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From the
Dartmoor town of Okehampton near Exeter, Avant Gardener were one
of the many oddities thrown up by punk. Ultra primitive
Beefheart influenced noise meets the Velvets. The band
apparently won a Virgin Records sponsored talent contest, which
resulted in this EP featuring
Gotta
turn back/Strange gurl in clothes/Back door/ Bloodclad Boogie
for the label in 1977 (the earlier ultra raw demos for
which make the finished release sound polished by comparison!).
After this the band released numerous singles and albums before
splitting in the eighties.
Russell
Murch-Vocals, Martin Sanders-Guitar, Nigel Rae-Bass, Mike
Kelly-Drums. |
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| "The
singer Russell smelt so much, he was really revolting! He used to turn up
and he hadn't shaved and he looked like he had slept in his clothes, he
always smelt. Ever such a nice bloke but I used to be glad when he left
the studio. One session, they bought a steel guitar player who really
couldn't play and I said to Russell " I don't want to shatter your
illusions or anything but this guy hasn't a clue what he's doing" He was
so bad that I had to kick him out the studio in the end; physically drag
him out by the scruff of his neck to get rid of him! They had come in to
record two songs and they phoned me back later to say that Virgin Records
had given them an advance to do their own thing and develop their sound,
so they came back and recorded some more. Sometimes I'd be in the studio
with them until three o'clock in the morning trying out ideas until we
ended up with what they wanted. They weren't any better musically than any
other band I worked with except because of their appearance and the fact
they could just about play their instruments, I could see that they would
make an r'n'b band like The Rolling Stones. I was doing my best to get
them to change the rhythm of a song very slightly to put an r'n'b roll
into it and I showed the guitar player how to play some r'n'b but he
couldn't play it so it didn't turn out that way. I showed him a riff based
on the chords he was playing but he couldn't move off the one chord. His
little hands just couldn't do it. The bass player couldn't play either. He
could only do down strokes and I was trying to show him how to do up and
down strokes to get a crisper sound but he couldn't do it; he kept missing
the strings! The thing that struck me was the rawness of the band in every
sense of the word.
Listening back to
The Avant Gardener session now, it still sounds terrible to me. The band
had reached a certain stage and they were just playing to the little
musical ability they had. The whole band was a complete mess. They were
always late and scruffy and just too bloody idle to do anything. Russell
couldn't sing to save his life but Virgin obviously saw something in them.
Apparently, Virgin held auditions in some sort of mobile studio that was
travelling through the country for about three hundred bands and Avant
Gardener was one of those bands. All I can say is that most of those three
hundred must have been absolute crap! Avant Gardener got an advance from
that. If you were in a band back then and knew two and half chords and
went up on stage shouting at everyone then you had a good chance of
getting signed."
John Greenslade,
producer of the bands pre Virgin demos, quoted in the sleeve notes to
Hometown Atrocities Records
Year Zero
compilation CD. |
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