Other ways of doing things
The period ’77 to ’87 was an amazing time for home-produced independent cassette releases and fanzines in Europe, America and elsewhere. Punk had come along in the UK and else where and loosened the monopolising hold of the record companies on the way music was distributed, written about and how you expressed yourself. Thousands of cassettes were DIY produced worldwide over this time!
Long before the Internet, social media, CD burners, mp3 players, streaming and high quality digital home recording using a PC or Mac running a DAW, synth and FX software, there was analogue audio/music equipment (hardware). Using reels of magnetic tape and compact audio cassettes as the only viable method to get your music recorded, mainly on domestic or HiFi machines.
The postal system was the only means to get your music distributed and heard at minimal cost without a record label’s backing and vinyl pressing, (private pressings being relatively rare and a very expensive route to go unless you could guarantee sales) and radio plays (if any!). Fanzines run by friendly and musically open-minded people being the original go to route for exposure via reviews and interviews for independent home cassette releases, (all now well documented by various authors). They were later picked up on by the mainstream music press in a small way. Also of note were/are the music fans who became cassette distributors such as Fraser Nash (Music For Midgets) and Rudi Tuscher (Calypso Now).
Years On Earth begins
Years On Earth formed officially in the grey, wet winter of 1979, with two years of home recordings already committed to tape. Full-time music fans, the duo are Bob and Mebz. Their brief for the name was that, “… we couldn’t be pigeon-holed to any one musical style or tribe, but leaning towards science fiction and gothic horror”.
The group's name came in part from a script book for the cult science fiction film ‘Five Million Years to Earth’ (also known as ‘Quatermass and the Pit’ outside of America), which they saw in a book sale in W. Mark and Co., Ltd., 27 The Drapery, (locally just called "Marks", sadly now no more), when walking around a cold autumnal Northampton town centre searching for inspiration for a band name they could agree on. Originally they were to have called themselves “Million Years to Earth”, but a chance misspelling by Mebz resulted in the better liked (and shorter!) name they finally took and seemed wholly appropriate for a tapes, electronics and FX-guitar group, where all the equipment must be earthed (grounded) to function properly and safely.
Why they decided to produce cassettes is described by them thus, “… we were making our own worlds with sound and all the recordings we had accumulated seemed to reach a critical mass that wanted to be heard, this and friends urging us on prompted a dive into the growing cassette culture we knew of and purchased tapes from, and we never looked back as people took an interest, wrote to us and wanted to know and hear more.”
Do It Yourself (DIY) technology
Originally most of there songs developed out of jam sessions with the final touches added later, but as practice and their technology improved other ways of working emerged. The basic song or sound structure was recorded on a Teac A-108 Sync cassette deck and one (eventually becoming two) Akai DS/DB4000 reel-to-reel tape machines running at 7.5 ips and then “bounced” through a second- hand Rokk mixer, (bought from a friend of Bob's) between them to build up the layers of sounds. A Sansui SE-7 graphic equaliser was used to improve the audio. The process was later revised to running tapes, synthesisers and guitars all at once to mix the stereo better and improve the quality and vocals became the only overdub.
Two WEM Copicat tape delay machines (both modified by them to remove the original (dry) signal and one with a playback head on a piece of “Blutak” to give odd stereo delays, (as did putting a finger on the tapeloop!) and a WEM Pre-mixer IV (incorporating a mechanical long-spring reverberation unit) handled all puesdo acoustic/ambience chores, an Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress De-Luxe Flanger, (bought from a friend of Mebz's) was often used on the guitars, drum machines and vocals. A battered tiny shortwave radio also came into use. All of this equipment was second- or third- hand.
The two tier modular synthesiser, followed later by a self-contained one (an E&MM Spectrum Synthesiser), both based on Digisound 80 or Maplin kits from construction articles in Electronics Today International and Electronics & Music Maker magazines respectively, were hand-built and modified by them. As were most of the guitar FX boxes (fuzz, sustain, chorus, etc.,), a 128-note digital sequencer and a drum machine, both from Practical Electronics magazine. A temperamental Roland DR-55 drum machine was also used and finally repaired, also active electronics were fitted in the guitars (quite a new idea at the time) and other bits and pieces as required.
The period ’77 to ’87 was an amazing time for home-produced independent cassette releases and fanzines in Europe, America and elsewhere. Punk had come along in the UK and else where and loosened the monopolising hold of the record companies on the way music was distributed, written about and how you expressed yourself. Thousands of cassettes were DIY produced worldwide over this time!
Long before the Internet, social media, CD burners, mp3 players, streaming and high quality digital home recording using a PC or Mac running a DAW, synth and FX software, there was analogue audio/music equipment (hardware). Using reels of magnetic tape and compact audio cassettes as the only viable method to get your music recorded, mainly on domestic or HiFi machines.
The postal system was the only means to get your music distributed and heard at minimal cost without a record label’s backing and vinyl pressing, (private pressings being relatively rare and a very expensive route to go unless you could guarantee sales) and radio plays (if any!). Fanzines run by friendly and musically open-minded people being the original go to route for exposure via reviews and interviews for independent home cassette releases, (all now well documented by various authors). They were later picked up on by the mainstream music press in a small way. Also of note were/are the music fans who became cassette distributors such as Fraser Nash (Music For Midgets) and Rudi Tuscher (Calypso Now).
Years On Earth begins
Years On Earth formed officially in the grey, wet winter of 1979, with two years of home recordings already committed to tape. Full-time music fans, the duo are Bob and Mebz. Their brief for the name was that, “… we couldn’t be pigeon-holed to any one musical style or tribe, but leaning towards science fiction and gothic horror”.
The group's name came in part from a script book for the cult science fiction film ‘Five Million Years to Earth’ (also known as ‘Quatermass and the Pit’ outside of America), which they saw in a book sale in W. Mark and Co., Ltd., 27 The Drapery, (locally just called "Marks", sadly now no more), when walking around a cold autumnal Northampton town centre searching for inspiration for a band name they could agree on. Originally they were to have called themselves “Million Years to Earth”, but a chance misspelling by Mebz resulted in the better liked (and shorter!) name they finally took and seemed wholly appropriate for a tapes, electronics and FX-guitar group, where all the equipment must be earthed (grounded) to function properly and safely.
Why they decided to produce cassettes is described by them thus, “… we were making our own worlds with sound and all the recordings we had accumulated seemed to reach a critical mass that wanted to be heard, this and friends urging us on prompted a dive into the growing cassette culture we knew of and purchased tapes from, and we never looked back as people took an interest, wrote to us and wanted to know and hear more.”
Do It Yourself (DIY) technology
Originally most of there songs developed out of jam sessions with the final touches added later, but as practice and their technology improved other ways of working emerged. The basic song or sound structure was recorded on a Teac A-108 Sync cassette deck and one (eventually becoming two) Akai DS/DB4000 reel-to-reel tape machines running at 7.5 ips and then “bounced” through a second- hand Rokk mixer, (bought from a friend of Bob's) between them to build up the layers of sounds. A Sansui SE-7 graphic equaliser was used to improve the audio. The process was later revised to running tapes, synthesisers and guitars all at once to mix the stereo better and improve the quality and vocals became the only overdub.
Two WEM Copicat tape delay machines (both modified by them to remove the original (dry) signal and one with a playback head on a piece of “Blutak” to give odd stereo delays, (as did putting a finger on the tapeloop!) and a WEM Pre-mixer IV (incorporating a mechanical long-spring reverberation unit) handled all puesdo acoustic/ambience chores, an Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress De-Luxe Flanger, (bought from a friend of Mebz's) was often used on the guitars, drum machines and vocals. A battered tiny shortwave radio also came into use. All of this equipment was second- or third- hand.
The two tier modular synthesiser, followed later by a self-contained one (an E&MM Spectrum Synthesiser), both based on Digisound 80 or Maplin kits from construction articles in Electronics Today International and Electronics & Music Maker magazines respectively, were hand-built and modified by them. As were most of the guitar FX boxes (fuzz, sustain, chorus, etc.,), a 128-note digital sequencer and a drum machine, both from Practical Electronics magazine. A temperamental Roland DR-55 drum machine was also used and finally repaired, also active electronics were fitted in the guitars (quite a new idea at the time) and other bits and pieces as required.
“… with the modular, the thought of being able to plug any output into any input and with multiple options and hearing what was happening was a dream come true.” The slightly odd layout of the modules input and output sockets arranged as a large middle strip came from Mebz after Bob was complaining about drooping patch cords covering the knobs (as was normal with conventional module arrays). Bob expanded on this by having all audio generation and processing along the top tier, while all control voltage modules were along the bottom tier. Of course the top and bottom modules could have their inputs and outputs cross over.
Later, came simple sequencing on a Sinclair ZX-81 built from a kit with a 16K Rampack added later. Then very primitive (by today’s standards) voltage controlled 8-bit sampling on a Sinclair Spectrum 48K home computer (although their main ‘sampler’ remained the tape recorder). Again the interface and the program code (after learning about progamming in BASIC) were built and modified from an article in Electronic Soundmaker & Computer Music magazine. This was all pre-MIDI too, but after learning how to use logic I.C.s eventually the sequencer could be triggered by the drum machine as well as running the sequence once to a stop, (most notably on ‘On the ice’). Around 1986 Bob even found the time to contribute an 'industrial' drum kit for the Cheetah SpecDrum to its user group for free, coming out of his earlier sampler experiments.
However, taped natural sounds or snippets from a shortwave radio remained common, although by “Worlds Apart” such was their skill that what sounds like a cat mewing (on ‘Dreams carry’) or a metal tank being struck (on ‘In a home’) were created using the synthesisers.
Cheap 6-string and bass guitar’s were put through the WEM’s and FX and usually into a sustain pedal and then a ring modulator, one of four on the modular synthesiser (affectionately called “Mark Five”) to octave-double the notes, or put through a voltage-controlled filter or oscillator driven by an envelope follower on the modular. Old battered microphones had the signal processed in a variety of electronic ways similar to the guitars. A Casio CZ-101 digital synthesiser (one of the first relatively cheap synthesisers which used phase distortion (PD) synthesis, which is similar to FM synthesis), borrowed from their friend Nick Stevens was also used on a couple of later songs, as was Nick’s keyboard skills.
Later, came simple sequencing on a Sinclair ZX-81 built from a kit with a 16K Rampack added later. Then very primitive (by today’s standards) voltage controlled 8-bit sampling on a Sinclair Spectrum 48K home computer (although their main ‘sampler’ remained the tape recorder). Again the interface and the program code (after learning about progamming in BASIC) were built and modified from an article in Electronic Soundmaker & Computer Music magazine. This was all pre-MIDI too, but after learning how to use logic I.C.s eventually the sequencer could be triggered by the drum machine as well as running the sequence once to a stop, (most notably on ‘On the ice’). Around 1986 Bob even found the time to contribute an 'industrial' drum kit for the Cheetah SpecDrum to its user group for free, coming out of his earlier sampler experiments.
However, taped natural sounds or snippets from a shortwave radio remained common, although by “Worlds Apart” such was their skill that what sounds like a cat mewing (on ‘Dreams carry’) or a metal tank being struck (on ‘In a home’) were created using the synthesisers.
Cheap 6-string and bass guitar’s were put through the WEM’s and FX and usually into a sustain pedal and then a ring modulator, one of four on the modular synthesiser (affectionately called “Mark Five”) to octave-double the notes, or put through a voltage-controlled filter or oscillator driven by an envelope follower on the modular. Old battered microphones had the signal processed in a variety of electronic ways similar to the guitars. A Casio CZ-101 digital synthesiser (one of the first relatively cheap synthesisers which used phase distortion (PD) synthesis, which is similar to FM synthesis), borrowed from their friend Nick Stevens was also used on a couple of later songs, as was Nick’s keyboard skills.
They both wrote lyrics and poems, with Mebz handling most of the vocals, while Bob would sometimes make him laugh and have to start again when recording him by over processing the vocals in his headphones.
The well received monochrome cassette inlays were photographed, painstakingly designed and handmade using photography and Alcatel (a rival to Letraset) rub on lettering by them with the cassette labels and letterheads being printed by Bob's friend Mick Wills. The cassettes for distribution were real-time dubbed by them to order, using the very same tape machines. The first album was mainly mono, but with the last track ‘What does it mean?’ stereo was here to stay.
The well received monochrome cassette inlays were photographed, painstakingly designed and handmade using photography and Alcatel (a rival to Letraset) rub on lettering by them with the cassette labels and letterheads being printed by Bob's friend Mick Wills. The cassettes for distribution were real-time dubbed by them to order, using the very same tape machines. The first album was mainly mono, but with the last track ‘What does it mean?’ stereo was here to stay.
Musical influences
Like so many, Bob's first exposure to radiophonic and electronic music was the Dr. Who theme in 1963. A little later he would listen to Stockhausen pieces on Radio 3 in the dark and the pirate Radio Caroline as well as Radio Luxembourg when the weather gods permitted a signal (of sorts) and later John Peel on the BBC. However, it wasn't until 1969 onwards when he left school and started a paying job that he finally had the funds to begin manipulating sounds using tape recorders (especially a 3-speed Fidelity Studio T.R.17), simple transistor amplifiers and a homemade pickup for a one string “guitar” (and including the odd tape loop for a friend to use at the local art school's annual art exhibition) and buying lots of records.
A chance hearing of Moog synthesiser's played by Isao Tomita, Wendy Carlos and Tonto's Expanding Headband on the radio changed all that, “It was a revelation to me on a par with all the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s wonderful output I had listened to and I wasn’t happy until I had started building my own”; the first of five, which rapidly evolved from a few crude wood and hardboard boxes of home built circuits to Dewtron modules (sealed in epoxy resin chunks) and finally the two tier modular 'Mk V', (also called 'The Beast').
For Bob any music which was natural, avant garde, radiophonic, electronically derived or modified in character - from Hawkwind to Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire, The Human League, Fad Gadget, Yello, Faust, Wire, Popul Vuh, ELP, Pere Ubu, Joy Division, Weather Report, Rema-Rema, This Heat, The Comsat Angels, Mad Professor, The Passage, Beaver & Krause (especially their 'Legend days are over'), The Sound, etc., etc., were listened to. He also developed an interest in world music after hearing David Fanshawe’s ‘African Sanctus’.
Mebz was initially a diehard punk rock fan (Buzzcocks, The Adverts, Sex Pistols, The Damned, Stranglers, etc.,), with other leanings to Hawkwind, Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Steeleye Span, Dr. Feelgood, AC/DC, Jethro Tull, Alice Cooper and Rush. Who liked nothing more than to pile on the feedback guitar with lots of reverb and echo or processed through one of the modular synthesiser's four ring modulators, although he did also play synthesiser occasionally (in a style all his own) and gave YOE its main vocal identity.
A few words about the songs
Many of the songs were about alienation, oppression or paranoia in one way or another, however as they were both science fiction and horror fans this showed through too. For example ‘Dune 1 and 2’ which was about the alien planet in the film, “The Man Who Fell to Earth”. Sometimes two or more subjects came together admirably, such as with ‘Golem’, which was about Frankenstein’s monster or ‘Dual spirit’, which was about a werewolf; both creatures alienated from human society. However, the torments of the (romantic) heart also came in for acute observation.
Parting of the ways...
Although further cassette releases were well advanced in the making, in 1984 the YOE tapes stopped turning. Mebz and Bob had gone their separate ways; Mebz to Leicester University to gain a degree, Bob into a “… deep black hole,” as he describes it, after the death of his close friend Mick Wills. Songs from this later period sound even more dark, personal and are coupled with political awakening at living in “Thatcher’s Britain” and the waste and treatment of people. While Northampton continued rapid housing development for the London over-spill and consumed their surrounding much-loved countryside. Bob’s photographs of building work and nature featuring as the albums artwork and as a backdrop to their music therein.
Reviews of the time
From the very first, the reviewers seemed to get what YOE was about; not fashionable, dark, quirky, dystopian, nihilistic to a point, but with a heart certainly.
Looking back, in some ways the reviews at the time were amazing, as Years On Earth were learning to play their instruments, mastering the machines they handmade, meanwhile holding down a steady job or progressing through higher education, and (just maybe) putting some of their inner demons onto tape. There was also an audacious streak present with their placing of lyric centred songs next to long atonal soundscapes, as if they were challenging the listener to stay in their ‘world’. They were in addition, against the easy chorus (or 'hook') and that “… songs about malevolence, hurt and anger or mental illness should not sound happy or pretty to make them palatable”.
Support, interest and distribution
Coventry-based Chris Jones of the band ‘The Sea Of Wires’ was a great supporter of YOE, though their musical style’s could not have been more different. Local support came from friends, family and the fanzine Zonk!, edited by Dave Freak (who went on to play in the band Venus Fly Trap). YOE also featured on two tracks of the Zonk! compilation cassette. Wider distribution came from Fraser Nash at Music For Midgets in the UK who suggested they contact Rudi Tuescher’s tape outlet Calypso Now in Switzerland, who immediately agreed to list two cassettes (and then all three) in its catalogue.
Years On Earth did try to get to the next level of distribution from the handful of independent labels springing up like Rough Trade, with the usual posting out of cassettes and slogging around London, but the lack of gigging (much as it is now, although the internet has changed this to a large degree), and the later split meant it came to nothing. However, they did get distributed through Europe and as far as America via the expanding DIY cassette network, (or 'cassette underground' as it is now termed).
However, as Bob and Mebz reflect, “… in a way we had done most of what we set out to do in our own small way; had our own band and our own label and released three cassettes (with a fourth and fifth planned), as and when we wanted to very good reviews". "So maybe it was just a matter of the scale of things and then ‘Life’ getting in the way". Also, they were not in any way fashionable or cute or based in London, Sheffield or Manchester. However, they were not the only ones to be left unnoticed and realistically only so many could break through. "Name the number of bands that came out of Northampton and you get Bauhaus [obviously] and maybe The Jets, The Venus Fly Trap and The Jazz Butcher AKA Pat Fish RIP". Certainly, they did not sound like anybody else in Northampton and while gigging bands they were friends with dreamed of recording and releasing tapes or records they had actually done the former and without a semi-pro or pro recording studio or label in sight!
For two Northampton lads mad about music who spent Thursday afternoons in Memory Lane (a much missed second-hand record shop on Bridge Street) and Bruce Bunkers (second-hand records and audio equipment, also much missed), or wet Saturday afternoons in Spinadisc (an independent record shop on Abington Square or John Lever's along Gold Street, who were sadly put out of business by mega-stores), and who got to hear the “… new weird, electronic and alternative stuff just in”, because they were regulars who liked to chat to staff about music; to releasing their own original music fuelled by their imaginations and self conviction is a major shift few made.
Along the way Northampton also spawned many other fine groups, including Religious Overdose, Giorky Markov’s Empire, Soldier, The Switch, Mutant Voice, The Antibodies and The Grip, to name but a very, very few. For some culminating in the Northampton Musicians Collective composed of gigging bands who released a compilation cassette (Glass 011) in 1981 via Glass Records (now re-released on CD by White Elephant Records: www.facebook.com/search/top?q=white%20elephant%20records%20-%20northampton). Not forgetting the Semilong area of Northampton was home to the much missed genius Delia Derbyshire from 1980 to 2001, (see: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rl2ky).
The Internet and into the future
Time moves on and there is now a strong interest and affection for the minimal, electronic, dystopian, alternative, experimental, or industrial music and groups of the late 70’s and 80’s who released mainly on cassette in very limited amounts. Thanks in part to internet sites such as Die or D.I.Y.?, and labels such as Vinyl On Demand and Calypso Now. From around 2008 without Bob and Mebz being initially aware a few of the Years On Earth recordings started to surface on the Internet either in blogs or YouTube videos.
Now with more time to pursue his interests again, by chance Bob saw a blog by Rudi (Hotcha) which lead to renewed contact between them. Rudi continues to support YOE, having created an archive of correspondence between them and in December 2010 he re-released all three cassette tapes with original artwork, plus a solo album (‘the view from here’ by Bob) on Calypso Now. In 2011 YOE was invited to contribute one song (aptly, 'On the ice') to Calypso Now’s ‘Eis Äis Ice Izo’ compilation cassette for der:die:das the Zurich art magazine.
YOE’s story takes another turn with a posting from Frank Maier being noticed on cassetteculture.net. Frank had been trying to find Years On Earth as a devotee and as the owner of the specialist record label Vinyl On Demand in Germany. The vinyl offerings were released in 2012, the result of Frank’s search and dedication.
Later life to present day
After a dedicated punk rock beginning, Leicester University beckoned northwards, and Mebz moved away. Over the years since, now married and a father of two, he has pursued his love of music in many forms; as a roadie for a soul band, a rock DJ, and finally as a teacher and recording studio technician. These days, he helps out with local bands in Leicester, and when not producing music listens to music constantly, takes the occasional photograph while walking the dog and does volunteer work.
In 1999 after a serious illness, then a relocation south to work, followed by the death of his father, Bob started recording once more, this time solo, “… recording again was a release for me, it was the first time I had lived on my own entirely and there was so much work stress and emotions in my head which could all pour out into the machines.” He was living in a small flat so the equipment only consisted of a hand built PC running Cubase v3r6, a Yamaha AN1x synthesiser, a Roland MC303 Groovebox, various samples, the old battered microphones and Sennheiser headphones.
After a successful technical and managerial career Bob had retired early, but got bored so went back to work as a DT Technician at a local school for seven years, "until the idiots and the increasing B.S. got too much". He continues to record although very little of his own stuff has surfaced in public apart from one solo album. Now using an assortment of analogue and digital hardware, including samplers and synthesisers (and a very full software environment). He also maintains a major interest in music, art and photography, studied and graduated with a degree from the Open University. Whilst trying every synthesiser or app he can lay his hands on, putting together the occasional video to a Years On Earth track on YouTube, initiating or contributing to the occasional music collaboration on kompoz.com and organises a regular Sunday morning badminton group.
Like so many, Bob's first exposure to radiophonic and electronic music was the Dr. Who theme in 1963. A little later he would listen to Stockhausen pieces on Radio 3 in the dark and the pirate Radio Caroline as well as Radio Luxembourg when the weather gods permitted a signal (of sorts) and later John Peel on the BBC. However, it wasn't until 1969 onwards when he left school and started a paying job that he finally had the funds to begin manipulating sounds using tape recorders (especially a 3-speed Fidelity Studio T.R.17), simple transistor amplifiers and a homemade pickup for a one string “guitar” (and including the odd tape loop for a friend to use at the local art school's annual art exhibition) and buying lots of records.
A chance hearing of Moog synthesiser's played by Isao Tomita, Wendy Carlos and Tonto's Expanding Headband on the radio changed all that, “It was a revelation to me on a par with all the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s wonderful output I had listened to and I wasn’t happy until I had started building my own”; the first of five, which rapidly evolved from a few crude wood and hardboard boxes of home built circuits to Dewtron modules (sealed in epoxy resin chunks) and finally the two tier modular 'Mk V', (also called 'The Beast').
For Bob any music which was natural, avant garde, radiophonic, electronically derived or modified in character - from Hawkwind to Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire, The Human League, Fad Gadget, Yello, Faust, Wire, Popul Vuh, ELP, Pere Ubu, Joy Division, Weather Report, Rema-Rema, This Heat, The Comsat Angels, Mad Professor, The Passage, Beaver & Krause (especially their 'Legend days are over'), The Sound, etc., etc., were listened to. He also developed an interest in world music after hearing David Fanshawe’s ‘African Sanctus’.
Mebz was initially a diehard punk rock fan (Buzzcocks, The Adverts, Sex Pistols, The Damned, Stranglers, etc.,), with other leanings to Hawkwind, Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Steeleye Span, Dr. Feelgood, AC/DC, Jethro Tull, Alice Cooper and Rush. Who liked nothing more than to pile on the feedback guitar with lots of reverb and echo or processed through one of the modular synthesiser's four ring modulators, although he did also play synthesiser occasionally (in a style all his own) and gave YOE its main vocal identity.
A few words about the songs
Many of the songs were about alienation, oppression or paranoia in one way or another, however as they were both science fiction and horror fans this showed through too. For example ‘Dune 1 and 2’ which was about the alien planet in the film, “The Man Who Fell to Earth”. Sometimes two or more subjects came together admirably, such as with ‘Golem’, which was about Frankenstein’s monster or ‘Dual spirit’, which was about a werewolf; both creatures alienated from human society. However, the torments of the (romantic) heart also came in for acute observation.
Parting of the ways...
Although further cassette releases were well advanced in the making, in 1984 the YOE tapes stopped turning. Mebz and Bob had gone their separate ways; Mebz to Leicester University to gain a degree, Bob into a “… deep black hole,” as he describes it, after the death of his close friend Mick Wills. Songs from this later period sound even more dark, personal and are coupled with political awakening at living in “Thatcher’s Britain” and the waste and treatment of people. While Northampton continued rapid housing development for the London over-spill and consumed their surrounding much-loved countryside. Bob’s photographs of building work and nature featuring as the albums artwork and as a backdrop to their music therein.
Reviews of the time
From the very first, the reviewers seemed to get what YOE was about; not fashionable, dark, quirky, dystopian, nihilistic to a point, but with a heart certainly.
Looking back, in some ways the reviews at the time were amazing, as Years On Earth were learning to play their instruments, mastering the machines they handmade, meanwhile holding down a steady job or progressing through higher education, and (just maybe) putting some of their inner demons onto tape. There was also an audacious streak present with their placing of lyric centred songs next to long atonal soundscapes, as if they were challenging the listener to stay in their ‘world’. They were in addition, against the easy chorus (or 'hook') and that “… songs about malevolence, hurt and anger or mental illness should not sound happy or pretty to make them palatable”.
Support, interest and distribution
Coventry-based Chris Jones of the band ‘The Sea Of Wires’ was a great supporter of YOE, though their musical style’s could not have been more different. Local support came from friends, family and the fanzine Zonk!, edited by Dave Freak (who went on to play in the band Venus Fly Trap). YOE also featured on two tracks of the Zonk! compilation cassette. Wider distribution came from Fraser Nash at Music For Midgets in the UK who suggested they contact Rudi Tuescher’s tape outlet Calypso Now in Switzerland, who immediately agreed to list two cassettes (and then all three) in its catalogue.
Years On Earth did try to get to the next level of distribution from the handful of independent labels springing up like Rough Trade, with the usual posting out of cassettes and slogging around London, but the lack of gigging (much as it is now, although the internet has changed this to a large degree), and the later split meant it came to nothing. However, they did get distributed through Europe and as far as America via the expanding DIY cassette network, (or 'cassette underground' as it is now termed).
However, as Bob and Mebz reflect, “… in a way we had done most of what we set out to do in our own small way; had our own band and our own label and released three cassettes (with a fourth and fifth planned), as and when we wanted to very good reviews". "So maybe it was just a matter of the scale of things and then ‘Life’ getting in the way". Also, they were not in any way fashionable or cute or based in London, Sheffield or Manchester. However, they were not the only ones to be left unnoticed and realistically only so many could break through. "Name the number of bands that came out of Northampton and you get Bauhaus [obviously] and maybe The Jets, The Venus Fly Trap and The Jazz Butcher AKA Pat Fish RIP". Certainly, they did not sound like anybody else in Northampton and while gigging bands they were friends with dreamed of recording and releasing tapes or records they had actually done the former and without a semi-pro or pro recording studio or label in sight!
For two Northampton lads mad about music who spent Thursday afternoons in Memory Lane (a much missed second-hand record shop on Bridge Street) and Bruce Bunkers (second-hand records and audio equipment, also much missed), or wet Saturday afternoons in Spinadisc (an independent record shop on Abington Square or John Lever's along Gold Street, who were sadly put out of business by mega-stores), and who got to hear the “… new weird, electronic and alternative stuff just in”, because they were regulars who liked to chat to staff about music; to releasing their own original music fuelled by their imaginations and self conviction is a major shift few made.
Along the way Northampton also spawned many other fine groups, including Religious Overdose, Giorky Markov’s Empire, Soldier, The Switch, Mutant Voice, The Antibodies and The Grip, to name but a very, very few. For some culminating in the Northampton Musicians Collective composed of gigging bands who released a compilation cassette (Glass 011) in 1981 via Glass Records (now re-released on CD by White Elephant Records: www.facebook.com/search/top?q=white%20elephant%20records%20-%20northampton). Not forgetting the Semilong area of Northampton was home to the much missed genius Delia Derbyshire from 1980 to 2001, (see: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rl2ky).
The Internet and into the future
Time moves on and there is now a strong interest and affection for the minimal, electronic, dystopian, alternative, experimental, or industrial music and groups of the late 70’s and 80’s who released mainly on cassette in very limited amounts. Thanks in part to internet sites such as Die or D.I.Y.?, and labels such as Vinyl On Demand and Calypso Now. From around 2008 without Bob and Mebz being initially aware a few of the Years On Earth recordings started to surface on the Internet either in blogs or YouTube videos.
Now with more time to pursue his interests again, by chance Bob saw a blog by Rudi (Hotcha) which lead to renewed contact between them. Rudi continues to support YOE, having created an archive of correspondence between them and in December 2010 he re-released all three cassette tapes with original artwork, plus a solo album (‘the view from here’ by Bob) on Calypso Now. In 2011 YOE was invited to contribute one song (aptly, 'On the ice') to Calypso Now’s ‘Eis Äis Ice Izo’ compilation cassette for der:die:das the Zurich art magazine.
YOE’s story takes another turn with a posting from Frank Maier being noticed on cassetteculture.net. Frank had been trying to find Years On Earth as a devotee and as the owner of the specialist record label Vinyl On Demand in Germany. The vinyl offerings were released in 2012, the result of Frank’s search and dedication.
Later life to present day
After a dedicated punk rock beginning, Leicester University beckoned northwards, and Mebz moved away. Over the years since, now married and a father of two, he has pursued his love of music in many forms; as a roadie for a soul band, a rock DJ, and finally as a teacher and recording studio technician. These days, he helps out with local bands in Leicester, and when not producing music listens to music constantly, takes the occasional photograph while walking the dog and does volunteer work.
In 1999 after a serious illness, then a relocation south to work, followed by the death of his father, Bob started recording once more, this time solo, “… recording again was a release for me, it was the first time I had lived on my own entirely and there was so much work stress and emotions in my head which could all pour out into the machines.” He was living in a small flat so the equipment only consisted of a hand built PC running Cubase v3r6, a Yamaha AN1x synthesiser, a Roland MC303 Groovebox, various samples, the old battered microphones and Sennheiser headphones.
After a successful technical and managerial career Bob had retired early, but got bored so went back to work as a DT Technician at a local school for seven years, "until the idiots and the increasing B.S. got too much". He continues to record although very little of his own stuff has surfaced in public apart from one solo album. Now using an assortment of analogue and digital hardware, including samplers and synthesisers (and a very full software environment). He also maintains a major interest in music, art and photography, studied and graduated with a degree from the Open University. Whilst trying every synthesiser or app he can lay his hands on, putting together the occasional video to a Years On Earth track on YouTube, initiating or contributing to the occasional music collaboration on kompoz.com and organises a regular Sunday morning badminton group.
A new beginning - "we are not dinosaurs!"
So, it's 2012 and not the end of our story.... click on 'The Present'.