Named in honour of the late, great Telly Savalas and his lolly-sucking ways, Kojak Pops is Ed Bayliss on guitar, keyboards, bass, beats 'n' bleeps and anything else he can knock out a tune on. The original band line-up dates back to college days with Ed on guitar and keys, John O'Connor on bass, Andy Crawford on drums, and a girl called Clare, who used to come round the house and pretend to play the flute. The music ranged from funky rock instrumentals to all-out screaming death metal. However, lyrics like "Take a goldfish and put it in boiling water.. I DID!" and "Step into the five-pointed star and into a world of despair and misery!", were never going to get them far in the long-term and after the bass amp blew up one afternoon, the original line-up decided to call it a day.Ed retained the ace name (after bringing 400 Duty-Free cigs back for John), a Four-Track and loads of time to muck about, on account of him taking a Fine Art Degree. Unfortunately the Four-Track knackered after providing such albums as "Don't Mess", "The Underarm Bowling Experience", "The Angelic Conversations" and many, many more! Copies were largely sold for 20 Lucky Strike or Camel, and a can of Panda Pop. Now he's got a computer, which enables him to do all the tunes himself with relative ease. Also, he doesn't have to keep yelling at the drummer to stop arsing about, and generally it gives him something to do when he's not painting (go to www.edbayliss.com or profile on Top Friends, to see some work). Happy times..
