I formed The Syndromes in 1980 just after I left school when I was 18. My school friend Nick Meeks was on bass and my other mate Carlo Marocco who was a couple of years older than me on drums. We used to rehearse in Carlo Marocco's out house and I borrowed all his gear until Nick Meeks lent me the money from his student grant to get a Fender Telecaster and Carlsboro amp. I paid him back!

We played 2 gigs with this line up, the first at Hackleton village hall in about May/June 1980 and the second later on that year at Hartwell village hall. At this time our set comprised of our own 4 songs that appeared on our first demo and Garageland (The Clash), I Feel Fine (The Beatles), Roadrunner (Jonathan Richman), I Can’t Control Myself (The Teenbeats/ The Troggs), Police And Thieves (The Clash/Junior Murvin) and a couple others that I’ve forgotten. Unfortunately there are no photos that I’m aware of of this line up. We were basically a mod/punk band. We were formed out of boredom and dreams, like a million other bands.

Carlo Marocco wasn’t really the sort of drummer we wanted, he had different tastes in music so we parted company and John Luccibello became our drummer. He came to see us at our first gig at Hackleton and he was a bit of a local hero to us because he played in a local group called The Russians who might as well have been The Beatles because they’d done a John Peel session and played gigs in town. Nick went to study in Nottingham and he was replaced on bass by a guy called Steve Harshaw. I used to see him at punk gigs at the County Ground in Northampton and I also spotted him at the psych hospital where I used to work. He was a nurse and I was a cleaner. I asked him if he wanted to play bass with us and he was up for it.

I can’t remember the first gig we did with this line up but there was a gig prior to Steve joining us at the Black Lion where Dan Lee from Social Disease filled in on bass.

We subsequently played a ton of gigs at the Black Lion and a few in London. We got a pretty loyal local following too. We attracted the attention of Fetish Records in London after I sent them a demo tape which was run by Rod Pearce and Perry Haines. They got us a couple of gigs in London, one at a ULU freshers ball, supporting a band they managed called King who went on to be pretty successful. We were very involved in the Northampton Musician’s Collective but that probably needs a whole book on it’s own to cover that aspect of local music. All I wanted to do was play. We never had a manager so managerial type things were at a very basic level like booking gigs and transport etc. It was mostly me and Luccibello who did that type of stuff.

I bought my Telecaster from a music shop called Jordans on Abington Square, Northampton in August 1980. I used it on our first demo recorded in September 1980. My mate Nick Meeks lent me the money to buy it from his student grant. I think there's a hairdressers now where Jordans once was. It was a 1974 model in Olympic White. It went through many modifications and colours over the years but I still have it now reverted to it's glorious original spec. I got a Telecaster because Joe Strummer played one. I bought the amp, a Carlsboro Cobra Lead 60 watt amp from a music shop in Nottingham because that's where Nick Meeks was at University, I'd gone to visit him and he'd lent me the money to buy that too. I didn't have the amp for our demo, I borrowed my school friend Paul Shepherd's Vox AC30.

The songs on our first demo were
1 Lazy Day
2 Temporary Feeling
3 Ward 23
4 All This Waiting

Lucci played on our demo in 1980 but he was just helping us out because he played in The Russians at the time. I've got no idea when he joined for good but it could well have been October 81.

Rod Pearce was a musical visionary. He ran the Fetish Records label and was very interested in us as a result of me literally knocking on his door when I was touting our cassette demos around London. He, with Perry Haines, managed the group King and he got us 2 gigs supporting them in London in 83 I think. The first was a student freshers ball at University of London Union the second gig was the day after but I can't remember where, some University building in London. The ULU gig was fantastic, we went down a storm and a load of friends came down from Northampton to see us. I think we signed autographs afterwards! They tried to get us another gig at ULU and I remember him saying that some other band called The Smiths had beaten us to it. I thought, "what a stupid name, they'll never get anywhere." Hahahahahaha! Tumbleweed moment. Needless to say I love The Smiths.
Rod was a really supportive guy and gave me good advice but I can't remember verbatim anything he actually said, but there was a really good enthusiasm about him. I found out years later that Rod had left the music industry and moved to Mexico to start some kind of tourism business. Unfortunately he was murdered under very mysterious circumstances, possibly to do with a business deal.

http://keithsneuroblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/rhythm-of-cruelty-rod-pearce-fetish.html

According to this he went to see Bauhaus and Throbbing Gristle in Northampton, a gig I went to.

I'm not sure what gear Steve Harshaw used.

I wrote Temporary Feeling on my nylon string classical guitar at home. We rehearsed it at Carlo Marocco's house and recorded it with John Luccibello on drums and Nick Meeks on bass. Nick had a fantastic 1960s Vox bass guitar, can't remember what model though. Ward 23 came out after jamming in rehearsals but I couldn't think of any words for it so I randomly took phrases from a Bible which was in our rehearsal room which was in a church room in Roade. We recorded our first demo in September 1980 at Northampton Sound Recordings, Spring Gardens, Northampton. It's not there anymore and weirdly enough I now live about 200 yards from it. It was run by an eccentric guy who's name escapes me, I think nearly every single Northampton band recorded there at one time or another. I remember being totally freaked at the sound of my voice. I couldn't believe it was me.
Falling In Action was written by me but the music was worked up in rehearsals by the band. Steve Harshaw was in the band at this point. The song wasn't really about anything but I remember at the time the title was a reference to the famous picture by Robert Capa of a soldier dying in the Spanish Civil War. We also recorded this at the NSR studio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falling_Soldier

The song John Clare came out of jamming at a room in John Clare music school Northampton. I wrote the lyrics but they're not about John Clare the poet, I'm not sure what they're about. During rehearsals I'd sing any old garbage which I'd try to remember afterwards and write down. We recorded that at Sketch studios which I think operated out of a cellar in Langham Place by a cousin of Alex Novak, Mike Novakovic I think. He used a cassette portastudio and it was the first (and only) time we used a synth. We copied the synth sounds onto tape and used it live to run through the song John Clare, they weren't musical sounds, more textural drones bleepy electronic ambience.

Over My Head came out again of jamming in rehearsals but I wrote the words. We recorded it at Beck Studios in Wellingborough. Derek Tompkins was the resident engineer there at the time and he was an absolute genius. We went there because of the work he did with Bauhaus. He got us sounding like a proper band, he put my guitar through an Eventide Harmonizer and it completely blew me away. His tape editing skills were second to none too.
If I think of anything else that's of interest I'll let you know.

P.S. Carlo Marocco converted his outhouse into a recording studio and Spacemen 3 ended up recording there after I told them about it.

Mark Refoy