Rikki and the Last Days Of Earth were a British musical group and one of the early punk groups. They released Oundle RocSoc in May 1977 and are cronicled in Henrik Poulsen's book "77: The Year of Punk and New Wave." The band was formed in November 1976 by former studio engineer Rikki Sylvan (whose real name was Nicholas Condron) (vocals) and Valac Van Der Veene (guitars), and shortly afterwards, Nik Weiss (keyboards), Andy Prince (also called Andy Prinz) (bass) and a drummer called Nigel completed the line-up. In May 1977, Nigel was replaced by Hugh Inge-Innes Lillingston. Although the band seemed to be working-class (a stereotypical characteristic for a punk musician), they had middle-class (or upper class) upbringing. Sylvan lived in Kensington and went to public school, Prince lived with his parents in Weybridge, Weiss went to public school and Inge-Innes Lillingstone lived in Thorpe Hall, near Tamworth, being the son of a Lieutenant Commander and attended Eton School. The band official live concert debut was at "The Man In The Moon", in Chelsea, on May 28 1977. Their first release was a one-sided 7" single Oundle RocSoc (early recordings of "City Of The Damned" and "Dorian Gray") in May 1977. By the late summer of 1977, the band signed DJM Records, and there they re-recorded "City Of The Damned", whose new version was released as single in November 1977. In January 1978, the band released the single" Loaded" (backed with the Rolling Stones' song cover, "Street Fighting Man"). Later, in May, "Twilight Jack" was released as single, but failed to chart. Shortly afterwards, they released their "4 Minute Warning" album. While the band were recording a second album at the CBS studio in London, they were dropped by DJM and split up shortly after. Later, Sylvan went to produce Gary Numan's albums "Replicas", with Numan's previous band Tubeway Army, and "The Pleasure Principle". Later, he was soloist, releasing his "The Silent Hours" album, and then formed a band called 3AM with ex Neos Steve Wilkin on guitar and Derek Quinton on drums. According to ex-Random Hold Steve Wilkinson, he passed away. Van Der Veene began to be a journalist, interviewing New Wave icons. Prince went to work with Random Hold and his ex-bandmate Sylvan in the 1980s. They were managed by Frank Case. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.