Back in 1990 on a balmy summer's day fortyone was conceived. Way back then we didn't have a name. There was also one main difference, that being the fact that there were only two people playing in the band at the time. Mog and Paul were the pioneers, the ones that went the hard slog and belted out one of the classics on a horrendously out of tune piano. Yes, wild thing (played with only one finger) was the principal tune of our repertoire, in fact it was our entire repertoire. One day, possibly another balmy one, Paul got bored of two people playing the one piano and decided that rhythm was his forte. He hopped on a kit and played some rock. And boy did it not rock.

These two pioneering young men, possibly still learning to read, were preparing for a talent show. Most treated it as a joke, however Mog and Paul were deadly serious. Finding that recesses and after school were the only times that they could practice, they diligently rehearsed daily. One particular day they invited a visitor, or maybe the visitor invited himself, anyway whichever way it was this visitor turned out to be the new recruit for the band, Nick. Wasting no time he joined Mog on the piano and we played at the talent thingy. We ended up losing by half a point to this annoying little nerd singing his own rendition of the British national anthem, 'God Saved the Biscuit Tin' or something like that - boy wasn't that a laugh. Still, we won a block of chocolate, which by the way I have not eaten any of. Nick, I am sure, ate my portion.

Realising we were back where we started out - with two people on the piano again, it was time for change. Mog decided he was going to become a blues hound on the saxophone and set out to do so. It had the makings of a very peculiar line-up. Eventually we came up with our first original song, Death Call (said in a loud grumbling voice) Yes it was a classic. This was followed closely by Steed and Evil Conga. Yes, we had out own 'EP'. By the time we were all in year seven things were starting to become a little stagnant. We needed a guitarist. One day at practice we decided that we would recruit another member. Pat was the unlucky victim.

From there on things started to pick up. We remember playing our revised rendition of Wild Thing with a guitar. There was an unfortunate yet brief stint with a line up where Nick was the main vocalist. The main classic that we belted out was Joy To The World sadly, Nicks voice at that stage had a little to be desired and brought absolutely no joy to the world whatsoever.

We began to get a few original tunes into our repertoire, our first half-decent one was a song called Rapacity. It was a much matured variation on 'Steed', having much more substance. It even had a middle-eight (funny bit). One day in January 1996, Mog told the rest of the band of a competition on the radio station Triple J (Australia's number one alternative music station). Paul hadn't even heard about it despite its popularity. It was called Unearthed. We practiced through all of one weekend. It doesn't sound like much but when you are small, restless, concentration deficient kids it's really tough. The practice was out at Paul's place, having brief time off to go and swim in the dam. We finally got Rapacity up to scratch and copied it onto tape to send off through the wonders of express mail.

It turned out that a few weeks later, that we'd won equal first with another band 'Flapjack' - much to our amazement. We were quietly ecstatic about this. We had won against eighty-four other bigger, louder, more experienced, older, more professional (and probably better) bands. We spent a day down in the astounding ABC Studios with Chris Thompson as our engineer. The end result was a very corny and predictable tune; however it was the foothold for developing a much more mature and powerful sound.

After Rapacity, we began to get into the swing of things as far as writing songs was concerned. We began to obtain some decent originals and we thought that it was time to get them down on tape. We booked in at Soundtrax 919, the local recording studio in Ballarat. The group now had a demo tape of eight of our songs.

Half a year later we came across a Battle of the Bands Competition. We decided to enter with an extremely rushed video of us playing and Mog acting like a tree (don't ask), and received a place in the finals. It was great to have thousands of hyperactive people screaming at you.

Later we were invited to perform at Leebo, a concert organised by Sam and Lee for their Communication Project. Featuring three other bands, Neahmiah, Porksword and Shades of Blue, Leebo was a great experience and a huge success.

As for the future, we can only quote Kevin Reilley: "The poodle is usually around 45cm tall and is claimed to have originated in France."