Monday 18 April 2011

The Majority



The Majority is the band that has brought me the greatest music enjoyment, because it's the band I was / am in. The original line up was Lewis Porter (vocals), Adam Hodgson (drums), Tim Darvell (guitar), Rich Contrereas (bass) and Patrick Moritz (keyboards). Stu Phillips became the 2nd keyboard player when Pat decided to leave the band. Over the course of two years from 1985 - 1987 the band played a number of gigs with the annual gig at The Five Horseshoes at Remenham near Henley quite legendary.


The name of the band came from one our of biggest influences The Alarm. "Majority" was one of our favourite songs by The Alarm. Our sound was heavily influenced by The Alarm and U2 and although we wrote many tunes we enjoyed playing a few covers too.

Majority

Although the live period of the band was short lived, the band has continued to record occasionally over the years and many of the songs from back in the day have since been recorded along with new songs written in the years since.

Out For The Count

What the band meant for me was how I discovered a love for writing songs which I still have to this day. I enjoyed the rehearsals at Ad's folk's house probably more than playing on stage as we spent hours fine tuning the songs, laughing at ourselves endlessly and always ended up with a post rehearsal beer at The Royal Oak in Knowl Hill. They were wonderful times.

The friendships that grew within the band have remained close to this day, with myself, Lewis and Ad remaining the very best of friends with godfathering and best man duties playing their parts along the way.

The band alas never achieved the success or recognition I always thought we deserved, but when I look back we lacked ambition, direction and possibly leadership; Ad in particular got frustrated with that and the live era of the band ended when Ad went in search of a band with a more serious outlook and approach, and quite right he was too as the rest of us spent more time in local drinking establishments rather than looking to see how far the band could go. Eventually I got my creative juices flowing again and I threw myself into songwriting, and it was myself and Ad who have continued The Majority in more recent times by recording the songs of the day along with new ones, plus some unusual cover versions...

But the songs have not been lost. There is material to listen to on our Myspace page at www.myspace.com/themaj and those fortunate or unfortunate enough to have seen the band will never forget such classics as "Majority", "Out For The Count", "The Inquest", "Poseurs Paradise", "Out of Order", "Aggggh Me Head" and "The Xmas Medley"

Is there ever to be a Majority reunion? Will the 2nd album ever get finished? These questions are as yet to be answered...




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