From then on, every weekend we would be playing the demos in the shop at ear splitting volume, looking like stars and wearing our own T-SHIRTS which we had sat up for hours stitching together in order to sell them in the shop to earn the money to play the next gigs. These featured pictures of transsexuals and all our other early influences, much like the early Pistols shirts but with the bands name in Japanese or Russian.
People were buying lots of the shirts from the shop now before anyone outside our clique knew we were a group, they just liked the designs. They were out there unaware that they were already promoting the band.
We actually printed each of the FUCK shirts ourselves, each one printed with a different colour to be unique. It was our art, every one special, individual. God the care and detail we put into everything. It was my fanaticism, everything had to be special, detailed exactly just so.
Before we had even played a gig and as fate would have it Billy Idol came in to the shop one day when none of the band are there and bought a T-shirt, just because he liked the look of it.
Sputnik was on Idol’s back before he knew it!
Meanwhile we continued to rehearse ceaselessly in the Mews, refining that Sputnik groove but at that time unable to recreate live the sound of the now super rocking demos.
Mick, on tour in America with The Clash rang one day to say that he'd seen a new type of guitar, a Roland guitar synthesizer that will trigger a synth module. He suggests that maybe we could use that to get the New Sputnik sound live that had been so illusive, it could generate a synthesized bass sound. Once again the timing was magical but the guitar is very expensive.
