Area 7

Area 7 is an Australian band that started out in a cover band called “Mad Not Madness”. 3 members left in 1994 to write and play their own music, creating a band called “Dawning of a New Era”, which was a lyric from “The Specials”. These three people were; Charles Thompson who played the guitar (also known as “Chucky T”), Dugald McNaughtan who played the keyboards and Dan Morrison who played the Drums.

In 1996, another member of the band left; Walter Eskdale, who was the lead singer of the band. However he was replaced by John Stevens, or “Stevo” as he became to be known. He was previously from the band names “Yeah Yeah!”

Around the time of 2002, three more band members left and were replaced by two new members. Alistair Shepherd who played the sax, Rohan Pacey who played the bass and Toby Dragaville who played the trumpet were those that left. The bass positions was filled by Chris Meighen and the trumpet was filled with Matt Sanders, but the saxophone position was not filled again.

Some say that the last major change of band members was brought about by the lack of success of the album “Say It To My Face” released in 2001, which only reached #36 in Australia. With such good sales from their first album, “Bitter & Twisted” released in 2000 reaching Gold Status and #3 in the Australian charts, they failed to meet expectations. Since then they released an album in 2005 called “Torn Apart”.