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Crush My second band

Crush

After a slightly acrimonious departure from my last band Coma Ray I never really expected or wanted to play in another band. I still loved writing songs and making music, but I never wanted to be in the position where I was just part of a band, having to compromise my ideals for the sake of group harmony.

However, I started a computer programming training course, where I first learnt to program in C (ugggh!). An unlikely place, you would think, to meet fellow musicians, but this is what happened. I soon learnt that a couple of the lads on the course (Matt Jackson and Will Taylor) played guitar, and found myself agreeing to have a jam with them. After so long not playing with anybody I rather enjoyed the 'live' music experience, and so the seeds of Crush where sown. We soon recruited the talented Sue Marshall for vocals, and slowly the jams turned into proper songs. Having written quite a lot of songs before, it naturally fell to me to do most of the writing and structuring of the music, but we all chipped in ideas. Though we all had disparate musical tastes, we somehow found a common ground in making guitar pop music with strong melodies and hooks.

However, just as we where finding our musical feet, and getting out there playing a few gigs, fate as always stepped in to deal us a blow. First Will, our lead guitarist, started to think he was bigger than the band, and after some arguments stormed off (which he later regretted, but by then we couldn't really take him back). Secondly our singer Sue developed nodes on her throat, which unfortunately brought her singing career to a rapid halt.

Rather than give up, me and Matt continued and later recruited another talented female singer Caroline England, better known to us as Spudge (pictured). I continued writing songs along with Matt, and soon Caroline was adding her own style to the band, and we went through another good patch of making some rather good music. We were also helped out by my mate Mark Docherty who I had been in Coma Ray with - his acoustic guitar added a more mellow tone to our songs, and some of our best music originated from this period.

Eventually, though, the band came to a halt. Work commitments, lack of time to practice and the usual squabbling took its toll and eventually we gave up as a collective. However, I still make my own tracks and Caroline has embarked upon a successful solo career.

Name Role
Matt Jackson Guitar
Will Taylor Lead Guitar
Dan Booth (me!) Bass and Sequencers
Sue Marshall Vocals
Caroline 'England' Parry Vocals (after Sue left)

Below are some Tascam four track demos we made in a small bedsit. They don't sound amazing because... they were four track demos made in a small bedsit. But I'm proud of the songwriting. Vocals are mostly by Sue for these tracks.