The ZANZIBAND formed in Byron Bay in 1982. Billy Milroy on bass and myself on guitar used to set up on the back of a flatbed ute and play every Saturday night for Merv Watriama’s weekly parties held at Dan Doeppel’s old Piggery - which would later become the famous Arts Factory. Merv would light up the “barbie”, and there would be great food and drinks and a real party atmosphere.

Usually about 50 - sometimes up to 80 people - would show up every weekend. The party area was called Zanzibar. There were old car seats and logs to sit on, with strings of coloured electric lights hung between several caravans. Merv served up prawns and calamari, cooked on hot irons over the fire. We got the name Zanzibar from Dusan Makavejev’s 1981 cult movie Montenegro or Pigs and Pearls. The movie was about Yugoslav immigrant workers going troppo and partying hard in an old factory in Sweden that reminded us of the old Piggery in the Bay! So, we decided that our group would have to be called the ZANZIBAND!

I met Pete McKaskill at the Railway Pub one night when for some unknown reason I found myself playing a solo gig. I was repeating the half-dozen songs I knew, over and over again. People were too drunk to notice me until Pete somehow appeared! He then grabbed the microphone and started singing the blues, and sounded great! I told him I was living and working at the Piggery and that there was a community of artists and craftsmen over there, plus a bit of music happening on the weekends.

A couple of weeks later I was standing outside my leather workshop in the Piggery, and as I looked out over the swamp and through the bush towards the other side of Skinner's Shoot Road, I noticed Pete in an old abandoned pump house! He’d set up camp and was living right there in the swamp. I called out to him and he answered back with a croak ! From that day onwards he was nicknamed “Bullfrog” ! The Zanziband now had a singer !

So Billy, Pete and myself, plus other guest musos, Bob Sender on fiddle and Wayne McGuire on guitar, to name a few……. kept playing on the weekends at the Zanzibar. There was a spare room in the Piggery that a band called ALEPH used to practice in. We scored this for our practice room thanks to Dan[1].

The band also got Neil Carney to play lead guitar. Then we got a drum machine we called Mr. Woo! Tom Mooney came over to Merv's party one night, and saw heaps of people partying - plus the Zanziband banging away in the corner. He must have thought we were the reason there were so many people there. Little did he know they were there for Merv's cooking !! Anyway, Tom gave us our first real gig at the Rails, and our “career” was started !

Tom Cuyler later replaced Neil on lead guitar. Tom came over to Australia from Canada in the 70’s to play ice hockey . He also played his Les Paul Gibson sweeter than maple syrup! All we needed now was a drummer, and we jammed with about a half a dozen until we found Tom Jaeger. Tom was a professional drummer from Germany. We found him to be the very first one who really clicked with us. He was also able to arrange songs and sing harmony.

We made up our about 15 to 20 of our own songs and also played some covers.

We basically had a great time, and tried to get everyone up for a dance! Because one of us always seemed to travelling somewhere around Australia or away overseas, quite a few other local musos played with the Zanziband at one time or another. Jim Stephens played guitar, keyboard and did lead vocals for a while. Martin Mueller played bass. Terry Ronan and Phil Gordon both played drums. There was always someone like Rusty Miller or Ric Light jumping in and playing harmonica.

We stayed together until 1987 . During this time we mainly played the Rails in Byron. We did a few gigs up as far as Murwillumbah and down to Yamba. We also got to play a couple of times at the RSL Club in Byron….three New Year’s Eve gigs at the Rails and one NYE at the Golf Club. We also supported Bo Diddley at The Piggery.

I made a few tapes of us playing outdoors under a tarp at the Bangalow Market in the early 80's. I ran a fifty foot electric lead out to a lawn chair set up in front of the band. I set up a portable radio cassette player/recorder and taped the band.

It’s lucky that I saved these “high-tech” recordings because I recently played a few original Zanziband songs that I’d saved from these live recordings to Tom Misner, of SAE College. He thought it would be fun to see if we could still play our old songs after 20 years, and maybe flash back to earlier days of the Bay. It was the perfect opportunity for the Zanziband! Despite SAE College and Studio 301 being a modern world-class studio …. it has a similar creative “vibe” that we felt at the Arts Factory over 20 years ago! Tom most graciously let us do some recording. We hadn’t played together for over 20 years and we didn’t have much notice to go into the studio. We layed down the rough tracks to ten of our original songs. Tom was able to take this raw material and bring to life a modern interpretation of our songs ! With his help and the assistance of a few other extremely talented people, the Zanziband were able to make a modern-sounding CD.

[1] Many people these days don't know that Dan Doeppel was the man who created the Arts Factory, where his vision of bringing world class music to Byron Bay was first realized. This vision continued with Dan's mate, Keven Oxford, who created The East Coast Blues & Roots Festival - which actually started at the Arts Factory! I’ve always maintained that, besides surfing, it was the national and international bands playing the Arts Factory and the Blues Festival that put Byron Bay firmly on the world map. Unfortunately Dan passed away recently before we could finish our CD. We would like to dedicate it to him and his memory!