Techno / Synth Pop
Manchester, England, United Kingdom
Early techno band that used to just be called Access. Members went on to form World Wide Message Tribe.
According to Mark Pennells: “We called ourselves Except For Access like the road sign. We had a photo taken where we stood under a road sign…. We weren't really getting anywhere and it wasn't really happening so we thought 'let's change the name of the band.' We'd released a tape called Made Perfect. So we switched it and said, 'Let's call the band Made Perfect, and the album Except For Access.' It was a terrible idea, completely confused our market.”
Zarc Porter said “Mark Pennells and myself had previously been in a band called Except For Access, trying to get a mainstream record deal. We'd had lots of interest from various labels and managers but nothing solid. During our time with the band we did some schools evangelism where Andy Hawthorne would come and preach at the end of our gigs. Mark was feeling that he wanted to focus more on schools work and I wanted to support that by working on tracks for him with some recording gear we had used for the band.” This led to the formation of The Massive World Wide Message Tribe, which was shortened to The World Wide Message Tribe.
Mark Pennells had a solo album called One of These Days in 1990. He had this to say: “One Of These Days was really just the same lineup - me singing, Zarc providing the tracks - as Except For Access. I don't know why we called it a solo album! I decided that I'd go out on my own in the schools. That was really the beginning of Message To Schools.”
| 1985 | Access | There Will be Dancing! |
| 1985 | Except for Access | Easy Life / All I Ever Had (7-inch) |
| 1987 | Except for Access | Give Me Another World |
| 1989 | Except for Access | Made Perfect |
| 1990 | Mark Pennells | One of These Days |