PROLOG
Blackpool Gazette piece announcing Prolog to an unsuspecting world. I must have just turned 17 on this photo. Dave's mum Hazel took the photo of us in the college drama hall.
Back in 1983 I was at St Anne's College, Lancashire where I was studying Drama, though I had no real intention of becoming an actor. It was through a friend of mine at college that I met Dave Holt. Dave and I were both keen on electronic music. Dave was a far better player than me whilst I found writing songs and lyrics a lot easier than he did, so it was quite a good balance. We got on well and decided to give writing some stuff together a go. I think this would have been around November 1983.
The gear we had at this time was about as basic as you could get. I had a Casio MT40 keyboard from Argos that had built in drum patterns and about three synth like sounds (the rest were glockenspiel, flute, bells etc.....awful) plus I had a Jen SX1000 monosynth (plays one note at a time) that I'd bought from the classifieds that summer. It cost me £80 and had a dodgy top C key. Dave had a Yamaha CS01 monosynth which was tiny but sounded good and could be worn on a guitar strap. We had no amps so I would play my Jen SX1000 through my Fidelity record player whilst the Casio and Yamaha had internal speakers. We recorded the results onto Dave's portable tape recorder in my bedroom. If you think it all sounds a bit lo-fi then you'd be spot on.
I had a couple of songs I'd written myself including 'Each time I see you', one I wrote with my neighbour Ian Newman ('Nuclear babes') plus Dave and I co-wrote an instrumental which Dave entitled 'Systamex'. So we had a demo tape of sorts, which - for a bit of a laugh - we sent off to the Blackpool Gazette as our entry to the local Rock Battle. We needed a band name so Dave came up with Prolog (a computing term, I believe).
Obviously, you can imagine our surprise, amusement and utter shock when Robin Duke wrote to us (no email in those days of course) and said we were through to the competition. Had he actually listened to the tape? The next few weeks meant rehearsing and writing more songs including 'Dear Girl', another instrumental (which was dire) and an instrumental Dave wrote for his mum called 'Hazel's Theme' which was really good.
As for the gig itself on 8th March 1984 at the Bier Keller in Blackpool, we actually had a good crowd of friends support us from college etc and that certainly helped calm the nerves....but we were pretty bad. I think I played a load of bum notes and - when compared to all the guitar based bands who appeared at the gig - we just sounded a bit lightweight. But hey, we had performed our first gig..
Live at the Bier Keller, '84. Note Dave is looking at me, no doubt thinking 'Paul, you're playing the wrong bloody notes!'
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Dave playing my Casio MT40 and Jen SX1000.
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Keytar action with me playing Dave's CS01 on the song 'Dear Girl'.
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 Setlist from the scruples gig. 'Anything yet' was supposed to be a song written by Dave but we played 'Investigators' instead.
It would be four months before we played live again. We needed to write more songs and basically get better. I think Dave got a new keyboard that summer, a large Casio keyboard with better drums and a sequencer, so we could program some complex backing arrangements into it, though we'd need to load these via data cassette between songs. New songs included 'American Daydream', 'Here in the basement', 'The strangest ways of love' and 'We talk in darkness'. Our next gig was at South Shore Methodist church in Blackpool (July 1984) and we were actually okay.
Dave and I worked together at the Pleasure Beach that summer at Jim Garrahy's Fudge Kitchen. I spent some of my earnings on an amp (with a spring reverb built in), a chorus pedal and a Soundmaster SR88 drum machine. The drum machine was quite important as it meant we were free of of the preset old-style drum rhythms. We wrote more songs ('Investigator', 'Inside you', 'She's a pyromaniac' and 'The Melt') and rehearsed lots. In January 1985, we got a gig at Scruples in Lytham. The Scruples gig was great. We played 10 songs and thanks to the new gear, the FX and more rehearsing, we sounded a lot tighter, darker and more modern. I even played guitar on 'The Melt'. However it was soon after this gig that Dave and I started to have different ideas on moving forward. Dave was more interested in instrumental music like Jarre etc whilst I was more into Numan, Ultravox and OMD. I also wanted to add guitar to more tracks but Dave was not so keen, so I considered working on some solo tracks whilst also staying in Prolog and going more in Dave's direction but we decided that wasn't going to work and Prolog was over. In hindsight, Dave's direction would perhaps have been the more sensible one as dance music and sampling would soon dominate the charts. 
Yes, we wore blue DIY decorating overalls at the Scruples gig in '85. We couldn't afford leather boiler suits.
Note the data cassette recorder.
We had to upload new info to Dave's keyboard (CT7000) in between songs.
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Listen to Prolog - live 1984
The tracks above were recorded at South Shore Methodist church, Blackpool in July 1984. The cassette is very worn but at least it plays. The track 'Hazel's Theme' was written by Dave for his mum.
No expense spared promo flyer.
Home recorded demo tape, 1984.
Dave in action at Scruples, January '85.
Prolog gear list
Yamaha CS01 synth Jen SX1000 (x 2 - one borrowed for live use) Casio CT7000 Casiotone MT40 keyboard Soundmaster SR88 Drum Machine Ross R88 chorus pedal Electric guitar (borrowed) Roland AP7 pedal (borrowed for 1985 gig) |
In 2020, Dave and I - now neighbours since 2014 - did tentatively discuss working on some new material and even created a rough demo of one track called 'Find a way'. I even based the lyric loosely around us having split up as a band and getting back together. Unfortunately, circumstances meant we would never get around to developing this and other ideas further.
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Dave became ill in late 2021 and three spells in hospital followed, meaning he spent much of 2022 away from home. However, we kept in constant contact via text, email and WhatsApp, and it was during this time that he asked me to create a website for his music. On one of my last visits to see Dave, we talked about setting up a room downstairs in his house as a more accessible studio for him. Sadly, Dave would never got the chance to work on more music. He passed away on 11th September 2022.
Dave went on to compose many fantastic pieces of music after his Prolog days and established a music production facility in his home, recording and producing many local artists. Please visit Dave's website, listen to his music and read his story. |
Prolog was my first introduction to being in a band and playing live music. Dave and I had a lot of laughs and we often talked about the 'Prolog' era in later years. I wish we had played lots more gigs, invested in better gear (instead of beer) and gone into a studio to record a proper demo...but it was all great experience and I'd love the chance to go back in time and do it all again.
