Venus Flight
Venus Flight was my first high school band. I formed the band
with Tony Smith and Mark Colwell over a number of sessions in our
high school library where we would lock ourselves in one of the
Audio-Visual rooms, stick three sets of headphones into a cassette
player and listen to Paul McCartney & Wings cassettes all
lunchtime.
We formed the band before we even had instruments, let alone
knew how to play them! I originally wanted to be the drummer but
Mark got in first - and also had access to a drum kit . And so I
chose to be the bass player since it seemed it would be easier to
learn to play, only having four strings (and big thick ones at
that) as opposed to six on the guitar.
The three of us would frequently catch the train up to Sydney
and scour the second-hand record shops for Beach Boys albums and
then drop by 'Elliotts' - a second-hand store near Central Station
- which sold used musical equipment. We would spend an hour or
more drooling over the twin-stack Marshall amps and the old Fender
Bassman valve amps.
Eventually we added a fourth member, Steve Nolan (an
accomplished guitarist by our standards) but when our sound became
a little heavier - and the number of Status Quo covers exceeded
the number of Ol'55 covers - we backed off, parted company with
Steve, and settled on a line-up including two girls, Jo-Anne and
Cathy. Thus began our ABBA phase.
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