We opened for business in 1979, and the first session was with a Northampton band called Bauhaus who later went on to greater things. They slept the night on the studio floor, and the next morning ate a vegetarian breakfast of nuts out of tupperware containers before recording two songs. The multitrack machine was a 1" Cadey 8 track tape recorder - a valve machine which used bicycle spokes as part of the mechanical linkage!

Other events from 1979...

Jim Callaghan was the last labour prime minister until Margaret Thatcher won the general election after a "Winter of Discontent" and put the Tories into bat for the next 18 years.

John Lennon was living in New York with Yoko, bringing up their son, four year old Sean.

Led Zeppelin played their last ever British gigs to capacity crowds at Knebworth.The resulting car gridlock after the first show was so great that, people fell asleep at the wheels of their cars in the car park, unable to move until the next morning.

John Paul Jones was using one of the most expensive keyboards in the world - the £25,000 Yamaha "Dream Machine" (costing more than the average house in 1979) which provided the strings and brass on Zeppelins "In through the out door" album - Vinyl and cassette only, of course, as CDs would not appear for another four years.

Jimmy Carter was nearing the end of his U.S. presidency, to be succeeded by Ronald Reagan.

Trevor Francis became Britains first million pound footballer, and Brian Cloughs' Nottingham Forest won the European cup against Swedens' Malmo by 1-0.

The Yorkshire Ripper was still at large, and the Shah of Iran was forced into exile, ending 2,000 years of "The Peacock Throne" - Ayatollah Khomeini was about to become much better known to us all.......

A major radiation leak caused panic at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, and Ugandan dictator Idi Amin fled his country.

We said goodbye to Sid Vicious, actor Marion Morrison (better known as John Wayne) and Lord Mountbatten, who was blown up by the IRA.

Alternative comedy and a new phrase - "political correctness" was just around the corner......

George Harrison mortgaged his home to raise the money to film "The Life of Brian" after everyone else had turned it down. He appeared in it briefly as "3rd Roman soldier", and the film profits enabled his company "Handmade Films" to later produce "Time Bandits, The Long Good Friday", and others.

VHS video recorders had just become available - This meant that for the first time ever, you could record such top rated TV shows as "The two Ronnies, The Muppets, Sale of the Century, Charlies' Angels, Celebrity Squares and Tiswas"

One of the first bands to make use of this new technology was Blondie, who issued their "Eat to the Beat" album as a video album as well as on vinyl.

Top selling singles included "Bright eyes" (six weeks at no. 1) "YMCA, Heart of glass, I don't like Mondays, Message in a bottle" and at no. 1 in the album charts who could forget "Oceans of Fantasy" by Boney M? Phew.........

A singer listening back to his voice asking us to make him sound "more green"...

The telephone enquiry from someone checking the studio equipment list and asking if we had a "falanger"....

The A and R man listening back to a final mix and declaring that what it needed was "more midi"....

And a certain female ex member of a chart topping 80's boy / girl combo who asked if we had a "fetherlite" (She probably meant a fairlight"....)