Poor bands buy bad pedals, make them sound good, get lots of money and then buy good pedals. But what if your whole ethos is about bad pedals? Where are you left to go? What do you spend the money on? Harbingers of Zoom found that conflicts of interests can pull you and your friends apart at the seams and leave nothing but slivers of tacking thread on the floor.
Young Michaela Chickenfeed (b.1979, Marton Cum Grafton) worked through the Summer holidays at Goosey's Greengrocers to buy parts for burgeoning interest in the electrified guitar. She had to endure the "Come have a goosey at Goosey's" jingle every 15 minutes for 198 hours but she eventually had enough money to buy a cheap guitar and amp. Enjoying the sounds she could create (including Am and Em7add11) she wondered if there was anything more she can do to the sounds after she made them but before they came out of the amp. She turned the sound up and down using the controls. Trying to play the guitar loud with the amp turned down was fun, as was finger-tapping. But there must be more, she thought.
Back in Goosey's for the Christmas holiday, Michaela had made a decision to purchase the cheapest multi-effect she could find. Her thoughts and dreams turned the to bizarre words she could find on the box: compression, distortion, phaser, volume, autowah. Her grandma gave her an extra £20 for Christmas and by the 27th of December she had a Zoom 505 in her hands. The next week she bought a second line to line cable. The week after that she purchased a 9v battery and/or a DC power adapter. Plugging in her guitar, she instinctively tuned it to C4- Choir Wave. The lapping chorus and flange sent her to a place Billy never could. Two weeks later, Billy had been replaced by Bobby and Bobby could play the bass. Bobby's friend Noddy could play the drums. Noddy's friend Roddy had access to a practise space and his mum didn't ask what that smell was. In a matter of weeks, Michaela had gone from a Goosey's pear-stacker to the figurehead of a striding new force for musical liberation in the greater York area.
Utilising all the creating talent in a 4 mile radius, the band baptised themselves Harbingers of Zoom in a manner not even Jesus Christ thought proper. The regular gig would revolve around the rhythm section knocking out some phat chops whilst Michaela used her inbuilt tuner to check her strings, pressed both pedals to stop the mute and played some open chords whilst switching between b4- Steel China and E2- JAZZY. By their eighth gig they had sculpted the bedrock of their first album, lovingly titled "Zoom Music Girl."
The following biding war was not quite a frenzy; although there was at least 2 contracts on the table at any one time, the A&R people found that they worked for the same company and the one offering the higher amount was suddenly recalled to London and never seen again. Michaela, flush with success celebrated by turning her amp to full and using patch E3- Octave Fuzz until she burst into a little jig.
Looking towards the second album, the band seriously considered buying a 505ii but decided that this would mess with their sound too much. plus there wasn't much difference and they would still have the same number of sounds. Michaela, becoming increasingly erratic would not let anyone else touch her pedal. Convinced that they were going to take it away form her in the night and play with the electronics inside, she would cradle it in bed and not let anyone else spend the night.
The second album, "Christmas at the Zoom" was a holiday-themed spectacle utilising -amongst other patches- C2- Bright Chorus and A2- Clean Delay. Their fans bought the album and put it away until Christmas. Four people resigned from the record company after they released the album in July.
By this time the 707 had been released. Bands up and down the Vale of York were popping into Woolworths and making themselves sound almost as good as the Harbingers. Their success was running away with itself and Michaela -both at the centre of the storm and unaware of what was going on around her- neither knew nor cared that new, fresh bands were using the latest technological accomplishments (including ring modulator-type sounds and a greater number of distortion patches) and making superior music.
Beginning to fall apart, the band booked studio time in order to work on new material. The accounts of these sessions are varied and suffer from what the French somewhat racistly call Le téléphone arabe. Some stories centre on Michaela and Noddy's failing relationship, some on the inability of the rhythm section to tune according to the increasingly computer-senile diktats of Michaela's pedal. Almost all accounts include one incident that included a dog, Roddy's mother and the police being called and then sent away. The resulting "Zoom oh very Zoom, we are going to see the king" although an undisputed classic of the genre, could not save the group. They broke up 3 weeks before the Queen invited them to play at the Royal Variety Performance.
The rest of the band started careers unconnected with junior-electronics but quickly found themselves asked to perform tongue-in-cheeck versions of the Hey Hey It's Saturday theme for weddings, school discos and bar mitzvahs. Over time, people even forgot exactly why these guys did the cover version and were just known as the "Hey, Hey, guys."
Michaela took to buying large quantities of 505s and connecting them in ever-more intricate ways. Although she never planned to release this music she was convinced to do so by Billy, whom she decided to rekindle and kindle she did. The early experimentation she completed led to pitch bending and circuit breaking now being seen as slightly odd ways for a youngster to spend their Saturday afternoons.
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