The Crucified Brains

Huge sound, mega drumming, heavy bass. Hugely experimental, no compromise, a bit confused by many line-up changes. The Crucified Brains centered around Mark Deas and Chez Holmes, and were a brief, but memorable experience.  

In the beginning there was The Crucified Brains, well not the beginning really, but the beginning as far as I can remember it. Viewforth High School pupils, Mark Deas, Ian Cargill and Cameron Campbell has been playing in bedroom bands for a few years. They had all ended up at Kirkcaldy College of Technology in the Autumn of  1984, along with school friend from the year below, Stephen Simpson. The line up of Mark, Ian and Cameron continued rehearsing and it's from these days that the tape of Mr.'s Smith's Front Garden is taken, recorded at a rehersal in the St Clair Halls. I like to think that the early Barrett Pink Floyd's improvisations sometimes sounded like this. Mark's heavy drumming and Ian's meandering guitar solos sounded great, along with some electronic noise from Cameron's synthesiser. 

The Crucified Brains only really took off when a classmate of Cameron's, Chez Holmes, who had come down to Kirkcaldy from Crail to study, was brought into the band on bass. There then began serious rehearsing, talk of future gigs and endless discussions over what to call the band. From these endless debates, mostly held in the Ald Hoose pub, came "The Crucified Brains". Rehearsals continued at the St Clair Halls, with 30 min versions of the Velvet's "Sister Ray" being a particular fav.            

The first of the Brains's many line up changes took their toll in late 1984, with Chez throwing Cameron out of the band and Ian going with him. Cameron and Ian then went on to Cassette Tape Trees (not the most successful of bands) and then went their separate ways, with Ian becoming the guitarist of The Surgical Wars, Who Cares, then The Schoolhouse and Cameron forming All Days fade, then the The Amused. It's a shame that line up changes happened so early as the Brains never really had a great coherence after that. 

Mark and Chez continued for a bit and did their first gig in about December 1984. It was really just a glorified rehearsal, but I turned up and some of the guys from the Tech did also. I worked the slide projector that night and had great fun with the slide that was a photo of Chez's stripy shirt, and the one of a light bulb that made it look like a spotlight. All I can remember of the music was a lot of feedback and Chez banging a car bumper. I'm not sure if a tape was made, but I don't have a copy anyway.   

In early 1985 Rob Jackson joined on guitar. Rob was on the same college course as me and he was a brilliant guitarist. If only he had a similar taste in music as Mark and Chez this would have been a great line up. sadly, it wasn't to be. I remember Chez complaining to me that Rob wanted to do a U2 cover. What a waste, great guitarist with no taste in music!

However, this line up survived long enough for the legendary Bentley's gig in Feb 1985. My memory of what this gig was all about are a bit fuzzy, but I think it was a Tech organsied charity event, that a lot of local bands played (the Surgical Wars were to debut at next years event). Someone had got hold of a PA system that Simple Mind's had used and the sound on the night was phenomenal. Even better was the fact that we had loud alternative bands playing in Bentleys, the white stiletto brigade's home in Kirkcaldy. By this time the Brains had added Penny Porter, also from my class at college, on vocals. Robin Deas (Mark's brother) also joined on the night on drums. The Brains were phenomenal that night. They began with what ended up as their signature tune, "Wipe Out". Rob's guitar playing was as good as we expected and I can still picture Penny reading off the lyrics from pieces of paper. As Chez was playing his old bass he decided to have a bit of fun with it and threw it around the stage at the end. This caused a bit of confusion amongst the Bentleys Bouncers (a notorious lot) as they were not sure if this posed some sort of threat or not. The story of the tape of that night breaks my heart to this day. There was a tape deck running off the mixing desk and the quality of the recordings was excellent. However the guy on the mixing desk recorded the Brains, turned the tape over to record the next band, then turned it over again to record the next again band and wiped the Brains. In fact, the Gimmix ended up over the Brains. I sat with Chez at the flat in Factory Road when we went home and put the tape in, only to find that the Brains had become the Gimmix. I would be amazed if anyone else had a tape deck running that night, but it would be great to turn another recording up after all this time. 

The Brains then became a two piece again and struggled to find another guitarist. Rob went on to play in Blue Vega, which was only a little bit different from The Brains. They played as support to Andy Carr's band Sacristy in the summer of 1985 and came on at the end as a combined band with Sacristy and generally made a racket. I can't remember completely what the line up was.

Davie Brown, who was also a guitarist in the Ghost Train joined in Autumn 1985, and stayed with the band until the end. Mark Carr, brother of Andy Carr from Sacristy and school friend of mine (Mark in fact played in the very first live band I ever saw in December 1983, "Moonstone", wouldn't it be great to turn up a tape of them!) began playing drums in the band also.

It's this line up that played the Abbotshall gig supporting the Gimmix in September 1985, that the four MP3's are taken from. I thought the Brains were utterly brilliant on that night, but I think their "no compromise" experimentation confused a few people. Anyway, the combination of the two Mark's on drums and Chez's pounding bass was truly memorable (even if Chez and Davie seem to be playing two slightly different songs on "No Flowers for Lucy" at one stage). The gig, like the Sacristy gig, done as instrumental only.

The MP3's from December 1985 were taken from a gig at the Dysart Miners Welfare. The Brains were first on the bill in a set that was headlined by the Gimmix. By this time Mark Deas had left, as he was about to move to Edinburgh (a common phenomenon amongst Kirkcaldy bands) and Mark Carr was sole drummer. Penny had also re-joined the band as singer, I can't remember if she read her words from pieces of paper this time. This was the last Crucified Brains gig. But they lasted long enough to be legendary. Well, according to us anyway (see Surgical Wars Interview on page 1 of the Image Archive).