The Wasp Factory Story

The Beginning
The Wasp Factory began its life as the variously named band which consisted of Pete and Ed Donnell (guitars), Dave Hawkins (guitar), Chaz Hooper (bass), Roscoe Chubb and Olly Butterfield (drummers). This lumbering and uncoordinated beast split in two to create the Dog Soldiers (Dave, Chaz, Roscoe and new guitarist, Chris Gilliver), and Pete and Olly's band, Kerosene, which recruited bassist Mike Collins and keyboard player Séb John. Kerosene played as a four piece, but lacking a singer (Pete was handling the vocals…), they enlisted Ed as vocalist/rhythm guitarist. They played four songs, ‘Twisted Crown’, a joke Metal song, a punk song called ‘Flivel’, Iron Maiden's ‘Wasting Love’, and ‘Sweet Child O' Mine’ by Guns N' Roses. The band and their new singer were equally unimpressed with each other, so they parted ways. However, a lack of progress on both parts led to a reunion after a few months. They carried on playing ‘Wasting Love’, which was starting to sound quite reasonable, and ‘Twisted Crown’. The other two songs were given up on. They then learned three of Ed's compositions: one with no name, known sarcastically as The Happy Song, ‘Nightworld’ which was gifted with phenomenally bad lyrics and ‘Exit’ an uptempo, bluesy number which Mike's absence from most of the rehearsals meant that he had no encounter with. This continued until constant and pointless arguments between Pete and Ed led to Ed leaving once again. Mike was later fired due to his attendance problems. Finally Pete left, having had enough of the frustration caused by Olly and Séb's inability to organise practise sessions. With Pete gone, Ed decided to form a ‘new’ band with them.

The Early Days
As a new band, a new name was needed. It was found in the title of a disturbing book which Séb had read. And thus the Wasp Factory was born. They began by playing songs that we had been playing with Kerosene: the ‘Happy’ song, ‘Exit’ and a few covers. Then some more songs were added: Laid back rock in the form of ‘Waiting for You’, the heavy and tortured ‘Don't’. An old and frankly crap song was reborn, named ‘Holy War’. This combined terrible lyrics and odd music (the song ended with a flamenco section). A vow not to play covers at public performances was almost made. Therefore when the set list for the first live appearance was Exit, Waiting for You and The Happy Song (these were the only three which had been finished at this point). Pete was enlisted as temporary bassist. They opened with a short instrumental intro which was written a few days before the concert. It started off quiet, then burst into a heavy metal sequence unexpectedly. After initial problems with the mic. stand, the set was begun. Exit was OK, but the guitar amp distorted a lot on the clean channel, making it hard to distinguish between the chords- not good. Next was ‘Waiting for You’, which was quite good considering that the band had never played it before. Olly's drums were slightly off, due to the tempo change in the chorus which he wasn't familiar with yet. The biggest problem was that Séb's keyboard stopped coming out through the speakers. When they went on to play The Happy Song, things really went wrong: the band silences in the middle so that the keyboard could play a fill which leads onto the second verse, but as the keyboard failed to work, the band just stopped. The sound check was made useless by the fact that the band was forced to use different amps to the ones that they had sound checked with.

FrogStar
Disappointed with its live performance, the band began to write more heavy, dynamic material. First was ‘Don't’, then another unnamed piece which never got off the ground. The band then went for a long time without meeting up. A second live performance was lined up, but Ed was struck down by flu. The rest of the band performed as ‘FrogStar’ with Pete on vocals and guitar, Séb on bass and Olly on the drums. They played Ed's ‘Happy’ song and dedicated it to him, plus Nirvana's ‘Pennyroyal Tea’ and Radiohead's ‘Creep’. (Pete and Olly had played these two in Kerosene's predecessor). To Ed's dismay, FrogStar continued as a band, but are now called ‘Corroded’. However, the Wasp Factory continued. Realising that they were making little progress, the band decided some new material was in order. Therefore Ed began to lay down 4-track demos of his songs for the band to learn. Before this was finished, the band learned ‘Plastic’, a quiet but haunting tune, and ‘Last Letter Home’ an acoustic song, which Ed planned to have played at his funeral.