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Originally formed in 1995
and based in the Darlington/Sedgefield area, the band started
life as an all male 4?plece under the name of 'Menace Patrol'.
After the addition of a second guitar player, the band played
a few gigs in this guise before deciding to make a change
in the vocalist department. A chance meeting between the
band's second guitar player and someone pushing the vocal
talents of her younger sister led to the recruitment of
Linda and the change of name to 'Big Sister', inspired by
Linda's older sister, Karen, who not only insisted that
Linda was the woman for the job but also took on the mantle
of band manager and all round sorter of things.
This incarnation of the band stayed together for about
a year before the drummer and second guitarist left to
pursue other things. The remaining three members recruited
a drummer and this line?up, consisting of Linda (vocals),
Stan (guitar), Mark (bass) and Tony (drums) was the first
really stable version of the band and continued very successfully
for the next three or four years. At this point, and for
various reasons, the band decided to go their separate
ways and the history of Big Sister went into an eighteen
month pause.
In 2003, Linda and Stan decided to have another go and
contacted Pete, who they had known from his involvement
with other bands on the circuit, to see if he was interested
in putting something together. Fortunately Pete had just
parted company with PAF, (another well known local band),
after nine years and was keen to get into something else.
He agreed to come on board, and so the basic structure
of the band was virtually complete. A drummer was quickly
recruited and following a string of rehearsals, the band
played one gig at Christmas 2003 before other commitments
meant a vacancy on the drum stool. This seemed to be a
major set-back at the time, but fortunately within a month
the band had a new man in place and had now decided to
keep the name Big Sister. This line up, which comprises:
Linda (vocals), Stan (guitar), Pete (bass) and Chris (drums),
is still the line-up and is how we hope, no intend, to
keep it!!!
In the early stages our musical instruments and back-line
amplification were all in tact, due to previous musical
ventures, but we had to beg or borrow PA equipment in
order to play gigs, for some reason when bands split up
the existing PA is normally sold off to settle everyone
up and ours was no exception. I think we had a couple
of leads, 1 monitor, a couple of stands and some questionable
microphones between the four of us. Never-the-less we
managed to get by and slowly brought our equipment up
to scratch, (we now command a sophisticated PA and lighting
rig which so far has been adequate for all our venues
– see Pete, he’s the techno freak!!).
On the music side, we started as most
bands do by playing old numbers that we all knew, but
not necessarily numbers that would do us any favours,
and this instigated the slow process of changing most,
if not all, of the material, (alongside writing a few
of our own), to suit the band. This process is on-going,
(we try to keep the sets fresh and lively), and has all
contributed in developing the band you know as “Big
Sister”. ............
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