THE HISTORY
SRE circa 1990
CHAPTER 1
Strange Red Earth was formed around Torbay UK in the early 1990’s. The founder members being; Roj, Blackstone and Zarquon. They set out to make; Dynamic, Tuneful, Atmospheric Rock that could be performed and recorded in a professional way.
“Although we played locally to our town we did not want to sound like a local band if you get my meaning”. Said Lord Zarquon. Therefore all SRE gigs then and now are played with a full Professional PA and light show. No vocal PA’s or overhead pub lights for them!
“We formed Strange Red Earth for the love of music. We have never played covers only our own brand of original Rock”. Said Jon Blackstone.
The next SRE member was Vince on Drums. A few more gigs were played in this guise until problems between Roj and Vince caused a parting of ways. Now with no drummer it was decided that a drum machine would best enable SRE to continue on their musical quest. SRE played numerous gigs and recording six albums with the old faithful R8 drum machine.
CHAPTER 2
Eventually tensions reared their ugly head once more between Roj and the other founder members. Blackstone and Zarquon felt SRE should give it a rest for a while. This they did and Blackstone left England for Australia. During his stay in Australia Zarquon and Roj patched up their difference and began work on a new album (Otherworld) during the making of this album Zarquon felt the need for Blackstone’s input. A demo was put together and Lord Zarquon flew out to Australia with the new songs. Blackstone was impressed and promptly wrote the great track Black Sun. On his return to the UK the album was finished, with complete input from all the members SRE were back! Rehearsals for new gigs were arranged but it was felt that they need a drummer for live work.
One name kept cropping up and that was an old band friend his name was Sleyer. Sleyer had played in previous bands that all members had been involved in and was now once again on the market !!
CHAPTER 3
After another couple of years of rehearsals and gigging, Roj once again felt the need to find the lost chord. Zarquon and Blackstone found it sadly impossible to help him on his new musical quest .
But this time Strange Red Earth were not to call it a day with Roj’s final departure Blackstone, Sleyer and Zarquon set about finding a new singer and guitarist. “We felt replacing Roj with a separate singer and a guitarist would be a better idea than finding a new lead guitarist /singer. "Too much like hard work". said Zarquon
CHAPTER 4
2008 saw the arrival of the new singer in the form of Sir James Vox a well rehearsed phenomenal vocalist. (Said he)! This gave SRE a new energy which they had felt lacking for some time. The guitarist proved a lot harder to find. After trying two players SRE finally settled for Dr Lucian R. Shroud.
The new line up played an exceptional gig at The Summer Moon Festival June 2009. Check the video page!
TO BE CONTINUED…
