Members were:
Paul Beckett (Vocals)
Tony O'Shaughnessy (Keyboards, Guitar)
Paul Cassidy (Keyboards)
John Blackhurst (Guitars)
Gary Williams (keyboards, drum machine)
In fond memory of Paul Cassidy, 1966 - 1994
Influences
Depeche Mode, Human League, Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, John Foxx, Heaven 17, OMD.
For a short time in the early 1980's, That Volcano was the forth most important band in Kirkby, Merseyside. At long last, this website allows the band's first, but most focussed demo, to once again see the light of day.
Gary writes:
It all started in January 1981 with me doing a multi-layered recording, bouncing tracks between one tape recorder and another to build up a wall of sound. Instrumentation included a vase, a 'pong' tv game, a set of springs, some and knitting needles as drum-sticks. The resulting cacophony was entitled 'I'm a membrane', and I was ever so proud! I played it to Tony O'shaughnessy, who lived around the corner, and within days, we'd formed a band called 'Penultimate Vehicle'! Most of 1981 saw us building our arsenal of instruments, including a casio VL1. Tony already had a stylophone and a church organ which you had to pump with your feet so he was well ahead of the game!
By January 1982, we had expanded to three members, including Paul Cassidy. Paul was approached entirely on the basis of the fact that he bought NME and liked Fad Gadget. Me, Tony and Paul had all gone into debt (or made our parents go into debt) to buy synthesiseers (Yamaha, Roland and Korg respectively. We also had the cheapest little drum machine that money could buy. We were ready for our first and last gig as Penultimate Vehicle, with me on vocals. This took place at a friend' Davo's house, as part of his 16th birthday party. Common consensus was that the music held at least some promise, while the vocals were appalling (the tape of the gig still exists, under lock and key. You can hear people laughing and making cat noises as I hold forth!). The gig led to a review, and soon we had recruited my classmate Paul Beckett as frontman, and John Blackhurst to guitar.
Anyway, for what its worth, the full line up of Paul Beckett on Vocals, Tony O'Shaughnessy, me and Paul Cassidy ALL on keyboards, and John Blackhurst on guitar then spent the best part of a year writing songs and rehearsing songs and not doing much else. Come the spring of 1983, we finally felt we had a set of songs we were reasonably confident with, so we played our first gig, which, as it happens was a battle of the bands at the local school fete. I can't really remember much about the other bands beyond the fact that one of them was called Mojo Filter. By this time we had changed our name to the very shortlived 'Radio Blue'. We won the competition, with the bands who lost questioning the decision of the sole judge (Kevin Perks), as he was a friend of ours!
Fired up by this win, we booked ourselves into the 'Abbey Green' 16 track recording studios in Warrington. Why Warrington? I have no idea. Liverpool was bursting at the seams with recording studios and rehearsal rooms at the time. I suppose it felt like, as it was just for one weekend, it made little difference. We all chipped in £25 each for a two day session, which covered the recording and mixing of the four tracks that can be heared over at www.myspace.com/thatvolcano . The girl on the tape was Pauline Alliston, who was Paul Beckett's cousin.
We were very happy with the results, and within weeks were on the train to London, to tout it around the record companies. Naturally, we were met with general indifference, but London Records and EMI said they wanted to hear more.
With this information under our belt, we got back in touch with Abbey Green, who immediately offered to manage us, serving up as much recording studio time as we could use to record a heavyweight follow-up to the first demo. So we would get phone calls telling us the studio was free, did we fancy using the studio? Invariably, my dad would be pressed into service, driving us up the motorway to Warrington, where we would then spend 36 very happy hours making cups of coffee, drinking beer, and generally noodling around. This went on for three months! At the end of which we had a tape with four songs on that bore no resemblance to the band we were or had been. This demo again got taken around the record companies, meeting with hostility this time! London records simply wanted to know 'What happened?' Back to the drawing board.
It was about this time that we took our very worst decision, when we kicked Paul Cassidy out of the band. Why? Because he and singer Paul were having too much fun! We felt distracted, and wanted to ensure we could focus on the music. Looking back, it was a big shame that we had lost sight of the fact that it was supposed to be fun.
Abbey Green thought that we needed to build our following and put ourselves on the map with a big, showcase show. Again, our general myopic view of the world meant that we spurned Liverpool, instead deciding to hire Kirkby's Civic Suite, with a capacity of about 600! We should really have been playing little pubs, but oh! no. So we then spent another six weeks in the studio, recording backing tapes for the gig. Basically, all the drum machine and basslines were put onto a 4 track fostex, which would then stand proudly centre stage during the gig. We were only two or three years behind OMD and Human League in doing this, but that didn't put us off.
So 3rd December 1983 saw us play this (for us) massive gig in Kirkby. We had an audience of about 400 people - there wasn't much to do in Kirkby of a Thursday night, if at all. Most people were there for the promised disco I am sure. Anyway, it all went reasonably well, and we convinced ourselves we were all popstars. Within three weeks we had split up.
This is excellent stuff! Not listened to these for too long. Would you call yourself electro or industrial pop? If you had recorded these now you would be tearing the UK apart with MV!
Oh yeah, that probably explains why they've been acquiring all those extra members...
Don't thank me, I reckon if you released that last track now, it'd be at least as popular as Lorraine!
I've just replaced Morton Valence with That Volcano as the song on my page.... I'm sure MV will be honoured to have been ousted by yourselves. If not: bandfight!
At my state of hair loss peroxide is not a consideration, I say grow a beard and peroxide that. We refuse to let you touch that trademark silver hair atop of your head.
Here I was thinking it was just another band wanting to be added, but lo and behold it was you Gary. Ultimately i love electronica, you are due a revival, unpack the synths.
