I’m Matt White. This blog’s pretty much here so that I have somewhere to share interesting links that I find, and to post any random thoughts that I have. One nice and easy thing to include in here is something that I have to answer reasonably often – what does WPBS stand for? Years ago, I put on a couple of gigs at the Agincourt in Camberley. One was a great success, got to pay everyone more than they asked for, all happy. The other one was a disaster, I think 7 people paid in and I lost around £300.
That could well have been the end of my involvement in putting on gigs, except for a few people from the B6K Collective in Guildford moving away and others wanting to keep doing stuff there. Originally, it was Tom Ellis, Ken Eakins, Matt Knell and myself, with others such as Rob O’Donnell getting involved later on. The all important question was obviously what to call the collective? I believe Protected By The Ejaculation Of Serpents was thought up by Ellis, and it’s a quote from The Wicker Man. Edward Woodward’s charachter is passing through a graveyard, and finds a stone with the inscription “here lieth Beech Buchanan, protected by the ejaculation of serpents.” Unfortunately, some places were a bit iffy about having posters with “ejaculation” on them, so it got shortened to Protected By Serpents.
Two Matts, so add the first letter of the surname, and you get MattWPBS (Matt White Protected By Serpents). The collective broke up finally a few years ago with people not being as interested or moving away, but it was a blast while it lasted. I’ll probably post some stuff about goings on when I get a chance.