User:Zenuk

ZEN (UK Rock Band 1992 - 2004)
Zen Website

Formed in 1992 in a sleepy English backwater due to a complete lack of anything else to do except work in the local docks and get your girlfriend pregnant, Zen grew from the ill named Furry Turds into a main stay of the local music circuit. The various members - various due to the flakey nature of the area, especially where 'guitarists' were concerned, drew crowds, took full coaches to gigs in London and helped ignite a - briefly - thriving local music scene. A new young band would emerge every other week and most knew and supported each other, with the exception of the much older bands, who generally kept themselves apart and excluded the younger groups (i.e. the long deceased 'Rock Nights', Railway etc etc etc). In 1996, mainman Christy announced that he wanted to go to London and the band uprooted and moved to.... God knows where in SE London, musically alot got recorded on old 4 track machines and the band gigged and rehearsed hard and several audiences with Warner Bros, East West and others proved that the boys were heading in the right direction, but at that moment the wheels fell off the wagon. The guitarist - hmm - got homesick and went off to have his ego massaged, the bassist became a liability and so changes had to be made. The semi-original line-up ceased and for a couple of years the band drifted through various changes whilst Christy found the right people to go forward, though during this time a residency in the South of France had made life just a little more tolerable ;-) From there on in, Zen became a touring band in France and the UK, alongside a studio band, the line-up rotating around Christy right up to 2004 when the last single was cut, Devil Take Me Down. By this time a totally new band had started to form, the Mandrakes, with good friends just jamming and actually enjoying rehearsals, supping beers, hanging out, everything that a real good band grows from. That really brought about the decision to shelve Zen for the time being. Check out The Mandrakes if you like this music and also ex-Zen mainman Christy now has a bunch of solo recordings, links available here.

Who knows, Zen may well pop their little heads above the parapet at some stage, watch this space and if you want to download the Zen catalogue, it will shortly be available at www.MileHighMusic.co.uk

Zen are dead... long live Zen!