DENIM IS THE COLOR OF MY TRUE LOVE’S HAIR - In the summer of 1985 I was still a teenager living in Wales, on the dole, and watching Live-Aid in a cloud of smoke at my old mate Griff’s house. During a visit to London that September someone told me about this nutter called Zodiac Mindwarp who was forming a band. He appeared exactly as one would imagine Genhgis Khan to have looked if he were a Hells Angel - and on the front cover of L’uomo Vogue - instead of some filthy herbert charging about raping and pillaging Central Asia on horseback. I made a few calls and following an audition that appeared to focus more on my ability to have the longest guitar strap since Johnny Ramone than any particular musical talent; I was invited to join Zodiac, Cobalt Stargazer, and Boom-Boom Kaboomski for the adventure of a lifetime.

The first thing Zodiac did was to change my name from Haggis to Kid Chaos – in honor of my youth and rather erratic energy. Two weeks later – November 4th 1985 - was our first show: Dingwalls in Camden, North London. There were only a few people present - our manager, our publisher, a roadie, and a journalist who reviewed the show under the title Horrorscope. All the songs sounded the same, and we played them horribly. It didn’t matter. We were – to coin a phrase - BADASS!!! It wasn’t long before every dirtbag, acid casualty and disgruntled metal fan crawled out of the woodwork to pay homage at our feet. Our shows became mini-Altamonts. For the next eighteen months we rocked our way across the European continent in the name of Bon Scott and Phil Lynott. Clad in psychedelically adorned German helmets and boot-polish stained denims we shat on everyone and shagged their girlfriends while they were away on tour. If you weren’t there it’s a shame you missed it. It would be another decade before the next British band walked the earth with such confidence and swagger (Oasis).
To this day, it was one of the greatest times of my life: A nieve Welsh boyo who abandoned his moral virginity amid the sordid underground of mid-nineteen-eighties London. Getting tattooed at midnight, drinking ‘til dawn then staggering late to rehearsal. Being fawned over by impossibly beautiful girls in darkened basement nightclubs, and awakening beside them in unfamiliar rooms with the stench of cheap hairspray and cigarette smoke hanging heavy in the air. Spending obscene amounts of record company money: We just bought louder amps and fancier guitars, and then smashed them anyway! Inevitably – as with anything that potent – something had to give, and it was me. I had ideas of my own and Zodiac was a man with a singular vision. I left under dishonorable circumstances.

To this day Zodiac loves to bait me. He was the drunken mastermind, his unparalleled knowledge of classical literature and art decorating our monstrous noise with a sophistication that sorted the wheat from the chaff in a scene sprung from the seeds we sowed. I was the conniving teenage upstart who left him for someone else at the rock’n’roll altar. He was pissed off. He still is. Yet, no matter how far I have wandered since, no one fucked like Zodiac Mindwarp And The Love Reaction. It was my first encounter with true love.
                                         
Stephen Haggis Harris (a.k.a. Kid Chaos) – March 28, 2011