What an anniversary this is! Mike formed Spectrum after the band he had been in, Party Machine wound up. He’d been impressed with the Party Machine style of delivering original songs. He enlisted Bill Putt (b); Lee Neale (kbds, v) and Mark Kennedy (d) for the first early Spectrum line-up (mid-1969). Mike (g,v) followed Party Machine’s style of playing lots of original songs and he began writing songs for Spectrum as Ross Wilson had done for Party Machine.

For their first 18 months together Spectrum earned very little. They were known to be aggressively original when this approach was not fashionable. However, there were people like Ed Nimmervol at music mags such as Go Set who were interested in this band and often wrote about them. Looking back Mike indicated he was pleased he’d held with what he wanted to do but he didn’t think he would have managed it unless the band had got support from the music mags.

While Spectrum were in Armstrong Studios with Kiwi-producer Howard Gable to record a jingle for the 1970 Launching Place Festival they had time left to record I’ll Be Gone – a song they had been playing at performances. However, it wasn’t until January 1971 many months after completing that recording, that the song was played on radio. By May it had reached No.1. And now it is an Oz-anthem.

Mike described Spectrum as an inner city band. They had become part of the head scene in Melbourne. Often crowds at their shows sat on the floor to listen to them when they played at venues like the TF Much Ballroom in Fitzroy. Playing with people sitting listening limited venues who would take them. They weren’t a pub band so Mike came up with the idea to form an alter-ego band (with the same band members) to play at venues where a more visceral feel was needed.

He had ideas for different songs for the new branch of the band. He presented these to the others and as they were a jamming band they worked on the songs together to complete them. This band, Indelible Murtceps presented differently too. Murtceps used less equipment and became a simple mobile band allowing them to preserve Spectrum as the concert band with all its big equipment (including all the lighting) whereas Murtceps equipment fitted into a van.

As well as playing at the TF Much Ballroom, Spectrum also played at well-known Melbourne clubs like Sebastians and Berties. They played at the festivals including Wallacia (1971), Myponga (1971) and at the first Sunbury Festival in January 1972.

Spectrum last 2 years then the core of the band: Mike and Bill moved on to form Ariel. But like I’ll Be Gone Spectrum didn’t ever really go away. During the mid-80s Melbourne saw the first serious attempt to re-establish Spectrum.

Some months after Bill’s death in 2013 Mike built another line-up of the band then in 2017, he added guitarist Brenden Mason (from Madder Lake) into the mix and often these days Spectrum and Madder Lake share the bill at gigs in Melbourne.