Ha Ha Said the Car

Where did the name come from?

When I was a few years old I heard Manfred Mann's song Ha Ha Said the Clown and misheard the title! The strange instrumentation evoked a world of talking cars.Even the Beatles in their early days sounded strange to my ears. I caught on to their surrealism very early. Then, each new record would surprise you with a new sound that you never heard before. My quest has been to continue that search for new sounds. I am pushed by the aim to make records I heard in my dreams, waking up to find they did not exist. My job has been to attempt to make them.

I was born in Bishop's Stortford on the 6th November 1960. My interest in music began as soon as I heard it...at the age of TWO I hummed back a twenty minute classical piece after hearing it only ONCE, according to my mother Irmeli. When FIVE years old I wanted to play the school piano, and felt sure I could read notation in a child's songbook. I was not allowed to play..

At NINE YEARS OLD I made a tape loop to create a soundscape for a school dinosaur project!

I began making music from the age of 15 when I got my first cassette recorder as a birthday present. I had made a simple voltage controlled oscillator and started making electronic soundscapes, overlaying sounds by covering the cassette's erase head. I also took up guitar and clarinet. I took my tin whistle down to the M11 underpass to record the reverberations, and made a tape of me accompanied by the sound of cars. I became interested in the magical effects of random musical "accidents"..derived from my overdub experiments, not hearing the previously recorded sounds.

In 1976 I lugged my homemade synthesiser to school - it was very heavy. Together with friends Paul Bamlett and Hugh Howard I started a kind of "avant-garde" group. Paul played the piano and Hugh played woodwind. More people became involved, and it turned into a kind of cathartic, auto-destructive lunchtime event. I lost control over this and was eventually ousted from the "group" by some usurper for not being "collectivist" enough.

After dropping out of the Graphic Design course I attended at Stevenage College in 1980 I was reunited with Paul Bamlett and we recorded three songs I had composed whilst studying. Paul brought in his friend Duncan Laine who played electric violin. By then I was well into my Syd Barrett era, having heard the Piper at the Gates of Dawn album and his two solo records by this point. I called the band Mathilda Mother after the Pink Floyd song. The songs were a bit dark, even the jaunty reggae styling of "Tawdry Secrets" was betrayed by an unhappy domestic lyrical theme. "Crows" was a song about a nightmare, and it sounds rather Gothic, with Siouxsie and the Banshees' tom tom drumming from Paul. The last song "Dont Leave Me in Here" is a picture of loneliness too painful to listen to now. It was all quite miserable, but then I was too. We performed together on a few occasions at the Railway Hotel and the Triad Leisure Centre in Bishops Stortford. There were another two years of angular angst, doing things like performing Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath, until the word "pretentious" came up and the whole thing fizzled out.

I joined a couple of local Stortford bands, "THE DECIBELS" and "SOME PEOPLE ARE ASLEEP" as a bass player.

I wrote some new songs and recorded a demo tape at Cheops Studio in Cambridge, with Graham Duthie and Nick Patrick from the Decibels. Amongst these were "Mr Fowler" and "Storm Petal Susie." The former featured in SOUNDS psychedelic chart in the October 27 1984 issue, at number 2! It had interest from 4AD Records, Dan Treacy's Dreamworld Records and Bam Caruso. It was due to appear on a compilation by Dan Treacy, but this fell through. I released the song in 1991 under my own name on my cassette album "MAGIC FROM THE ATTIC." (Fragment Records) "Storm Petal Susie" was later performed by my next group ERICK (1986-1992), and appears on their album "Fuzzyfelt" released in 1990.

I formed a band called HA HA SAID THE CAR to perform these songs in 1985. We played three or four gigs with two different lineups featuring friends and local musos. Despite some interest, the band ended rather abruptly as the musicians departed, without much explanation, leaving me staring at an empty rehearsal room.

I joined Erick in 1987. I was one of the founding members of this group that formed to play a party, and went on to record three albums and nearly achieve major label success, only to break up in 1994 in frustration.In 1991 I formed the Willy Brandt Cooperative, whilst I was studying Popular Music at Harlow College. This was a satisfying side project whilst being a member of Erick, allowing me to develop and perform my own music in a rather more relaxed environment, and in the company of some great musicians, these being keyboardist Jamie Odell, (Jimpster) drummer Toby Baron who now performs with Ray Davies, Toby's brother Shaun on bass and Ben Evans on guitar.

Since the breakup of Erick in 1993 I left Bishops Stortford to study Popular Music at the University of Salford. I formed a band called DOLLYROCKER (after the Syd Barrett song) with Mark Kelly, Gina Charalambous and Paul Klabou. I appeared cross-dressed for the occasion, ensuring that the few gigs we played would be as outrageous as possible! Our final college gig at the Night and Day Cafe in Manchester was introduced by the then-unknown student comedian Peter Kay.

2003 Released "Down There From Up Here," a collection of tunes spanning 2000-2003 bookended by two tunes from 1990.

One of my compositions "SHIPS PASSING" was featured in a short experimental video "Perfect Spot," by JENNET THOMAS (2003)