Sean Smith

I was born in Greenwich, London; the home of time itself, and of the mighty Charlton Athletic (currently, if I'm honest, experiencing a minor blip in form). My dad was a jazz drummer and, while I found this music hard to love, I had an immediate affection for the muscular geometry of the drum kit, the first of which I inherited on my 11^th birthday.

Although I was at school with Steve Harley and most of Thunder, it wasn't till after I left that things turned more sonically serious, with Teacher's Pet, a fashionable 'power-pop' outfit whose 1978 single, "Missing Person" brushed the lower reaches of the chart and to this day changes hands in Japan for many thousands of Yen (which converts to roughly 60p). 

In the 80s, power-pop having run its course, I joined Are You Henry, who included the excellent singer/songwriter Bill Clift (still going strong; www.billclift.com is well worth a visit), until I met and eventually married a geordie lass, who, like all geordie lasses a long way from home, soon started to miss her mam. We moved up to the northeast in 1990, sadly leaving behind my beautiful 9-drum Tama setup - there were hefty bills to pay and it was time to grow up and move on… 

…except that growing up and moving on proved a little tougher than I imagined, and before you could say 'Keith Moon', I'd bought a little Yamaha kit which I pretended was for the children to learn on, and formed Pure Audio with some work colleagues. Pure Audio became Crazy88 and suddenly I was gigging regularly in my new homeland.   In 2005 I joined an ambitious and original young band called The Longsands and had three fantastically busy and exciting years on the road and in the studio, before deciding to make way for a younger man and return to the covers circuit, answering an ad on the Riffs website and hooking up with Jo and the band. 

I currently play Pearl drums and Zildjian K crash cymbals with a Sabian HH ride.