ormed as cover act Notre Dame. Changed their name to Jameson Raid in August 1975.

It was in the late summer of 1975 when Terry Dark, a butcher's son from Sparkhill, met John Ace, an unemployed drain-layer, in a betting shop in Aston. At the time, John, who was heavily into playing double bass with his feet, was looking for a band. Terry, who had been off the road for nine months since his previous band, The Surgeons, had been jailed for malpractice, saw his chance. They recruited Ian Smith, who had just returned from a three year trip to the Shetlands to catch wood lice and was looking for somewhere to do nothing. They also called on Phil Kimberley, 'cause he lived just down the road and also because he was the only person with a big enough drum kit (which he intended to learn to play sometime in the distant future).

The music progressed to its then-present form from versions of Swedish and Irish nursery rhymes and Terry's influence of singing ballads whilst diving off wardrobes.

The band had its ups and downs, like when Phil tried to shoot Ian's knees off on a bus as part of his macro-economic experiments (designed to prove that Ian's knees have a "damping" effect on the long-term investment plans of large international companies - a fact which Ian denies to this day), or when Terry took a meat cleaver to John's neck when he had a hopping fit on stage one night.