World Secret

It was the time of Thatcherism, the time of anti-Apartheid, before the Berlin Wall became a tourist attraction.

(1989) The Eighties were becoming really boring, dressing up like girls and wearing dungarees just seemed so uncool.

“Lady Africa” was the first song we ever wrote, by we I mean Perrie Walder-Vocals and Bass Guitar and Garry Cox on Keyboards and programming. Under the name “White Russia”.

Step one in our plan for world domination was to get a band together. The first gigs we did were in early 1990, a guitarist John Rhodes joined and we went out with a drum machine. In March 1990 we played the Battle of the Bands, but had to keep stum about the fact we had already signed a record deal and this could have been seen as bending the rules of the competition. We were lucky we had our own rehearsal space that we could use anytime, we practiced all the time, and we got really good.

Our Live gigs full of Theater, great songs and great moments, brought attention from Live agents (tough people) one of the drummers we had was told after his first gig with us “The band was fantastic, but you were shit”. We never saw him after that.

The recording of “On the loveline” was a bitter pill to swallow a potential single with record company backing, The Producer decided to pretty much take all control of the song, and turned a dance song with edgy rock guitar into a Techno Euro mess, I find it difficult to listen to that song now he really ruined it not just artistically but finically and mentally.

In 1991 we again found ourselves with no drummer, but were committed to playing live gigs, so once again we were a three piece with a drum machine (Barry Wheeler played the guitar) this was the beginning of the end and mid way through 1991 Perrie left.

Garry and Barry tried to keep the band going and auditioned other vocalists to sing the “White Russia” songs, but even though many of the vocalists were very good, they just weren’t right.

In 1992 Perrie agreed to come back and record some songs, these songs included “World Secret” “Hideaway Girl” and “Theme for unknown soldiers”.

Garry and Perrie still remained friends but the band was finished. After a falling out, I don’t think either of us can remember what it was about, we lost contact in 1995.

Ten years later and a chance meeting, we agreed to re-record “Hideaway Girl” and “Theme for unknown soldiers” unfortunately before we could get it together, Perrie had a motorcycle accident and was left disabled, losing the use of his right arm and his Bass playing abilities. But Perrie being Perrie was determined to carry on.

2005 was getting to know each other again, Garry’s multi-instrumental skills now included having to learn all of Perrie’s Bass parts. But this time it was better we were older, wiser and could say “that was shit” do it again without it ending up with one of us getting the strop. We knew it was good we knew it was something worth putting time and energy into and we agreed to write some new songs and record an album.

It wasn’t until 2007 that the first of the news songs came along “Signs” Joanne Arrowsmith sessioned on vocals after we had used her talents on “Hideaway Girl” and we knew we had raised the bar, this was even better than the first time, this was shortly followed by “ME” and “Jessica Brown” and a new band name “World Secret”.

In 2009 the World Secret website was released and a number of songs were issued as a free release including “Sad eyed Beagles” and “Heaven Knows I’ve tried”.

In 2011 The World Secret Album was released called “World Secret” the album received glowing press, was nominated for three awards and won most requested song of the year in 2011 for “Hey little piggy” on Total Biker FM.