placed an 'ad' in the local Weekend Newspaper. I received a few phone calls for the positions, and worked out some times for the hopefuls to come around and audition. This didn't go so bad. A few of the people were a bit old for what I was looking for (as I was only 22 at the time, some of them were in their 40's.) I did have some success though. I found my first Bass Player Scott Miscall and my first Drummer Paul Buttimore, all we needed now was a guitarist (did I mention that I was the singer?). Looking for a guitarist was a bit of a mission. After a bit of trial and error (and 3 guitarists later) we found him, Adam Kopu.

e now had to work out a name for the band. After a lot of suggestions (mostly stupid or in-appropriate) we decided on the name "Untitled State" this being made up of the suggested names "Untitled" and "State", of which we were split 50/50 on. So this turned out to be not a bad compromise. People liked it, so we were happy.

owever, it seemed it was not to be for Scott and Paul, who both after only a couple of weeks decided they were too lazy to play in a band.
This wasn't a bad thing though, as both had friends that played the same instruments.

nter new Bass Player Billy Dickson, and new Drummer Greg Woods.

e rehearsed 3 nights a week out at an old "Gun Club" on the top of a hill over-looking the Tasman Sea. After a couple of months we had quite a reasonable repertoire of 18 cover songs.

e got our first "GIG" at the "GlassHouse" in New Plymouth. This was a Christmas eve-eve gig on December 23rd 1993. We performed our 18 covers for 1 dozen beers. The crowd did seem to like us though. After this successful night we managed to talk someone into letting us play for 1 hour before the main band on New Years eve at the "Duke of Devon" (this time for 2 dozen beers.) It was also another successful night.

e talked our way into playing a couple more nights before the band went on at the "Duke of Devon". We were loving it. It all seemed pretty good to us, as none of us had any previous band experience. All we needed now was to be properly paid for our gigs (of course, we did need to increase our repertoire to more than just 18 songs.)

n January '94 we decided that we would try our hand at recording some of the songs. We set a date of February 6th to record them at the "Gun Club".

hen the day came we had not been able to afford hiring a 4-track recorder, so we borrowed a 6-channel amplifier from a friend and rigged up Greg's Denon Tape Deck to record our sounds. It didn't turn out to be too bad a setup. However, we only managed to record 6 songs all day (because of playing around with the mix for a couple of hours before we even started recording.)

fter learning some more songs, thus getting the list up to around 35 covers, we got our first paying gig at the "Normanby Hotel" (Normanby is 72km south of New Plymouth.) This was a tough gig, as we had to play for 4 hours (and as any musician can tell you, you need at least 45-50 songs to fill this time), so we ended up throwing some of the songs from the first 2 sets into the 4th set to end the night. Nobody seemed to notice. We decided that we should learn at least 5-6 more songs so it was not too obvious. So for the next week we crammed on some songs we had chosen, then went on to play many more gigs. We played at least twice a week for the first year - until the live scene started to dwindle down due to the fact of many establishments acquiring "Resident Bands", successfully cutting down the amount of places a band could play (and there wasn't that many places to start with.)

round the end of this first year Greg, Billy and I decided to replace Adam as guitarist as he was constantly not turning up to band practices.

t was May 1995 when we auditioned a young guitarist by the name of Justin Duckett (he was all of 16 years old - but a brilliant guitarist.) He brought along to the audition his friend, and vocalist slash keyboardist, Scott Lister (who also happened to bring along his keyboard.)

e all jammed together, after a while the 3 of us decided we would offer both Justin and Scott positions in the band. Scott could also introduce some more songs that he could sing, so I could play some rhythm guitar (as I had never played an instrument in the band before.) We also decided to change the band name to "Outbreak".

ot before too long we had dumped about half of our repertoire and replaced it with new stuff we had learned while practicing at our new venue, a warehouse in Bell Block (just 5km north of New Plymouth.)

ur first gig was at a soccer function in Inglewood (21km south of NP) on June 28th 1995. This was a very successful night, and it seemed our new songs were very popular (even though they were made up of a 'strange brew' of alternative and pop-disco influenced songs.)

nyway, not to go into this too much (you've probably tired of reading this by now anyway) the next few months were not too brilliant, as we were only managing to play maybe 1 gig a month due to the lack of venues now taking live bands. Even so, our song list had grown to around 100 songs by now. We tried not to give up too easily, and decided to write some of our own material, so to make it interesting for us to play and to stick together.

e did manage to write 7 songs and practice them at the warehouse. So now we decided we would record them.

t was March 11th, 12th and the night of the 13th in 1996 that we set to record at a new studio in town called "Avalanche Audio". We would be their first band to record, so it was a bit experimental for all of us involved. The songs were recorded and we had a rough mix of each within the 2^1/2 days, so we were happy (some of the songs we had only introduced to the band the previous week before.)

owever, in August 1996 we had decided to replace Billy on the Bass with Johnny Brooking now on the Bass, and (yet another addition) Dan Paniora on 2nd guitar, so that we could try a different sound and replace some of our older songs.

his did not seem to get off the ground. We did rehearse a few times together. However, Justin (our 1st guitarist) decided it was about time he left to take on the responsibilities of becoming a father. After this we all decided it was no use carrying on together, as we had all tired of trying to find places to play (plus the fact that we would have to re-learn almost all of our songs with Johnny and Dan. So on September 28th 1996 we played our last gig together at Scott's 21st party.

fter we split up Greg, Scott and I decided we would write some more songs and go back into the studio to record them. We would then see if it was worth getting a band back together to carry on. This did not come to fruition, as Greg was offered a job playing the drums in a current band "On Yer Bike". Scott also took on the role as 'Sound Man' come vocalist for a resident band "Wishing Well" at the "Crown & Rose" (formally the 'Duke of Devon'.)

e did manage to get back into the studio on November 26th and 27th to record 4 more songs (2 that I had written, and 2 that Scott had written.) We recorded 2 of these songs, as well as re-recording 2 of the old ones, with Dan and Luke Gordon from the band "Wishing Well". Johnny also joined in on one of Scott's new tracks.

his was our last work together as a band.

fter this I decided to do a remix of one of my new tracks, so I went back into the studio 3 or 4 more times. I then made some copies of our 11 songs at home, along with me making up some album covers on my PC at the bank, and took them into a few of the local music stores to sell. That was that.

now live, with my wife Mandy and our son Brayden, on the Gold Coast in Australia, just north of Surfers Paradise. I am still looking to get into a band here. I have decided that I will write some more songs, and record them as soon as I can afford to buy some musical equipment.

will keep you posted.

Tony.  :-)