BONA DISH - THE ZARAGOZA TAPES: 1981-1982

Our style emerged as we scoured Saturday jumble sales in North London usually coming down off cheap speed from the night before. We wanted a band that was musically democratic, cool and rhythmic, so with our girlfriends we formed Bona Dish. Luckily our friend Kev (Saunders) put on art/music happenings for new romantics, and we played our first gigs (utilising our passions for visual art by experimenting with slide projections and polythene hanging in front of us), with bands like Portion Control and the Marine Girls. We recorded C30 for In-Phaze in a small prefabricated hall next to a stagnant pond one Sunday in the spring of 1981. The songs were just half formed ideas that were realized that day through a mixture of youthful enthusiasm and necessity due to the cost of studio time. More gigs followed including the Alternative Knebworth Festival with 23 Skidoo. John Peel played Actress and to my amazement said he liked it; I heard this alone on a tiny radio in my squalid Baker Street bedsit. Pat (the man) from In-Phaze offered to do another release so we decided on an EP, with the genius idea that if we packaged it in a cardboard tube John Peel would notice it amongst the hundreds of tapes he received weekly and we’d get some more radio play. The record shops wouldn’t take it because the odd shape was difficult to stack, so we had hundreds of spare cardboard tubes. We settled on a conventional tape case for EP (1982) with our coolest friend and ‘chemical adviser’ Dave as the cover star. The image was shot on the stairs of our newly moved-in shared house in Palmers Green, north London where we also made the recordings. These songs described feelings of alienation on the Underground, memories of beach parties and boredom through love lost. Our sound had expanded with the addition of Pete (Moss) a close friend and brilliant artist/musician on guitar. A few months later and talk of a single, this was getting poppy, add a saxophone! Another Palmers Green recording (Susan Says, Tactile Sob, Situation) but we were falling apart, Julie left and then me. The group carried on another few months similarly to how the Velvets carried on without Lou Reed. That’s how I saw it anyway. Steven Chandler. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.