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  Everybody hated us. This tape ruined my life. In 1979 I, Zoe Moore, was 20 and a semi-closeted bi drag queen living in Leeds England. My best friend at the time, Colin Baker, was 20 as well and a completely closeted gay man that came from a rich conservative family. I hated his family. After an early Soft Sell concert, Colin and I were utterly inspired. Not so much by Marc Almond spreading dog food on his face, but the severe Punk energy projected just from one queer, twig, seductive man, and a quiet lad in the background hiding behind a synthesizer making the room shake. I had very limited experience singing besides messing around in my bedroom, and Colin would sometimes pluck around on his family organ, but we both dug punk music, and in the summer of 1979 we started jamming together in his family's garage.
  We listened to a lot of Suicide and Sex Pistols and lots of other legendary forgotten punk bands of the era but we wanted to make something new and completely outrageous that was the definition of punk. We wanted to embrace our sexualities and music and make possibly the raunchiest songs that had ever been written at the time. Originally Collin bought a Korg 770 and a Boss DR-55 and we would record our raunchy original music on a simple tape player. We could write about three songs in a day, unfortunately, all but these three recordings are lost. We were so afraid to have a live show we knew that the fate of our band was just going to be our home recordings, so we decided to be like the Beatles and embrace that. Another piece of equipment we picked up late that summer was a defective Teac 144 portastudio, the rewind function was broken but the rest of it worked.
  I wanted to play a synthesizer in the band instead of screaming with barely any clothes on half the time because no one was going to see the performance anyway, so we decided to get another synthesizer for me to play. In 1979 the Roland Jupiter 4 had just hit the shelves and it was still expensive for a four-note polyphonic analog synthesizer, but Colin was pissed after spending all his money on equipment when the band was my idea. So we ended up stealing a Roland Jupiter 4 from Dawson's music and Colin played it on the song Cum On My Face. I played the ending riff on the 770. We wanted to make some decent recordings to show some people and possibly get some recognition and get out of the garage, but that would also mean getting out of the closet for both of us. We recorded these three songs, Fap before you fuck, Lubie Vagina, and Cum On My Face on the Teac with a lot of precision. The broken rewind function on the Teac was more trouble than inspected. We had to flip the tape over and fast forward every time we wanted to rewind, and some days we were so anxious Collin's parents were going to come home and fuck us over we rushed ourselves and one day the Teac ripped apart the master tape to these recordings. Refusing to give up and start all over, me and Colin painstakingly taped the original cassette tape back together with Scotch tape. Colin thought we were fucked the entire time and that the tape was going to crinkle up like an accordion, but I refused to give up and sure enough, the tape still worked, only resorting in a little bit of distortion at the beginning of Lubie vagina, my favorite song we did.
  Once the recordings were finalized we made a few copies to show to our friends and we booked a gig at Leeds Polytechnic, our college at the time, also were Soft Cell originated from. Our mates were creeped out by the recordings and rejected us, and after the concert, we were banned from school after performing just one song, Cum On My Face. Word got around to our parents and Colin was disowned from his family, he ran away from home in September of 1979 and we never saw him again. My mother was paying for the majority of my schooling at the time and our relationship got pretty rocky after that and I ended up dropping out of school and getting stuck in foodservice. OMe and my mom are on better terms now but we never bring up the songs and the recreational sex band or Colin.
  Some days I would forget about it some days it would be all I would think about is that these recordings and the band ruined my life and I had to move out too soon with a shity job and no friends to go to. I descended back in the closet but I knew who I really was. I was an angry person after that, we had to sell our synthesizers and all the equipment, and I ended up getting fined for stealing the Roland Jupiter 4. I didn't end up making a lot of music after that, just back to singing in my bedroom.
  Today I’m the head supervisor at Wendy's, my life has turned around a little bit, I make a little bit more money, I'm in a good relationship and I just accepted where my life was. I thought about recreational sex less and less. Until the pandemic hit and I realized I had a lot more time on my hands, and after doing some cleaning, I found one of the copies of the tapes that I gave to one of my mates at school. I realized I might get some redemption these days since the LGBT community is more recognized and supported. So here I am trying to redeem myself and see if some people might enjoy the music that once meant something to me. And if you don't, go fuck yourself.
  
  -Zoe Moore ... more
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