Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Middle Twenty split up on 21 July 2000.

The main reason for this is that Joe is going to go to drama college in London as of this autumn. As I hope we have always shown, we are either dedicated to something and commit to it with the full force of our personalities and energies - or we don't do it at all. Joe feels that he now wants to turn his energies to something else and neither he nor the rest of us believe it would be fair to ourselves to carry on.

We also all feel that we've given it our best shot and that it may well be best to move on now. Martin, Joe and Matt have been in some kind of band together for the best part of a decade - Joe joined our first incarnation when he was only twelve. Though it baffles us as to why we never made it, the fact remains that we didn't and none of us want to be sad old men flogging a dead horse with that elusive break 'just around the corner' when we're pushing thirty.

I'd like to think that even though (or perhaps because) we never made it, we never sold out and never compromised what we believed in: energy, sensitivity, passion and fucking good songs. I think it's a shame that people never got to hear our best material get properly recorded. I honestly believe that songs such as 'Backslider', 'Repeater' and 'New Steel Construction' were potential chart hits and that we had the capacity to change people's lives in the way that our favourite bands changed ours. We'll never know. The fact remains though, that we failed in pursuit of noble aims and that will always be better than succeeding at something worthless.

To everyone who supported us during our time, please accept my deepest thanks. To everyone who didn't support us... there are too many of you to mention.

Martin Jones
July 2000

 

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