Biography

The Rat Hole Sheikh / Mike McCann was born 1:st of february 1957 in London. He started playing drums in "Orc" in 1974, then tried vocals with "Five fingered widow" 1976 - 1977. Between 1981 and 1983 he was a guitarist in the London based garage band "The Cannibals" and played on the album "Bone to pick" in 1982 on Hit Records, single "Mumbo Jumbo/Led astray" 1982 on Hit Records, free single "Don't make me angry/Hey Mr.Clap Trap" 1982 on Trash Flash, compilation album "These cats ain't nothing but trash" (with The Stingrays & The Milkshakes) 1983 on Big Beat Records and Compilation CD free with Garage bands revisited issue #4 2002.

Under the summer of 1983 Mike played acoustic reggae on the streets of Nymegen in Holland with Danny Welsh on vocals. The Sheikh also played guitar on "Government Scum" with Well known Wankers on a Greenwich performance collective cassette release called "Here's the shit" 1984. Then played guitar with "Mass Murder" 1984 - 1985, and guitar with "No, No Go Zone" 1985.

After moving to Sweden, The Sheikh joined "The Lost Ghost" in 1987 and recorded a single "Affections/Glad you found out" on Wee wee Records 1989. Formed "The Fledgelings" in 1990.Busked and played guitar with Wes (from Deep Forest) and Laingo both from The Cameroon in 1992 under the Stockholm water festival. After Stockholm county council unjustly threw Mike out of his hospital job in 1992 (resultling in an out of court settlement that gave Mike 3 years pay)Mike invented The Rat Hole Sheikh and invested his own money into making the 2 man band Mad cow disease C.D. in 1997 and continued to make his own D.I.Y. one man band c.d's until 2003.

From 2004 - 2008 Mike has played music in various forms with Christine Smith from Linz in Austria. In 2008 Mike has performed at the London folk club Sharps, been busking at the Broadstairs folk week and outside the entrances to Gamla stan and Hornstull underground stations in Stockholm during the rush hours up until he felt to ill to continue. He played guitar and sang for at least one hour daily until he had his surgery in early January 2009, hoping that he'd recover and be able to play for people again in folk clubs. Unfortunately he never recovered.