There seem to be quite a few internet sites dedicated to the band but I guess this is the only place you are going to hear from me. So I will take this as an opportunity to use this space to look back, inform and maybe even entertain from time to time.
I will begin in the beginning. In the black n white late seventies a bit of black plastic called a record still had the power to change a young person’s life. For me it was The Buzzcocks, Bowie, The Jam, Roxy Music, Clash, The Damned, Dr Feelgood, Joy Division and The Kinks. It would also be Iggy, Dylan, and The Velvets but they came later. I wanted to be like the people who made those records, to me they inhabited a world I wanted to be part of and in a strange way was part of. They were talking to me; they were acknowledging my crummy life. Somehow mysteriously and magically they had teleported into my tiny mind and understood everything that no other human being ever had. They were my confidants, my soul mates. They made my existence bearable. They had something that I wanted. They represented something that I could aspire to at a time when there was nothing but violence, dread and emptiness. They also looked weird, cool and sexy. I knew I looked weird but I did not look cool or sexy. So it began; buying records, clothes, records, clothes, records , clothes, going to gigs , buying records, gigs, gigs, gigs, gigs, clothes, records, gigs. I gorged myself in the ways of rock n roll. Then one day I heard a voice in my head that sounded a bit like a Bristolian Johnny Cash (but higher pitched, sucking a gob stopper ). The voice said ‘I gort a base snow yew shurd by a gurrtar’
Way back in 1979 me and Chris (Galvin) full of youth and swagger decided to form a band . Chris had a bass and he told me to by a guitar. We formed a band called The Hybrids. In our 2 year existence we alternated between having a real drummer ( Jimmy ) and a Doctor Rhythm drum machine. We sounded something like the Jam meets Echo and the Bunnymen. Strangely enough considering I had only been playing guitar for 6 months we got gigs at the The Stonehouse , where we got quite a following of suburban mods and punks. I guess not because we were any good but because we were always smashing our gear up, more through nerves than real anger. We also got gigs at ‘nightclubs’ called Mistys where guys who looked like they had walked out of Miami Vice would beat us up because their girlfriends thought we looked ‘funny’ and ‘cute’ despite our best efforts to exude a quality of menace and cool.
The Hybrids never released any records but did record demo’s that I would send to Rough Trade records and John Peel. I remember getting a very nice letter from Rough Trades Geoff Travis saying how he liked our tape but he couldn’t put it out. Around 81 maybe 82 I met Bob ( Morris) when I was working at Clifton College as a chemistry tech. (It didn’t matter that I knew nothing about chemistry I somehow landed the Job, and get this , I went to the interview wearing a white tank top with no shirt on underneath. Summers back then were really hot! This fuddy old guy, actually he was probably in his twenties , just dressed fuddy like prince Charles, called Dr Hopely offered me the job) Bob was working part time as a washer up of test tubes. I would regularly put Sodium and other explosive elements in test tubes that would blow up in his face when he washed them. I have to mention that the previous washer up was Dan ( Catisis) a great guitarist who was in a band called The Glaxo Babies. They had put out a record with a song about Bruce lee that Bought and used to play all the time.
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