training sessions on icy football pitches. Ironically, not long after he sold is soul to Punk he was offered a trial with Coventry City, but his mind was made up already: he wanted to be in a band!

Fired by the DIY punk philosophy and the electro experiments of some of the post-punk musicians, he bought a synthesizer and formed a synthpunk band (that never got out of the bedroom) with a housemate in 1980. He has since played in bands or created music in a multitude of genres, including Reggae, Jazz-Funk, Freeform, Hip-Hop, House, Techno, Drum ‘n’ Bass, Folk and Bhangra-Urban Fusion. One freeform project, Art Vermin, in 1982 saw the launch of the musical talent of Doctor Das, later the founder of Asian Dub Foundation, and Mark was to collaborate further with him in another project, Delhi 4 Delhi, and went on to be ADF’s tour-bus driver for a time. With the advent of Electro-Funk/Hip-Hop, Mark became a beat junkie and, getting into African drumming, decided to focus on percussion as his primary instrument (having played mainly bass in Art Vermin). In the late eighties, the travellers’ scene and the summers of love drew him into rave culture, the free-party movement and making music on computers, sometimes with his brother, Joe, a member of rave pioneers, Nebula 2.

Almost as a timely antidote to the digital rave domain, Mark also joined the nascent Wholesome Fish, having chanced across them busking when he was walking back from a Forest match one Satdee afternoon and asking if he could join them on the triangle he saw they had. Folk music and the Fish’s punky sound and attitude had got its fingers into him and there was no way back, even though he had sworn as a punk that one music he would never play was Country! These days Mark is fairly monogamous to the Fish, but still dabbles in the odd hip-hop track through his Permanent Revolution project, who back in 1997 got a track licensed for use by Spike Lee in his film ‘Get on the Bus’. A DJ since the rave days, he now plays most weekends under the guise of Mista Shotta, spinning Funk, Soul, Jazz-Funk, Jazz, Latin, 60’s and 70’s Rock and RnB, Roots Reggae, Dub, Ska, Disco, House and Jungle.

A bit of a manic Marxist back in the day but now more of a laid-back left libertarian, Mark tends to vote Green in elections and supports direct action environmentalism (in theory, if not getting up to much himself). A thing that hasn’t changed, however, is his love for Nottingham Forest, and he firmly believes one day they will reclaim their rightful place in the upper reaches of the premiership! Come on u Reds!