…..about Spit Like Paint
Portsmouth, late 1970s. Peter Stephens and Michael Wood attend the same school. Somehow or other, the two of them start making music together. Actually, Mike is already a good bass player, and at that time he is jamming with a guitarist and a drummer.
Pete often ends up at Mike’s parents’ place, where they play songs and bits of music, with Peter doing the singing. They try to start a band with some friends of Mike’s, but it doesn’t work out.
Peter and Mike decide to start their own band – and they get the name first. The inspiration comes during a morning walk: ”We were idly trying to think of a name for our new band, just saying the names of things we saw (pavement, bus stop etc.) when Mike spat (it had been quite a heavy drinking Saturday night) and said, “my spit’s like paint this morning”. I immediately said, “Spit Like Paint, that’s it!”. And that was it”.
Finding both a guitarist and a drummer proves difficult, so eventually Peter Stephens, vocals and stylophone, and Michael Wood, bass, get the drummer Nicholas Connors and decide that a line-up with just the three of them will do: the Spit Like Paint were born.
In 1979/1980 the band starts gigging around the Portsmouth area, the local punky scene being reasonably good at that time.
They get to know a lot of other local bands from going on Friday and Saturday nights to Portsmouth Polytechnic, which back in those days is about the only place you can go if you look a bit different.
Then the band gets a trumpet player, Robin Sabey, who introduces himself showing up at the Polytechnic in his work (bank) suit and is taken on board just before the band’s first recording session, at Toucan Studios in June 1981. The recording will become the tape “I think about it”.
Pete reveals the story behind the 19-second last track, “Egypt”: “The story with Egypt was that we were told we had a bit of tape left so decided to do it anyway as we had paid for the recording ourselves and were pretty poor at the time – I don’t think we realised how little tape was left! But we liked it anyway – when we did our first gig at the Bali Hai above the Locarno (where the big bands played) in Portsmouth, we wrote Egypt and another track (called Funck, I think – I can’t quite remember or what it sounded like) when we were sound checking”.
Only about 100 tapes are copied and sold to friends and at gigs at the Polytechnic – mainly for beer money. Spit Like Paint start to gain a following and various gigs are organised, supporting more popular bands such as Josef K & Felt at a Portsmouth nightclub called Nero’s, Pigbag (twice) and Rip, Rig & Panic at Gaiety Bar on South Parade Pier.
In December 1981, Spit Like Paint are back in Toucan Studios for their second recording session. Robin invites his friends Mark Lockheart, a talented sax player who joins the session, contributing greatly to the sound of the EP.
The tracks somehow end up with Dave Henderson, who in 1982 puts out the 12” “Spit like Paint” on his interesting label called Dining Out. In the same year, all the band members move to London, where they carry on gigging until about 1990, adding and losing various members along the way.
