Memory Tapes: A Setlist By Siamese Fighting Fish, Played Badly

The Memory Tape is a chance for you, the lovely listener, to reminisce and share the soundtracks to your lives. Whether that be a mix made for you, made by you, or collectively shared with everybody you know. Send your track lists and stories to lauren.6music@bbc.co.uk immediately. Today's story follows the dreams of a teenager who reached for the fame, the bright lights and the break ups...but only ever achieved just one of these. Here's Gary Yay to tell all:

"Hi, I’m Gary, I’m a long time listener of 6music and I’m fairly typical of the rest of the demographic who listen – in my 30s, sensible office job, first kid on the way. But I do still nurse the habit of playing in a band for my sins, and I have played in countless other bands since I learnt to play the guitar in my teens. It’s because of this I choose to write about the memory of my very first band, not least of all because of the enormous pressure to come up with something suitably 90s to hit a note with the average 6music listener. We were called Siamese Fighting Fish, born out of Folkestone in Kent and featuring members Chris Youles, Suneil Saraf and Martin Barr as well as myself.

It was in the mid-90s and we were 16 going on 17 and consuming music new and old at an alarming rate, so much so that we weren’t content to just listening to music that we had to start playing it too. Although we were far from good enough to be doing music justice at the time). We largely only did covers and probably only played about three gigs, but it must have been interesting as a stranger to our outer circle, walking into a pub somewhere and seeing 4 spotty teenagers in the corner making a complete mess of She’s Lost Control by Joy Division. Incidentally, I was also told by numerous people I had a face like a constipated hippo every time I sung the word ‘meeee’ in Dive by Nirvana.

I think at the time we were going for a mix of credible and contemporary (being quite arrogant reading the NME like every good teenager at that time), but this mixtape is a list of as many of the covers we used to do as I can remember.

A Setlist By Siamese Fighting Fish, Played Badly

Nirvana – Dive

Ash – Kung Fu

Super Furry Animals – God! Show Me Magic

Suede – New Generation

Placebo – Teenage Angst

Manic Street Preachers – La Tristesse Durera

Kim Wilde – Kids In America

Joy Division – She’s Lost Control

Mansun – Stripper Vicar

Undertones – Teenage Kicks

Cheers!

Gary"