Dyax the Rock Band days
Dyax were formed when through family contacts Jamie needed a guitarist to play a song with him for his GCSE music project. I accepted the challenge and played lead guitar on David Bowie's Rebel Rebel in front of the board of examiners at his school while he played drums and a bass player and singer were also draughted in. Jamie and I then thought it would be a good idea to form a band, he was already quite a talented young lad so that's how it started. We thoroughly enjoyed it for a couple of years and was pretty damn successful locally with the students and local pub audiences. What we lacked musically we made up for in energy and very tight playing. Still today there are people who remember our songs, they were quite catchy with driving rhythms. Our equipment in those days was dire as none of us could afford a pack of fags between us, so forgive the naff sound we had and enjoy the tunes on these primitive recordings.
On guitar - Mark Cockerill and Tony Pell
Drums - Jamie Charlton
Bass Guitar - Tom Foley
Lead vocals - Matt Busby to be replaced by Rick Ashbridge
The lads in Dyax were all very young but dedicated 16 and 17 year olds. We originally had a keyboard player called Colin Vipurs who played all the bass parts before he was replaced by a bass guitarist and second guitarist. We practiced in Jamie's garage every Saturday afternoon and it was there that these recordings of a practice session took place with a stereo recorder. I basically wrote all the songs and they soaked them up enthusiastically. We had about 15 or 16 tunes by the end but these three songs here were our favorites and reflect our style pretty well.
I'll see if I can find any photos of the band and post them here for a laugh. If any of the old Dyax lads have any, just pass them my way and I'll post them on here.
