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THE HISTORY
Well I guess it all started back in September 2000. Walty was bored and spent most of the summer having fun and getting in to new stuff. He stumbled on a band called The Red Hot Chili Peppers. I don't think then he realised how big an influence they would be on his life over the next few years.
Ok so it's the end of summer and everyone goes back to school. Walty gets talking to some mates. Namely Doug and Owen. He finds out that Doug is an awsome guitarist, and Owen, well, Owen will try anything that sounds fun. Walty had decided that he was going to learn the bass guitar - after hearing Flea and his awsome style (If God was a bassist his name would be Flea -Walty) he had no choice. Ok so now we have a drummer, bassist, and a guitarist.
This plan seemed perfect only, Walty had no bass and also had never played a musical instrument before so his musical ability was doubted,Owen had no drums and no one knew if he could tell time, let alone keep a beat. Owen had at least some musical background. School choir, an accompolished pianist, (or so he likes to think), So some sort of vocals were immenent for Owen as Walty and Doug had about as much singing talent as something that sings pretty damn bad!
-We had no singer
-We had no second guitarist
-We had a month till our exams
March the 29th, Walty's birthday. He gets a Bass guitar (I dunno what one but it's black!). He starts learning his ass off to play the bass! It took him a while but he cracked it in the end! He's the man!
Owen eventually came to his senses and bought a second hand drum kit for not more than 150 quid.
Meanwhile Walty and Doug have been in Owen's garage playing songs and start writing simple riffs (Caught naked by the offshore policeman was written at this time!) Ok so now we sort of have a band. Owen couldn't be arsed to pay for lessons so decided to teach himself (and it shows with the trademark Owen/Mong style of playing)! He cant really comment on his drumming ability cos he is writing all this (lets say he can keep a beat [just about]).
So we need a singer and guitarist. Good friend of the band Ruth Williams puts us into contact with A Mr. Ian Hughes, An accomplished guitarist and a dab hand at being Random! He sounded perfect for the band so we secretly put him on trial for like a couple of weeks (most of which were spent writing crazy songs and having Ian show us allt he cool sounds he thinks his effects thingy makes). So now we only need a singer. One day Owen and Walty went for a game of golf (of all things) and saw a miserable Alex Cottrell. Alex was in school with us but was part of a band called Divide. Alex had just left the band the day before for reasons that cannot be explained cos nobody really knows. We immediatly grabbed him while he was vunerable and appointed him as our new singer. A few gigs went by, we were really really bad, playing in a style that none of us really liked and doing songs we didnt enjoy playing. It took a couple of months and an appaulingly bad "battle of the bands" to kick us into shape, after the battle of the bands we decided to take a break for our AS exams and so we could all improve individually. Anothre couple of months later we reformed into the funk machine that is Blue Phoenix, we played a few gigs and then got straight back into the swing of things and were better than ever before.
We had a whole summer of great playing and gigging, a lot of fun had there. Then things went stale and we lost Doug due to a separation in music tastes (Doug still remains a close friend to all the band). But things could not go on the way they were otherwise many friendships would be lost. At the point of typing this i have no idea what the music world has instore for what remains of Blue Phoenix...... |
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