DURING JANUARY 1997 THE most exciting development on the art front was a call I got from a lady called Cherry Gray from Warrington Museum and Art Gallery. I had sent her the booklet of my sculptures I'd compiled with Nonconform during 1996 and she wanted to meet me. Intriguingly, her husband, Richard Gray, was the head of Manchester's City Art Gallery – where I had met Captain Beefheart sixteen years earlier. Through Cherry I was offered my first ‘one-man exhibition’ at the Warrington Museum and Art Gallery during the summer of 1997.

I was still working with Dan, Roger and Tony Mac as The Kachinas at this stage. We needed to re-mix some of the recordings we had made in Lori's studio in Bethesda, North Wales. I had bumped into Ian Broudie and he said if we needed some studio time his new studio on a barge on the Thames down in Richmond was available. All we needed to do was box off Kenny the engineer.

The studio on the river barge had belonged to Pete Townshend and was near to Townshend's Eel Pie Studios. To give him his due, Ian had again come through for us at a crucial time.

Down in Richmond, an A&R woman called Charlie turned up to hear the songs. Mick Moss had gotten her over from, of all people, Go! Discs. She listened with interest and seemed to like the songs, and after we'd chatted for a while she promised she'd play them for label boss Andy MacDonald. I was hopeful to a point, but it was hard not to feel cynical considering all they'd endured with The La's, not least the seemingly endless rejected studio sessions for their album. Would Go! Discs really want to touch an ex-La's ‘barge mixes’ with a barge pole? I didn't think so.

The Warrington exhibition kept getting closer to being realized. On 26 February, I met with Jon Barraclough for lunch and talked about the forthcoming exhibition which I wanted to call Lost and Found. The name had come to me instantaneously when Cherry Gray had begun to set the wheels in motion. I liked it immediately and knew I shouldn't question it or consider alternative names.