THE EASTER STORY

THE WALTONS

PERSONNEL

In September 1984 The Waltons turned up at the press launch for the "Feet on the Street" (AKA "Seagull Shit") compilation album. There they discovered that all the other bands on the album had spent a lot of time and effort putting up stands informing the viewing public of information pertaining to themselves. Furthermore some of the bands' stands were quite funny. And so, in a fit of jealous preprandial rage, some of The Waltons hot-footed it to their singers flat where they got very, very drunk and spent a couple of hours in front of a microphone, slagging off the members of the band that wer'n't present and making extreemly naive statements about their future prospects. The resulting recording was then typed up by the band's secretry and turned into dot dot dot

The Easter Story THIS BIOGRAPHICAL INTERVIEW WAS RECORDED ON 17TH SEPTEMBER 1984 BETWEEN: DC BITS, SEAN "THE RIDDLER" RIDLER, SARAH BARKER BARKER TB, TV, ACDC, BBC, ITV (WHATEVER HIS BLOODY INITIALS ARE) WALTON, AND JANETTE INAUDIBLE WHISPERING
BITS:	What did you say Janette?
JANETTE:	(giggles) I'm not going to ask you questions.
BITS:	Oh come on man someone's got to. Why don't you and Sarah.....
TB:	Where do we start.
BITS:	......ask questions.
SEAN:	Where does this story begin?
BITS :	Well the first gig was on April 21st 1983
TB:	Oh! You don't want to know about me arriving an this planet then?
BITS:	No!
TB:	In 1967 in a space ship.
BITS:	Go on then tell us about that then.
TB:	No! You don't want to know. I'm not going to tell you. Me and Hank arrived at the same time.
BITS:	Was it the same space ship?
TB:	Yeah.
BITS:	Once upon a time there was a band called Story of O.
SEAN:	How far back is that?
BITS:	Quite a long way. Quite a long way man.
TB:	Yeah what about it?
BITS:	Well tell us about that because that's where it all started.
JANETTE:	No it didn't it started with Fatal Dose.
TB:	Only for me.
JANETTE:	And Owen
TB:	Oh yeah.
BITS:	Yeah I forgot about him. He's not in the band anymore so what are you talking about? Anyway I suppose we've all got other stuff on the family tree so what we need to talk about is THE WALTONS OK?
	EVERYONE AGREES BUT THERE IS A LONG SILENCE AS NO ONE CAN THINK OF ANYTHING TO SAY.
BITS:	Ask us some questions Janette.
TB:	Just a single word to trigger us off would do.
	SILENCE
BITS:	Come on.
TB:	Don' t let me listen to this tape when it's finished, I always thought was quite intelligent until I heard myself talking on tape.
BITS:	We're getting really laid back now, man.
JANETTE:	We'll why don't you start talking about the Prince Consort.
BITS:	The Prince Consort? So what you are saying is, "Tell me about the Prince Consort," that's what you mean isn't it?
TB:	We really need someone here who doesn't know about it, so we could tell them all the gory details.
BITS:	The first gig was at the Prince Consort, What happened was (you don't know anything about this, right?) we heard this cat was, you know, starting up a local gig at the Prince Consort, right. So TB got on the old blower and said 'Hey Man, what about having us play there?' and this guy said yeah O.K. but only if you do two weeks. And we thought OhmyGod! We didn't have a drummer at the time and we didn't have any numbers and I'd just started playing the bass and we had something like 12 hours before our first gig. But anyway it all came together quite nicely.
TB:	We had a Russian Jesus Freak from Brighstone playing with us then didn't we?
BITS:	Yeah that was the guy, Gobbley.
TB:	No he came from Wooton
BITS:	Well who was that Russian Jesus Freak then? Oh I remember that was Illya but he didn't do a gig with us.
TB:	No but he did drum with us for a while
BITS:	Young Gobbley drummed that first gig.
SEAN:	When was this gig?
BITS:	21st April 1983. And anyway we went down there and they loved us, surprisingly enough. Did you know this? Well actually that's not true, Mrs. McDermott hated our guts, but Brian stood around saying 'Marvellous, marvellous, wonderful, Amazing!' O.K. And anyway he was a bit overpowering this geezer, right and he kept coming up to and saying things like 'You are Gods, can I be your Manager? I see you as being bigger than Led Zepplin' and things like that, and he insisted that we write the music for this autobiographical musical about the life of Enoch Powell that was going to be called 'Rivers Of Blood'
TB:	Biographical.
BITS:	That's the one.
TB:	I mean Enoch Powell didn't write it.
BITS:	No, actually he didn't.
TB:	He was very surprised when he heard about it actually.
BITS:	Really I didn't know that.
TB:	That's what it says in the paper anyway.
SEAN:	Oh, get on with it will you.
BITS:	So TB tell us about this reporter who phoned you up.
TB:	He wasn't a reporter, he was a friend, in fact it was LOB In London and he phoned up because he had just read about us in the Evening Standard and it said that we were going to do the music for this musical about Enoch Powell, and he was very shocked and astounded.
BITS:	It was utter bullshit of course, I mean we never said we were going to do it, we're not fascists man are we, and that's just what we told Brian.
TB:	No we didn't we kept saying 'Yes Brian, O.K. Brian, Yeah all right Brian', for weeks and weeks and weeks.
BITS:	Yeah you're right and he kept saving 'Darling, darling, marvellous, marvellous'.
SEAN:	What you mean you are fascists?
BITS:	And wasn't there something in The Stage about us too.
TB:	Yeah , but I never saw that .
BITS:	Oh I did, but I can't remember what it said.
JANETTE:	Are we still on the first gig now?
BITS:	No this is afterwards, we're talking about the next thing now really. And the thing that came after that was.....Belch....there's a hole in my trousers ......Um what was the next thing? I thought of it just now Oh yeah we got shot of Gobbler didn't we. Hank was very rude to him.
TB:	Gobbler?
BITS:	GOBBLEY , GOBBLER? whatever his name is.
JANETTE:	Wasn't his name Gobber?
BITS:	Yeah something like that. Anyway one day we were practicing and Hank turned round and said 'I think we ought to get this drummer problem sorted out' and until then he didn't realise there was a problem.
TB:	He said 'I think it's only fair to tell you we're going to get rid of you'.
BITS:	Yeah, then he left and I went to see Dread because we thought he was God's answer to ....uh ......fuffleberries.
SEAN:	Did the other guy commit suicide?
BITS:	Oh yeah.
SEAN:	Good.
BITS:	(FARTS LOUDLY ) Oops ! That was when we used to practice at my place at 67 Westhill. Road. A groovy pad. (STARTS WAVING HIS ARMS ABOUT)
JANETTE:	(INDIGNANTLY) Don't waft that over here!
BITS:	And then I went to see Dread at the Crown one night and asked if he would come and play drums for us.
TB:	Oh it's your fault Dread's in the band is it?
BITS:	Too f**king right it is, - that was one of the blacker days in my life. I should mention at this point that I was actually meeting MATT KELLETT on a regular basis (EVERYONE LAUGHS ) and he was talking to me at great length about what to do with the band, how we ought to be running it and what we ought to be doing musically and what a lousey guitar player Hank was.
TB:	Have we followed his advice?
BITS:	I hope not.
SEAN:	Who was Dread playing with then?
BITS:	Stigma, a covers band - a load of crap.
TB:	They were funny Stigma
BITS:	Yeah they were weren't they up until they realized everyone was laughing at them then they weren't so funny.
JANETTE:	Do you think it's actually recording this.
BITS:	(VERY LOUDLY) AH! Yep.
JANETTE:	Yeah, but you're not talking that loudly are you.
	CLICK. CLICK WHILE WE REWIND THE TAPE AND ARCERTAIN THAT IT IS ACTUALY RECORDING.
BITS:	BOOM! Yeah here we go then. What's the next thing? The BED-SIT GIG I suppose. We got stuck into a gruelling eight months playing two nights a week.
SEAN:	Where are we now? Dates?
BITS:	Sumner of '83
TB:	At first it Was one night a week then we started doing two.
BITS:	Yeah it kept going up to peaks and then fizzling out.
TB:	But we did the BED-SIT early in the year didn't we?
BITS:	It was just after Dread started drumming with us but he didn't play with us that night so we just played in a bed-sit we created on stage with loads of furniture.
TB:	We made it up as we went along.
BITS:	I remember at one point we were very stoned and the phone behind the bar started ringing and you (TO TB) put down your guitar and picked up the phone on the stage and started shouting 'Hello, hello'. Oh and we started off with that 25 minute rendition of some Country and Western song.
TB:	It was only 25 minutes because we got to the middle bit and I couldn't remember anymore.
BITS:	We were very stoned that night.
TB:	VERY stoned.
BITS:	Smashed actually, I mean pissed, yeah that's what I mean. Um, so then the next thing was .........Oh this is all very boring....was a man called David Shanks arrived on the Island, he was an executive producer for a film company, looking for locations to film a three part serial, a sort of modern leuve story.
SEAN:	Leuve?
BITS:	And what happened was he went to the Tutorial college to see if he could get hold of some students as extras, and Dread ended up driving him around the Island showing him locations. Then the guy let slip that there was going to be a scene in a dance hall with a band and Dread sort of, you know, stuck his oar in as he says. So the next thing we know is that we are going to be doing a few days filming, actually at The Consort but in the theatre upstairs. That was in August.
TB:	I can't remember very much about it, except that it took four days getting there at nine in the morning and we spent most of the time stuck in the dressing room in a terribly twisted condition.
BITS:	It was directed by Colin Nutley and he was a really good lad, he knew what he was doing.
TB:	And we got free coffee and sandwiches. Of course OB Quiet was with us then. He was very cool, very cool indeed.
BITS:	He was going through his COOL period then - Ice cool. And Hank wore his tutu.
TB:	Yeah well he was going through his feminine phase.
BITS:	And at the same time you (To TB) were working down at the holiday camp.
TB:	No, no, that's a lie.
BITS:	Oh come on you were a kitchen porter.
TB:	No I wasn't I was a chef.
BITS:	A Chef!? Well that's not what I heard. I think you were working with that Welsh git, well I know you weren't actually doing any work, but you were employed by the same company.
TB:	Look he leads a Marxist terrorist organization so don't call him a Welsh git,
BITS:	Ooh, sorry, sorry, but you do admit you worked at the holiday camp don't you?
TB:	Yeah, yeah O.K.
BITS:	So tell us a bit about that.
SEAN:	Oh hurry up and get on to the next interesting bit like when I joined the band. (MORE LAUGHTER )
TB:	Well there's not much to say about it really, I was a chef and that's basically it.
BITS:	Give us a quote that sums it up then.
TB:	All right then how about 'OB Quiet used to work for me'. Well actually he just used to come in and hang around moaning.
BITS:	What and complain about his back and say he couldn't do any work, like he used to every time we had to move the band gear?
TB:	He didn't do very much and what he did do took five times longer than anyone else
BITS:	So Sean, tell me when did you join the band?
SEAN:	October '83.
BITS:	You didn't enjoy the first gig did you?
SEAN:	I can't remember.
TB:	He was turned down so low no one could hear him anyway.
BITS:	And what were your impressions of the band?
SEAN:	I thought it was crap, but I thought there was some money to be made so I stuck around... I still do .
JANETTE:	You were wrong weren't you.
SEAN:	Horribly wrong.
BITS:	And you use some rather unusual equipment, tell us about that.
SEAN:	(AFTER EVERYONE HAS STOPPED LAUGHING). Well I've got an old Vox Continental
BITS:	That's with the.... breath control?
SEAN:	No, that's with No control. It's only got one keyboard, I've had to take the keys from the bottom keyboard to replace the ones on top, but my piano is all in one piece.
BITS:	Perhaps you'd like to tell us a little bit about your collection of percussion instruments, which is growing larger by the day.
SEAN:	Well I've got a very nice frying pan, a fire extinguisher - I got that off a skip - assorted hub caps and a couple of old jam tins.
BITS:	A five hundred gallon oil tank?
SEAN:	No, not yet, uh what else is there? Oh a tobacco tin, which I don't use very often, but it's quite useful for the high frequency work. I did use to use Dread's tambourines a lot but I smashed them all up and he didn't get anymore. I always used to apologise if I broke one, and he would say 'That's all right, it doesn't matter' and shake my hand, like he does after gigs, but he never bought any more, and he only gives me broken drum sticks to play my things with. I think he's trying to tell me something.
BITS:	So you joined in October.
SEAN:	Yeah.
TB:	Well no one else in the band new you'd joined , I wondered who the f**k you were, you just kept turning up at gigs.
SEAN:	I didn't actually get paid for two months then one day TB said 'I think we ought to start paying you as you always turn up and play at our gigs.
JANETTE:	They stopped earning any money at all shortly after they started paying you Sean.
TB:	(TO SEAN) We started paying you as soon as we could hear what you were playing, your volume increased minimally each time you played and when you reached the point where we could hear you we thought we'd better pay you.
SEAN:	Next was Keats, after I started getting paid we played a few gigs at Keats.
BITS:	We did about three gigs there, they had that amazing wallpaper and that guy had a 'screw pad' upstairs.
TB:	The Medallion man.
BITS:	Yeah - Don't print that, he'll send the lads after us.
JANETTE:	He's not there anymore.
BITS:	No I know but he may still be in the country. So what can we say about Keats?
SEAN:	Nothing, let's talk about something else.
BITS:	So what happened after Keats We were still playing at The Consort then but we'd gone down to one day a week.
TB:	We decided we shouldn't inflict ourselves on them two nights a week after the summer.
BITS:	I'd decided that way back in June.
TB:	Yeah, but the money was good.
BITS:	That's true.......Which we didn't earn (NUDGE, NUDGE, WINK, WINK) I mean we never got paid, DID WE?
TB:	Eh? Oh no, no, we never got paid.
SEAN:	No, never, we never made any money out of it.
BITS:	And then we had a holiday, we had a whole month off while Dread went camping and you (TO TB) went to Amsterdam, you rich bastard.
TB:	You were very productive during that month, because when I got back you had three new songs arranged, I was really pleased.
BITS:	TO TB Tell us a bit about your creative influences, where do all the lyrics come from?
TB:	I've no idea.
BITS:	Yeah, it shows...........Oh this is boring.
SEAN:	It's all the boring questions.
BITS:	Well no one else is asking anything.
TB:	They're the sort of questions that LEE PECKARY asks and you don't know how to answer. I don't like that about interviews, I suppose the more times it happens the more you get used to it and eventually you work out standard replies. But they ask such banal questions.
BITS:	What's your favourite song that we do?
TB:	The one I enjoy singing the most is HAIL MARY.
BITS:	What about for listening to....what's your favourite, what do you think has the most potential?
SEAN:	It's not the same thing?
TB:	None of them are my favourites, I don't think I particularly like any of them that much.
BIT'S:	Well what I mean is there maybe a song that I really like listening to but not as we're playing it, because it always sounds bloody awful, but I can see how it ought to sound. What's your favourite Sean?
SEAN:	I like playing FALL OUT WALTZ for the middle bit but I don't play much in the rest of it.
BITS:	My personal favourites are songs like CONTROL, FALL OUT WALTZ.
TB:	It's difficult to listen to songs as a whole while you are playing them, particularly when you are singing and playing guitar.
SEAN:	I think FAST METAL MACHINES is probably my favourite.
BITS:	Yeah, it's a strange song though, I like the bass riff in it, but it's weird
TB:	It could be a real epic.
BITS:	Unfortunately.
TB:	I like epics, they're coming back into fashion...,.. vogue, into vogue.
BITS:	So anyway the Christmas gig was next and we had a tee shirt competition . Win a Wonderful Waltons Tee Shirt Competition whereby participants therein had to fill in bubbles....fill in bubbles, I think I'll leave it at that.
SEAN:	Say where the bubbles came from then.
BITS:	You, you pig shit!
SEAN:	All right, the bubbles came from your (BITS) mouth and TB's mouth, O.K.
BITS:	Well let's just mention Townsy Loose-end who was a winner with a marvellous entry which was: "BITS - How wants one anyway? TB - Do I." O.K. that was Christmas, that was wild, flour and custard pies and all that.
SEAN:	And then we split up.
JANETTE:	No, you played New Years Eve before you split up.
BITS:	Yeah we played New Year's Eve and then we got rid of Dread.
TB:	I think Dread got rid of us actually.
JANETTE:	And then you auditioned various drummers and ended up with RICHARD.
TB:	That drummer from FAMILY OF NOISE rehearsed with us once, let's give him a mention, Mark Wozencroft he's a very good drummer.
BITS:	They're a good band FAMILY OF NOISE.
TB:	Nice people, even if they are very clean.
BITS:	Yeah and they don't get all shitty about who uses their drum kit (BLOWS RASPBERRY AND PUTS V'S UP AT TAPE RECORDER) So then we were going to split up and decided to do the I.W. compilation album as a last gesture, and it was really good fun.
JANETTE:	No, no, no you've got this all wrong, you did a gig before that.
BITS:	Yeah we did one at the Pavilion and we had two or three drummers, RICHARD am Dread and DAVE PACKER on percussion. Who did we do that gig with?
SEAN:	FAMILY OF NOISE and V AND THE HEP SNAKES.
JANETTE:	It was a Social Services benefit gig.
SEAN:	In aid of the DEAF, yeah that was the one.
BITS:	And after that gig we decided we'd had enough.
JANETTE:	Of what?
BITS:	Being in a band...(SOBS LOUDLY) Oh I can't take it anymore, oh, it's terrible SNIFF, SNIFF, SLOBBER Let's see you type that then.
TB:	We were very low on enthusiasm, we hit an all time enthusiasm low.
BITS:	But we decided it would be a good idea just to do that compilation album just to put it on the mantle piece.
TB:	That's right, that's why we did it.
BITS:	In fact I didn't want to do it, but that was the one thing you said that that won me over, that it would be a good thing to put in your record collection. So I rang up ROD GAMMONS and was very rude to him, I said ' I've got no faith in anything you're doing' and then he phoned you (TB) didn't he?
TB:	Yeah, and I was nice to him.
BITS:	You creep!
TB:	I'm one of those creepy sort of people. I can't remember what he said, in fact I can't remember anything, I've no memory at all.
BITS:	In the end we decided to do it, even though we didn't have any money. That must have been back in May/June?
TB:	Around the same time I remember we talked about approaching STEVE GOLD for some reason, because he'd shown interest in us.
BITS:	Wasn't that to do with gigs?
TB:	Possibly
BITS:	Yeah, it was to find out if we could do some gigs at the Pavilion.
TB:	But he got in touch with us first to see how we felt about being managed him.
BITS:	And how did we feel about that?
	TONY JUMPS UP AND RUSHES OUT OF THE ROOM
JANETTE:	What have you said to upset him.
BITS:	I think he's just going to find out how we felt about being managed by Steve Gold. Oh god I'm smashed what were we talking about? Oh yeah Steve. Anyway he became our manager and one of the first things he did was organise a recording session in Canterbury, unfortunately we had to get that complete and utter bastard Dread back in the band, I'm sure we'll live to regret it.
TB:	Look you're going to hurt him, don't hurt him.
BITS:	Well he's no going to hear this is he?
TB:	Yeah Janette's going to type it all up and he'll read it.
BITS:	You're not going to type it up word for word are you?
JANETTE:	Of course I am!
SEAN:	I'd just like you to know Dread that I don't share David's opinions.
BITS:	HA, HA, HA, CONVULSED WITH LAUGHTER.
TB:	Me neither mate.
BITS:	Mate!
TB:	Brother.
BITS:	All right brother. Anyway just before we went to Canterbury, what happened Shock Horror Sensation?
TB:	York Minster burned down.
BITS:	No, no, no, what happened to our cuddly kitchen porter?
TB:	Oh Mr. Quiet, Old Bull Lee....what did happen to him?
SEAN:	He started growing a beard.
BITS:	Did he actually decide he was going to leave the band?
JANETTE:	No he never actually made a decision.
BITS:	Well what started it off?
JANETTE:	He didn't want to take time off work to go to Canterbury.
BITS:	Oh that was it, when we did the recording he didn't want to take time off work to go and spend a day in a studio - hundreds of quids worth of recording and bloody Owen Lee would rather be a kitchen porter, Ha!
SEALS:	Call yourself a musician Owen.
	EVERYONE LAUGHS.
BITS:	But anyway we made him, Steve sorted it out.
TB:	I had to take Owen down to see Steve for a chat.
BITS:	I had to go over to Portsmouth and pick up a van on Sunday f**king morning.
JANETTE:	Well I had to go to Yarmouth to pick Owen up from work.
BITS:	I spent from about twelve to three in a swimming pool talking to all the tarts who all came and sat down next to me. It was a really horrible people in Portsmouth are horrible! They throw rubbish everywhere and are really disgusting, horrible people. I was sitting in this swimming pool on this concrete step and all these crisp wrappers and old fish and chip papers came drifting down and wrapped themselves round my legs. It was horrible. But anyway I picked you guys up at about 4 o'clock and we high tailed it to Canterbury.
TB:	No we stopped off somewhere along the-way to visit someone and I had blisters on my feet and you made me walk all the way to the phone box to phone the guest house to tell them we'd arrive late.
SEAN:	What are you talking about the phone box was only two inches up the road.
TB:	Yeah but I had new boots and I didn't take any socks with me.
BITS:	What a prick. Anyway we spent the day recording.
TB:	We stayed in a nice guest house.
BITS:	..and we recorded AMBITION, CHERRY PIE AND BROWN RICE.
TB:	We had a nice breakfast too.
BITS:	It was such a nice, clean place and the people were very polite. Owen and Hank had their own room and had homosexual affairs all night. A homosexual liaison in the most formidable style.....
TB:	And we went to that Irish pub, Jesus I've never been in a pub like that before.
BITS:	And we went to a really horrible trendy pub too, but that's the only pub I've ever seen where they sell milk on tap, straight up, they sold pints of over the bar.
JANETTE:	Oh yeah?
BITS:	It's true, cross my heart and hope my willy falls off.
TB:	It was a crap pub though.
BITS:	It was a quite nice situation, while we were sitting outside all these fire engines and Sherman tanks started rushing past.
JANETTE:	Just after you got back TB and I were watching a news clip about York Minster burning down and he said 'That's funny I saw all the fire engines but I didn't know the Cathedral was on fire.
BITS:	I did exactly the same thing.
TB:	I don't like the way you and I think the same thing a lot of the time
BITS:	The trouble is we normally approach them from entirely different directions, We both think the same thing but argue about it for hours.
TB:	Yeah, it's true.
BITS:	And what happened after Canterbury? It was a pretty disappointing result although Sean played some Ace piano.
SEAN:	Yeah, can you say that again a bit louder.
BITS:	SEAN PLAYED SOME CRAP PIANO.
JANETTE:	Wait a minute. Have you spoken about recording at ROD GAMMONS? Have I forgotten. You didn't tell them about breaking his garden furniture.
BITS:	Hey look, while we were at Rod's studio I sat on this plastic flower pot and it broke and I ended up on my arse, and Janette thinks it's REALY funny, but I don't.
JANETTE:	It is, I saw one of those pots the other day and I pointed it out to my friend and told her you'd broken one and she said, well it's obvious something like that would break if you sat on it.
BITS:	Yeah but I didn't actually mean to sit on it, I was just going to crouch over it and say 'Hey look everybody I'm sitting on this pot and it's not breaking' but my legs gave way. Anyway where have we got to now?
TB:	Well since Canterbury we've just been sitting around waiting for Steve to get us some sort of deal and we were waiting for the TV. serial.
JANETTE:	But you haven't spoken about Owen actually leaving the band.
SEAN:	Well he didn't leave did he?
JANETTE:	But you had a confrontation with him didn't you and asked him to say one way or the other whether he was still in the band.
SEAN:	He still didn't make a decision did he.
BITS:	So we told him to f**k off.
TB:	Not in so many words, we just told him to f**k. Oh Wow, wasn't that a good joke.
BITS:	Wowzer, wowzer. But he's still a jolly nice chap and I like Ian, I mean Owen Lee an awful lot.
TB:	He looks very worried whenever he meets us these days.
BITS:	He always did. I think it was because of some terrible psychological trauma the poor guy has gone through and I feel really sorry for him.
TB:	It's called QUIET LIFE.
BITS:	Is there anymore cider?
SEAN:	No
TB:	There's some wine left.
SEAN:	Coo yeah, let's have some wine.
BITS:	So what happened next guys? That must have been last week.
SEAN:	No there's some more to go yet.
JANETTE:	Then we saw 'Annika' on television.
SEAN:	Have we mentioned signing the management deal with Steve yet?
TB:	No, we didn't mention that, we'd better make it clear that me, you, Sean and Hank signed.
BITS:	But then the time scale changed, didn't it, weeks seemed like days and days seemed like weeks. And nothing happened. Oh we got some fan mail.
JANETTE:	No, you haven't seen the thing on the T.V. yet and you can't get to the fan mail until you have.
BITS:	O.K. we saw the thing on the T.V. and then we got some fan mail, all right?
JANETTE:	But how did you react to the television serial?
BITS:	I was intensely embarrassed.
SEAN:	I thought it was quite good because I'd never seen any of it before.
TB:	I didn't think much about it at all, it happened too fast for me.
SEAN:	Most of the programme was crap though wasn't it, I was just interested in seeing people I know.
BITS:	It did have some good bits, some nice little cameos between Pete and Per I really liked the party scene at the end when he nicked his bike and got killed. The makeup was good when he was dead.
SEAN:	What I felt most of all was intense jealousy (EVERYONE LAUGHS) and hatred of everyone who was in it.
BITS:	So that was on August 10th and lots happened since then.
JANETTE:	Like you've had a fan letter.
BITS:	Yeah from Lucy she's got to be our number one fan.
TB:	Did you write to her?
BITS:	Yeah.
TB:	Did you give her your address?
BITS:	Yeah.
TB:	SNIGGERS. Ah well once bitten, twice shy.
BITS:	What does that mean?
TB:	Well the last time I wrote to a fan, she turned up on the door step madly in love with me.
BITS:	I don't think I'd have that trouble, it wasn't that sort of letter anyway. What happened next TB? Oh we went looking for bloody Lee Peck in Cowes during Cowes week, and the bastard wasn't there.
TB:	LEE PECK
BITS:	LEGCERY PECK.
JANETTE:	What about the gig you did at the Ponda Rosa last week. Bits was dying from the common cold.
BITS:	Look I was really ill, I just wanted to go to bed and sleep.
JANETTE:	Yeah but you were inflicting it on everyone else.
BITS:	The gig was good, I got into it as soon as I got there. And I won't mention what a bastard Dread was there, f**king prima dona Jones.
TB:	The thing I remember most about that gig was singing in the dressing room.
BITS:	Mmm, we supported Quiet Life from the dressing room with percussion and backing vocals. FAMILY OF NOISE were good weren't they. It was a good gig. It had a classic Waltons ending i.e. we did lots of songs we didn't know at the wrong tempo.
TB:	Yup and in different keys.
BITS:	And people did that thing they do.
SEAN:	What, you mean screaming and shouting for more?
BITS:	That's right.
TB:	They danced too, they didn't stand twenty feet from the stage and stare. They must have missed us.
BITS:	And today we turned up at the Pavilion and nothing was going on. There were the bands over one side, the TV people the other side both doing absolutely nothing, there was ROD GAMMONS running around in circles doing absolutely nothing and Steve Gold watching him with a cruel grin on his face. And I went up to LEE PECK and said 'would you mind telling us what's going on' and he looked all surprised and said 'Well I thought everything would be ready by now'. So I got everything together. And they filmed us miming to our song on the album.
TB:	Miming incredibly badly.
SEAN:	I couldn't stop my hand shaking when they did the close ups of the keyboards.;
BITS:	That's how I felt when they were talking to me, it was alright just talking to them, but as soon as they put the camera on me I clammed up.
SEAN:	He was such a dick as well.
BITS:	It's not so bad while you are playing, because then you can ignore them, but when they're talking to you and you don't know what they're going to ask you your mind goes blank........ .....And then this evening we went round to our lead singers place to talk about getting everything ready for the gig on Saturday, which is the launching of the STREET ON THE FEET album, Man, O.K.? And they all lived happily ever after. The End.
BITS:	Oh we've got a contract with RED BUS RECORDS we ought to mention that, for one single, but if we do another they've got to pay us a £2,000 advance, Ha, ha, ha. Perhaps we'll be able to afford a van and some decent keyboards for Sean.
ADVERTISEMENT: AN OVERWHELMING NUMBER OF PEOPLE HAVE WRITTEN TO THE WALTONS (NOW UNDERGOING PSYCHIC REHABILITATION) DEMANDING A RECORD ABOUT THE PLAGUE OF MEDIOCRITY THAT IS DESTROYING THE MINDS OF THE NATION'S YOUTH. I AM PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THE IMMINENT AVAILABILITY OF THE FIRST, SILENT, FULLY AUTHENTIC, INVISIBLE PICTURE-DISC ENTITLED: "NOT SO MUCH A BAND, MORE A STATE OF MIND" ENQUIRIES TO: SWAMI BHAGWAN SHREE WALTON, WALTONS MOUNTAIN, ISLE OF WIGHT. ...Top...

The Easter Story

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