Chocolate was a band that I started sometime around 1993 with Wolfie & WJ. Over the next 4 years we did a great Euro tour supporting the Dambuilders, released a respectable number of vinyl and CDs (on Dirter and Out Of Step) and went through a whole load of line-up changes. In fact so many line-up changes that by the time 1997 came round and we started recording what was to be the final album I was the only original member and even I’d lost half of my responsibilities when Clive took over lead vocals sometime in 1995.

The final line-up change happened about a week before we were due to start recording. Our drummer, Chris Turner, decided he couldn’t carry on due to work commitments and so guitarist John Hannon managed to get his old Understand band mate, Andy Shepherd, to come along on the first day of recording, learn all the songs and get them down on tape there and then with me supplying a guide guitar and vocal and John adding comments and drummer short-hand speak from the control room. I know it’s only punk rock and therefore not exactly complex stuff, but the songs came out really well and the lad done good.

However, the headline story was that we’d lost our drummer so Chocolate pretty much overnight moved from band to project and it took another 2 years before I finally finished the songs. By then we’d added some lovely lead guitar from James Allen (Elmerhassel & Big Ray) and I’d moved to London and was about to form K-Line. So these songs just sort of dropped off the map. I was going to release them through Boss Tuneage, but I was skint after paying for the 3rd Big Ray album to be recorded and released and I just never got round to doing anything with them….which is a shame because I honestly think they’re a great set of tunes. They rock, they’re played well, they sound good, the singing’s great. Definitely up there with the best punk stuff I’ve done.

To my mind the songs I wrote for K-Line were the logical continuation of the ones on this (non) release. They should also sound a wee bit like Sink. So all you Sink fans out there, get yer ears round this lot.

On this recording Chocolate was: Clive Watling (vocals), Ed (guitar, backing vocals & bass on one song), Paul (bass), John Hannon (guitar), James Allen (guitar) and Andy Shepherd (drums).

The whole thing was produced and mixed by Roop with Ed lurking. Roop did the majority of the engineering (certainly all the hard stuff), but John Hannon and Ed also did their share of knob twiddling. Studios used were No Recording in Southend (back when it was still called Mushroom) and Purple in Norwich.

• Information Age (5.6MB)
• Customer (2.5MB)
• Stubborn (5.8MB)
• Circular (3.7MB)
• Waiting (5.0MB)
• Compartmentalize (5.9MB)
• I Can’t Free You (8.6MB)
• Smalltown Song (6.6MB)

For the sake of completeness I’ll dig around for the lyrics and post them here.

Part 2 of this post will feature 4 other songs - recorded by yet another incarnation of Chocolate. Together with this lot they’d have made up the final album.