The Rong'uns Are...

 

 

 

A BRIEF HISTORY.
The original four members of the band (Andy, Simon, Paul & Colin) Were at Simons birthday party in 1997 and decided to get a group together for a bit of fun. Paul and Colin were in thrash band Sarcasm at the time but wanted to do something a bit more regular. By the time of the first rehearsal, another friend of ours Gaz was also roped in to play guitar as well. On January 4th 1998 we played our first gig with Truth Decay and Leicester band Jet Junk Jivers at the Charlotte, Leicester. Gaz couldn't make the gig so we played as a four piece. Gaz left just after this cos of his commitments to FBI Crew. To cut a long story short we played that bad that it was comical, we hadn't even got a name at this point. People found it funny so we carried on. The name came from that gig cos a friend Dave Moulds liked to refer to people as 'WRONG'UNS' when they did something stupid, we got it for a few weeks so we decided to keep it for our name but spell it wrong as well.

Gaz/Drums Colin/Guitar Rob/Bass
So on we went, then in May 1998 we recorded our first demo tape, 'Ain't Right'. 8 tracks, 5 of our own and 3 covers because we didn't know what else to record. Paranoid Junky a track from the demo came out on a compilation 7' ep, A Tour Story on Mass Products. We kept gigging and doing what we could. Early January 1999 Simon left the band. After a short break we returned with old friend Gaz Johnson, a well known punk drummer in Leicester. So we carried on gigging and then December 1998 Andy left the band. We tried with no success to replace him, but not one person offered to even try out as singer. After 3 months we started gigging again with Colin singing. Not ideal bit there you go! Then in May 2000 we went into the studio again and recorded 3 new tracks. Bad Advice, Cold Sweat & Trapped. This was originaly to be our first ep but it never happened. It was decided that Colin would continue to sing and we stopped looking for a singer. While all of this was happening Kiym joined playing Saxophone on the couple of Ska tracks we used to do and did some vocals on the rest. But she was deported back to Canada in the summer of that year because her visa had expired. And then there were three!

 

And have been...

 
With Paul on Bass

 

 
We were let down by a lot different people and our intended first ep 'Unpissed' was never released. Disappointed but by no means disheartened we carried on. We were playing more and more gigs and we were getting more and more interest from people. Yet still no one would release us. May 2001 we went back into the studio and recorded another three tracks, Social Control, I Must Have Pissed Off God & It's My Life. (we had gone into the studio to record in June 1999 but we got really pissed and only one track ever got completed From The Wrong Side Of Town a Ska song we no longer play. Out of the four songs we recorded that was the one we weren't bothered about. Andy was still with us at that point). So we put the six completed tracks onto a CD and sent loads out to loads of record labels. Still nothing! We got on the bill for H.I.T.S. 2001 so we did 100 copies of the CD so that we had something to give out at Morecambe. We called it 'Unwell' with a classic picture of our mate Blacker on the cover. Unwell got good reviews in many fanzines etc our live performances too were getting good reviews, yet still no interest from any record labels. Although we had tracks on lots of compilation albums.

Kiym played Saxophone and did
some singing until she got deported

2001 continued with a lot of gigs and we also continued putting new songs together and generally having a good time. In the first few weeks of 2002 Nervous Tension from Newark, Nottinghamshire played in Leicester. I had sent Ian (singer) a copy our homemade CD in the hope that he might release us on his DIY record label Weird Records. I gave him another copy of the CD and we had a bit of a chat. a couple of days later he e-mailed me to say that he wanted to release a Rong'uns 7' with Social Control, Bad Advice and Cold Sweat as the track list. AT LAST! At around this time Mark the Sarcasm vocalist was organizing a tour for Forca Macabra a thrash metal band from Finland who we knew from the Sarcasm days. We did the UK tour with them in May 2002 the single came out in the same week. The tour was great. But the Rong'uns did have a bit of a fall out which led to Colin playing in Glasgow on his own as the Rong One. The next night, the last night of the tour we kissed and made up and played at the 1 in 12 club in Bradford. Paul then left in July just as Colin Jerwood (Conflict) had offered to put an album out on Mortarhate Records. It took us a long while to find a replacement for Paul. Eventually friend of the band Rob (guitarist from Leicester punk band Set Back) offered to play bass for us. So we've got Rob to put some bass on the album, hopefully it will be released in the near future. In the meantime we continue to gig.

 

 

The original line up

 

 

Andy, Paul, Colin & Simon
Honourary Rong'uns.
Gaz - Unknown Rong'un
Simo - Driver
Blacker - Web Assistance
   
Kev Reverb - Studio Engineer