Breaker
Breaker was Horace Panter's Soul / club band before the Specials.
Line up of Breaker
Margo Buchanan - vocal, Gordon Reaney - guitar, Geoff Conway - drums, Horace Panter - bass.
A little bit of the history and lead up taken from his book Ska'd for Life and from the Hobo Magazine archives.
Funding for Hobo was difficult with printing costs rising rapidly, so Horace had already found a band by then as his follow up letter indicates.
He doesn't mention the name of the band in the letter but i assume it was Alive and Smilin'. I sent some possibilities for local gigs.
Horace was born in Croydon in 1953 and brought up in Kettering. His first band, c 1970 was "Mobius or Mobius Strip after the MC Escher called the Mobius Strip. Horace did "vocal and bass duties". They played live 6 times and Horace's own words "we were awful".
He landed a place at Coventry's Lanchester Polytechnic studying Fine Art in October 1972. Geoff Conway was his first musical contact in his 2nd year 73 - 74 - he was Social Secretary and a drummer. One of the first year recruits was Jerry Dammers, born in India in 1955, his father was a clergy man. Together with Bob Carter and Roy Butterfield (who had played lead in the early version of Indian Summer and later wrote songs with Tom Robinson, they formed a band called Alive and Smilin' - short lived though.
In June 1973, I, Trev Teasdel and John Bargent (who ran Rougestar Music Promotions and Disco), set up Hobo Coventry Music and Arts Magazine. We received an advert from Horace in the August. It appeared in the February .1974 issue.
Funding for Hobo was difficult with printing costs rising rapidly, so Horace had already found a band by then as his follow up letter indicates.
Breaker began in 1975 when Horace finished his degree. He and Geoff Conway remained when Alive and Smilin' split up and Horace met Margo Buchanan and her boyfriend Gordon Reaney. Margo had done vocals with Alive and Smilin' latterly and both her and Gordon had been in a band from Matlock in Derbyshire called SMACK back in 1973 and they moved to Coventry for the music scene and signed up with Craig ward's Sunshine Music agency in Gulson Road Coventry. Olllie Oliver aka Doc Mustard and Nick Trevisthick complete the line up. The original band back in Matlock was called Pug Ma Ho.
Horace says of Breaker, in his book Ska'd For Life."The plan was to form a band that was versatile enough to play funky / soul stuff in discos but had a 'standard' repertoire to do Working Men's Clubs. The band was to be called Breaker which had an American CB kind of vibe...We emptied dance floors all over the country. We couldn't possibly compete with the new funk 12-inch releases that the DJ's were playing..Working Men's Clubs were another universe completely. Three half hour spots in between several games of bingo. No fast tunes until the end, please. One time we got sent packing because people got up and danced when they weren;t supposed to, Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough. "And tonight, ladies and Gentlemen, all the way from...where are you from again?..The Breaker Showgroup!'
In retrospect, Breaker was on a hiding to nothing from the start, but I wanted to play, and if anything good came from my stay in the band, it was that I learnt to be comfortable on stage."
Breaker had a Monday night residency at the Smithfield Arms in Coventry, in 1976 and it was there Jerry Dammers came to see them and asked Horace to work on some songs he had written and eventually to join the Coventry Automatics who became The Special AKA.
Horace Panter
Craig Ward of Coventry's Sunshine Music Agency, Gulson Road Coventry, wrote a history of the band SMACK featuring Gordon Reaney and Margo Buchanan later of Breaker.
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