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K9's
Update May 2001
The
K9's were our local '77 punk heroes in Reading (although as I recall they all
actually came from Crowthorne). Rick Dellar on vocals, Greg Muden on guitar
and vocals, Iain "Sprogg" Aird on bass and vocals and Kev Drain on
drums. They were in a very similar vein to The Damned both musically
(they frequently used to include a cover of New Rose in their set), and
in their gloriously chaotic live performances: they regularly used to
come on stage wearing all sorts of strange costumes (policemen, nurses,
ballerinas, holiday makers....) and frequently ended up playing the encores
stark bollock naked!
They
originally started out as Rick Rodent And The Sewer Rats back in '76 and used
to be regulars at Bones Club in Reading until it closed. After that they
only gigged sporadically until mid '78 when they split up.
They
reformed in '79 which was when they recorded the single K9 Hassle / Idi Amin /
Sweeney Todd which they released themselves on their own Dog Breath label.
They initially rejected a recording contract offered to them by the local
record shop, Quicksilver, but subsequently were forced to agree to sign
up for 2 singles because they needed someone to sponsor them on tour as
they'd been offered a support slot by The Damned. Unfortunately
no money was forthcoming from Quicksilver so they had to abandon the tour and,
feeling understandably annoyed and despondent, they decided to call it a day
again.
In
the meantime they had recorded four tracks - Sewer Rats, Speeding, their
own slightly rewritten version of Leader Of The Pack retitled Dose Of The
Clap, and The Weekend Starts Here. These were going to be released as an EP,
tentatively entitled The K9's Four Skins - but these tracks were left
unfinished when they split up
.
Sprogg
later mixed down a couple of these tracks, The Weekend Starts Here and Dose Of
The Clap, as me and my mate Captain Callous were hoping to release them as a
free flexi-disc with the 'zine we used to produce (Grinding Halt) but the
pressing plant refused to produce them because of the highly questionable
lyrical content!
Meanwhile,
Sprogg had started playing guitar in a new punk / oi! / thrash outfit
called Zerox; Greg joined another leading local band called General
Accident for a while; Kev played for quite a few local groups, notably Between
Pictures, and Rick just seemed to disappear of the face of the earth for a
while.
The
original line-up reformed yet again in 1980 but had to masquerade as an R 'n'
B band under the name Gene Creamer And The Bunkbeds (!) because The K9's reputation
for wild live performances had preceded them, and they found
they had already been banned in advance from just about every venue in the
Thames Valley!
Greg,
Sprogg and Kev. later played together in another band called The Geisha Girls
.
....
and where are they now?
Well,
Greg is now the manager of the Purple Turtle bar chain (along with Danny, who
was Kev's replacement in The Geisha Girls); Rick and Kev are still living in
Crowthorne and I believe still have a band together which plays occasionally,
although I haven't seen them for a couple of years; and as for Sprogg....
well....
Mr.
Aird was / is an absolutely superb bass player and has played with any
number of bands over the years - perhaps most notably Nik Turner's Inner
City Unit - and in just about every identifiable style known to man (as
well as a couple that I'm pretty sure he just made up himself on the spur of
the moment). He was even asked to audition for The Damned once (after
Algy left and before they recruited Paul Gray). I'm absolutely convinced that
he could have had an extremely successful career as a professional musician,
except for a couple of small but unfortunate details - he is almost
certainly certifiably insane and is without any doubt whatsoever the
single most disorganised and unreliable little tosspot it has ever been
my enormous pleasure to know..... (If you're out there anywhere reading this
Sproggy, please call your old Hungarian friend Christopher Bollock!)
Stewart
Osborne
(The
Accountant Formerly Known As Eddie Snide)
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