1984 - Avant Gardeners

 

Bob Parker, Me, Kevin Asbrey, ?, Phil Dann in the garden of The Racehorse, Northampton

All of the bands have special memories for me for different reasons, the Avant Gardeners were without doubt the most creative band of all of them, two terrific song writers in Kevin Asbrey and Phil Dann (Fifi and the Firbirds) accompanied by a philosophy of "anything goes". We spent many hours recording ideas and songs in Phil's garden shed, which was extremely small, possibly room for three people standing up and used an early 4 track cassette recorder. Phil was a master track bouncer and so we were able to do some pretty amazing recordings. I suppose that the music style was indie(ish) but very hard to define. I'm know that the guys brought the best out of me and it was always really challenging to come up with lyrics for their great tunes. Every time that we met there was something new happening. We didn't just record though, for gigs we prepared upstairs at The Oakley Arms in Rushden and were joined my Bob on drums also various keyboard players, Heather from PLI, ? (pictured above) and also ?  a brilliant keyboardist from Northampton. I remember us playing in Buckingham and at The Racehorse in Northampton. The recordings that you can hear on the jukebox hopefully show just how talented this band was.