VERSION GIRL's THOUGHTS ON:

THE JAMS BOARD

"I discovered the Board in the summer of 1998 through Nigel (vbloke) my husband, I wasn’t interested in the World Wide Web until he found the UB40 sites. He found the Jams Board from a link on Joris’s (Dubmobile) site…whilst searching under anything that contained UB40. He also found a few others but these were the 2 sites we got hooked on. We just watched for a few months and then after seeing the Band at a TOTP recording we felt we had something to share with everyone. I posted our first message in December 1998 and now can’t stay away."

UB40

"Nigel also introduced me to the band back in 1982, he was always playing UB40 and the first birthday present I brought for him was Labour Of Love. Although I liked the sound and between us we brought every single and album released, I never realised the impact a concert would have on me. Another present to Nigel was tickets to the NEC gig in November 1986 for the Rat In The Kitchen Tour….I was blown away. After that I was completely hooked and couldn’t get enough, we had to get tickets to the next concert. We did and the next month we were in Brixton for the Artists Against Apartheid concert."

BEING A UB40 FAN

"Is like an addiction. Linking up with the people from the Jams Posse has given me friends from around the world….it’s a Big Love. I never believed there were people who loved UB40 as much as we do, its great to have people who "understand" the feeling of a new album or a gig."

MUSIC

"I listen to all sorts of music EXCEPT heavy rock, which grates me. However, more than ¾ of my record collection is UB40. I have a couple of Simply Red CD’s but the rest of my collection is compilations. No other artist inspires me to go and buy their latest offering. I listen to Reggae because of UB40 and they have led me to discover other artists such as John Holt, Winston Groovy, Beres Hammond and my favourite Ken Boothe."

TOP 3 SONGS

1. "All time fave which never changes…'If It Happens Again’"

2. "Guns In the Ghetto"

3. "Look At Me"

THE JAMS POSSE

"What can I say..….a fantastic bunch of people. From the first post we were made to feel very welcome. We had emails from sistah*e & Reza straight away, and we couldn’t believe the friendship extended to us from people we’d never met. We were invited to join the chats and the next Fanfest…to take place in 1999 and went with some reserve. Oh how foolish we were, these people were as great in person as they had been online. All out to share stories and experiences, the feeling was like meeting up with old friends not new ones."

THE #UBJams CHAT

"Thursday nights have changed forever, as I never want to miss a chat. We get to catch up on each others lives as well as sharing news and gossip, especially about UB40."

A PERSONAL QUOTE from VERSION GIRL

"Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today."

Mia is known on the Board and Chat as Version Girl and hails from Bedford, UK but now lives in Northants.