Rickthepostie

When Sweet Melody split & went there seperate ways, i was not doing much for a couple of months, when out of the blue i got a phone call from Bill asking me if i would join them as there drummer was letting them down, turning up late at gigs etc, i jumped at the chance, & the 1st line up of Sweet Memories was formed ,the line up then was Bill rhythm guitar/vocals, Dave lead guitar/vocals, Mark bass guitar/ vocals & me on drums, i think that was around Feb 1987, Mark was later to be replaced by a guy called Eddie on bass guitar as Mark wanted to do something different with another band & that was the 2nd & final line up of Sweet Memories, & that is the way it was until the end of 1988, after the disastrous trip to Dubai were we were supposed to do 3 months but only did 3 weeks. This was mainly down to the guy we orditioned for to get the job, he was english but lived in Dubai & he came to see us the 1st night, we went down a storm, but the next day Billy was called to see this guy in his office & i went with Billy thinking we were going to be thanked for a good opening night, i was wrong, he wanted us to change our music because, he said, it was not right for the place we were playing, i looked at Bill, Bill looked at me we were gobsmacked, we thought we had a good night & told the guy this, but no he was the boss he was paying us, so we had to change the music, this was no easy task as we were doing 4 45min spots Mon-Sat & Sun was Rock n Roll night were we did 3 45min spots. I remember we went looking for a music shop and bought a load of song books & we all sat & looked through them all, anyway we did our best & we learned probably a good hour of new songs & put them in our show, anyway we were not called into the office anymore until about into the 2nd week, me & Billy went into the office, took our weekly money from the boss & he said "It has been nice knowing you" & that was it, me & Bill went back to the Hotel room & looked at each other, i said "was that a goodbye" & Bill said "i think it was" & anyway it was, he saw us later & said you are booked to fly out next Sunday, so that was it we finished the week up to Friday took our gear down Saturday & a duo from the UK turned up to put there gear up. Sweet Memories was the first 4piece band to be flown out to Dubai & the gear alone must have cost a fortune, they usually have duos & vocalists with backing tapes & not much gear, & i think we were costing this guy to much money with drinks to keep us going at night, only cokes were free & that was limited to about 3 each, we sometimes went over that limit as it was hot in there & we were playing for 3 hours 6 nights a week, & we needed them to keep going. Anyway we phoned our agent back in the UK and told him we were coming home, & he told us not to worry and that he would be straight to work filling our diary, of which he did, i for one could not wait to get back home i was miserable & p****d off, & in the end it got to us all, we got to around the end of that year & decided to call it a day, i joined Sons of Jet, Dave & Eddie got themselves a band, & Bill started to go out & sing on his own, Bill died on September 29th 2003 from lung cancer he was 60 yrs old, the last time i saw Bill was at Castle Ward Club i think it was about April 2003 when Footloose were playing, he got up & sang Whole lotta shakin i will never forget that as it was the very last time i saw him, he often came to see the group when we were local & we always got him up singing, i keep in touch with Dave as he works at the same place as me & he is a postie aswell, Eddie i don't know where or what he is doing now, but i know that i spent a lot of time with these guys & we had a lot of fun together, you cannot bring these times back but you can always have Sweet Memories.