Kris Weston, former member of The Orb, has written a fascinating blog about The Orb, his former bandmates, and some of the shady goings-on over the last 20 years which he feels has been a history re-write.
“This page is basically a mile long rant which turned into a battle over royalties, lies and loads of crap about a band called The Orb, a name I once made a number one selling act, which since I left, has consistently managed to release absolute dross and devalue my back catalogue,” explains Weston
The rant starts out as an attack on last year’s compilation which Weston claims he isn’t receiving any royalties for despite having created at least half of the tracks.
“So THIS is The Orbs ‘new’ album. I say new, but its actually a load of old….. er tracks. This album features rather a lot of my work, rather a lot of my mixing and rather a lot of me onstage, including Top of The Pops footage that is so cringe worthy I’ve managed to hide it from my mates for years.
I didn’t ask for this to come out, I didn’t give it the ridiculously pretentious title and I had no idea this would be coming out at the same time as my Crowd-funding effort.”
Weston argues that over the years the band’s history has been mis-reported to the point that it is now a complete work of fiction and, after years of torment, he’s decided to give his side of the story.
“I found it hard to even talk about The Orb for many years, if people brought it up in conversation I would quickly change the subject or play it down.
“The press articles I’ve seen that dealt with my period in the band featured such outrageous lies, I just blanked them out and left it.
“Over the years the articles became more and more a rewrite of history and now as a result of dealing with all this, I can remain silent no longer.”
Weston then goes through the band’s entire Wikipedia page correcting almost all of it. He then takes aim at former band members Andy Hughes, who he describes as a “cokehead,” Thomas Fehlmann, who he described as a “weird looking aids victim,” and Dr Alex Patterson, who takes the main brunt of the attack, as a “twattercake”.
He’s finishes off his rant with his thoughts on Thomas Fehlmann performing one of his tracks: “Thomas Fehlmann had fuck all to do with this track. I wrote this track. This illustrates perfectly the history rewrite. Thomas go fuck yourself, go make more bland shitty tunes and leave my ones the fuck alone you weird looking aids victim.”
“As a result of the constant unauthorised re-releases, the unauthorised remasters by people I would never let touch my music, the fraudulent royalties, the lies, the shameful exploitation of my work by Island / Universal Records, the stealing of my work and renaming it, the illegal broadcasting of my music at gigs and such without my permission, the unauthorised use of my intellectual property and one other seriously fucked up thing I have decided to wage all out war against these people until such time as they stop exploiting my work, give me the money they owe me and GTFO”.
If you’ve got a spare hour be sure to check out the blog here.
