X Certs | Coventry Bands 1960’s to Now

The X Certs

New Wave / Punk

Record Label Zama Music (a few rare copies) and Race Records.

The X-Certs, from Coventry, England, began life in 1977 and lasted for 3 years. The 3 Gray Summers, Zero Summers and Dave Pepper.

‘Here’s the Weekend’ by the X Certs – listen or buy it on the Alternative Sounds Bandcamp album https://alternativesounds.bandcamp.com/track/its-the-weekend

Originally called The Monitors. Dave Pepper started out at 17 in a band called Phoenix who played for us at the Hobo Workshop, Holyhead road, 1974 where both the Selecter and Specials started out and Phoenix were down to take part in the Hobo Workshop Coventry precinct concert in 1974 with Memories but the concert got shut down by the police allegedly for noise – see here https://coventrymusicarchives.blogspot.com/2016/07/hobo-workshop-concert-that-led-to-7-day.html

Bass player Gray Summers created a brilliant My Space for The X Certs about 10 years ago with some of their tracks on. This is the address of the site but it probably doesn’t work now! http://www.myspace.com/xcerts1978

The songs are here if you can get them to play (Actually My Space might not work anymore!)

https://myspace.com/xcerts1978/music/songs

And included Satisfied / Feeling in the Groove / One of the Boys / Asylum.

The X-Certs, from Coventry, England, began life in 1977 and lasted for 3 years.

“Zero Summers (Kev) had started playing drums about 2 weeks before we got together. A Natural!!! Gray Summers, previously playing on 6 string guitar,changed to bass at the same time due to a lack of bass players in Coventry, at the time. Dave Pepper, was persuaded to join by kidnapping and threat of torture. He was pretty good and Gray and Zero didn’t think he would join a couple of novices. Swayed by our lack of good looks (it meant he would stand out!!) we got down to the nitty gritty of writing some tunes. Dave and Gray shared vocals and the song writing. Some decent tunes and a semblance of being able to play a bit materialised and we launched into gigs. Joined by Dave Chalmers (sound) and Chris King (previous manager of The Flys – check them out on myspace, you’ll be glad you did!) we got rolling.

Our image was pretty low key as we thought the music spoke for us. Our following was pretty good, but the more visual bands of the time (the Specials / Selecter/ God’s Toys) grabbed a huge fan base in Coventry. We won the Battle of the Bands at Warwick Uni. and suddenly ‘got confidence’. Dill of God’s Toys (a superb Cov. band see them on YouTube) felt cheated. We’d probably agree with him. Gig after gig, a few recording sessions and interest from record companies materialised and then we sort of drifted a part really. The threat of the single release of ‘FEELING IN THE GROOVE’ c/w’SATISFIED’ didn’t materialise as the Indie record label ZAMA Recordskept re-mixing it all the time. (They wanted fairy dust sprinkling over it!!!!!)”
We had about 40 songs, but most are on cassettes with little blips. But I’ve managed to rescue some of them for MySpace

“Just a quick note to say a big thanks to the people who’ve given me positive feedback about ‘Satisfied’. Me, Dave Pep and Kev were at the start of a practice session and I had this idea to shove a song into gear that would hit everyone as an opener to a gig. We had played a song called ‘Here’s the Weekend’ ever since we had got together as the opener to gigs and after a couple of years of the same song we felt it was time for a change. ‘Weekend’ was kind of our equivalent of Quo’s ‘Juniors Wailing’. Satisfied seemed a good alternative. I sang the tune for Pep and Kev and they kicked into this manic guitar/drumming (with that exhausting double bass drum kick) and we were off. We wrote it in 15 mins. and we were over the moon. We played it live first time at the Hope and Anchor, London. It set the mood for the gig proper and it stuck from then on. You seem to like it from the general feedback and that is’satisfying’. Really though the energy comes as a four piece contribution. Dave Chalmers produced the sound and the final mix and I don’t think anyone better could have done it. So Thanks for the good vibes.

Gray Summers. From the X Certs My Space.”

Below, pages from Alternative Sounds c 1979 / 80

Gray Summer

Dave Pepper

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