - dB magazine

Change of plans....here's our first article from dB magazine. As you can tell from the interview, we didn't take it very seriously.

The photo was taken from a photo session we did in a forest. I think there were around 100 photos taken. God knows why we selected this one - maybe it had the right "atmosphere".

That's me second from right. My partner cannot look at this photo - she thinks I look "gay"! She prefers my more "manly" current sheared look!

July - September 1992

And that's where the diaries end. I'm sure I wrote more at the time, but I'm buggered if I can find those entries now! Maybe I deliberately disposed of them!

There were a few notable events over the next few months:

• We got a manager! Sounds like progress, hey? Not exactly. Our manager was actually our sometimes sound guy Peter. The four band members had neither the time not the inclination to manage the band, so we were always on the lookout for someone to shoulder that burden. We had some interest from potential managers, but nothing ever eventuated. And although we never took Peter that seriously as a candidate, we figured he couldn't do us any harm.
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• The first thing Peter did was get us a residency. Ah yes, the legendary residency! Does that conjure up images of The Beatles at the Star Club? Hmmm, not exactly! The dump in question was known as Control, which consisted of a small bar downstairs, and a larger nightclub upstairs. We played the small bar. From memory, we played there every second Saturday night, five or six gigs in all before we pulled the pin. While it was good to have a regular gig, I'm not sure it did us much good. The venue never promoted the gigs, so the turnout was usually small. The main things I remember about these gigs are that:  

• I once threw a hissy fit when I broke a guitar string, and threw my strat off stage - the most rock 'n' roll moment of my musical career (and possibly my entire life) - pity only about four people were there to see it! 

•  we played an improptu version of Smells like Teen Spirit - well at least up to the first chorus. This was the closest I ever got to my dream of being in a grunge band
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• We recorded the Anthems for the Estranged demo, as featured in the first post on this blog!
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• We played a benefit gig (I can't remember who for though) where we actually made it to the lofty heights of...upstairs at Control! This will be the subject of my next post - a gig that was a turning point for me as this was when I first thought about leaving the band.
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• We were featured in articles in both local music magazines, Rip it Up and dB. The first of these articles is a classic! I'll post these articles in forthcoming posts.