Following on from the story reported last year by News OnTheWight of the re-release of an 80’s track by Isle of Wight band, Cassie, there’s more exciting news for one band member.
Cassie bassist, Hugh Kim Lewis, has been in touch to share news of another musical project he was involved with “back in the day”.
A musical side project
Rendezvous were a musical side project that Hugh and his close friend, Tim Prouten, started working on back in 1983 and continued through until 1986. The band was formed out of the ashes of new wave of British heavy metal band, Warrior.
Hugh says,
“Recently, like Cassie, we’ve had a CD of our six recorded songs released on UK Based ProgAor Records.”
Rendezvous’ background
The blurb from their CD reads:
Writing songs was something that interested Hugh and Tim and they purchased a Teac 4 track porta studio. Tim got on and handled lead vocals and all of the guitar parts and Hugh the drums and helping out with the backing vocals. They wrote probably a dozen songs in total, but unfortunately only six were ever recorded.
Rod Gammons the famous producer (Ultravox, Eartha Kitt, etc.), heard a demo and asked the lads to participate in the ‘Feet on the Street’ LP project of 1984. ‘Decisions in Love’ and ‘Don’t Give Up’ were subsequently re-recorded at Rod’s Sound studio in Brighstone on the Isle of Wight in late 1983.
‘Decisions in Love’ was considered the strongest and most commercial track and was chosen for inclusion on the album.
After much critical success from the press following the release of the album in 1984, Dakota Records expressed interest in the song, but sadly nothing materialised.
After the LP project, it was thought that putting a band together could be fun and a bass player and keyboardist were recruited and the band rehearsed extensively with a view to writing more songs and getting out and playing live. This period was however short lived and they split up citing musical differences.
Tim and Hugh got back together in late 1985 to write again and ‘Hollywood’ and ’Tell me you Love me’ came from those sessions using the porta-studio. In 1986 ‘Forgetting About the Pain’ and ‘Don’t Say it on the Phone’ were recorded at Paul and Pete’s 8 Track studio in Ryde, on the ‘the Isle Of Wight.
Hugh and Tim moved on to other things around January 1987 and never officially ‘split-up’. Sadly, they never played live and only six songs exist.
You can hear their six songs buy purchasing your copy of Rendezvous on the Isle of Wight from Andy Barding at AAA Records in Newport, or through the HearNow Website.
