Ket Kolomper

Let's take another trip back in time to Leeds 1990 when the eternal support act seemed to be an odd bunch that went by the name of Ket Kolomper. For a while it seemed like whoever you saw play at The Duchess Of York - they would be first on the bill.

I suspect that most people will remember them purely for the fact that the "bass" player had an instrument that he'd made himself from a cricket bat, a single bass string and a hand-gripped pulley system.

It sounds like a piece of design genius and in a way it almost was. Worn like a guitar, he would pluck the string with a plectrum in his right hand and with the pulley in his left hand he would change the tension in the string to form different notes. I'm surprised it never caught on but it may have had something to do with the fact that, for the most part, it sounded bloody awful.

As far as I know (and let's face it they have a name just MADE for Google) this was their only official appearance on vinyl and luckily for me was the song I liked best from their set. A jolly sing-a-long recounting a drink-drive experience gone wrong.

Ket Kolomper - Morning Occifer

We saw them play a few years later and were disappointed to see that the cricket bat bass was long gone and the singer was quite dismissive of the old gimmick when we asked him about it. Maybe if he'd kept it they could have been huge..(but probably not)