I’m Jamie, I play drums for the Crush. (Is that enough of a biog Rich?)
I discovered my love of music at an early age. At infants school, like most kids, I was presented with a Recorder – I can still remember the sound made by 12 kids playing “London’s Burning”, slightly out of tune on the recorder. Then I dabbled with the violin for a while in first school. I could hear my parent’s sigh of relief when I decided that the violin wasn’t for me. However, their relief was short-lived when I told them that I wanted to learn to play drums. When I moved up to secondary school, I signed myself up for drum lessons, and while that was more years ago now that I care to admit, I know that there is always something new to learn.
Much to my parents dismay (who I think, secretly hoped that playing the drums was a phase I’d grow out of) it wasn’t long before I joined something that resembled a band. We didn’t take ourselves too seriously and just messed around in our spare time, making noise and having fun. When I was 15, I joined a 7 piece band called Temporal Distortion. We played a heavy mix of RATM, Iron Maiden and that kind of thing.
Myself and the guitarist from Temporal Distortion formed a band with some others. We only did two or three gigs but we did get to make a TV programme with directing legend, Ken Russell. We could never agree on a band name as we thought everything sounded so cheesy. I think we were called Pandemonium for a while. I left around the time the name Spunk Monkeys was settled on.
After leaving Pandemonium, I had a break of about two years while my spare time was taken up with revising for exams and getting a job. However, I missed playing in a band and it wasn’t long before I joined Southampton covers band, Murmur. The music I played in Murmur is very similar to the music we are doing in The Crush. I have some very fond memories of gigs I did with the lads from Murmur.
After Murmur, I joined another great bunch of lads from Bournemouth, who called themselves Lostaura. Playing only original material for my first gig with Lostaura was an experience I’ll never forget. I got a call about 9am in the morning asking if could I do a gig in Southampton that evening as their drummer had just quit. I had no idea what they sounded like and hadn’t been to a proper practice with them. It was definitely a seat of the pants moment!
We did a great variety of gigs, at some fabulous venues and had a really loyal following. However, when the rest of the lads said that they wanted to relocate closer to London, I had to make the hard decision to leave. Lostaura are still going from strength to strength and are soon to release their first album!
After another break from being in a band, and driving my poor wife mad by playing imaginary bongos on every available surface, I joined what would become the covers group The Valves. We played some great songs. Sadly, after a couple of shuffles in the line-up, The Valves were no more. However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom because I stayed in touch with Rich, who I had met during my time in The Valves and not long before the end, we had discovered the talents of Guy.
After a short break, while we gathered our thoughts and planned our next move, we advertised for a bass player. Sadly, none turned up, so we dragged the first guy off the street we could find, stuck a bass in his hands and with Pete now on board, the rest, as they say, is history.
