"Self-plagiarism is style"

Blog Tag: 5 Things You Didn't Want To Know About Dave Pattern

20th December 2006

Blog Tag: 5 Things You Didn't Want To Know About Dave Pattern

posted in misc, the headmen |

Eeeeek — I've been tagged by Brian Kelly, so here's 5 things you didn't want to know about me (with lots of links)…

1) For the last 8 months I've been raising a farm of mealworms to feed the birds in our garden, and there are several thousand of them wriggling around boxes in our spare bedroom as I type this.  Occasionally some of the mealworm beetles escape (I've yet to find out how they're doing this) and you'll spot them making a painfully slow bid for freedom across the floor… presumably with the insect equivalent of the theme to "The Great Escape" going through their tiny heads.  The garden birds love eating the mealworms, and it's incredibly cheap to raise them.

2) I spent Christmas 1994 touring Bangladesh, playing bass guitar in a bhangra band.  Over the course of about 7 weeks, we played around a dozen shows (starting in Dhaka and working our way up to Sylhet).  Lizards, cockroaches, and spiders with bodies the size of your fist were de rigeur in the majority of hotel rooms we stayed in.  We were even filmed playing for a TV show, although someone forgot to bring the backing tape to the studio (we had planned to mime), so we had to feed vocals, guitars and keyboards through one tiny practice amp… it probably sounded like a slightly tuneful 5 minute long fart.  Plus I came out of the make-up room with a face the colour of a ripe orange.

3) Prior to all that, I was the bass player in a band called "The Headmen" during the early 1990s.  We were signed to a local label (Positive Records) and released a demo tape ("The Happy Shoebox"), a single ("Kissed to Pieces") which got quite a bit of Radio 1 airplay, and a 12" EP ("Reach the Sky") — the demo tape was supposed to named "The Magic Shoebox", which was the name of a shoe shop opposite the "4th Wave Records" shop in Huddersfield.  Most of our studio recordings were engineered by Steve Whitfield, although all of the master tapes were lost when the recording studio was destroyed by a fire.  The highlight (for me at least) was getting to play support for "The Wedding Present".  If anyone asks nicely, I might even try and convert some of the recordings to MP3 ;-)

headmen1
(from http://www.vinyluk.com/search_result.php?vartist=headmen…)

4) When I was a young spotty lad, I used to do computer game reviews on Pennine Radio's "Chips" programme (as in "computer chips") — I vaguely remember reviewing "Tir Na Nog", "Atic Atac", and "Skool Daze".  I also got to review an early model of the ZX Spectrum+ and "yes", the keys did fall off when you turned it upside down ;-)

5) I can't stand touching cotton wool, and the mere thought of any cotton wool touching my teeth sends shivers down my spine.  Fingernails scraping down a blackboard I'm fine with… but not cotton wool!

I think most of the bloggers I know have already been tagged, but here's who I'm planning to do…

1) my partner Bryony
2) my good friend Iman Moradi
3) the one and only Ben Ostrowsky

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 at 5:15 pm and is filed under misc, the headmen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 13 responses to “Blog Tag: 5 Things You Didn't Want To Know About Dave Pattern”

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  1. 1 On December 25th, 2006, bobsy said:

    hi dave,

    way back in 1992 or thereabouts i bought the reach the sky 12" via mail order and it still gets airplay every now and then as mp3s on my computer. i also own a copy of kissed to pieces but it would be nice to hear the happy shoebox too, if you've got the time to make up some mp3s. i can send you the mp3s of the 2 headmen records if you'd like…

    posted on December 25th, 2006 at 2:52 am

  2. 2 On December 25th, 2006, Dave Pattern said:

    Hi Bobsy

    I'll have a rummage around and dig out some of the tapes! I'd love copies of those MP3s too, as they might be better quality than I can make. I think I've also got a demo 4 track tape that we did after leaving Positive Records, which had quite a few new songs on it.

    Simon (the singer) formed another band in the late 90s called ROI, and I've got a CD somewhere that I'll convert to MP3 (I'm sure Simon won't mind).

    Matthew (the drummer) left the band in the early 90s to study at Hull University and joined another band (whose name I forget, but I'll look it up).

    I've no idea what happened to Nik (the guitarist) — I think someone said he'd become a roadie for a Leeds band.

    The Headmen had an amicable split up after playing a gig at Bradford Queens Hall (as part of the yearly Bradford Festival) — we all wanted to go off and do other things, with Simon and myself wanting to go to university (Simon went to Nottingham Uni and I went to Huddersfield).

    I'm pretty sure I've got a box full of Headmen memorabilia somewhere, including some of the early publicity material, so I'll have to dig that out and scan some of it in. I might even have some of the band fanzines!

    posted on December 25th, 2006 at 8:13 am

  3. 3 On December 25th, 2006, Dave Pattern said:

    Heh — just started scanning in some of the memorabilia to Flickr:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/davepattern/sets/72157594437469691/

    These days I normally have my hair tied back in a pony tail, but just in case anyone wonders what I used to look like with it hanging down…

    halifax_07

    posted on December 25th, 2006 at 3:07 pm

  4. 4 On December 28th, 2006, Kathryn Greenhill said:

    Ah..I had read these, I had…bhangra, mealworms..it's all coming back to me. Christmas has blacked our all memory of things that came before it. Sorry about the double tagging.

    My mother-in-law was breeding mealworms to involve and excite her grandchildren. I've met the critters in their sawdust.

    We're ickier here and breed worms.

    posted on December 28th, 2006 at 12:32 am

  5. 5 On June 21st, 2007, bobsy said:

    hey dave i left this comment and promptly forgot all about it until now…
    can you email me about exchanging those MP3s?

    thanks!

    posted on June 21st, 2007 at 8:58 am

  6. 6 On July 16th, 2007, Matt said:

    Hi Dave

    Just thought I should let you know that, as long as you're happy with the idea, The Headmen are featuring on my site at the moment. Seeing as I found this while looking up info I thought I should let you know.

    http://becausemidwaystillarentcomingback.blogspot.com/2007/07/headmen.html

    cheers
    Matt

    posted on July 16th, 2007 at 10:03 am

  7. 7 On October 11th, 2007, Dave Pattern said:

    Just spotted that Pennine Radio now has it's own page on Wikipedia and that it mentions my older brother Simon :-)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennine_Radio

    posted on October 11th, 2007 at 6:12 pm

  8. 8 On October 28th, 2007, bobsy said:

    hi again dave… was hoping you'd get in touch about the headmen…

    posted on October 28th, 2007 at 1:16 pm

  9. 9 On June 3rd, 2008, boris dlugosch said:

    Errr… I was talking to my brother on the phone and we were talking about what we were doing about our respective vinyl collections (amassed during the 1980s/1990s from places like rotate in Brighouse and fourth wave and fulcrum in Huddersfield) - both of which are sat in boxes in lofts mostly unplayed since the advent of CDs and Mp3s. my brother mentioned your record 'kissed to pieces' which he bought aged about 16 after going to a gig. he also recalled owning a t-shirt with the headmen logo on the front which I also remember borrowing and subsequently losing after playing 5-a-side one evening at rastrick high. Anyway, I thought I would look it up on the internet and hey! here I am. thanks for the memories!!!

    posted on June 3rd, 2008 at 8:21 pm

  10. 10 On June 4th, 2008, Dave Pattern said:

    Cool! :-D

    The t-shirts were definitely "limited edition" (i.e. we couldn't afford to get many printed!!!)

    The "Happy Shoebox" demo tape was named after the shoe shop that was opposite Fourth Wave in Huddersfield. If my memory is right, we were all in Fourth Wave browsing thru the LPs and decided to name the demo tape after the first thing we saw when we went outside.

    posted on June 4th, 2008 at 12:42 pm

  11. 11 On June 28th, 2008, bobsy said:

    hi dave,

    i have the mp3s of the 2 headmen records ready if you'd let me know where to send them to…

    also still waiting patiently to hear the happy shoebox tape.

    posted on June 28th, 2008 at 5:12 am

  12. 12 On June 29th, 2008, Dave Pattern said:

    Have a browse through here:
    http://www.daveyp.com/headmen/

    :-)

    posted on June 29th, 2008 at 6:13 pm

  13. 13 On July 1st, 2008, The Headmen » "Self-plagiarism is style" said:

    [...] mentioned that I used to be the bass player in a band ("The Headmen") a while ago and it was great to hear that one or two people still listened to our [...]

    posted on July 1st, 2008 at 12:30 pm

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