In the beginning...
NOSTANDARDS first came about on half priced cocktail night in Oldham Chicago Rock in March 2002, so you couldn't call this a history just yet, at least not for now. Still we thought we'd open up this web page to let people know what we're all about, hear for themselves, see for themselves and then decide whether we're worth your time.
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WHO THE F**K?
Myself (Melon) and our original drummer Ant Hunter had been talking for ages about starting a new band, though failing college and my suffering from a complete lack of motivation held things up for months. He told me about a friend of his, Mike, who he'd been in bands wth before and he could really play the guitar. From the off I liked the sound of him, Green Day was one of his favourite bands and that put him up there, plus he had his lip pierced which made him unspeakably cool. I didn't get to speak to him for a couple of months after that, though I had the guy in mind to 'complete' the band. A friend of mine from college Chaz Ward who I'd never heard play before was the first and last person I asked to join. He was so fucking funny and his taste in music, obscure at times, stretched far beyond anyone else our age that I knew. This could not be a bad thing. Chaz came with me to meet the other two that night at Chicago's. The fact that I was over an hour and a half late and nobody semed to mind spoke volumes about the unspoken agreement we still have in this band and also the ways in which the band works so well. We have to make room for everyone's character at the same time, and it shows. The factthat we're all completely different people just adds something else. Aswell as never having a dull moment, it helped the music go exactly where we wanted it to.
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How the F**ck?
The 'sound' of No Standards wasn't officialy made for yet more wasted months. An apparant 'breakdown in communication' meant that me, Chaz and Mike didn't hear from Ant for months for reasons that I suppose are still unclear. We'd still been practising every week and we'd already penned some of the tunes we now play at gigs. To cut a long story short, we needed a new drummer pretty badly. A freak meeting on a fags and booze run to the local supermarket from our practice space - a disused mill in Oldham - is where we bumped into out disturbingly talented drummer Danny Walters who went to Mike's school and got talking about the band at a local gig. When he first showed us what he could do, I myself got giddy, whilst Chaz and Mike both had looks of people who had been officially blown away. Right there and then we asked him to be our new drummer and within an hour he had created his own contributions to our songs 'Who's A Rock Star', 'I Want To Fuck My Best Friend' and 'Thank God For Possibilities'. With 'Uncle Phil' (after the Fresh Prince's portly guardian) as our new moniker, we gradually reclused into our dungeon to have a go at our own punk/rock band. One of the only bands of our style in Oldham, a town where having spikey hair is considered some sort of disability by many of our upstanding young individuals. Fuck it, as Franky Sinatra says - do it your way.
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