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Ferrets can finally perform

Young Ferrets, performing. Picture: Nigel Chatfield
Young Ferrets, performing. Picture: Nigel Chatfield
City Fun magazine.

Thirty years ago The Performing Ferrets didn’t exactly find themselves swamped with accolades and fending off phone calls from EMI.

Nor was the young Maidstone band of DIY musicians championed by the press. One Kent Messenger headline ran: “Band barred after stabbing”.

If that wasn’t enough, not even their fans seemed to get them. The band spent a great deal of time and effort convincing skinhead fans that the song Didn’t Like Us wasn’t “about them”.

Who was it about? You guessed it – the Kent Messenger.


Click here to listen to a special alternative mix of album track The New One.

And yet against odds, increasingly lengthened by time, the group of former musicians, now in their late 40s, have found themselves faced with an unlikely offer – a record deal.

The achievement is impressive considering most band members went on to pursue non-musical careers, and haven’t played together since the early 1980s.

Ferret Nigel Chatfield, originally from Sutton Valence, played melodica, harmonica and guitar in the band, and now works as a housing policy officer in Newham, London.

He said the offer, which coincided with the band’s 30th anniversary, had initially been treated with scepticism.

He said: “An American company contacted us and said they’d like to put out an album but we’d had a few offers that never came to anything when we were younger.”

Despite such doubts, the band’s first commercial LP, No One Told Us, was released by American record label, Hyped2Death last weekend .

It’s not strictly a debut album in the truest sense; The Performing Ferrets released The Ferretable Thing LP in 1980 on underground independent label Dead Hippy and followed it up with an eponymous LP in 1982.

But the self-effacing rocker admits commercial success is still unlikely.

“We were definitely an acquired taste,” he joked. “We were popular in places we never played.”

However home-made and ramshackle it appeared though, he says they were always dedicated to their art.

“We always had self belief, we just enjoyed making stuff up.

“We say we’re the biggest thing to come out of Maidstone since Chicory Tip .

“We’re proud to be a Maidstone band and we always called ourselves that.”

Indeed the songs themselves are filled with references to the town, from the paranoid Didn’t Like Us to the less obliquely titled Bower Mount Road (it’s about walking down it) and of course Develop That River – a comment on the then-new St Peter’s Bridge.

As for the “stabbing” incident, Chatfield maintains it was blown out of proportion after someone cut their hand on a glass.

But will the band finally see cash from their musical endeavours?

“It would be nice,” said Mr Chatfield, “but I’m just quite pleased to have something out that we did. It seems a long time to wait.”

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