Flavel Bambi Septet

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The Flavel Bambi Septet were formed as a light hearted outfit dedicated to the performing of classic Arab music and other middle eastern pop music standards.

The group demonstrated their fundamental problems with basic integer arithmetic by almost never performing with 7 members. At their peak, there were 13 members of the band, including the excellent Natacha Atlas.

The band were formed on the basis of a concept, not so much written on the back of a cigarette packet, as discovered at the bottom of a pint of beer. Or in truth, several pints of beer.

Several members of the yet-to-form Septet had been part of the popular beat combo Furniture, who, courtesy of the British Council, had been on tour around the middle east (no doubt surprising some of the locals with their blue-eyed soul-pop-funk stylings). Whilst on furlough, at various times during the trip, several cassettes (remember them, eh?) of Arabic music were obtained, and, on return to Blighty, were played one evening after a sesh down the King's Head, Acton. This, for those present, was the crossing of a musical Rubicon.

So, acting upon the impulse that only good British beer can provide, the IDEA was born..." Hey, that song is great! (The song in question was a 40 minute epic from the legendary Warda)...let's try and do it ourselves!" Or something like that anyway.

Thus, the acorn was planted that later became the great oak of the Flavel Bambi Septet.

The first gig or two consisted of the one song " I Will Love You For Ever and Ever" by the aformetioned Warda although somewhat reduced in scope. The original featured a multistring orchestra, multiple percussion players, not to mention the mighty Warda herself, so having only one violin, no percussionist (apart from the guitarist, who, strangely enough, in a previous existence, had been a drummer) and no vocalist. She will turn up somewhat later in this tale. Oddly enough, at this point there had been a plan to include a second song in the repertoire, bizzarely enough, "Spacer" by Sheila and B Devotion. I think the drummer liked it, in fact.

But soon, more songs from around the globe, and more musicians from around the Acton and West London area, accreted to the Flavels (as they were jocularly known), like calculus to teeth, and thus the legend that The Flavel Bambi Septet became, was well and truly established.