Malfunction are John McGowan and Chris Laverty who first came together as a duo in 1972 playing with other fellow students from Newman College of Education in Birmingham, forming the group Malfunction in 1976 with another fellow student, Dave Ashton but Dave left to pursue a different musical direction in 1979. The name of the band arose on a drunken walk home from the Bell and Pump a long time ago where they had been promised a floor spot (it embodied their initials MAL). Becoming teachers and IT practitioners they were only able to return to accepting bookings in November 2017, especially when their local club in Harborne, the Princes Corner Folkish Club which they ran for about six years in the mid 1980s, closed in the 1990s.