Hall of Fame

Gama's place in the Rock 'and' Roll Hall of Fame should have been assured in 1977 with the release of the Sculduggery album. Although it is a classic of it's period, the years have treated it less kindly and today it is more of a curiosity than a standard. Whereas the vinyl generation have rushed to replace their Dark Sides of the Moonses and their Tubular Bellses with the CD versions, the Gama platter has stood alone and unloved, dragged out only during periods of bereavement or when someone has died.

It is noteworthy that no Gama song has ever made it on to Desert Island Discs with Sue Lawley, Roy Plomley or Leslie Crowther ("Come on Down!") and while Slade and Wizzard make a fortune every Christmas from the performance royalties on hits such as "Cum on feel the noize", Gama's splendidly festive "Cold Turkey" has faded from the playlists like icicles in a broken frigo.

A casual observer might be left to conclude that Gama are no more than a bunch of wannabe no-hope has-been losers - which would be very hurtful. Taken in the context of record sales, sell-out tours, merchandising and general popularity, it's true that Gama lose out to stars like Chicory Tip or even Mike Reid (TV's Frank Butcher from EastEnders) but the Gama Men were never interested in popularity or mass appeal and never measured success in terms of financial security (although it would have been nice). Instead, they set about creating a new sound, a style of music which would stretch the limits of the Rock genre and test the patience of the county set.

Dave Atha, Gama's highly-rated guitarist, remembers the excitement within the band when they began to understand the direction they were taking - "We spent some time in the country getting our thoughts together, trying out new ideas in a workshop type environment scenario thing and after a few days one of them, it might have been Phil Robertson, jumps up like he's been bitten by a rat . Turns out he has been bitten by a rat and his arm goes a funny colour. Anyway, the fuss dies down, we get to thinking and swapping a few ideas on arrangements, production techniques, who wants salami - suddenly this rat dashes out from behind one of the stacks and makes a leap for my throat! "Sticks" grabs a hammer from his tool kit and hurls it after the rat but he misses and it catches one of the Hitchens smack bang in the face. Well, this is where it started to turn nasty - both Hitchens start shrieking that we're a keyboard-based band - and they attack Steve Knight with what we all thought was a stick but was in fact a piece of wood with a nail in it - they always carried stuff like this about in their tool boxes. Knight goes down like a sack of potatoes and the Hitchens go in for the kill. At this point Dave Knight produces a descant recorder from his tool box and runs at them, wielding the woodwind. They try and back away but he's in there and before you can say Jack Robinson TM he catches one of them, Simon probably - he wasn't known for his sprinting, although he was a reasonable 60 Metres hurdler - on the back of the head - it's only then that we realise that the descant has also got a nail through it and the blood is really spurting out of the fracture - it was a blood bath, I can tell you! At this point the Sound and Lighting engineer Frasher Kaye comes in and says - believe this or believe it not! - "What's Going On?" Just like that! Had us in stitches...so when the fuss died down we decided we'd write the sort of stuff that no-one else had ever written..."

And did they think they succeeded?

"I remember some radio station playing half a song and saying it was derivative - we were well pleased and phoned everyone we knew but then somebody looked it up and found it what it meant.....and we were all a bit upset for a while..."

Remember the summer of discontent of 1976? - the preparations for the Silver Jubilee, the imposition of the hugely unpopular Tool Box Tax, the riots on the streets of Spofforth, Nana Mouskouri dancing naked on the Esther Rantzen show - it was against this social backdrop that a band of musicians were thrown together in the hope of creating something unique and thus were born Vasco da Gama - they may never make it into the Rock Circus tourist trap in Piccadilly Circus, they might never have headlined at Reading or Glastonbury and they might have been overlooked for the Band Aid Record .....but they tried and who's to say they failed? Actually, they did fail if you measure success by applying the generally accepted criteria of popularity but that is only a technicality. What if they set out to be very unpopular ? Then they would be deemed to have succeeded, wouldn't they? Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Vasco da Gama , the most unpopular band on the planet... deliberately and deservedly so!

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ŠThe Vasco da Gama Foundation - reprinted by kind permission. Not to be taken internally. If symptoms persist consult an alchemist