'Smith 6079' - The Forgotten Band

Being a contractor has its advantages. One of them is that that you meet many more people than if you stick to the same job in the same company for many years.

When we were told another packager was joining our team, I did a little research as per the norm to see who I would be working with.

The new guy wasn’t on http://www.linkedin.com at least not personally, and I had not heard of him from my years in the business.

We all went out for some beers a few nights back and I got talking to Jez Moorby while in Alexander's Bar & Kitchen in Skipton (pending @tasteem review will be written in the next few weeks).

What I didn’t realise was that this guy was the bass player in a promising alternative band named Smith 6079. The band split in 2009 but they could have made it big and for good reason, they are bloody good!

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One MP3 was dispatched to a few carefully chosen record company execs. The track – Damn (The Music) - certainly hit home. The phones never stopped ringing

There are record contract offers on the table – and they’ve so far not signed any of them.

A couple of sentences from this article tells me that they had caught the attention of the media, so why did the deal never happen?

Jez tells me, ‘Yes we were presented with at least one offer”

‘Kill Romeo’ is the song that I have listened to several times now and it certainly has something. There’s a great riff that gets your attention throughout the song and some know that I don't get into tunes very easily.

Smith 6079 - Kill Romeo (Regular Version)

My opinion is that the vocalist, ‘Moon’ can be a little shouty but if you listen to the quieter parts of the song you can hear that classic rocker vocal.

There are two versions of ‘Kill Romeo’ on YouTube, the original was done in a strip club and Jez tells me this was a fantastic experience. The girls agreed to take part for free and there was the experience of having these sexy chicks around you for the day.

Being the bass player is probably the most unassuming part of a band, but you can clearly see him playing in both the ‘strip club’ version and the later ‘official’ version.

Smith 6079 - Kill Romeo (Strip Club Version)

The band created enough material for an album provisionally named ‘Therapy’ but I’m unable to find any more of their songs on the internet.

‘Kill Romeo' was pressed to CD and scours of eBay and Amazon show plenty of copies for sale, starting at £1.99 including delivery.

I might just order a copy so I can listen to the tracks, ‘Fading Souls' with Jez on backing vocals and their very first song, ‘Dam (The Music)'.

It seems to me a shame that the best offer they had was £20,000 a year (each) which is not enough to live on for the four players. What could have been the next Kasabian is now lost?

Asking Jez about regrets he simply tells me, ‘I wish I could have tried harder and dedicated more to the band’. He was married with a young family and that was limiting his time.

Another problem was that half of the band lived in Manchester and the other half in the south of the country.

‘Doing gigs was hard work and unpaid', he tells me and included a lot of travelling. ‘I always had at least one beer before playing', he continues. The nerves needed to be calmed.

The highlight of Smith 6079 was supporting Kasabian at the Jersey Festival in 2007. ‘They didn’t pay us, but paid for ALL our expenses including travelling’. Playing to several thousand fans must have been something.

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After some initial interest post-festival, they were told in no uncertain terms by promoters, ‘you are too old to make it'. The vocalist was 42 at the time and Jez the youngest at 35.

He tells me he still has his £1000 bass and can’t bear to part with it. I’m not surprised given the memories stored inside it.

Fortunately, Jez has other skills besides playing the bass and appears to be an accomplished application packager, scripter, and sequencer.

He's also writing a trading bot for cryptocurrencies and has not only heard of STEEM but used to trade in it when it was more dominant.

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He looks a little chunkier in the stills and the videos and that is because he was not consuming 'Huel' in those days. Likely it was not invented in 2007 and it has made a difference to his appearance, though I keep seeing him eating sneaky bags of crisps and boxes of chips.

All unreferenced non You-Tube images are my own.

Other References:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2005/09/15/140905_smith_6079_feature.shtml
http://www.mwaweb.com/rocksectorbands_smith6079.html
http://www.unsigned.com/smith6079
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/music/fleshing-out-the-dark-side-of-the-moon-992270