Snowboy

Snowboy was one of the first signings of Acid Jazz. He also played with James Taylor Quartet and is the regular Percussionist with Lisa Stansfield. Neil joined Snowboy in 1993 when Snowboy's "Somethings Coming" album was racing up the mainstream album charts at no.10.

Other band members include - Dave Pattman on Bongos, Davide Giovannini on Drums, Andres Lafone on Bass ( replaced in 1998 by Nico Gomez ), Gary Plumley on Sax, Sid Gauld on Trumpet and Paul Taylor on Trombone.

Early in 1993 the band toured Europe for a couple of months playing just about every night. The tour was gruelling with hardly a night spent off the tour bus.

"Near the end of the tour we took 3 long days to travel to the north of Italy from Spain without a hotel room in site. Being so close to Venice and never having been, Gary Plumley and myself left the bus and caught a train to Venice for the day. The weather was cold and raining as it was early February. Italy is a place for image and fashion and Venice is certainly no exception to that. So as we were sat on the steps of the main square munching away at our sandwiches a Police officer decided to move us on for vagrancy. If only he had known... Ah well, I suppose we did look like sh#t!!

Albums have been frequently released with the next album ( released 1995 ) entitled "Pit Bull Latin Jazz" - so called because of the hard edged, no nonsense, aggressive style of playing that the band had developed. Havana Club, a composition of Neil's on the album, charted in Miami at No3.

1996 saw the release of The Many Faces Of Snowboy, an Album covering many styles of popular dance music from Hip/Hop and Garage to Soul and Afrobeat. This Album was purely a Studio Project, however a cover of "The New Avengers" recorded on the Album found it's way into the live set and eventually onto the next Latin Album.

During this time the band were still gigging heavily, touring regularly in Belgium, Holland, Germany and Italy. It was during one of the tours that we did in Italy that took us to Sicily that we had a brief meeting with the Mafia.

"We were playing in Paloma in a theatre to a very polite seated audience. This was different to the normal 'Club'crowds that we were used to. However, the gig went well until the point of our last number in the set. Snowboy was taking his usual unaccompanied conga solo. I had sneaked off stage to grab a quick drink when a man who was clearly 'Mafia' tapped me on the shoulder to tell me we should not finish playing for at least another 45mins. So with no more material to play and not wishing to argue, our last number turned into a 45 minute epic!!!

Meanwhile back in the safety of the recording studio the next album released was to be under a new record label from America -'Ubiquity' with Snowboy parting with Acid Jazz after several years loyalty to the label. The new album saw the first change in personnel since the Something's Coming Album in 1993 with change of bassist to Nico Gomez.

The new Album released in 1998 was titled "Mambo Rage " and saw a guest appearance on trumpet by Paul Jayasinha with Sid being on tour at the time with "Blur " The album was harder edged than all the previous albums with the introduction of the Hammond organ.

The release of Snowboys latest masterpiece on ' Ubiquity ' entitled " Afro Cuban Jazz " has already had rave reviews which you can view in the "Press" section of this Web Page. Also check out forthcoming gigs in that "Forthcoming Gigs" and photos of the band recording the latest album.

This document maintained by neil@angilley.com.
Material Copyright © 1998 SoftQuad Inc.