From Then Till Now
The Full Story
The story of Soft Phenomena starts in 1977. Stan Burton (drums) and Larry Day (bass/vocals) had been playing since about 1974/75 with a friend Jeremy Hornigold (guitar) mostly for fun. When Jeremy decided to quite Stan answered an advert in the NME ( 26th November 1977 ) and the following Sunday afternoon met up with John Bygrave (too many instruments to list!) at his home just outside Norwich.
John was into recording and so for the first year the time was spent playing and recording 'in-house' on his Revox 4 track reel to reel.
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Once we decided to play live we found various place to practice including a windmill. The first live 'gig' was playing four songs at the Connaught Hall in Attleborough for a Young farmers event in March 1978.
With the help of our esteemed manager Glyn and manly roadie Barry we started playing various pubs, clubs and venues in Norfolk and Suffolk, including Whites, The Rights of Man, Romany Rye, The Griffin (where we were we had a regular slot.)
The set was a combination of covers and original tracks written by John and Larry, but at its core was some good old R & B and rock.
We were joined in about 1979, by John Nobbs on rhythm guitar and backing vocals.
As with most things life took over and Larry (who got married and moved) quit the band. John and Stan went on to play in other local bands such as the Hethersett Kazoo Orchestra.
Time passes quickly as it is want to do - so skip forward some 37 years to 2019. Larry, John Stan and Jeremy decided to have a jam session.
Following a fun afternoon John and Larry agreed to meet up to try recording one of the tracks they had played during the jam session and in September 2019 recorded their first track a cover of "Secret Agent Man."After which John and Larry recorded a number of covers version of songs which can be found on their YouTube channel.
So What Is Happening and Where Are They Now?
In 2023 John, Larry and Stan did a short set and Stan's private birthday party. Followed by a slightly longer set in 2024 again at Stan's birthday bash. They were joined in 2024 by Richard Style on rhythm guitar and so the talk came round to "public gigs". While Larry is regularly gigging on bass with "The Tall Fakers" and Richard doing bass and vocals with "Loose Covers" it was agree that we might have a few spare dates in 2025 to actually look to do some public gigs ( the first time in 44 years ). As it stands we should be playing the first of these at The Ox and Plough in Old Buckenham in February 2025, so watch this space!.
