The Charms was a pop band formed by Mags, Ken, Tomás and Michael with a selection of drummers, in January 1995.
Karl O'Leary was the original drummer (after the Alesis SR16), and, some would say, the best. Declan Campion took the
drum throne in August 1996 and really rocked things up. We were the next best thing, we were dedicated and very tight.
We even have live recordings to prove it! There were lots of different musical ideals in this group. We wrote some
interesting songs, did some fun gigs and we learned that music is about people, not lyrics, notes or even grooves.
A valuable lesson... Ken and Tomás are madtheory, while Mags is a guest vocalist. Mike regularly adds his magic to
madtheory tracks. Declan has changed career and Karl is a lady's man. Tomás.

1997 wasa glorious year really of gigging - full of excitement and exhiliration. Wouldn't it be great to do it all again! I had no idea
the Starchild gig was our last one - that always seemed lke the start of something for me. I remember feeling that is was
probably our most composed and professional gig. I think we really hit a high point with that one. The Melting Pot gig
was always spoiled for me by the name of the band that we doubled up with. When I think of us playing with a melting
pot I think of sweating miners slaving away under a harsh coalface, swigging beer sodden with tea and naked to the oxters,
their coal-lined mouths oozing with coal tar and their hairy chests glistening in the dusky lamplight. How could that ever do
as a background for our sparkling pop?? Michael.

We've put these songs up for sentimental reasons, but if you like them, great, let us know! All but two songs were recorded by Tomás on a Tascam cassette four track, some bounced over to a Yamaha 4 track to allow a stereo drum mix. Most of the mixes you hear were later transferred into Cubase for mixing, while some are from the original DCC mixes straight from the four track. Tomás went to the trouble of manually syncing the overdubs from the second four track with the original tracks on the first four track tape, so that all tracks were first generation. It was a charming task...

The Charms circa 1896