You’re going to uni, or you’re at uni and you play an instrument – Why not join a band?
I did.
In my first year, I got asked if I wanted to jam sometime with some mates and perhaps be in a band. I jumped for the opportunity, as we all had our instruments at uni, but were merely collecting dust.
We met up and jammed for a bit and agreed we worked well together. Voila, my first ever band was born. Jared (left) played the guitar and did vocals, Sam (right) played the melodica and various synthesizers and I played percussion.
Perfect! Now we needed to think of a band name. Some ideas came to mind, some rubbish from my part like ‘Tech-yes’ instead ‘Techno’. Oh dear…
We gave up and just had a rest from improvising and brainstorming. Sam had some bananas on his windowsill and offered them to everyone. We thought it was quite funny, everyone having a banana on the short break we had, then Dan (Our friend, and Sam’s flatmate) had a light bulb moment.
Breaktime Banana!
We all thought it was genius, rather catchy and quite ‘out there’ (like our music).
Wasting no time, we had a photo shoot soon after being branded ‘Breaktime Banana’… For our future multi-platinum album cover of course!
Remarkably, we had our first ever gig three days after forming. It felt great having some friends coming over and supporting us and we enjoyed listening to other local bands perform.
We kept on doing open mic nights, I recall one day we did about two or three and we visited a number of interesting venues.
We met a variety of inspiring people whether it was giving us advice, criticism or even some business cards.
Talking about inspiring people, a guy from BBC Introducing approached us saying he recommends us record some tracks and send them to him to be played on air across Hereford and Worcester.
Everything escalated so quickly!
When I was working at a summer camp in America, we got asked if we would like to play two gigs at the Worcester Music Festival.
I couldn’t be prouder seeing our name on our first poster.
It was such an exciting year and we had a great journey together, but it’s quite a big commitment and we need to focus on our studies as these are important years.
I definitely encourage you to do it!
Worcester Student Life 