How I ended up in The Zippers - Rob's story

Mon, Jan 16 2012 | How I ended up in The Zippers, Yarns from yester-year, Rob Zipper
Well it all started many moons ago, approximately 19 years to be vaguely precise, when a friend/client of mine - Neil, who I was in a band with - played me a recording of someone playing blues guitar and asked me who I thought it might be.

I asked if it could be a Stevie Ray Vaughan bootleg, or indeed any well known, talented professional blues player. It wasn’t, so he enlightened me… ‘it’s my mate Tim Hacker’ (now Tim Zipper) he told me. Well, I was knocked out and, being a devious sort, started wondering how I could get to meet him.

I pondered for a couple of days, and then asked Neil if his chum would like to come along and have a listen to us in rehearsal, not thinking for a minute that he would be interested. However, much to my surprise Tim agreed and came along a week or so later.

Expecting some sort of arrogant ‘rock God’, I was pleasantly surprised when he sat on a dustbin in the corner of the room and listened intently, but flatly refused to show off his talents to us. The next day Neil received a fax (blimey that dates us!) from Tim with a critique of the band members, which basically stated that he thought that Rich the drummer and I were pretty good, Neil wasn’t bad, but that the other two guitarists were a waste of space (and yes, we did have three guitarists).

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I asked if he would come and have a blast with us, and he agreed. 
He came along to a secret rehearsal where he played the rhythm guitar in a blues track ‘Green Stuff’ perfectly – I (the bass player!) had been trying to show all three guitarists how to play this correctly for months! So Tim was invited to join, and we ditched the other two guitarists.

It all started quite well but it became apparent that, although we were very much a blues band, all Neil could play was Van Halen solos. He did that very well but they didn’t quite fit… so we ditched him too, and ‘The Wood B’s’ were born. We commenced gigging soon after.

Somehow, over time The Wood B’s transmogrified into a disparate (or was it desparate!?) band ofseven wildly unsuited talents that became known as ‘The Message’, still featuring myself and Tim – the gigs were chaotic but fun though, as described in previous blogs. This lasted for about five years, finally shrinking into a corking little three piece ‘Kick The Fridge 3’ – with myself, Tim and the extraordinarily talented Keith Testill (aka Curly McVicar) on drums and lead vocals. This period was particularly satisfying, both in terms of music and alcohol!

After a couple of years, Curly’s old chums ‘The Soul Survivors’ decided they really needed his services again, so off he went. I took a brief sabbatical in the real world, which was not really to my taste.
I was chewing the fat with Tim on the phone a year or so later, when he mentioned that he was trying to get a band going over in Leicester called ‘The Zippers’, but the bass player was neither very good, nor popular. Not being one to hang around… well, you can guess the rest, and so ‘The Zippers’ proper was formed – myself, Tim, Col and Charlie (on lead vocals).

Jon Zipper joined the band soon after (as has been brought to life by his blog), and Charlie left the band to focus on soul music, which was his real strength. I stepped up to the plate and took on lead singer duties, and The Zippers gigged for a few years as a four-piece in that line-up.
Early in 2010 though, things turned distinctly blonde as Dawn Zipper joined our ranks. Over to you Dawn to tell your story…
Rob Zipper
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