CHRIS COOMBS
Chris needs no introduction, so here it is! From the early recordings in Bretton to his membership of The Wires, he is by far the most involved person in Holyground after Mike. A brilliant singer and composer, and a close friend, Holyground just wouldn't be the same without him. He appears on virtually all Holground releases. The first psych rock LP, A to Austr, owes a lot to his music, words and performances: it also owes its name . . .

Chris writes : 7 Laburnum Road, Epsom, Surrey. My birthplace. My home for the first eighteen years of life . . . surrounded by books, books, books. Some were my Mum's friends'; some my Dad's, others my brother Tony's; whilst many were and still are mine; 'though I knew them all. In the big front bedroom of our suburban Victorian semi were some real old codgers . . . a set of 20's Encyclopaedia Britannica, bound in battered green, each one the size of three telephone directories. Like kind but stuffy old relations, I would happily spend a wet Sunday afternoon with them satisfying my youthful eclecticism.

They passed on long ago but I see them now . . . I can run my eyes along their strange familiar names:
A - Austr; Austr - Calga; Calho - Const; Const - Edwar; Edwar - Mum;
Mun - Paym; Payn - Reeve; Refec - Shutt; Shuva - Tom Tom; Tonal - Zymot; Aalan - Oyma; Paki - Zuid; Index.

Unconsciously I chose the name of the first of these wise old friends,and the curious tales he told, when we were struggling for a title of the first wholly original Holyground Album. Prophetically, Brian Calvert went to Austr(alia). I wonder which of us is destined to go to Calga?