Stray Tracks: White Gates Band, Mystery Team, Basharan, SNM, Monumental – Pink Toothbrush, Rayleigh

For the last few months Phoenix FM has been involved in the Stray Tracks competition, a competition for unsigned bands held in honour of local musician Lee Andrews.

Lee was a drummer from Canvey Island who played in many local bands, including The Accommodation, The Shopkeeper Appeared and Bif Bam Pow. Sadly, Lee passed away from cancer in 2023.

Two of Lee’s long-time collaborators – Andy Gallagher and Roman Jugg – had the fantastic idea to let his legacy carry on. In a pub, with Lee’s wife Angela, and daughter Georgia, they came up with the idea of Stray Tracks inspired by one of Lee’s favourite bands, the Stray Cats.

The four of them have been working hard over the last few months and called in some additional judges, including record label boss Tony Pontius, ex-Sunscreem musicians and producers Rob Fricker and Darren Woodford, and Russell Lee, promoter and DJ at legendary Rayleigh venue The Pink Toothbrush as well as myself.

We have been listening to demos for the last few months and whittled it down to five local acts, all sounding very different in their music – The Mystery Team, Monumental, The White Gates Band, SNM and Basharan.

So we all convened at The Pink Toothbrush last week to listen to each band play a set, and then mark them all Eurovision-style.

We quickly came up with a winner – The Mystery Team – whose energy and politically charged lyrics really stood out. Although I loved all five bands – I didn’t give any of them less than 8 out of 10!

The winners will receive new music gear, a radio session and interview on Phoenix FM, studio time with a professional producer and tracks pressed onto vinyl and released on the new Stray Tracks label. And who knows, we may do it all again next year!

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OK, so the above blog post suspiciously looks like my Brentwood Gazette column for that week. I did drive 400 miles to Essex and back to judge this, mainly because (a) I thought I could arrange some other work around it, but I didn’t in the end, and (b) it’s just nice to be asked, isn’t it?

I ran a Battle of the Bands for the Brentwood Festival before, which turned out to be a colossal waste of time because the organiser and his friend, who was so drunk he couldn’t speak, decided to pick the winners themselves and ignore the judges.

At least this one had a bit of democracy. I didn’t really mind who won to be honest, I had a good night out!