|
Part of the refreshingly pretentious ethos of this site is the exploration of shifting identities, heteronyms and stage-names. It should come as no surprise then that my musical output is similarly in need of defragmentation. Not only am I known for writing incalculable numbers of unpublishably bad novels, I am also equally unfamous for being in hundreds of unsigned bands. Here are some of the more recent and decent:
Steve Cake 
Steve Cake is my solo project. It's an endearingly lofi mixture of Johnny Cash acoustic and Norman Cook electro. Free downloads at Myspace.
Dub Ninjas 
Yet to record their unique sound, the Dub Ninjas mix contemporary electronic dub reggae with traditional Kurdish tamboura music.
- Gav master of the heavy dub bass
- Jeremy lord of wibbly keyboard noises
Science Ninja Team were electro punk before it was cool. We played every venue in Brighton, from the Concorde2, Pressure Point, Albert to the Freebutt and loads more. We used to jam in the industrial estate by Whitehawk because we were so tough. They put us in the magazines and they put us on the radio but they never put us straight.
This is what happens when you mix a bedroom-band hippy like Golden Elf with a dangerous MC machine like Steve Cake: you get a kebab to the face! More hiphop lunacy and free downloads on Myspace.
I would like to thank all the other poor bastards who have been in a band with me over the years:
Little Vinyl Dinosaurs: When I was still a schoolboy, I sang Joy Division covers and Swans-like originals with Simon, Adrian, Nigel, Matt and Keiran. We sounded like Napalm Death meets the Happy Mondays. It was the early nineties. It made sense at the time. We gigged in Croydon, South London and Surrey even. Wowza!
Rolf's Cartoon Club : LVD side-project with me and Simon and MC Sooty on human beatbox. We only had one song and it was an Australian/Neighbours themed rap called "Shrimp on the Barbie". Again, it was the early nineties and such things were allowed back then. We played live at least twice. I can't remember either of them.
North Surrey Glitterati : I was only involved in one album for this motley collection of artistic renegades from Sutton, a strange mash-up bedroom band doing somewhat abusive covers of Nirvana and The Fall. I still like Lex's version of The Smith's "There is a Light".
Retard Spoilage AKA Fashion Gun9: We had some other names I can't even remember now! Experimental industrial rivet-head art-noise terrorism with Slam and Keian (and occasionally Adrian too). Primitive sampling devices made with a walkman and some selotape evolved into Tetsuo-like levels of machine sophistication. Some tapes still exist. I swear it wasn't me who lost the back catalogue, Slam! We were too cool to play live.
The Melon Farmers: Fore-runners to the Science Ninja Team with Matty, Loz, Ian and Lucy. Gigged all over Brighton and had a proper laugh doing it. Thanks everybody. G! C! S! E! P! E! Oi!
And a thousand others... Including The Surrealist Army of Teen-Angst Casualties (me, Dave and Tom busking the Velvet Underground's "Heroin" in Croydon shopping centre over and over again), the then-unnamed Stanford Road All-Stars (Sam, Simon, Loz, Toby and even G on drums once or twice) and their classic "Dirty Marijuana Junkies" and "Millipede" (sample lyrics "Millipede, a thousand legs on speed"); the Dorking-based quirk-rock jam sessions of the band known only as Bill; the post-rock progessiveness of Fried Gold; that four-track band we started in West Norwood with Bradley and Simon with those seriously cool songs I can still remember even now except I can't remember if we even had a name; the Howard Terrace Abuse of Gideon's Basement Studio House Band with their memorable bunny-killing "Doogie Howser MD". or the techno psychosis of "Me So Horny"?
Lest we forget.
|
