Deke Roberts and Barry King were school friends, who decided to form a band ‘THE NITE WRECKERS’. They played a few gigs, but struggled, due in those days to the band name, organisers felt it was an intimidating name, so they changed it to ‘THE UNNAMED’. Under the new name, the band established itself as one of Oxford’s top acts.
After a period of time and personnel changes, the band morphed into ‘MOTHERLY LOVE’, which Barry left not long after, to settle down into married life (sic!)
When ‘MOTHERLY LOVE’ split up, Nick was alerted to Deke’s availability, so set about adding him to the ‘DIESEL DOUGHNUT’ lineup, (Deke always felt it was one of the best sales pitches he had encountered!!)
With Deke in the band the musical direction changed both dramatically and quickly, leading to the original guitarist quitting, citing musical differences. At this point a new guitarist, Richard Witoszynski joined the band
With Richard on board, the band flexed its musical muscles but found a 4 piece lineup limiting, so set about adding another guitarist, a second drummer and a second singer. With this lineup, Deke was able to start introducing his own material. It was also felt that a new name would assist the total change in musical direction, so ‘BOSS RADIO’ was born
‘BOSS RADIO’ lasted for a couple of years and were maybe at the point of a breakthrough (John Peel was showing interest), when half the band quit to play pub gigs
Nick moved overseas after this, so lost contact with Deke until the early nineties when Frank Zappa passed away, at which point ‘BOSS RADIO’ was resurrected to celebrate his music. To do the music justice they gathered together a 12 piece band which included a 5 piece brass section
This band lasted a couple of years after which Deke and Nick went their separate ways, until they met up once more in January 2016 and Nick suggested they get together again, leading to them attending some jam sessions at an Oxford pub, where Richard was in the house band and Deke reconnected with Barry. Both expressed an interest in forming a new band ‘THE NIGHT WRECKERS’, (full circle for Deke and Barry)
All the band needed now was a bass player, they were helped in the early stages by a couple of musician friends until a permanent player was found, thanks to the assistance of John Pilkington who had previously played with Deke and Nick. Jamie Long (“I will never forgive John”) then came on board and ‘THE NIGHT WRECKERS’ was complete
Sadly in 2021, Jamie passed away, so the band needed a replacement bassist, they have spent the time carefully looking at who is available – eventually Jake Kirkpatrick was selected, being an extremely experienced and excellent player
Also in January 2022, Richard decided to leave, citing musical differences and has been replaced by John Keston Hole, who originally joined the band to allow Deke to play keyboards, something which he will continue to do