Biography
Hello! We are Vienna Ditto and we are a 3 piece rockabilly/electronic band from Reading, Oxford and London, comprising Hatty Taylor on vocals, Nigel Firth on guitar and 'top, Rum Scotty Lawrence does the hitting and 'top too. We started off writing wacky little tunes on a laptop, quite badly. This was largely on Nigel's boat but also in Hatty's bedroom, with duvets and stuff hanging on the walls to try make it sound all professional. The first tune was called 'Long Way Down'.
That particular tune somehow got to Linda Serck on BBC Berks who gave it the highest score ever on their demo review panel back in April. We couldn't believe it! Anyhow she passed it on to Huw Stephens on Radio 1 who played it on his show which was a bit nuts. At this point we still hadn't played live, or even had a band practice or anything- actually the three of us hadn't been in the same room, so when Linda phoned up in late April and said we'd been given a slot on the BBC Introducing stage at Glastonbury at the end of June we had a mad scramble getting it all together. At this point I didn't even have a guitar amp so when I found some old wreck dumped in a front garden I thought "that'll do...". Anyhow it turned out it was some super swank amp from the sixties that was worth about £2500, which was nice. Although I still fear it might electrocute me. Just as we were getting over this a guy phoned up from Radio 1 and offered us a session at Maida Vale and we were like "what the fuck?!" This led to another mad rush bit as it was to be at the end of July. Actually in the end we got a bit fed up of rushing and started mucking about doing cover versions with Hats on drums, Scott on guitar and me on vocals, which probably sounded awful but was fun.
Our pal Chris Britton let us use his studio to rehearse, and helped us sort out all the squiggly electronic bits so we could play live. He also came along and helped us with the live sound bits at Glastonbury, which was a right giggle. We actually played straight after Speech Debelle, though no-one had really heard of her then. Was a surprise when Micachu suddenly strolled up through the backstage bit and did a guest spot for her though!
Maida vale was super too- there was all manner of cameramen and lights and those cameras on rails like a train and stuff. Also there was a big plaque on the wall saying that Bing Crosby recorded his last session there which was very impressive.
Anyhow Chris offered to record and release a single on his label Weird City Electric Company and we set to work fiddling and tweaking and eating really unhealthy food like you do in studios. We're going to release that as a free download from our myspace (www.myspace.com/viennaditto) on November 14th for a month, and then whack it on iTunes.
Ooh and our BBC Maida Vale session is due to be broadcast on Tom Robinson's BBC6 show on 15th November -www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/
AND!!!!!! a truly bizarre twist, the band has just being asked to play on the Hollyoaks Music Show on 7th November, which is gonna be shown on T4 on Channel 4!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Some time in Nov).