Punkdaddy started playing guitar soon after leaving school but didn't get into a proper band until punk came along and swept away a lot of the crap. Under various names, such as Phil McCavity, Dan Dadandan and Phil Perfect, he played in Brighton punk and new wave bands Flesh, The Lillettes, April & the Fools and in the eighties and nineties with Feline Jive, the Gary Mould Experience and The Innocents.
When Flesh split up back in 1978, the nucleus of that band formed the Lillettes, who featured two tracks on the Attrix Records Vaultage 79 album. A year later, an offshoot of the Lillettes emerged as April & the Fools and appeared on Vaultage 80.
In 1983, he was commissioned to write his first music book. Published by former Yes & Osibisa album cover artist Roger Dean's Dragon's Dream company, it was entitiled The Boys Who Rock, an A-Z (from Abba to Zappa) of the top bands of the day, which had a print run of 15,000. A year later, after undergoing a course in film and video, he made a 20 minute film, New Religion, in 16mm. New Religion was featured as part of the 1984 Punk Film Festival. It was shown locally around Brighton and several European cities. "It was based on the old Look-At-Life shorts I used to see at the flicks when I was a kid. I shot some of the film myself and used a load of found footage, edited together using some of my own music and a couple of tracks by early Duran Duran as a soundtrack, from which I took the title. That method is not totally dissimilar to what I've done with my music on my first solo album Retard In The White House."
In 2000, and using the name punkdaddy, he continued writing about music when he launched his first website, The Punk History of Brighton, a social history of the Brighton punk scene from 1976-1981. In 8 years the site has generated over 7 million hits and led to local publishers asking him to write a book on the subject, which is due for publication next year.
Last year punkdaddy completed his first solo album Retard In The White House. The do-it-yourself mentality and social commentary of punk had always struck a chord and the Retard album became a vehicle for his feelings about the Iraq war, politicians in general and the duplicity of the mainstream media. He decided to use their own words to reflect how we are lied to, manipulated and dumped on by those in power. Using audio clips from various sources he fitted them to his tunes.
Punkdaddy recently finished working on a music project with old Brighton punk favourite Dick Damage (who he met up with through his punkbrighton website) when he was invited to DD's wedding to Mary last August. They hadn't seen each other in over 25 years. At the wedding punkdaddy gave him a copy of Retard, which he'd just completed. He'd been looking to work with a vocalist after he finished the album when Damage turned up out of the blue.
Damage liked the sentiments and attitude of the Retard album and clearly wanted to get something going. So they got together and under the name DD&PD wrote a batch of songs which turned into a 13-track CD, entitled TSDS. Check out his myspace page: dickdamagemusic
Following the collaboration with Damage, punkdaddy has now resumed his solo status and is working on a new album.
Check out punkdaddy's 2007 interview with the BBC's 48 Hours
