As he’s joining the band on a short-term secondment, it would seem only polite to introduce our adoring fan to Dusty Jopling: thinker, drinker, tinkerer and drummer extraordinaire.

Born Dusty Jackson to a showbiz family, a swift escape in early childhood and a change of identity bought Doug to Preston where he swiftly gained qualifications sufficient to propel him to the hallucinating spires of Loughborough University. There he played drums with the Waterpistols and met a young singer called Neil. A meeting that was to have grim consequences for both men and for music in general.
Doug’s meteoric (i.e, plummeting rapidly from a great height) career then led him to Birmingham where he manned the skins for SwampManGirl between bouts of design work in the exractor fan industry.
After several depressing years of having to earn a living, the two were reunited and shared a house in the bucolic, antique-trading backwater of Tetbury where, in between drinking excessively, offending neighbours and freaking out houseguests, they found time to write ‘Multiple Choice’ and ‘ShadowPictures’.
Doug’s fate then led him to the USA, Malaysia and finally the tropical paradise that is Leeds, where he took up the sticks for The Revelator Band – a pirate blues-rock outfit that sadly foundered in stormy seas recently. On the plus side, this freed their drummer up to fill in for the Layers in the USA, so every cloud…
Nobody knows where Doug’s life will lead next, apart from an old Gypsy woman who read his palm at a fete a few years ago but she refused to tell him the details after he tried to pay her with Monopoly money. She was later killed by a bus that she hadn’t seen coming.
We’re delighted to have Dusty as a temporary Layer and hope that it won’t sting too much when we have to rip him off and discard him.