keith's biog

keith's musical biog

beginnings

The trail leading to otherness started with linda singing into a hairbrush in oldham, greater manchester. copying motown and northern soul. I on the other hand was listening to beatles records under headphones – wondering what ‘I am the walrus’ could possibly mean to a pudding-basined schoolboy in south east London.

streetlegal

Standing in music shops learning the chords from song books that I couldn’t afford. Rehashing pop rock standards on truly awful guitars which cut your fingers and never played in tune – rehearsing in church halls thinking that the band was producing the definitive version of honky tonk women – so different to the thousands of other boys posing and turning up their amps. We were called streetlegal but then Bob Dylan released an album with the same name. This was the first of many cases of our originality being cruelly copied by less creative people.

Punk caught us covering 'gloria' – like those ten thousand other bands were now doing too – we followed the lighter shade of punk – we even killed ‘in the city’. The highpoint of this punk-lite phase was the all original ‘victim of society – who’s your target gonna be?’

the persons

As punk waned I was guitarist in the persons a second wave mod band with staypress trousers, short hair and a love for 'the kinks'. Alex bienkov, paul knott and mark mee were the other members. Things got better with a new guitar - the classic shergold masquerader and burman valve amp. The highpoint of this phase was when a local fanzine said that our version of ‘keep on running’ was ten thousand times better than the original. It wasn’t, but it cheered us up. Less successful was the misogynist ‘blackheath girls’ whose words made blackheath girls shout ‘wankers’ as we broke into the song. A good way to win over an audience. You live and learn.

st limbo

When the persons fell apart – as most bands founded only on musical differences and angst do – I found myself with an echo pedal – a memory man. At the time it was noisy and very dull sounding (this was before we knew that these things were good and classic). Turning off the distortion from the guitar for a moment I could hear the beautiful, ethereal and shimmering sound of echo chorus reverb guitars – no longer did a guitar need to sound like ‘cows hitting electric fences’ as my mum had told us. (She also told me my brother’s guitar playing sounded like he was 'chopping wood' and that tom jones had ‘got something’ – so what did she know?).

As ever – our new original sound was shamelessly copied by bands who hadn’t heard us – the passions, cocteau twins and the cure. Still it didn’t stop me, paul and mark playing instrumentally around blackheath and lewisham as st limbo (formerly 'packmule express' – wise choice to change names). Both paul and mark were great to play with. My confidence was only slightly dented while standing in the kitchen at a party to overhear that ‘the drummer’s alright but the other two are useless’. We played the tracks ‘lament’, ‘rickshaw ron’, ‘walls of jericho’ and the less memorable 'big pots'. Paul never told us that this song was named after poo – but it suited the song.

Listen to two vocal versions of St Limbo songs (vocals: Chris Knott)

politics

Once again a band of boys fell apart and I was now a student in Bristol. A brief foray into success resulted in a musical relationship with roland from tears for fears. He loved our music – he was going to cover our song! However it never got to replace the filler b side and the cover version was quietly forgotten.

After this I was oh so socialist - music was put on ice to be replaced by getting a drafty arse in an upstairs room above a pub. The revolution consisted of six of us dreaming about a moneyless classless stateless society – while the collection just raised three pounds for the hire of the beer soaked carpet.

musical chairs

It was about this time that I met linda. I had been going back to London to play with mark mee to combine our floppy fringes to produce gloomy instrumentals – waiting for a wonderful voice. Linda answered our prayers.We recorded a demo at a mobile studio engineered by linda's wonderful partner, ken. After an audition which lasted several weeks and involved an outward bound endurance course and a written exam – linda was then ready to leave the band. However the spell had been cast. Whatever anyone else thought our music – I knew that linda’s voice was for me.

Listen to Musical Chairs

atmosphere music

When this cross country non-band fell apart – all went quiet with band music so I started to write a lot of new songs and also atmospheric music – for film or more likely for sad days at home in Bristol. Graduating from portastudio to eight track to drum machines and yamaha DX7 – I too made the transition to floppy hair and floppy rhythms and was – by the miracle of multitrack recording able to overproduce the vocals, keyboards and bass part of all of my songs – all at once! It was good to be supreme ruler of the recording studio for a while. Persuading my then partner tessa roberts to sing on our leftwingery we produced cassettes for ourselves to listen to while we drank pia d'or and ate maltesers.

When things went pear-shaped in bristol, I left as it wasn’t serving my musical needs. Massive attack, portishead and tricky breathed a sigh of relief at my departure and went on to develop trip hop and become wildly successful. Once more I proved that I had my finger on the musical pulse by going off at a pace in the opposite direction to wealth and fame.

Listen to some atmosphere music.

she bellows, we play

Three months in london – and then I visited linda on spec. as luck would have it – she was on that very day moving home – from the flat she had live in for seven years! In our time apart linda had become very involved in community arts - particularly the puppet group 'fooled again. With linda’s sister caz we formed a highly principled unit that forbad the use of drums and absolutely forbad relationships in the band. We failed on both counts. We were joined by an ex-comrade from thames polytechnic library – paul golding. Paul and his friend phillip sharman were into r d laing, david cooper and eno. They had tape loops running from end to end of their abbey wood studio and paul kept notebooks in his back pocket of creative ideas that he wrote in as we sorted the mechanical engineering shelves in the library. Paul – a wonderful man and bassist joined.

Listen to she bellow we play

swoon

Paul fell in love and moved to america – I still miss him. The search for another bassist led us to fretless bob clarke. As bob would admit he was also unable to play the same thing twice – but when he was on he was great. Caz left for portugal and linda, bob and I gigged around London. It was in our frequent visits to the famed dog and bell pub (where you can still see jools holland) that they met emma cafferty. The three was now four. More songs – more recording at my mum and dad’s house - 'thin air', 'chains' and 'shattered glass' were some of the songs.

Fergal sharkey (then an a&r man) - sent us a sarky reply to our demo - 'no tops of the pops this week guys'. We could take criticism but ...fergal sharkey! The band then expanded to include mo perry – a gifted percussionist and his friend phil – a keyboard player. Now known as swoon, the band found another brighton-based drummer guy and gigged in London.

Listen to swoon

otherness

In time linda and I got fed up with playing the same songs again that we had been playing for a millennium. We left the band in a haze of recrimination and went on to write and record a whole load of new songs – with an atari computer and a wonderful sampler. Linda went on to work with sam in loop guru and later slipper and toured widely. I concentrated on running the studio doing tribute backings (honestly! take that, madonna, aha, adam and the ants - I could go on) and song recording. We did guitar, bass vocals and keyboards on so many songs. Good experience but it didn’t get us where we wanted to go.

Listen to early otherness songs

otherness today

It was then that our two children wonderfully intervened. Some years later we can now put our heads above the parapet and ask ‘what happened when we were away?’ Everything is the worrying reply.