And, on Guest Vocals ...

In which The Author doesn't join a rock band

I was round at my brother's house this morning when Radio 2 played 'Walking on Sunshine' by Katrina and the Waves. Instant flashback to the summer of 1985, when three of my mates from school, and a young lad they'd found en route, formed one of Aberdare's legendary bands – Trevor and the Sprouts.

There's a story behind the name, which I won't bore you with. Suffice to say that Takka Tim (bass and vocals), his younger brother Deke (guitar and vocals), Doctor Paul (guitar and vocals), and Gerwyn (drums), occasionally augmented by Kinky Steve (I know – there's another one) spent much of the summer holidays in the Scout Hut in Trecynon, rehearsing and refining their set for their first big gig.

When I say 'their first big gig', I'm not talking about Reading, or Donington, or even Brecon Jazz. I mean an all-day piss-up outside the Michael Sobell Sports Centre in Aberdare. Our pal Stuart Turville had organised the whole thing, which was a fair achievement for a guy in his late teens. He and our mate Darren Broome had been in a band, and Stuart had networked most of the Aberdare music scene to pull together a fairly impressive line-up. Trevor and the Sprouts were pretty much guaranteed to draw a crowd, if only because by the time all their friends and relatives turned up there'd be about a hundred people there.

Every weekday, from mid-morning to late afternoon, the boys lugged their gear to the Scout Hut and worked through their set list. I was there most days, too. My job was to man the stopwatch, to make sure that if Paul shaved a few seconds off the solo in 'Lady Eleanor' we'd get to the end without Stuart pulling the plugs.

Anyway, one day we convened to find ourselves a man down. Paul was on holiday. Even though Kinky Steve was able to fill in on lead guitar, it still meant that 'Walking on Sunshine' was a non-runner. Paul took the lead vocal on that song, so the boys dropped it for the afternoon. It buggered up the timing. Steps needed to be taken.

But I was already networking, even at that early stage.

The following morning I rang Darren to ask if he could pop up to Trecynon and fill in while the rest of the boys refined the set. Fair play to him, he came up as soon as he could.

Paul was (and is) a very fine guitarist, whose biggest influence at the time was Steve Howe of Yes. Darren was (and is) also a very fine guitarist.

Unfortunately for a band whose major influences were the Beatles, the Kinks, Lindisfarne, Man, Fairport Convention, Bill Oddie, and the Rutles, his biggest influences were Lou Reed, Robert Fripp, Steve McGeogh and Bill Nelson.

And I'd never sung at all, apart from doing the usual teenage girl singing into a hairbrush in the bedroom mirror nonsense.

But I knew the words.

Thus it was, for one afternoon only, that three quarters of Trevor and the Sprouts played 'Walking on Sunshine'. I sang the lead vocal in Mark E. Smith fashion. Darren played the most bizarre snatch-and-grab chorused and flanged lead solo since Mr Fripp himself guested on Brian Eno's first solo LP. With no malice aforethought, we murdered one of the best British pop songs of the year.

The only people we knew at the time who could have afforded a video camera were Paul's parents. Luckily for us, they were on holiday as well. These days, such a debacle would have been live on Facebook within seconds. Like many of the key moments in rock history, if you weren't there, you won't be able to experience it ever again.

This afternoon, after telling my brother about the whole shambolic session, I logged onto Facebook. My pal Louis M. (who's been playing guitar since his very early teens) was raving about King Crimson. I shared a couple of YouTube clips which only die hard fans would know about. And then I heard 'Walking on Sunshine' again. It's funny how memories interconnect at times, isn't it?