HISTORY

    Well, the band first got together in our final year of college cuz we were all interested in writing our own material, playing gigs and gettin' drunk. James had already been playing the guitar for a coupla years, and Alex had just bought a drumkit so I figured I'd buy a bass guitar - instant 3 piece band! After gettin' a few songs together we played at a couple of local pubs, which wuz an interestin' experience, heh.
    
    Soon afterwards, this website got made (albeit in a much worse incarnation then), got submitted to a few search engines and was linked to a few other pages. A guy from Amp Records in Canada came across it and asked if we wanted to be on a compilation CD, so we recorded a track for that on a 4-track machine in a garage. The quality was pretty poor, but hey it helped us to get a mention when the CD got reviewed in Maximum Rock'N'Roll! It said "Punch Puppet, due to incredibly bad quality recording, create a completely unique and cool sound" - nice one!  Back then, we also had a track on a UK cassette compilation called 'Top of the Pops Rejects', compiled by Martin Brown and featuring some ace UK bands.

    Our first proper gigs came soon after when a guy from Leeds came across our web site and asked if we wanted any gigs in Leeds. By this time we'd just finished getting a proper set done, so we thought yeah. Then he got us our first proper gig at the Duchess in Leeds, supporting the UK Subs! Not bad for a first gig! It was ok, feckin' nerve-wracking tho'. Then we played at the Fenton a coupla days later, and that was cool cuz we were a bit more relaxed. So we'd done our first mini-tour (well, 2 dates) in Leeds!  

    Not long afterwards we recorded a 3 track studio at Southern Studios in London. After sendin' the demo around to a few London venues we started getting a few proper gigs on good bills! Over the years we've played some ace venues, the Bull & Gate in Kentish Town a few times, the Red Eye (RIP) in Islington, the Camden Monarch, the Verge and Fusilier and Firkin (in Camden too), Hollywoods, the Cellar bar, Trax and Musictek Studios all in Romford, the Ruskin Arms in East Ham, plus some out of town shows in Leeds, Guildford, Hertfordshire and Birmingham, with more to come soon.

           More recently in May 2002 we recorded a 7 track CD at Music City Studios in New Cross, London. At the minute we're puttin' the CD out ourselves, 'What Happened to the Gurdip Knights?' - e-mail us if you'd be interested in gettin' hold of a copy, fer a small charge! It's gottn a pretty good response from people so far, ya can hear 3 of the songs on MP3.com. One of the tracks also features on the compilation 'Beerbelly presents...', and there's a couple more comps that we'll probably feature on in the near future. It rocks havin' new material again!

    Just a quick mention to some of the great bands we've played with, 3 1/2" Floppy, The Griswalds, Penfold, The Morons, UK SUBS, Jakal, the Jon Doe$, Joe 90, Foxy, Skimmer, Buzzkill, Lowlife, Sticky Back Spastics, Luga Buruga, Weapon X, SuperTrix, Jaded, Minority, 17 Stitches, Caffeine, Isor, Lashed Up, Gutterman, Shallow and who could forget the Amphetamine Missionaries, with whom Jello Biafra got up on stage and sang a few Dead Kennedys songs, I shit you not, back in May 02 at the Fusilier. There have been others too, the names escape me.

    So that's it really. More history will be added as more 'historical' things happen!