Band Family Trees: Inchworm

A R T I C L E
Band Family Trees: Inchworm
by Ian Duggan

​In the second issue of HUPzine we ran our first Hamilton ‘band family tree’. A “band family what”, you might ask? ‘Rock Family Trees’, as they are commonly known, were the invention of English rock journalist Pete Frame, writer since the 1960s for music magazines such as NME, Melody Maker and Rolling Stone. His first trees, however, appeared in his own magazine, Zigzag, in 1971. What the trees basically do is chart changes in bands, or whole music scenes, by constructing ‘family trees’ based upon the interrelationships of members among bands. To date Frame has created at least a couple of thousand such trees. (continued, below)
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This isn’t the first time family trees have been created for Hamilton bands. Back in the early 1990s, and probably earlier, band family trees were being created by Malcolm Hutchison for bands such as Watershed, which is where I first came across (and became inspired by) them. Hamilton bands seem particularly incestuous, making them ideal subjects for such trees. People come, and people go from Hamilton, commonly necessitating the need to change band members, or to form whole new bands.

Our first (and to date only) tree centred on Inchworm, which was a bit of a challenge first up! For example, bassist Scott Brodie, who also played here recently in Grok, has been in at least 11 other bands through time — and as you will see from the tree, rather than simply going from one to another sequentially, he has commonly been involved in several bands simultaneously (all of his bands certainly can’t be shown on this tree)! Scott has commented that following his move to the UK in 2000, the English members of one of his new bands were shocked to find he was in a second band, and indeed felt he was some kind of a traitor for doing so! Anyway, this is the first of our family trees, and the first of what we hope will be many. We hope you find them interesting!