Who were these young UK bands of the early nineties?
As children growing up we were completely aware and knew of the 1960s music, it was everywhere still being played on the radio on television and in tv shows like the "The Monkees".. and also in our parents record collections. But as we hit the early teenage years and started to learn musical instruments many of us gravitated towards rock music that although not mainstream was still easy to hear through small local radio stations and record releases. And with the BBC controlling everthing you got to see and hear culturally then a typical "top of the pops" music tv program would feature bands like culture club, duran duran and kajagoogoo.. need i say more, so basically many of us ended up in heavy metal bands in the 1980's. But for myself and my school best friend drummer brian (The Shapes, War Machine) the metal thing was short lived because our main love was the 1960's and as for me once i discovered the Smiths in 1987 (whilst still in my thrash metal band Atomkraft) then that was it, i saw the smiths and thought they looked very 1960's especially Johnny Marr with his semi acoustic guitar. It turned out that all of my generation of musicians were thinking the same because soon after the smiths came then the stone roses and later oasis. My band the shapes were part of a UK music scene that was developing in Britain right as grunge had become mainstream, we were what would later be known as Britpop, although we early 90's bands were more late sixties in influence and sound whereas britpop bands were more mid 60's in influence. That's not to say their were not plenty of bands on the scene that were'nt also mid sixties because their was and many bands would copy the clothes and look perfectly, an example of this would be in the US "the brian jonestown massacre" who would have slotted in perfect in early nineties UK. Also acid house and drug culture was an influence on some bands, my band "the shapes" and because we kept our long hair!.. then we where more towards the beatles "white album, the doors and syd barret pink floyd" era.
The Shapes were formed in Newcastle England by Musicians Rob Redhead, Brian Waugh and Duncan Ferguson. I was signed to neat records with my heavy metal band atomkraft as was brian with his metal band war machine. In 1987 we were called the summerlands a kind of goth indie band i had become friends with guitarist duncan who was into bands like the smiths, the cure, xymox.. etc, also at this time the cult had just released "she sells santuary" and i began to realise what i was missing out on, i bought the smiths albums, and new albums by killing joke and me bri and duncan formed the summerlands. This band was signaling me and brian changeing musical direction with a feeling that the 1960s was in the air.
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While i was busy with atomkraft and the summerlands in 1987 and 88 i must admit i completely missed out on the stone roses but only got their album in 1990, i was at art college and duncan was also studying at this same college while drummer brian was 20 mile down the road. I was introduced to a lad called johnny who i was told was a bass player, when i met him he apologised that he was'nt really a bass player but just had a bass guitar, i said great your in. Johnny turned out to be a natural on the bass not like a guitarist deciding to play bass but a real bass player playing the bass how it should be played (less is more).
So as a band in 1991 i wrote songs and the band rehearsed and we did some gigs, we were offered to contribute a couple of songs for a compilation album which we did, we recorded a live demo using Venoms back line of amps and produced by Atomkraft and Venom live sound man Don Morton. Duncan left and was replaced by a guitarist called Benny before he then left and for 1992 we were a three piece band. During the whole two year period we did i think about five demo tapes in different north east studios so there is plenty of music down on tape of the band. I personally think we were best as a three piece!.. and without realising it at the time we were a kind of a young Cream. I remember towards the end in a rehearsal i just sat and listened to brian and johnny (drums and bass) jamming together and when they stopped i said "fucking hell man that sounded amazing! really proffessional", which it did they had become a real powerhouse together over those two years. But for me the writing was on the wall, i felt a big change in myself, i knew i was heading off to university and i was getting curious about english and irish folk music. But not just that i also had my vespa mod scooter which was taking up most of my thoughts as it had become a much needed break from music.
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