(1977-2005)
1st period - The Establishment
(1977- 1980 )
In October 1977 in a small greek town by the Corinthian gulf namedXylokastro, a group of school boys were sitting together on the beach talking about forming a rock band.The band’s name came out to be THE MOLES BAND and it’s name was strongly associated with the boys school identities and in particular with the lesson of chemistry.
The Moles Band was created on the 27.10.1977 by Takis Dedes (drums), Antonis Lymperides (guitar), Thanassis Panou (bass), Christos and Dimitris Mavromatis (keyboards), Aristides Stamatopoulos (guitar) and George Kanelos (guitar) Their music was reflecting the pluralistic radio music in Greece at those times.
2nd period - The first gigs
(1980- 1985)
Three years later in October 1980, an old school-mate from the kindergarden and the primary school days, Ilias Missyris comes back in Xilokastro after been away for more than 10 years. He recognises his old school-mates at Karavidas café and finally he joins the band as a lead singer and occasionally percussionist. Being all of them students at that time, the half of them were studying in the city of Patras and the other half in Athens but during the weekends the Moles Band was getting together at a small 2 room warehouse near by the railroad rugs. It was there where they learned to play together by practicing popular rock songs from 60’s and 70’s which they already have heard from the radio or from a tape recorder.
It was not so easy to try to keep a rock band in that times in Greece. And especially when you had to deal with the small-town stereotypes of that time which considered young rockers to be some kind of young hippies that all they did was making terrible noise, use drugs and taking advantage of little school girls that were curious to visit their place and listen to the band while practicing... All those bad rumours about the band were spread from unwatered (xeneroti) villagers who didn’t have anything else to do than to blame young people who tried to learn to play some music together. Actually this small town stereotype not only did not effected Moles band’s wiliness to go on but actually contributed to its later success and for that we Thank them...
In reality what was really happening at the Moles place it was very much different of what people thought.... The place was a small warehouse belonged to Takis Dedes (drums) father Mr.Spyros who was using the half of the place as wine cellar. For that, he has placed a couple of barrels of his finest Corinthian white wine waiting to be ready for consuming. Paradoxically, those barrels were getting half-empty during the weekends and while the band was there practicing songs (to the big surprise of Mr Spyros who finally didn’t bother at all…because wine is a free product in the Corinthian region)
That wine barrels of Mr. Spyros provided the Moles band with the motivation to continue playing and with the inspiration to start to create their own songs.It was not very long when the Moles band started to be famous and someway quite wanted to come to perform their first gigs in Xilokastro town and the surrounding Corinthian area. They played mainly in hotel restaurant-bars, summer discos, summer movie theatres and a couple of big gigs at Xilokastro highschool and at Touristiko periptero, the main beach restaurant of the famous Pefkias sea-forest in Xilokastro town.
And It was that particular gig that the band felt that they have learned to play good together because that night they got their first positive critics from one of the great greek singers- the late Tony Maroudas who was performing there too that night and who heard the Moles band playing: Keep it up guys, he said. And the Moles kept it up until 1985 when they had to brake up because their studies were over and the greek army was calling them one by one for a 2 years service…
3rd period-The Depression
(1985- 1990)
During this 5 years period of depression, the Moles band do not exist anymore and their members are serving their military time…However, a significant event that took place during that period was the creation of a new band who’s life lasted less than one year and its name was EMERGENCY CASE. That band was formed by Antonis Lymperides (guitar), Ilias Missyris (vocals, guitar) George Gourvelos (bass) Tasos Missyris (drums), and George Alexandropoulos (drums), That band’s purpose was to practice and work with a a series of self-made creations that most of them were inspired during this period of depression and were arranged by Antonis Lymperides (guitar), Ilias Missyris (vocals, guitar) and George Gourvelos (bass). Those songs were performed only once at Arion Hotel in December 1988.
The creation of the EMERGENCY CASE was of a great significance since it has succeeded to its objective to save the self made music creations and also because it played an important role to create again motivation for a possible MOLES comeback in the beginning of the 90’s. Another important factor of this period of time was the moral support from the Moles Funs and other local musicians and culture personalities of that time as the “Olympian” Giorgos Hristou (or Tsatuhas), Petropoulos brothers(Nikos and Jiannis) Giorgos Zafiropouros and his brother the late Hristos Zafiropoulos the owners of the legendary BabelClub, Kostas Golden-Arvanitakis ,Vassilis Liakos and his wife Kiki, Disco owner George Kouris, musicians Thanassis Zongas,Kostas Karageorgas ,Bill Hitas and his brother Kostas, the late Nik Doikas and the always "dry" Pavlos Vakatatsis, good friends Diomedes and Andreas Hassouras as well as the Tsamis Brothers (Tanas and Kostas-Gnostos), Alex Kouroumalis, George Handis, Takis Varduniotis as well as the crazy easy-riders Andreas Korkas and Andreas Pandazis and so many other super-individuals who have contributed with madness and brainstorming to the resurrection of the Moles Band in the beginning of the 90's.
