Over a period of approximately one year, Tap Thru’ played in the pubs and clubs in and around the Swansea area with our own brand of light show featuring LASERs, strobes, smoke machines and even pyrotechnics. If the music didn’t wake people up, the fireworks certainly did!
We had our own roadie, Spoon (aka Mark Daniels), who provided the transport in a vivid purple transit van and who operated the lights and pyrotechnics. Spoon was like the sixth member of the band.
The band name and logo were the brainchild of Chris Williams (Mex), our guitarist. Unfortunately, they have rather crude origins, which would be inappropriate to go into in detail here. If you can work it out for yourself, then you truly are a sad and depraved puppy and should seek professional help immediately.
Band Members
- Richard Farrar – Bass Guitar [Right]
- Steve Mackrill – Drums [Left]
- Richard Rees (Dickie) – Keyboards, Guitar & Backing Vocals [Second Right]
- Gerald Waters – Vocals [Front]
- Chris Williams (Mex) – Guitar & Backing Vocals [Second Left]
Set List
The following are the songs that we regularly played at our gigs:
- Sold Me Down The River – The Alarm
- Rosalie – Thin Lizzy
- Sledgehammer – Peter Gabriel
- Riders On The Storm – The Doors
- Alive And Kicking – Simple Minds
- Nothing Compares To You – Sinead O’Connor
- Helta Skeltor – The Beatles
- Purple Rain – Prince
- Smoke On The Water – Deep Purple
- Biko – Peter Gabriel
- Where The Streets Have No Name – U2
- Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd
- Little Devil – The Cult
- Working Class Hero – John Lennon
- Underneath Your Pillow – It Bites
Listen to Us
Recording bands has been a hobby of mine for quite a while. So, we took the opportunity of preserving some of our performances for posterity in my home studio (back bedroom) and recorded a few tracks from our set list. All tracks are in MP3 format and are recorded in stereo at 128 kbps:
Where The Streets Have No Name – 5’ 43” – 5.3 MB:
[powerpress url=”https://www.richardfarrar.com/audio/streets.mp3″]
Lil’ Devil – 2’ 46” – 2.6 MB:
[powerpress url=”https://www.richardfarrar.com/audio/devil.mp3″]
Comfortably Numb – 5’ 57” – 5.5 MB:
[powerpress url=”https://www.richardfarrar.com/audio/numb.mp3″]
Rosalie – 4’ 00” – 3.7 MB:
[powerpress url=”https://www.richardfarrar.com/audio/rosalie.mp3″]
Gigs
According to my records, we did a total of 20 gigs, although we apparently did a few others that I hadn’t made a note of for some reason:
- 18-01-93 – The Cardiff Arms
- 22-01-93 – The Coach House
- 31-01-93 – The Coach House
- 16-04-93 – The Coach House
- 17-04-93 – The Coach House
- 15-05-93 – The Singleton
- 29-05-93 – Birchgrove
- 05-06-93 – Blyngwynvie
- 11-06-93 – The Singleton
- 12-06-93 – Birchgrove
- 18-06-93 – Birchgrove
- 10-07-93 – Birchgrove
- 17-07-93 – Wedding; Steve’s Sister
- 30-07-93 – The Singleton
- 31-07-93 – Taibach
- 13-08-93 – The Singleton
- 24-09-93 – The Singleton
- 25-09-93 – The Kingsbridge
- 02-10-93 – The Railway Inn
- 30-01-94 – Cwmgorse
Additional Gigs
The following are a few additional gigs that we did trawled from our clouded collective memory, that, for some reason, weren’t made note of in the above list:
- The Royal Oak, Pembroke
- Port Talbot Naval Club, Port Talbot
- The Dark Arch, Neath
