Helen and the Horns

Originally, I intended to have a Western-style band playing cowboyish countryish music with a dash of Ennio Morricone. Lester Square, who had just left the Monochrome Set, played guitar, Mike Slocombe (who later joined eighties band Dance on a Telephone), played drums, I played bass guitar and sang and I was looking to recruit a trumpet player. I bumped into trombone player Dave Jago at the Rock Garden one night and he offered to play, bringing along Paul Davey to play sax. I was signing on and couldn't afford to transport the drumkit about town to rehearsals, so I started to rehearse just with the Horns. The Monochrome Set (with Lester Square temporarily back, I think) offered us a support gig at Kingston Polytechnic as a 3-piece, and we did it because I'd always liked them and couldn't turn it down. We were an accidental hit, and so we decided to carry on the way we were. We could do really short soundchecks (no drums) and ended up being offered masses of support gigs because we were so easy to deal with. We soon recruited Marc Jordan on trumpet, although we often used session players because he was in big demand. Six months before, John Peel's producer John Walters had called me, offering me a session. I was really ill and miserable at the time and asked him to call back in six months. "FOOL!", said lots of people, "you should have taken the session and just done any old thing". I was damn lucky because exactly six months later he called back and the Horns were ready to record the first of three sessions for the show. Our first single, Freight Train, was recorded on Thin Sliced records, the label who released King Kurt's first single. we got played on everything from Terry Wogan to Mike Read who actually took his guitar on to the Radio One Breakfast show and attempted to play along with it. We played all over the place, and did a lot of gigs in Scotland, which we loved (great audiences). We played on the infamous Pebble Mill at One. Eventually. RCA signed us but they didn't understand the sound and couldn't match us with a suitable producer (I begged for John Collins or Dennis Bovell to no avail). After 6 months I requested a release from the contract and Dave and Paul pooled their savings (wasn't that kind?) and we made our own label, Rockin' Ray Records, releasing 'Hell Hath No Horns' in about 1984 as our swan song. I have taken my remaining copies of this vinyl album to Rough Trade- they are selling them mail order- follow this link to get one: http://www.roughtrade.com/site/shop_detail.lasso?search_type =sku&sku=300250 We were included in the 'cowpunk' movement but also managed to play things like medical students Prom nights at the Cafe Royale and Variety Club charity bashes at Barkers in Kensington. The whole thing was a blast, and it all happened by accident.