the myth Official website
S K I P I N T R O
The Myth Malta Official Website - Welcome to the Official Website of The Myth - a rock band that is one of the oldest in Malta. Band members: Dion Farrell (guitar/vocals), Mark Galea (drums), Karen Farrell (guitar/backing vocals), Edward Muscat (guitar), Patrick Mifsud (bass). Dion and Mark met in 1989 when Dion, together with some other friends, was rehearsing for a rock mass. Mark was introduced as the drummer, but in the end, he didn’t play. However, they continued playing and jamming together and the following year, another rock mass was organised. This time, Mark was the drummer. Etienne Farrell and Karen Tanti, two of the choir members, would later form part of the band. With the rock mass over, Dion and Mark discussed the possibility of forming a band. Two other members joined in, Jason Zammit on the guitar and Adrian Vella on vocals. In September 1990, the band officially started rehearsing. Their first two songs were Children Of The Grave by Black Sabbath and With His Empty Hands by Lenny Kravitz.But there remained one problem: the band still didn’t have a name. As it happens in most bands in the making, everyone was giving his ideas. The name Machine Head stuck for a while until one day, Dion was talking to an old friend of his, Henry Abela, who suggested that the band should be called The Myth.Two months after its formation, the new band was asked to perform during the Jesus Festival, an annual event held at St Agatha’s College, and which that year was to be held on the 24th November. For a new band in the very early ‘90’s, the prospect was quite high: nearly one thousand seats were booked, local news papers published their photos and TVM showed part of their performance during the 8 o’ clock news. The new band was on a high. In fact, they didn’t even mind carrying their equipment to and from the venue by bus, including the guitar amps and parts of the drum kit!That same year, Dion started writing some original material for the band; the first three being Master Of Death; In The Night, which he wrote and recorded as a demo in 20 minutes, and Cindy.In 1991, Dion replaced Adrian and became the guitarist and vocalist of the band, while Etienne Farrell, Dion’s sister, replaced Jason on the guitar. Besides playing the guitar, she also was the backing vocalist. Now the band was playing a mixture of original material and cover versions.In this new formation, the band played for the first time during the Tarxien Youth Centre’s Youthfest, on the 3rd August 1991. This logo, which was basically a T inside an M, became known as the Symbol Of Power.
1992 was a decisive year. The band decided not to perform live since they felt that some issues had to be settled. On the previous year, Mark was working as a P.E. teacher. One of his students, who was interested in rock music, used to watch the band rehearse in Tarxien. With him he used to take his friend, a certain Paul Micallef. Forward back to 1992, Etienne went to Sixth Form and there she met Paul. Obviously, they started talking about the band and it was here that Paul mentioned that he was learning the bass guitar. Paul was asked to join, and for the first time, the band had a bassist. Dion composed anything; Blues, Rock ‘n Roll, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal and even Ballads. Everyone believed that their original material was good enough so the decision was taken to quit playing cover versions. On the 24th March 1993, the new line up performed at the Live Buzz, which was held at the New Lyceum in Msida. On that same year, the band competed in the Mondo Rock with two songs, namely Midnight and Cryin’. The band was one of the three finalists who’s song was chosen to be aired abroad.Mark’s cousin, Ian Galea joined the band on keyboards in late 1995. Dion knew Ian from the time he was studying classical music, since they were attending the same class. Joining the band was a tough job, since all the material was not written with the keyboards in mind. However, Ian did his job well, and a new sound was created.
The band was on another high in 1996. They were featured and reviewed in all local news papers and on most tv and radio stations. On the 23rd June 1996, they supported the Eagles Tribute Band at the Rock Café in Paceville.That same year, Mark quit the band since he took a job in Germany. Seven drummers applied for the audition and finally, the band chose Chris Musu. Chris brought with him new ideas and it was here that the band decided to change its musical style. The intricate drum rolls and long guitar solos were ditched in favour of a quieter, more mature sound. Etienne even wrote two songs for the band; Bruised and Angels. Ian quit the band in 1997 and the band reverted to its old sound. This time, however, it was decided to add a couple of cover versions to the song list. In this same year, The Myth was invited as a guest band in the Carovana Rock competition. The following year saw Chris quitting the band. A week later, Mark phoned Dion. Luckily, he had just returned from abroad and he was looking for a band. So he joined again and that same week, after almost two years absent from the band, Mark and his old buddies supported Status Quo in Ta’ Qali. The band supported Smokie in 1999. This was Paul’s last concert since he had to quit the band due to personal commitments. If 1990 and 1996 were the band’s highs, than 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003 must have been an all time low. Work commitments and further line up changes meant that the band almost did not perform live during these years. However, the weekly rehearsals never ceased and the band managed to secure four gigs in 2002. In 2000, David De Cesare joined the band as a bass guitar player and as a backing vocalist. In 2001, Etienne quit the band and Karen Tanti, Dion’s girlfriend and Mark’s cousin, took her place. One of the gigs in 2002 was during a wedding reception. Nothing unusual here unless you’ll learn that this wedding belonged to Dion and Karen... Another guitarist, Edward Muscat, joined the band in 2003 and for the first time the band had three guitarists. David quit in 2004, but the band continued performing at a number of venues even though it had no bass guitar player.A new bassist, Patrick Mifsud, joined the band in 2005 and the new line up decided to add even more cover versions to their song list. In 2006, The Myth participated for the first time in the Battle of the Bands. The band played three original songs and one cover version and on the semi finals, the band scored the highest overall points. On that same year, it was also decided that it was about time that the band should have its official website. After a lot of brain storming between Dion and Patrick, the site began to take shape in November. It took a while to launch the site since it was decided that all the work, including all pictures, photographs and the actual web creation, should be undertaken by the band members themselves. In the meantime, however, the band created three sites: one on Soundclick, one on Hi5 and another one on MySpace.