Vespa

From Worldtraveller

Vespa was my first proper band, and consisted of me (bass, keyboards, guitar), James Harvey (vocals), Paul Hutchinson (guitar), Dave Moore (guitar), and James Abel (Drums).

History

Quite how it formed is really lost in the mists of time - I joined because I knew Harvey, but I don't know how I knew him. Still, we started practising in the summer of 1995, recorded the tracks available here in October of that year, and played our first gig that November.

Some time around then, in a Stone Roses-inspired campaign of self publicity, we took to the streets of Durham in the middle of the night armed with chalk, and wrote our name in as many places as we could. These places included the Cathedral, and in some cases our antisocial grafitti was visible years later. Inspired by our rock and roll antics we decided it was time to try and get more famous.

We sent our demo off to several record companies, and one (Kitchenware) said they liked the sound, and wanted to come and see us play live. We said great, come to our next gig. Unfortunately, they had a prior booking to see the Lighthouse Family. Somehow we never managed to arrange another meeting, and we had to postpone dreams of rock stardom for another day.

In early 1996, Jim Abel left for a new existence in York, and was replaced by Simon. I'm sorry to say I can't remember his surname, but he was a good drummer. We played several gigs during the first half of 1996, and began to build up quite a good following around Durham. However, all great things come to an end, and we played our final gig in July 1996, before I broke the band up by going to university.

Tracks

You can download our original demo tracks here, which we put on tape as our debut album Concrete Artists. What a bold move it was, to start our album with a track called 'Pain Begins'. Hopefully some time in the future I'll get hold of the tape with our later works recorded on it. In the meantime, enjoy these, particularly Dirty Day, No Serenade and Subservience.

Listen	Download
	Pain Begins
	Verity Paradise
	Tired Graft
	Blue
	Dirty Day
	Curfew
	No Serenade
	He Didn't Die For You
	Subservience

Gigs

Just for posterity, here's a list of the gigs we played:

29/11/95	Redhills Hotel, Durham	First gig. Health and Safety made us turn the volume down beforehand, and an electrical problem screwed up the vocal sound a bit, but it went well
22/12/95	St. Aidan's College, Durham	Huge success - audience of over 500, many people congratulated us afterwards. We got paid £50, and opened a band bank account with it.
30/1/96	Brewer & Firkin, Durham	A Battle of the Bands. Paul had to be replaced by our mate Graham, who played marvellously despite a lack of practice. We were the only band there to get people up and dancing, but we somehow managed not to win.
12/2/96	Durham Johnston	Another Battle of the Bands. This time we played a storming set, and were the proud winners of £50, which we managed not to drink away afterwards
20/3/96	Houghall College, Durham	Headlined a bill of four bands. Unfortunately, due to some very shabby publicity, the venue was only about a quarter full, but we still managed to get them going. Many plaudits received afterwards.
7/7/96	Brewer & Firkin, Durham	Our final gig. Joint gig with some friends of ours. Lot of fun, not least because I'd passed my driving test a few days earlier, and we all went for a drive around town after the gig

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