During the early 80's after some years, a number of bands, tours, gigs in restaurants, recording sessions and hours spent busking at South Kensington tube station I decided to form my own band. Luckily, my girlfriend at the time, Berenice Nally, had a good voice and wasn't a half bad lyricist. The Swim were born and we rehearsed during the weekends ( in a room at Edwin Shirley's trucking company ) while Bee and I wrote songs during the week. After a number of personnel changes and a few gigs ( mainly at the Windsor Castle on the Harrow Road ) we recorded some demos at Florien Pilkington Mixer's studio in Barnes with Mike Andrews producing and Peter Williams engineering. Record companies were singularily unimpressed by these recordings so Bee and I disbanded the group and struck out on our own. I bought a Korg MS-10 synthesiser and we managed to persuade Mark Dean of Polydor records to give us some studio time at the now defunkt RCA studios in Windmill street. I roped the wonderful Ian Curnow into playing some additional keys and we recorded 'Blood and Sand', 'Nosferatu' and a couple of other songs in one day. These tapes finally ( after about a year ) got us signed to CBS Records under the name Miro Miroe. We released three singles and worked with Colin Thurston, Zeus B. Held and Steve Levine. Ian Curnow played all the keyboards that weren't programmed on my ancient Roland MC-4.

Ian Curnow - Colin Thurston

nights of arabia imagenight of arabia rear image

Nights Of Arabia, the first single (lyric) , did do fairly well ( 9 or 10 plays on radio one in the first week and charting at number 30 ). Unfortunately this was a massive surprise to CBS, who did not have enough copies made to properly service the record. The sales and chart position faded away as there was no re-stocking of the single in the shops. No promotional video was ever made. The only tv appearance was on the 'David Essex Showcase' ( along with Thomas Dolby doing 'Windpower' ). Two more singles were released. 'Islands' from the Colin Thurston sessions and 'Ready, Steady' which was produced by Steve Levine. Again, limited copies were pressed, insuring no possibility of chart success. A typical music business experience.

I re-recorded 'Nights' with the singer and dancer Shay. Although this version was never released I was pleased with the result. The radio mix is available on my music page.


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