My first ever band and not really ‘my’ band at all. Before I could really play or write or do anything particularly musical these guys got me in as a singer when the wanted to make the transition from punk to mopey post-punk a la Joy Division & early the Cure.

What happened? Absolutely no singing technique and having no idea of how to acquire one after a while completely shredded my voice. That and the fact that the other guys were already having ‘artistic differences’ when I joined, and given my own moody hormonal teenage disruptive influence it didn’t last long.

I wish I still had the demos, at least to know what I put my throat through all that pain for. Somewhere I have a tape of me and the guitarist/drummer Steve Ward playing ‘Dumkopf’ which he wrote for our high schools’ gala evening for its’ language courses. I believe the lyric went:

“Dumkopf

Ich bin nicht ein

Dumkopf

Du bist eine

Dumkopf”

…repeat

That’s some quality vocabulary right there.