iSound

Originally conceived as a multi media performance event (cf A "Happening" from the 60's), The YoYo Collective Circus was born in Hereford, (a city that also spawned 3/4 of the Pretenders and Mott The Hoople) in the sleepy rural welsh borderland in 1980, comprisingof a loose band of musicians, poets, performance artists and sculptors. The early "events" were constructed around a mixture of improvised jazz, beat poetry and dub reggae, staged in suitably "dressed" locations and peopled by a plethora of performing-art humans, something which was later clearly influential in bands such as the Blue Aeroplanes (see Bristol Sound). With such a varied and changeable line up the band metamorphosed almost monthly and each event became a unique marker in the lives of the fanatical local following. Moving to Bristol in 1982, the musical side of the circus solidified into a tight and well rehearsed band delivering music somewhere imagined between Captain Beefheart,...