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ROB TARANA'S SECRET PAST
PLAGUE DOGS
the fog (mp3)
Louis Gilbert - vocals & guitar
Charlie Rocker - vocals & bass
Rob Overdrive - drums & lyrics
recorded 1990 darnall music factory, sheffield, uk
plague dogs ... the reason i left work forever.
i saw an advert in musical sounds on london roads window
drummer wanted : slade ramones phone lou.
after ummin and ahhin for a day or two, knowing that i had only
been playing drums for a few months and was not good, i threw caution to
the wind and went to a phone box. yes there were no mobiles in 1988
and my bedsit had no phone. i ended a day layer at lou's house listening
to tapes of his previous band "fuck city shitters" and starting to feel like
i might be out of my depth. i'd already been sacked from one band for being shit!
we arranged an audition down at jump studio practise rooms.
we hacked our way through clash, sex pistols, motorhead, free and alice cooper tracks
and i was suprised when he decided to have me in the band.
still with no name we got pete mercer a mutual friend in to play bass.
eventually we lost touch with pete (not suprising with all the friends he had)
and charlie, lou's brother became bass player and vocalist along with lou.
we rented tommo's bailey street attic room sharing with seventh son.
i really didn't like pete fuck (the drummer from "fuck city shitters") at first!
cause everytime he turned up he'd ask for a go and blow my tits off with his playing.
in hindsight i have to say pete was the first really good influence to me as a drummer
as i worked and worked to get better so he wouldn't make me look so bad.ta pete.
we did our first gig after a month, i invited everyone i knew from the limit and we
pasted up posters every few days round town as the leadmill kept covering them all up.
charlie wonthe chance to name the band plague dogs - it was better than what lou and me picked.
we ended up with 100 people plus in the hallamshire hotel upstairs room.
we guaranteed that most of them didn't return to see us for quite some tiime...
rob overdrive/tarana
THE BREW
wasting my time (mp3)
Garry Dunmore - vocals & guitar
Geoff Wheeler - vocals & bass
Rob Overdrive - drums
recorded 1993 bailey street, sheffield, uk
"Too many people in the pool. Somebody's got to get out of the pool.'
"i got poched while playing a gig with meld and after an audition at red tape studios
and a few guest ales in the tap and spile we were ready to waste our time heading for the big time.
after a few gigs and 5 day a week rehearsal we set off to the big smoke to find a manager.
after several times back to clapham juntion and tears of laughter we met up with red eye management
nik nikol and gloria, the uk management for ramones, janes addiction, debbie harry, talking heads.
they had previuosly attempted to have my first band plague dogs be the backing band for dee dee ramone.
they decided they wanted to get us in a studio in london. we did one track in an egptian done out studio
where i remember nik told me to strip back the drums to make the music work. it sounded more polished but for me
lost its edge and spark. my last gig with th brew was in brigg where i wandered into a hallucination
(not drug induced) where the drums i played were in slow motion and nothing to do with the set we'd worked out.
the journey home from this gig through a storm in the front seat of our van in my vision turned into
a vesrion of the end of the world. all i saw and felt was matter sinking down slowly as if moving to the earths core.
soon after was visited by geoff and gary to listen to some of the new mixes of tracks and i found myself
paralysed unable to breath properly with my mouth open wide.
i was taken to ward 56 mental ward in northern general hospital and after escaping late that night was
taken back sectioned and moved to whitely woods.
the brew got andy from the dylans to record down london and after a short return once out of hospital
it was suspected that i was going to have a relapse so the band got a new drummer dan.
spent some time later playing violin with geoff doing trinidad songs with a quatro ending with a performance
to hundreds buskin on chapel walk in sheffield one afternoon.
were we wasting our time? i loved this period of my life, fuckin' fantastic!!!"
rob overdrive/tarana
TABLET
dreaming (mp3)
Andy(Roo)Pigott- vocals, guitar, drum programming, ni & production Rob - vocals, lyrics
"i wrote the lyrics the morning after a dream.
i saw endless bodys floating down a river, as i got closer i saw the faces were all mine.
roo made a guitar part for this and we recorded it at Cage Studios late in 1995.
we only ever performed it once after at a house party where we were living.
this was my last attempt at singing before i went for vocal lessons with opera singer olive sutton."
rob overdrive/tarana
BLIND MOLE RAT
jewish wedding tune (mp3)
(trad, arr BMR)
recorded at tonstudio, gerber st 3, weimar nov 1994
engineered by robin downe, trevor thomas & burkhardt blum
BMR
Dan Bernstein - guitar
Chris Boddington - accordian & guitar
Kiri - fiddle
Trevor Thomas - mandolin
Robin Downe - bass
Rob Overdrive - drums
1994 BEFORE photo by nolle
2008 AFTER photo by david chang
"in november 91 we did a plague dogs gig with an early version of blind mole rat on the bill.
in the summer of 94 i rang an advert wanting a drummer into the selecter/pogues/clash.
after a garbled conversation with dan he seemed to get the impression that ididn't like the
selecter but wanted to audition. i did think i had said i really love the selecter...
we auditioned in my spital hill rehearsal room that i shared with a couple of bands.
the things i remembered most were chris singer, accordianist, guitarist looking at me then
looking on the wall behind me over and over, also that they were shocked i could play on drop
reggae beats and how pissed off the rest of the band were when chris declared i was in the band
without consulting them first.
i found out later tht chris thought the picture of bono on the wall was a photo of me.
after intense rehearsals we played heeley city festival and soon after set off for a european tour.
was finallly getting to do what i left work for five years before.
we played gigs round uk, france, germany, belgium, poland, spain & portugal...
i got addicted to banana juice in germany...we got robbed of a months touring money in spain,
then saved in perpignan when the van broke down outside les baleane where the bar owner offered
us a gig, for him to record on a cassette player in exchange for rooms in his hotel, free drinks and
getting someone to fix our van in the morning. we did the gig just for him and his barstaff...
had to steal a snare stand in paris, never ran so fast...stage dived in suwalki, got took to the back of the
room and back to stage by a room full of skankin' punk rockers, played in a polish castle, drove in throgh a
drawbridge, played to arond 500 who all disapeared half way through our set, we stoppe, went to find them
and they were fighting fascists with baseball bats outside who came to disrupt the gig. they won, we played...
met doug (buster bloodvessle) trendle on a ferry to france...broke down in leipzig...cried in potsdam..."
rob overdrive/tarana
SPITHEAD
call the police (youtube)
ON THIS TRACK SPITHEAD WERE
John Spithead - vocals & guitar
Paul Harris - vocals & bass
Charlotte - vocals & stylophone
Tony Baloney - organ
Rob Overdrive - vocals & drums
produced by Andy Roo Pigott
first saw spithead playing in samuel becketts, london with blyth power and doing my third gig with blind mole rat.
they did everything they said "the crunchiest ska band in the universe" etc they soon became my favourite ska punk
band on the circuit. i also witnessed ranking roger performing "ranking full stop" b-side of "tears of a clown", with
spithead on their 100th gig in their hometown brum.
three days before the last bmr gig i recieved a tape of spithead tracks to learn as scott their drummer had left the band.
so what was to be the last bmr was also my spithead (debut apart from getting up to do vocals in the square, harlow
on a linton kwesi johnson cover "fite dem back").
many gigs up and down uk folllowed and i hitch hiked either to birmingham or to meet in a good place for travelling north.
in 96 we cobbled together a tour of uk, eire, germany, holland, belgium & france.
i remember nolle our host in germany giving me a backy on his motorbike to a doctors barely able to cling on, with egg sized
mosquitoe bites all over my body, then in the evening doing a gig to over 10,000 people at stemwede festival.
this band was both great to be with on and off-stage. after i left another drummer joined and scott joined again for a few gigs.
my favourite all time sithead gig was watching them as a 3 piece at the broomspring centre, sheffield in 94...
rob overdrive/tarana
more here soon ...
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