Thursday 8 January 2009



I found some notes that I made in 1993 about the history of WKDN and with their help I will elaborate further.

1981/82

Played as a duo. Mark Fell and Paul Moller.

Mid 1982 we did a gig at the New York hotel in Hull. We played two sets of 30 mins each with The Luddites doing the same. For the first set I was on guitar and vocals with Mark playing violin, we had two friends with us - Yana and Tanya who played a radio each. For 10 mins of the second set I played Sax and Clarinet while Mark played the Drums then we swapped and Mark played the Trumpet while I played the Drums for the next 20 mins. We had a strobe light going continually for 30 mins. Yana and Tanya fought, whipped each other, pulled and cut hair, bit and wrestled each other very convincingly for the duration. Afterwards one of them (can't remember which) was upset because it had moved from being a 'pretend' fight into something that looked very real to me.

1982/83

Our friend Chris Hunter joined us playing bass. Chris had been in a band called Aphasia with John/Willy on guitar, I only saw them once, they did a great version of the Stones' Jumping Jack Flash. He's out there somewhere I hope, probably drunk, I don't have a clue how to find him. My notes say that we sat freezing in overcoats and occasionally gloves playing in a small room above my Dads' shop where we did a lot of our playing. We did one gig on 14.3.83 at a deserted Bridlington Spa, a massive place and I couldn't see a single member of the audience as we played. The best jazz thing we ever did was performed at this concert. We were allowed 17 minutes having an alarm clock onstage so we finished perfectly on time. Our friend Cheryl walked up towards the end and put her young daughter Gemma on the stage, she wandered about for a few minutes. Mark wore a gold lame tutu. I threw a chair offstage (we played sat down) at the end in disgust, I was like that in those days.

Johnny Tasker joined in about April playing percussion mainly on gas canisters, we also had a sheet of hardboard used as a wobble board just like Rolf. We also had a thing which was a length of tube on a trumpet mouthpiece that you blew into and twirled around your head. We recorded a video in late '83 and I had been up getting twatted beforehand, I demonstrated the twirly-thing to Grant Ardis before we started filming and promptly passed out! Everything we did was totally improvised so we used to tape as much as possible.

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