Getting back to the talented kid brother thing again, Robin Key was the kind of sickeningly talented musician who could figure out how to get a tune out of just about any instrument invented, if left alone with it for a week, and with a sense of harmony that could take an arrangement into undreamed of areas. We shared a love of 60's and 70's guitar groups from The Beatles to Big Star. But I was a devout disco dancer (every Tuesday at The Dugout - see 'Weekends') who variously thought Beefheart's 'Clear Spot', Joni Mitchell's 'Blue' or James Brown's 'Sex Machine' was the greatest record ever made.

Robin seemed to favour more elaborate musical forms that frequently included extended guitar workouts - I seem to recall Todd Rungren's Utopia and Hotel California knocking about on cassette back in his schooldays, but you'd have to ask him for his favourites after the punk revolution. Like most Brummies, Robin and I had grown up with a reggae tune never more than a stone's throw away -

we'd gone to school in Handsworth and Steel Pulse were the foremost UK reggae band back then but Robin had gone on to study in Coventry, which at the time was the coolest place in Britain, home of The Specials and the whole Two-Tone scene; mixed race bands playing a brand of ska laced with new wave energy and punk politics. So he brought a bit of that speedy edge with him when he moved to Bristol permanently to join Various Artists/Art Objects axis.

Which leaves Christian Clarke on bass. I really can't remember how or when we met. I was certainly friendly with a number of Bristol University students at the time and I suspect they told me about this guy, the coolest, dudiest, fastest bassist around.

Well, we met and the disco funk connection connected us - though I remember we didn't agree on Chic! To Christian, Chic were the ultimate - sophisticated funky dance music makers - whereas I favoured something a bit grittier...the Fatback Band 'Wicky Wacky' Galaxy era 'War' or even Kool and the Gang 'Funky Stuff'. Robin's call would probably be the Ohio Players 'Who'd She Coo...' but no matter there was more than enough common ground for the four of us to work as a band, and for a good time we did exactly that.