After the Summer (hot as hell) I saw that if I continued to post about what was actually happening in the world and what I thought about it I would explode. Not a pretty sight or sound.

‘So,’ I thought, ‘lets not go there.’ How about digging up the past and trying to work out where all this came from but as a wise message on my desk says: ‘I wouldn’t start from here!’

I remember that the first serious voluntary engagement with music was when I met the Lyle family who lived around the corner from my family in London road in Canterbury. Curiously Ben Challis of later Ignerent fame lived just over the back garden wall but I did not meet him till some time later. Julia Lyle had a guitar which she lent to my sister and I but I could not crack F major in first position. I did give up for a day or so, and if I had stuck with something for once probably my life would have taken a more sensible course. But I persisted and sang: ‘If you miss the train I’m on…etc’. Eventually my sister and I bought a Spanish guitar and I messed around on it. I had no music training apart from being shouted at over a piano by an old lady with an inflated opinion of herself and a profound distaste for me. I did not work and could not ‘apply myself’ to anything for more than five minutes till years later. For some reason it did not occur to me that in order to play music you had to study.

Bing Lyle and I started hanging out, worshiping and playing the Beatles and Chuck Berry but I was all mouth and no trousers technically so did not progress in any kind of useful way. Eventually I built a crude electric guitar with telephone earpieces working as electromagnetic pickups. This later was transformed into a bass and there is a picture of Bing and I playing in the dining room at London road, taken by my brother.

By this time I had a second hand Futurama guitar which was a sort of cheap Stratocaster and in the picture I see that I had covered the face of the guitar in a piece of wood effect Formica. Why you might ask…Well I am ashamed to say that I saw Geo. Harrison playing a hardwood Telecaster on the roof of the Apple offices and thought I would like to be like that. It was only years later that I came to understand that the wood visible on his guitar was real wood not some Formica or Fablon and that you can have the trappings but they are not the real thing.

What did we play? Bing (Piano and Bass) had been in the Cathedral choir and by this time had grade five theory so he was the music brains behind things and he could transcribe parts which was witchcraft to me. We met up with Anthony Johnson (Guitar) and Jez Scrine (Drums) and had a band which we called ‘Fig’ which was a fruit like ‘Apple’ and also I was a fig-roll fan. We rehearsed in a shed which we refurbed up at Stray Lees in Blean which was Jez’s parents house. How they put up with the racket I don’t know. We had the idea of writing our own material and also attempted some covers. The band did play a gig in the old church hall which is next to where I later took up residence and continue to live, Canterbury is a small place. Thankfully there are no recordings from that time!

By now it was probably the mid 70s and the band drifted apart as those things do. Bing and I started to get into Woody Guthrie, early Dylan and the 60’s folk revival in the US. This started to give me some idea of simple guitar playing, wearing straight leg jeans and short hair. Bing was also interested in and played English (mostly) folk music. Bing and I played out as a duo doing Guthrie type songs that would probably now be called Americana and I remember standing on a hay cart in the town square at Wye during the Jubilee of the latest queen singing this stuff and thinking that it was a tad odd. We also played at Alberry’s wine bar to all the pseudos who thought they were a lot more than they were. More interestingly an older guy we knew played in a rough sort of function band (Check out guitar George…he probably does not know all the chords) at the Blackgriffin pub on the high street. We would go in to play whilst they took a break and laughed at us in a friendly sort of way and I think Bing ended up going on tour with them playing the bass thus enlargeing his view of things!

Then the Clash arrived and we thought this is fun so formed the Longport Buzz. We teamed up with Anthony (again) and his cousin Jim Hackford played drums. This was a genuinely interesting combo and we played some great tunes over the time we were operational. The thing with bands is the cats have to be herded on a regular basis and the better the cats are the more difficult it is to arrange stuff around their other gigs and thus was the Buzz. I maintain that most bands who stay together for a long time are bands where the occupants are mediocre have nothing else on.

We took to the idea of just being basic about music with gusto and kicked complexity (mostly) into the can. In 1978 We made a 4 song ep and started the record label ‘Canterbury Pop’ because that is what you did. The ep was reviewed in one of the music rags and I think J.Peel probably played something. That was the way it was, if you put it out on vinyl people would listen; it was a statement. There was a thriving local scene at the time based around Canterbury Art School with local bands putting themselves on in the bar and bigger gigs in the hall (Selector etc)where there was sometimes the chance of a support. We sometimes played as a three piece as Anthony was at university. The best recording of the Buzz was for the ‘First Offenders’ album set up by Jeffery Richardson Rupert Hine and others. This was recorded in the old Marlowe theatre with the Manor Mobile (?) parked around the corner. A motley bunch of local punky rural scruff bands participated including the ‘Ignerants’ fronted by my near neighbour Ben Challis.

You can find info about the Album here: https://www.discogs.com/release/2266420-Various-First-Offenders

The Longport Buzz contributions here.

Who is he? : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dupOoyOQuP8

I wanna have some fun : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzjYdyaaSj0

Needless to say we did not become rich and famous and the record company went bust (not our fault gov!) but we had a scream doing it. Thinking about it there are many friends from the Names, The Red Squares and others that I still communicate with and play with. Unfortunately some have now passed on to where I hope the Art School Dance goes on for ever!