Introducing Corbieres - New Wave Revivalist Mod Pop

I thought for my first post I would introduce my band/ music.

I have been playing guitar in bands since I was 15 which if you say it fast enough is 19 years ago!

My current band has been together for about 4/5 years although the nucleus of the band played together in a different incarnation 17 years ago.

We started off life as The Superfinks but then dropped this as it was deemed really really crap. After much ponderous brainstorming, we settled on Corbieres as this was the name of our favourite bar in Manchester - and also where we happened to be sat when trying to decide on a new name...what can I say beer makes you lazy so Corbieres stuck. It could have been worse - we could have been sat in The Prancing Swan.

We started off playing small venues around Manchester albeit our first gig was at The Academy 3 in Manchester which was a ticketed affair with tickets being sold on Ticketline alongside other household names such as Hawkwind, Heather from the M People and the guy who came 4th in the last series of X Factor.

After gigging infrequently and inebriated, we decided to cut a demo. In fact we cut several. And then some more. Of all of the addictions you can have, a recording studio addiction is one of the lesser known vices but one of the most costly for all involved. After figuring out we had more material than The Beatles, we tried to distribute some of our material locally but the two band members charged with sharing our crown jewels with the world just got drunk and concentrated on discussing the possibility of recording more demos.

Corbieres did however get played on the Clint Boon show on XFM radio as part of an amateur band search based in the North West. Clint played one of our songs and was supposed to read out a profile of the band live on air but he lost the piece of paper it was written on! We were voted the best of four bands on that weeks show and were put into the final at the end of the month only to find we were unsuccessful at this stage - due mostly to reasons of politics, seasonality, socioeconomic unrest and possibly just not being good enough.

We then decided after a few more gigs (including a local festival) to call a band hiatus so we could concentrate on not spending money in the recording studio.

The singer and myself then decided to start a new musical collaboration (which is more highbrow than a band apparently) called The Luckies which is still going strong today and we are currently gearing up for a spot at the inaugural Richfest later this year. I will be posting more about The Luckies in a future article.