After Circle Of Sin had gone their separate ways I was invited to join The Worms as their previous guitarist had left. I thought "why not" they are an entertaining band and it could be a good experience and a good laugh too. They had arranged a rehearsal session at Ram Studios in Hayes so I went along to give it a go. When I arrived the band "Chaos" were rehearsing in the adjacent studio so I popped in to say hello and get the usual abuse from Frog that he welcomed everyone with. After a quick chat I went into the other studio to start our rehearsal session. All the band were there, Chris, Frot, Andy And the Wormettes Julie and Melissa. The hard part was to learn all the songs in a short amount of time but gradually after a few rehearsal sessions I managed to learn them and even add a few extra guitar bits too. The next stage was to start on some new songs and perfect a good set. The new songs were a little bit harder to work on and after many weeks there wasn't much to show for our efforts. During this time we only played a few gigs and I don't seem to have any memories of the details. I know we played at The Ad Lib Club and also the Hundred Club in Oxford Street but the dates and who we played with are very vague.

At some point during all this Andy our Bass guitarist left the band, and we rehearsed without a bass guitarist for some time. A while later the wormettes stopped coming to rehearsals and eventually we stopped rehearsing at Ram Studios for reasons I can't remember. After trying to find another Bass player for a while Chris decided he wanted to learn to play bass and be the singer at the same time. We started to rehearse at Alpha Studios (also in Hayes inside a big industrial estate) and we got to Know the studio owners quite well. It was at this point where we started to try out different styles and our sound started to change into a more "Killing Joke" style without the heavy beats.

Chris took to the bass guitar quite well and after a while he had learnt all the old songs and we even had a few new ones under our belt such as "Formula", "Shadow Of doubt", "Skull Beneath The Skin" and "Alistairs Prayer". We started looking for a new vocalist and advertised in the Melody Maker. At this point we changed the bands name to "Shadow Of Doubt" and with a new vocalist Sarah (who would hitch down to London every week from Bristol for the rehearsal) we started getting a more accomplished tighter sound. We even had a second guitarist for a short while to beef up the sound a bit, but he didn't work out very well and was not too commited to the band so we sacked him.

Just as we were getting quite good Sarah had to stop coming to rehearsal due to some personal problems and in the end we lost her too. We advertised for another vocalist and we recruited Phil (a soft spoken geordie) and we started rehearsing again. After about a month we got offered a gig playing at Bumbles Wine Bar in Acton supporting the legendary Dirty Toilets. We played the gig as The Worms but the gig didn't go too well as we had sound problems, and Phil's voice was not strong enough to be heard over the music.

We had a couple of rehearsals afterwards but we had started to lose heart. We didn't feel that Phil could improve his performance and our drummer Frot was soon to be a father. So in the end we decided to give it up. As far as I know none of us went on to play in other bands and for me it was the end of an exciting time being involved in performing music.

 

Martin.

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