From Nikki Sudden's Blog
www.nikkisudden.com

I've known Steve 'Jowe Head' Bird since our first day at Secondary School. We met in Big School at Solihull School in September 1966 or was it 1967. I think it was 1966. Jowe was born in June 1956. I entered the world a month later on 19 July 1956. Steve is, after David 'Phones Sportsman' Barrington who I've known since 1964, my oldest friend. But it wasn't until last month that I found out why he bailed out of Swell MapsÉ and I didn't get the details until yesterday. The band broke up over twenty-five years ago and it takes a quarter of a century for the truth to come out. Phones has been in touch of late. None of us had heard anything from him over the past twenty-two years but then the wonderful No Men from Scotland did their particular rendering of the Phones Sportsman Band EP. A friend of Dave's asked him, as folks sometimes do, if he'd ever been in a band. He punched www.google.com into a computer then 'Phones Sportsman' and was a bit surprised to find the No Men's cover of his record. He contacted them, they told me he'd been in touch. I wrote him a letter and lo and beholdÉ he answered. I'd written to Dave /Phones over the years and had sent him copies of reissues but to no response. One time, three or four years back, I wrote, "Dave, you can't escape the past forever!" It seems this has come to pass and all five surviving Maps are in touch with each other again. For details of how to buy /download the No Men's amazing versions of Swell Maps. Epic Soundtracks, Richard Earl, Phones Sportsman, Cult Figures and coming soon Nikki Sudden stuff go to: www.topplers.net If you don't check this out you shouldn't be reading this... I spoke to John 'Golden' Cockrill last night and once again the subject of a Swell Maps' reunion came up. John is up for it, Jowe as well. If we could find the right drummer - Epic was irreplaceable - then I'd be game. Richard might or might not. But if we do a reunion we have to at least record a new single first. Richard, Jowe and I did some new tracks in a studio in Berlin in early 1998 when the two of them were in town for the Berlin tribute show to my brother. As soon as two or three of us play together it automatically sounds like Swell Maps. But don't hold your breath waiting!