The Story So Far

"SO! how did it all begin?"

The story so far. (Continued)

With "the undiscovered genius of Nigel Spennewyn" (an actual quote by a journalist, may we add) in the band and stalwart Charlie Olins on keyboards they spent the summer in Lincolnshire recording and moving over to South Wales and Loco Studios for mixing.

May 1998 saw the release of "Baby Blue", the debut single from SO! on Edel records and to coincide with the release the band embarked on another short UK tour. Joining them on keyboards was Lyndon Connah, who has played in Wham, Take That, Level 42 and Thomas Dolby to name but four. Despite being completely insane Lyndon's musicianship is second to none and by the time the band hit the stage for their second appearance at yet another 'sold-out' Borderline, they were on fire.

Journalists from the rock press were mightily impressed by the quality of the songs and show the band put on. Unfortunately the record company didn't bother to turn up and witness the amazing performance by the band. Troubled also with distribution problems that left the SO! fans unable to buy the record, it soon became obvious that "Baby Blue" was not going to have the chart success it richly deserved.

It did pick up a lot of plays on local radio stations around Britain, but due to SO!'s "out of our hand's" problems, it was back to the drawing board as they say.

Although "Brass Monkey" had been met with rave reviews, securing a realistic contract for its release was proving difficult, so a deal was struck with a shop called Townsend Records. Through Townsend "Brass Monkey", became available by mail order only, over the Internet.

After the usual 'music industry' difficulties in getting both "Baby Blue" and "Brass Monkey" off on the right foot, personal finances were becoming 'stretched', and although the band were back in the studio that summer laying down some new songs, Steve and Pete were offered a lucrative trip to Bahrain in the Middle East. Bob was touring with Wishbone Ash, Lyndon was with Mark King (Level 42) and Nigel was busy with gigs & various session work. SO! was very reluctantly put on hold.

Even the old and now defunct Official web site

(www.soweb.force9.co.uk) stopped being updated. The reason being as Pete put it,"It was doing my head in writing the monthly news page and pretending everything was hunky dory when it was infact the total opposite." He continued,"We all care and believe in this band so much that it got to the point where I didn't have the energy to sit down and just make up stuff. I became angry and frustrated until in the end I had to walk away from it."

Pete adds,"From talking to fans over the last year or so, I've discovered that they'd rather have bad news than no news at all, and they have a genuine passion about this band. Just as we do. So we'll keep things up to date. Good, bad or indifferent."

Well there is good news at long last, "Brass Monkey" has finally got a general release through Prestige Elite records and a single "High" will also be released on April 30th 2001.