'DENNIS quits court job for pop group' read the Hereford Times headline when Music Pool

administrator Dennis Schiavon left his position as Junior Clerk at Hereford Magistrates Court in 1980.

He was heading north to join the punk band The Revillos - a popular Edinburgh-based band that had started its life as a Sixties revival group.

"I was 19 at the time and very, very heavily into music," he says.

An avid reader of the 'musicians wanted' columns in the music press, when the right ad came up he went for it, beating off a field of over fifty.

Before he knew it, he was appearing on Saturday morning television and travelling around the world with the 7-piece sci-fi influenced pop group, likened in style to the B-52s.

The next four years' passed in a blur, with Indie chart success, plenty of television work and always on the road. The band released three albums and five singles and had a wild time, on and off stage.

"We got on well most of the time," Dennis says, "but it's like most things creative, there were volatile times."

With two lead singers, three musicians and two backing singers (The Revettes), wearing little more than lurex, lycra and lam, Dennis was living the life he'd always dreamed about.

Now it's time for those days to be revisited.

Approached by a punk nostalgia record label, tapping in to the resurgence of new wave and punk nostalgia, the band's 1982 vinyl release, Attack is now out on CD.

Integrity

"There's not an awful lot going on in the charts right now, just a rehashing of old material.

"Manufactured bands have always existed, they're just more blatant now. In our day bands were properly organic, responsible for every note, every word that we'd learned together.

"And I think people valued that integrity."

The band's original mastertapes were lost in the mists of time, so it was no mean feat to put it together. Having spent a few weeks holed up in a mastering studio in Oxfordshire, the new release sounds better than Dennis ever remembers.

"It's been a personal crusade," he says.

"And great to hear how fresh, raw and inspired that sound really was".

Still answering to his rock pseudonym Vince Santini, and a working musician - Dennis plays regularly with the rock covers band, The Big Top - it is not inconceivable that The Revillos may hit the road again.

"There have been various attempts at reunion over the past twenty years," Dennis says.

When the band were dropped in 1984 by EMI for being 'commercially unviable' he returned to Hereford and a nine to five job.

"I was gripped by a desire to wear a suit and come home for tea."

A few reincarnations on - Dennis spent several years touring as a jobbing actor - and Dennis is these days happily ensconced in his life at community based music charity, The Music Pool.

"I care passionately about music, what it can do for people, and Hereford," he says.

Look again and you can still catch just a hint of lam in his eye.

l Attack is available from most good record shops on the Captain Oi! label priced £8.99. Also at www.captainoi.com catalogue no AHOYCD212. Most tracks are co-written by Dennis and the CD contains three singles previously unreleased.