To celebrate its 30th Anniversary, I have decided to make available the "legendary" cassette "Definitive" by my band of the time, Drop. Copies of this cassette have been circulating for many years, Radio Cleveland played bits of it over the airwaves, Julian Cope raved about it and unsuccessfully tried to get us signed to Zoo records, and Mark Hammonds probably still has a copy wrapped in cotton wool in his loft.

Drop coelesced out of my first punk band, The Silencers, and by the end of 1978, the steady line-up was-

Richard Sanderson - Vocals/Guitar
Neil Jones- Keyboards
Chris Oberon - Bass
Andy Kiss - Drums



We played our first gig at The Wellington in Middlesbrough (alongside Basczax, The Barbarians and others) where, scared to death, we rushed through a 17 song set in as many minutes. We played about 6 more gigs, at various places including the Teessider and Marton Sixth Form College, before I left, after going a bit loopy, late in the summer of 1979.

I still feel a strong affection for these songs - all written when I was aged 16 to 18, when I didn't drink, and seemed to be in a fury of creativity. The influences are pretty obvious, and tend to come from what I was listening to on John Peel at the time, Joy Division, The Fall and particularly Wire are all pretty evident.

These recordings are not exactly hi-fi, they were recorded at my parents house on a mono cassette recorder. We were schoolkids, so going into a studio was pretty much out of the question, and portastudios were still a few years off. But the mix of instruments and voice is pretty good, and I've heard a lot worse quality bootlegs.

We recorded this tape to try to get more gigs, and it didn't succeed in that, but Larry Ottaway of BBC Radio Cleveland was very enthusiastic about it, and a single on his "Pipeline Product" imprint was mooted. Julian Cope, who I'd met at Middlesbrough Rock Garden on the same day I left school, was also terrifically positive about it - comparing it to (amongst other things) The Seeds and Soft Machine, neither of whom I'd actually heard at the time, and pushed a reluctant Zoo records to sign us. They didn't.

After I left (eventually to join Tick Tick as bassist, preferring a more collaborative role) the band Drop continued without me, with Chris Oberon taking over the front man duties, and they recorded a single, before changing their name to "Colour Nine".

So here is the entire "Definitive" cassette. Although all recorded on the same day, the songs range in age from 1977 ("Sinking") to just before the recording was made (the giving-the-game-away "New Direction") For those of you who use iPods and iTunes, I've transcribed the lyrics which you can now view. To my 49 year old self they range from the excruciatingly embarrassing to the liveable-with, but they're there and I wrote them.

Be 16 again.

1. Instro 1.35
2. Burning The Evidence 4.23
3. Get The Point 1.09
4. Diamond 1.45
5. Frozen Film 2.48
6. New Direction 2.50
7. Nothing Changes (long version) 1.18
8. No Rock 3.23
9. French Windows 3.29
10. Sinking 3.22
11. Nothing to Nowhere 1.32
12. I Want to Watch 1.27
13. Making The Connection 2.11
14. In The Background 1.07
15. Running Out of Time 3.13
16.Move Me 3.12
17.The New Education 1.15
18.Talking To Myself 1.33
19. Instrumental With Fade 1.32
20. I Wanna Be Your Dog 5.10
21. Get Out Of My Dreams 2.35
22. A Sense of Loss 2.44
23. Radio Cleveland Feature 6.16

All songs composed and (c) Richard Sanderson, except "I Wanna Be Your Dog" by The Stooges, and Instro, which was a group composition

Special thanks to Neil, Chris and Andy - I know I wasn't always easy to work with, but your dedication and musicality carried me along. I would love to hear from you again. Thanks also to the other, less permanent members of Drop 1978-79 - Genevieve Pink, Stewart Rickard, Mark Sanderson and Mark Spybey.

Glommed from the Rock Garden Facebook page- the bizarre occasion when Smash Hits magazine decided to run a two page article on the Teesside music scene. This dates from 1979. To my knowledge not one artist in this article got remotely near to having a "smash hit".

You can just about read the pages if you click on them and then select "full size".

Two bands I was in get a mention - "Drop" and "Tic Tic" (sic) although in that worrying journalistic way the facts are wrong - I was the singer and guitarist in Drop not the bassist, and I didn't form Tick Tick, they existed before I joined.

Really great to see that picture of "Shoot The Lights Out" though, they were a genuinely avant garde band from Hartlepool, a crushingly loud and atonal drumless duo of guitar and bass, a drifting formless racket. I'd love to hear a recording of them again. Their singer is a quite interesting Americana/country artist now...

after faffing about with different settings on my camera-

Albert Park - Middlesbrough. Ahead of me Jack Sanderson (my son) with Jack Sanderson (my father)-


Whitby - my Frank Meadows Sutcliffe hommage-

This holiday is creeping towards its conclusion.

Holiday Photo Checklist-

1. Photo of children running away shrieking from the sea - check

2. Photo of children with faces smeared in ice-cream - check

3. Photo of the sea with unintended tilting horizon - check

4. "Arty" shot of the sea with lobster pots in the foreground - check

5. Photo of children being held by Northern relatives - not yet

6. Several photos of the back of child's head whilst on funfair ride - check

Having quite a nice time - although cursing the circumstances that resulted in the children being ill whilst the weather was glorious, and being full of beans whilst it returned to Redcar typical - rain, wind and generally overcast. Still we have managed to paddle in the sea, ride a miniature railway, fly a kite and visit several photogenic places, so I can't complain.

Yesterday afternoon was marvellous - I met up with Mark Spybey and my cousin brotherturold in the Yorkshire Bay, a pub I've seen since I was tiny, but obly went in for the first time a few years ago. Back when we were 13 and 14 (1975) we formed our very first band - an experimental "space-rock" group called "Solaris". Also there was Steve Dinsdale whose blog was instrumental in getting us together. I played with him in a band called "Macbeth" back in 1983, and probably hadn't seen him since. It was a very entertaining few hours, consisting of lots of jolly nostalgia and punctuated by much laughter. I will post on this further, when I can post picture.

When we get home our loft extension should be finished. That'll be nice.

A couple of years ago the school I attended from 6 - 12 years of age - Marton Road School (Juniors and Infants) was demolished, after a good decade of use only as a kind of storage depot.

Now, as I was driven past my old secondary school "Bertram Ramsey School" and my Sixth Form, "Marton College", I discover that both have been reduced to a big heap of bricks. I'm not especially bothered - my schooldays were not the best years of my life to say the least, but I do wish I had a few pictures of them before the bulldozers moved in.

Curiously, during my five years at Bertram Ramsey school, I was completely unaware of who Bertram Ramsey actually was. I'm still at a loss as to why a school in Middlesbrough was named after him.

As to what's going to happen to the large site that previously housed Bertram Ramsey School, Brookside School and Marton Sixth Form College - at one time known as Prissick Base - it's about to become a new housing estate called, cringemakingly, "Scholars' Rise"....

Courtesy of Mark Spybey - these are photographs of The Euphoria Case, Spring 1985 (just a few months before I moved to London). Incidently the decay on these photos are not deliberate effects - the pictures were rescued from a flood at Mark's house. Click on the photos for enlargements.




l-r, Ronnie Burke, Mark Spybey, bagrec, Martyn Simpson, Gary Philips





Gosh, don't we look "C86"!

Mark and I's collaborative recordings from 1992 are being released by Lens Records on the 14th of July.

Courtesy of an anonymous reader - a terrific flyer for Middlesbrough Rock Garden circa 1977-


In amongst the impressive (Pistols, Clash, Motorhead) are the unexpected (Darts! Burlesque - featuring Bromley's own rather marvellous Billy Jenkins) and the long forgotten (Krakatoa? Quartz?? Jenny Haake's Lion????)

I never saw any of these, except Ultravox!

Thanks for this.

I had an email from markhammonds last night, informing me that scaffolding had gone up around part of the old Marton Sixth Form College, and that the bulldozers were revving up to tear it to bits. The building in question housed The Common Room, and for this reason I'm feeling a little sad.

If my late adolescence manifested itself anywhere it was in the common room of Marton Sixth Form College - it was here, after leaving the horrors of Bertram Ramsey Secondary School, that I first encountered people who were able to talk about art, music and literature without calling me a puff.

It was a significant year for me too - I'd left Ramsey as a long haired fan of Hawkwind, and, after the summer holidays returned with much shorter hair and appreciating punk rock. I wasn't the only one either, there was a small gang of us punks (this was '77), and, I think it would be fair to say that we ruled the common room. We took over the cheap record player (permanently cranked up to 10), argued with the straights, and generally considered ourselves pretty cool - despite the fact that only one of us, Mike Munson (as in, "whatever happened to Mike Munson"), actually had the spiky died hair look. I basically wore a lot of badges and old t-shirts that had belonged to me as a child.

On the way into work this morning, I tried to put together a top-ten of what was played on the common room record player between 1977 and 1979, and I reckon it would go something like this (I'm sure other common room visitors, like jeanieurr, markhammonds and elvislives77 would vouch for these)-

1. Easter - Patti Smith
2. New Boots and Panties - Ian Dury
3. Exodus - Bob Marley
4. Chairs Missing - Wire
5. Love Lies Limp - Alternative TV
6. United - Throbbing Gristle
7. Showroom Dummies - Kraftwerk
8. Two Sevens Clash - Culture
9. This Year's Model Elvis Costello
10. White Punks on Dope - The Tubes

Some people even danced to the records in their breaks - a couple of posh girls (odd enough in 'Boro) always danced to anything vaguely reggae - including, hilariously Alternative TV's very risque "love lies limp", another couple of girls, more wacky than posh, used to do the "dead fly dance" to Wire's "I Am The Fly".

I pretty much wasted two years there academically, but what I wasted in improving my brain one way, I gained in building social confidence and making friends, moving from a being a hugely introverted loner to a noisy weirdo. People sat around and talked about poetry, and clever books and modern art, it seemed amazingly liberating - the lessons took very much a back seat for me.

My time there culminated in a completely illegal, and covert gig by my band "Drop" in the common room. We managed to sneak a PA in, and drums and amps and played a full set to the students - until one of the chemistry teachers cut the power. It was worth doing, I even got a kiss, and later a girlfriend out of it.

We must have sounded a bit like this -
Drop, performing "Sinking" in the summer of '79.

I'd like to think that the sound of that gig is still echoing around in the bricks of that place, even when they pull it down.

Me, then.

elvislives77 writes on his blog about going to Middlesbrough Arena to see some new band (The Kills?), and reminds us that The Arena used to be the legendary North Eastern venue - Middlesbrough Rock Garden.

Geoff remarks that it reminds him of "all the times we came within an inch of losing our lives" which is true enough, The Rock Garden was extraordinarily violent, and by mid 1980 was frankly just too dangerous to attend, unless you were a skinhead.

As it was the only nightclub I ever attended at the time, I didn't really have anything to compare it to - and if, at times, it resembled some kind of mixture of a Viking pillage and a far-right rally, it also gave me some great nights out.

A few memories then-

Tick Tick - elvislives77, gazbro and bagrec plus our drum machine taking to the stage as last minute replacements for Dexy's Midnight Runners. An audience of skinheads were remarkably tolerant, and waltzed with their coats.

The Fall twice 1979 and 1980 - MES on full speedfreak hilarity, lots of ad-hoc dialogue about gnomes and slagging off UK Subs. "Fiery Jack" "Rowche Rumble" Mike Leigh's drums. The second appearance was a bloodbath. Tick Tick supported as "The Maid's Neck" - MES telling the bass player at the bar - "you were good!".

The Cure before the goth years, doing stuff like "10:15 Saturday Night". Place was half empty.

Manicured Noise with Gavin still as lead vocalist. Punk in front of me asks "are they punk rock?", mate replies "No, they're shit rock". Bonkers music.

Tick Tick Supporting Pink Military Stand Alone their sound-man regaling us with tales of "hot knives"...

Rough Trade Tour Triple Bill of Kleenex, The Raincoats and Spizz Energi. Kleenex were superb.

The Human League Still with Marsh and Ware - thinking my head was going to explode as the pulse increased on "Zero as a limit" and Adrian's slides flashed faster and faster...

Wire Amazing, touring "Chairs Missing" and playing hardly any songs from it, instead trying out stuff from 154. The first occurance in what has become a decadely event of meeting Graham Lewis. Great account of that gig here.

The Piranhas Notable only for being the night I stopped being teetotal.

Teardrop Explodes Their seventh ever gig, as support to Patrik Fitzgerald and The Wall. It was also the day I left school. Had very long chat with Julian that continued for several years (and still continues now and again even now)

Gang of Four (Twice) INCREDIBLY LOUD - ears rang for a week, and I still blame them for my tinitus. What a band though. They used to finish with a version of the Rezillo's "Can't Stand My Baby".

The Day the Tick Tick EP came out I sold copies for £1 each, I went home with £50 in my pocket, in pound notes.

Gary's interview with MES
Dave Robinson -Can I have a sip of your beer?
MES -Yeah, only one sip mind
Dave Robinson -(in the exact voice of The Bra Men) Cheers Mate!
MES -I'll send you some beer in the post...
Come on Geoff make that tape available!

Also - Jill Old dancing to Dillinger's "Cocaine in my Brain", John Peel DJing and me giving him a copy of the Tick Tick EP, the "women wrestlers", being terrified of Mappy, skinheads asking "lend us 10 pence", the horrible toilets, the bear, actually didn't it used to be called "The Beerkeller"?, CRASS punks dancing to "Shaved women", Russell with his big red hair, Dave Robbo shouting at bands, the hilarious "Frenzy Battalion", Anoraky's homemade "Fiery Jack" badge, Hippy Howard rolling a joint whist watching The Fall, fizzy beer....

Christ, I was only 18.

While the world is getting understandably, and gratifyingly excited about the the Large Hadron Collider, I enjoyed reading about a related experiment happening in my native North East.

Although not as glamourous or exquisitely expensive as the LHC, the Boulby Dark Matter Collaboration project looks like it could give it a run for it's money-

Success would be an enormous coup for the group: the contrast between Geneva's LHC machine and Boulby could not be more marked. The former has taken 10 years to build and is the size of London Underground's Circle Line. Zeplin-3 is the size of a large cupboard but still has to be kept scrupulously clean even though it has been erected inside a working potash pit.

"It is a very different world down here," said Paling. "You have to put on mining gear, fulfil careful safety requirements and take great care not to get lost in all the different galleries. It's not like that in Geneva."

This story appeals to me not just because of the obvious "come on plucky Britain!" angle, but because it takes place at the mysterious Boulby Potash Mine, a strange alien complex on the North East coast that's been on the periphery of my experience since I was a child. The mine is astonishingly deep, the second deepest in Europe in fact, and goes down a mile underground and several miles out below the North Sea.



Until recently I had no idea the mine was so boggling, until I met a bloke who actually worked down there (a miner, not one of the scientists) who told me how hot it gets down there - about 42 degrees apparently. That a mere mile closer to the centre of the earth should make such a difference to the temperature seems amazing to me.

More on Boulby mine -
A video report, with a fantastic Teesside accent, is here.

I was rather taken with this sign which uses the title of my Lj Friends Page to good effect-



Come on, Britain!

With pictures as promised-


The children see the sea for the first time (well actually Jack has wandered in already hence soaking trousers...)

( more scenes of Northern sunny beaches etc )

...but I wish I was still here-


Huntcliffe, Saltburn, viewed from the water-powered cliff lift

And does this house look familiar?

1. Haircut, Sir!!!
It's got to that time - too long to spike up, and regressing to the Peter Torke (when neat)/Paul Foot (when scruffy), it's time for a lunchtime visit to Mr Toppers. Where once again I will be appalled at how much of my hair is now snowy white.

2. Spent last night making an MP3 CD for my cousin brotherturold of all the recordings I have of our earliest musical exploits, from Solaris (1974) to The Silencers (1978) - the sounds of kids making a din with whatever they could get their hands on. The curious/foolhardy can hear some of this juvenilia at my Multiply page - although these days you need to sign in to listen...which is an enormous bloody drag.

3. I'm done with HP Lovecraft - Verdict? Neither as bad as I feared, or as interesting as I hoped. Some stuff is effectively creepy and sick, but some of the more sci-fi orientated stuff like "The Shadow Out of Time", allegedly his masterpiece, was almost laughably bad with glaring logical flaws. I quite enjoyed Lovecraft's Anglophilia though, at least he spells "colour" correctly.
"The Colour Out of Space" was the best one I read, and came close to raising goosebumps.

4. I'm enjoying "Red Mars" enormously, so thanks to the folks who recommended it. I'm starting to wonder if the title has a political angle too...

5. The family are all in rude health. The ability of kids to move from "ill" to "robustly well" in very short spaces of time is astonishing- I note with a little envy.

6. We're all off to Redcar tomorrow, where relatives can coo over the kids, and we can show the kids the sea, ooooh! It also brings up the intiguing prospect of Ruth and I having a night out together for the first time in nearly four months.

7. Teessiders! is there anything we should definitely see while we're up? Good exhibitions etc... I think we're planing to go to MIMA, which might provide some meet-up opertunities. I will have internet access, so I'll keep sporadically blogging where I can.

A few days ago publicansdecoy emerged from his semi-self-imposed exile to ask who would be going to see Magazine performing live.

After giving it some thought, I've decided I probably won't. There are a few bands from my youth that I missed seeing that I'd happily trot along to see now if they reformed - Young Marble Giants, The Pop Group, The Monochrome Set, This Heat etc but to see a band that were responsible for what I now consider the best rock concert I ever saw, and hope to recapture even a fraction of the excitement of the orginal gig would be foolhardy.

Magazine played at Redcar's Coatham Bowl on July 2nd 1978, which, I'm sure you realise, is now over 30 years ago. My memory is fading, but I'm fairly sure I went with brotherturold and Mark Spybey and possibly Neil Jones - all members of my punk band, at the time. The venue itself is a pretty ghastly little warehouse with a corrugated roof and lots of red plastic chairs (although nobody used them at this gig).

I don't remember anything about the support act, The Zones, but Magazine were astonishing from the start. I already had their album "Real Life" LP and it had become the soundtrack to my summer. Although it was obviously "post-punk" in it's subject matter, and with its keenness to move away from the Ramones blueprint that was already becoming dull, it was also curiously "pre-punk" in some respects, most noticably in the use of keyboards and a synth sound that was more Floyd/Oldfield that anything to come out of "futurism". Live however, any doubts about a creeping retro-ism were dispelled immediately. Devoto emerged from the right hand side and played a keyboard along with "Definitive Gaze" before stepping up to the microphone and an eerie green light - or to be more accurate, climbing up the microphone. His mic stand was about nine feet tall, and allowed him to climb up it and then dangle over the crowd - looking reptilian and scary whilst he spat out the lyrics.



The rest of the band were incredibly well drilled - Adamson and McGeoch would step up for any backing vocal work - the chants in "Shot by Both Sides" and the echos in "My Tulpa", Adamson was as funky as hell, and opened my eyes to what a bass could do (Ie not just ape the bottom string of a guitarist's bar chord) and Dave Formula somehow managed to look cool whilst operating a Wakeman-like battery of keyboards, well not cool exactly, slightly menacing would be more accurate.

Devoto remained the focal point though - from reading the interviews dropping references to Dostoyevsky I was completely unprepared for the physicality of his performance, Devoto moved about the stage a lot - stalking, stumbling and at one point writhing on the floor whilst deliberately entangling himself in his microphone cable. He was more like Iggy Pop than Iggy Pop himself was when he played at the Coatham Bowl a few months later... He also wore a bright red suit with bright green buttons (maybe the other way round). He looked weird. The recent set of plays on Radio 4, "One Chord Wonders" (concluding tonight) repeatedly evokes the idea that punk empowered the misfits and losers, and made them cool - Devoto with his odd clothes, receding hairline and haunting Munch-Scream face was the living embodiment of that.



As the gig was in Redcar, I didn't have to rush for a bus home, but could stay at my Grandmother's house in Redcar East, and I walked back with the two Marks, incredibly excited by what I'd just seen, clutching an enormous poster. The poster was a massive photofit picture of Devoto's face, which hung, like Big Brother, on my bedroom wall for several years...

I was 17, I'll be 48 if I go to this gig. It won't be the same. But for those of you like publicansdecoy who weren't even born when I was at that gig, don't miss it...


See also Indulging in Ostentatious Display for lots of video...

Like most people interested in left-field music and radio oddness I subscribe to WFMU's "Beware of the Blog" (or wfmufeed if you prefer), but one set of words I never expect to see in an entry is Middlesbrough Town Centre. But there they are-

In March of this year, Forma commissioned People Like Us to make a series of new soundworks for the AV Festival "Now Hear This". Now Hear This is a series of site–specific audio works presented in various public spaces across Middlesbrough, UK. The project featured audio works by artists including Marcus Coates and Zoe Irvine, selected for their various interests in the complex relationships between sound, space and location. Adopting diverse modes of broadcast and public address, Now Hear This offers a range of listening experiences and unexpected sonic interventions into our everyday urban environment, creating surprising and engaging encounters with broadcast material.

People Like Us produced this series of short audio works to be broadcast via Bluetooth in Middlesbrough Town Centre. These brief musical compositions explore the humorous side to communication breakdowns in all their varied and surprising forms. Pair up with People Like Us for a series of misfiring musical arrangements, exploring the entertaining aspects of miscommunication, disharmony, bad connections and missed calls

All the MP3s are there....


Middlesbrough Town Centre, yesterday

I'm very grateful to markhammonds and his family for taking an hour and a half out of their London sightseeing tour to meet up with our family at the Royal Festival Hall on Saturday. It was fun.

Ruth walked Jack around on his "lead" (unfortunately this is neccesary as Jack has a tendancy to start running and never looking back), whilst I sat May down on the RFH balcony and watched the world go by. May was in heaven- gurgling, reaching her arms out to the passing boats, clapping, and practicing her new laugh - a slightly sinister, throaty "heh-heh-heh" chortle.

Mark arrived with his wife, Danny and their two kids - my first meeting with the lovely Lydia, and we adjourned to the bar of the RFH, where we swapped holding babies, and Mark's son Alex tested the aerodynamic qualities of a bag by throwing it repeatedly over a balcony.

It wasn't especially easy to have the kind of wide ranging conversations I used to have with Mark - we mainly stuck to childcare and sleep, although Mark did mention that my old secondary school in Middlesbrough, "Bertram Ramsey Secondary School" had been demolished to extend the car park of the hospital he works in. Whilst I can't say I had the happiest of times there through the mid '70s, I was a little miffed that they've demolished five years of my life without even consulting me.

Bertram Ramsey was never going to win any architectural prizes, being a classic example of sixties "big school" design, it was perhaps most noticeable for being the work of John Poulson, the disgraced British architect.

It's also rather sad that the first Google entry for my old school takes you this blog...

If anybody has any photos of the old place, please get in touch.

elvislives77 has meticulously typed out and scanned an article by Rob Nichols from the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette. Rob (of terrific bouncy Fall-esque band "Shrug") has a column in the paper, and has done for a while I think. In it he talks about the recent visit to Middlesbrough by Resonance FM, and in particular elvislives77's programme about the Teesside Punk and Post-Punk scene. Which you can still listen to here (mp3), if you missed it.

Anyway, I went to source - it's here.

Rob was a bit younger than us, so his memory of some of the groups is a bit sketchy, but it's great to see those names in the Gazette again, even if he does spell Tick Tick wrong.

The reason for all this helpless nostalgia is because Ruth and I have been clearing out the spare bedroom, in preparation for the two new members of our family, hopefully arriving some time next month. In the excavations, various bits and pieces have been unearthed.

Anyway, I thought I'd lost this. It's the fourth and final edition of "Printout" the free fanzine written by me and elvislives77 around 1979-80, printed out by gazbro on his work photocopier, and handed out to users of the Rock Garden in Middlesbrough. Sadly time has rendered some of it damn near unreadable now.

It includes a round up of the "New Cleveland Bands" including, Ether, The Filth, The Vulgar Monkeys, Robot Youth, The End Result, Rank Xerox, Slight Error, Savage Passionand 625. There's a review of the Rock Garden's "New Wave Disco", an interview with Bugsy of the Amazing Space Frogs, a review of a "Rank Xerox" "live Bootleg"(!), and a review by someone called Phil, (who, I confess, I've completely forgotten) of Men in a Suitcase, Savage Passion and The Vultures.



click on the picture for an enlargement

( pages 2-4 beneath this cut )

This one was taken in the early 80s. Just a little camp, possibly?


Me in my back garden 1981.

( more! )

EDIT: See also Old Photos 2 and Old Photos 1.

Here is all 52 minutes of Geoff (elvislives77) Spence's wonderful show for Resonance FM, exploring the Teesside punk and post-punk scene, 1977 - 1980.

DOWNLOAD

Featuring Blitzkrieg Bop, Nicky Beat and the Beatniks, Basczax, The Vultures, No Way, Discharge, The Filth, The Amazing Spacefrogs, Terry Trans and the Vestites and Tick Tick.

During the programme, Geoff mentions the sad, unexpected passing of Matey, the vocalist of No Way at the age of 50. This was news which had escaped me down here. There's a tribute page to him here.

And point of information, Geoff, Eclipse Studios was in Redcar, I have a fantastic single by The Four Plugs that was also recorded there...

EDIT: Some Links
-John Hodgson's exhaustive Blitzkrieg -Bop pages.
-Funhouse - a Teesside punk band that includes 75% of The Filth.
-The Amazing Space Frogs
-No Way page by Paul Callan
-Teesside Bands Archive - most of the original singles are here.
-Basczax Myspace page
-Lotus Blue - Sav from Basczax's solo project.
-Something on the Discharge single.