My mate and ex-bandmate, John, has written a brilliant blog post about “Bitter Truth“, the Heavy Metal band we were in when we were about 18. It’s a short history of the formation of the band and what we went through.
I cannot for the life of me remember how we got a band going, but I had met John around 1991. I was working in the offices at Duron Brakelinings in Buxton as a YTS, and I think he was attending High Peak College in Harpur Hill. John had a mate called Chris from Sheffield who was a pretty hot guitarist, and the three of us would meet up and jam, then we started to practise at the Methodist Hall.
After a while, we began a quest to look for other members. I’d recently met up with an old acquaintance, also called Chris. We auditioned for drummers, but they were a bit thin on the ground..
Here are even a few cool old photos.
The Story of Bitter Truth
Eventually, we found an email drummer, and we thought that she was pretty cool. She was a nice girl, and we all got on well… unfortunately, she didn’t have much kit that she could transport. Anyone who’s ever been in a band will know the eternal frustration of working with drummers who either don’t have the means or just can’t be bothered to transport their kit to and from practice.
Lisa didn’t last very long, and so we were without a drummer again. Quite by chance, I learned that my friend’s neighbour was a drummer, and we went to see him to ask him if he fancied helping us out. He certainly looked the part; he was a bit older than us, and I think he found us annoying and immature. He was much more into country rock than Heavy Metal, but he was a bloody great drummer.
Bitter Truth’s First and Only Gig
John and I spent a bit of time building a poster template by cutting bits of magazines and old photos up. In those days, it was the precursor to Photoshop. (see below) It looks a bit naff now, but at the time we thought it was great, and it did look pretty good when photocopied.
We plastered the local area with fliers, praying that somebody might actually turn up…all the time dreading the possibility that anyone would turn up. We were there a couple of hours before we needed to be, just to get set up and soundchecked.
I’d arranged for another local band – REDHEAD (later changed their name to SWEETLEAF ) to Headline us. They were actually a lot better than we were, and had played loads of gigs, so they were doing us a favour really.
Before going on stage, we were interviewed by media Studies students – *embarrassing, but we thought we’d better get used to it if we wanted to be famous. Anyway, it was all pretty “cringe”, but we pulled it off.
