This site is now a shrine to the once great band 18th Emergency. We existed from about 1997 to about 2004. We had evolved from a 3 piece consisting of Billy, Dave and Neil Sheppard on bass/vox known as the Escape. This was a punk band inspired by the Clash, Green Day, the Ramones and the Wildhearts, together we released a 5 track casette called 'Tunnel Vision' but then kinda broke up as Dave, soon followed by Billy joined a cover band called Mr. Meaner (now known as the SeaMonkeys)

Later Phil suggested we get the band back together and have him as vocalist. We renamed ourselves 18th Emergency after one of Dave's favourite books from school and started to write some tunes. Neil and Billy wrote most of the songs with Phil writing lyrics too.

We gigged in and around Kent in places like The Forum - Tunbridge wells, the Carlisle - Hastings, Planet Hellingly - Hellingly, and the Union Bar - Maidstone. We also supported a few big names along the way including the Yo-Yos, Toploader, Nojahoda, and Peter and the Test-tube babies which was especially cool as we used to cover one of their songs in our set ('Run like hell').

We released 3 records, the 'Shut it' EP and 'Therapution' which had 3 tracks from 'Shut it', and a 3 track CD called 'Denying truth'. We recorded the first CD at S16 studios located in Tunbridge wells on digital in a day, and came back to do the mixing a week later. The other 2 were done at the Granary Studios in Lamberhurst with Guy. Our sound was so much better on these two and that's probably due to the double tracked guitars. For 'Denying truth' we had Ben Wilks on Bass who played with us in Meaner. Our sound definately changed on this record to something a little more groove orientated with a harder edge. We didn't get to gig these new songs as much and after we finished the recording we soon broke up again as Ben left the band, and we all got involved in another cover band called the Mighty Worm.

We got back together again in late 2003 and auditioned bass players until we found Darren. We took a jamming approach to come up with new songs instead of just one person writing but we didn't really produce much at all and only played a few gigs. It all came to a head when Dave left his job to take up the drums professionally as a session drummer and teacher. He is presently in a band called 4th Wall, and has toured with the Anti-nowhere League briefly.

Billy and Darren joined a band from Chatham briefly called Lumina and now Billy is in Catalyst. Neil has just recorded an album with a mate of ours John Ling and they're called the Last Ghosts.

Find our music on these sites:

www.burbs.co.uk

www.peoplesound.com

www.locozrecords.com