a story about how gibbs came to be in trip

the four original people in trip, tim, phil, wilkes and wheat, had been making music together
for a long time. they played their first gig at wallingford baptist youth club in 1996 or maybe
before. back then they were called avocado underground, stoo was the vocalist, and
wilkes only knew two chords. gibbs was in a band called myth, with mike, dan, robin and
putman. they played their first gig at the baptist youth club too. some people in myth felt a
rivalry with trip that was never really there, gibbs and robin wouldn’t get involved. it carried
on like this for a long time, tony, who ran the youth club, would get both bands gigs, and
gradually they both got better and better. they organised gigs at their school, and myth and
trip would both play. lots of different people joined trip here and there, but they realised
that they sounded best when phil was singing. they started writing some new songs which
were a bit different to the ones they had written before, like paranoid, and the indian
instrumental.
it was around the time of the greenbelt festival in 1998 when gibbs first started jamming
with the band. at the festival he was camping with the other people in myth, but he grew
bored of them making fun of him, so he took his guitar and went to where trip were
camping and joined in playing their music. sometimes gibbs would go to tim’s field and jam
with trip, but he was still in myth really. it became obvious that myth wasn’t going
anywhere as a band, everybody was headed in different musical directions. putman didn’t
really like the songs they played and would get annoyed at mike’s singing, robin prefered to
dj drum’n’bass records, and secretly gibbs prefered playing trip songs. so in january 1999
myth played their last ever gig supporting fono at the wallingford baptist church. it wasn’t
long before gibbs was jamming with trip again, he would go and join phil and wilkes in phil’s
bedroom and they would teach gibbs their songs, and they would make up songs which
only used one chord, like the e major jam, which is still on tape somewhere. trip must have
liked the way their music sounded when gibbs was joining in because they asked him to be
in the band. they practiced in phil’s garage and they just sounded better and better with
every practice, they even played a few songs that gibbs had written. at the end of the
school year trip played their first gig with the new line up, at wallingford school. they
amazed their friends with their sound and confused the hell out of a few people too. that
summer trip spent a week recording their music at gibbs’ house which is called kilifi. they
made a tape and called it parrain affinis. gibbs sent a recording of some of the songs from
the school gig to some gig venues in oxford, and in september they were offered a gig at
the elm tree. a short while later they played at the point but it was after wilkes had started
university so he couldn’t be there. gibbs went to start university only a few days later.
in the christmas holidays trip quickly got practicing again and were offered more gigs at the
elm tree and the point in oxford. but when gibbs went to pick up tim before the first gig, he
found tim too ill to play, in a state of dispair he drove on to oxford. they weren’t sure what
they were going to do, but at the last minute olly, the drum tech of the bursides, the band
they were supporting, stepped in and played drums for the gig. by the time the point gig
came, tim was well enough again and they played an amazing set, they were also
pleasantly surprised to find themselves second on the bill, as they were always last before.
but then they had to go their separate ways again, gibbs had to go back to university the
very next day.
while he was at university that term, gibbs set up this website so that he could keep the
sprit of trip going even though they couldn’t be making music together. phil recorded a
whole tape all by himself and that is called 24/7 twice. in the easter holidays they were
able to play together again, and none of them could believe how easily they could pick up
from where they had left off. now phil has gone to be a travelling minstrel in n z for a while
and gibbs and wilkes are back at university. but they know that nothing that sounds this
good can be kept quiet for very long...