The Hamsters
| The Hamsters | |
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| Background information | |
| Origin | Southend on Sea, England |
| Genres | Blues rock, R&B, Americana, rockabilly |
| Years active | 1987–2012 |
| Website | www.thehamsters.co.uk |
| Members | Snail's-Pace Slim Rev Otis Elevator Ms Zsa Zsa Poltergeist |
The Hamsters were a British band from Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England.
They performed their first live show at the Cliffs Pavilion, Southend-on-Sea, on 1 April 1987, and their last at The Half Moon, Putney on 1 April 2012, exactly 25 years later. They initially played in local pubs with no ambitions to take themselves seriously or to turn professional. As the band ethos is to combine humour with music two members of the original band (now all three) use light-hearted and parodying pseudonyms as stage names. The original line-up was Snail's-Pace Slim on vocals and guitar, Rev Otis Elevator on drums and Andy Farrell on bass. Andy Billups, aka Ms Zsa Zsa Poltergeist, replaced Farrell on bass in 1988.
The band's name was based on a pseudonym used by the Sex Pistols.
Their first performances were in local pubs in and around Southend as a part of the area's well-known R&B scene which had begun in the 1960s; they initially formed for their own amusement and didn't take themselves too seriously. Their bookings quickly started to increase as an increasing number of local music fans requested venues to book them. Eventually it was decided to turn pro and slowly they started getting bookings from venues further afield. During 1988–1990 they released a limited run of four cassette releases of their music until they released their first CD in 1990, titled "Electric Hamsterland" as a parody of the Hendrix "Electric Ladyland" album. There was also a limited run of vinyl LPs of the album.
The Hamsters were called Britain's leading interpreters of the music of Jimi Hendrix and ZZ Top. and so were called a blues rock band, although they were not a tribute band "they take the music and push it a little further in the direction originally intended". These covers only made up a small part of their playlist, the majority being Americana.
As of March 2009, the Hamsters are in their 21st year and claim to have performed more than 4,000 shows. They have constantly toured throughout UK and occasionally mainland Europe. In 1991 they performed a small tour in the US. The group has been described as "the hardest working band in the UK". In 2000, the Hamsters were runners-up in the best blues rock band category, voted on by the readers of Blueprint. They contributed a track for the BBC Radio 2 series "Bright Lights, Big City" documenting the story of British Rhythm and Blues from the fifties to the modern day and presented by former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, and was broadcast in late 2001. They performed at the 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 London Guitar Shows at the Wembley entertainment complex.
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