One Louder…

To this day, I still can’t remember exactly why we are called Geko. I remember sitting with the band in the India Arms in Southsea and us deciding we weren’t going to leave until we had a name. Unfortunately, thats about as much info as I can give you because boozy discussions in Portsmouth tend to be forgotten pretty quickly. I do remember dropping the “C” from Gecko because “All the best bands have 4 letters”.

Hannah and I had known eachother for a few years before we strated Geko, and had done a couple of open mic nights at The Railway in Winchester. To be honest with you, although I think there is a time and place for accoustic music, it just doesn’t grab me like a proper rock band does, so we decided to form a band. Our original lead guitarist Gareth finished uni and had to quit, and we went through a couple of pretty naff basists before we struck gold by advertising on the King Alfreds intranet.

From our first practice with Gregg and Ben, I could tell it was going to work. If you have ever started a band, you’ll know that the first practice is horrible. Everybody wants to show off their own instruments by playing loudest, there isn’t a song that everyone knows to play and you end up playing some really naff 12 bar skiffles. That didn’t happen though. From our first ever practice, we were writing songs. I think Junkie and The Contest were both written in the first 2 practices.

Just before Xmas 2005, Ben left the band. It was a tricky time, because he was and still is our friend. But having graduated and moved back to London, the trip was just too much to make practices. Luckily, we found a replacement immediately in Rob, who had filled in for us on the drums in a previous gig. Since then, we have gone from a gig a month to a gig a week and it’s going really well. You get to a stage, and for us it happened in about Feb 2006, where there are no more nerves when you play live and you genuinely enjoy it for the sake of playing and seeing the audience react to your songs, rather just the raw adrenaline of the early days.

We’ve recorded a full albums worth of material now, and it’s in the process of being mastered before the grand launch! You can download the MP3’s from our website which I’m going to be updating with the latest recordings and mastered versions as they come in. Check out the solo on the version of Play You which should be up very soon! I don’t really see us as an album band though, as I think our live sound is what makes us. If you haven’t seen us live, check out our website, but I’ll also probably include links on here as well.