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G.B.O.A

Situated in what might be described as a bit of an industrial wasteland on a backstreet in Digbeth, Birmingham, the Wagon & Horses may not be in the most salubrious of locations – but this pub-cum-live music venue is a real gem. I’ve long known about the place but never got round to seeing a gig there… until now – the second night of a long-overdue Gaye Bykers On Acid reunion, organised by Dysfunctional Bungle & The Barnboppers Collective in conjunction with Mute Elephant Promotions.   Understandably enough there’s a distinct psychedelic flavour to tonight’s line-up, but where the Bykers’ catalogue of delights veers more towards a head-on acid punk end of the psychedelic spectrum, the two opening acts charter a more space-rock psych trajectory with a soupcon of electronica and prog deviation thrown in to boot. 

Since the Gaye Bykers’ reunion was officially announced back in February, the Electric Banana tour has been eagerly anticipated by many of their old fans and new ones alike. The Bykers haven’t played together on stage in nearly 26 years apart from the first date of the tour the previous night in Nottingham, and even then they’d only had a few rehearsals together in Leicester in the run-up to that.  Any misgivings people might have that the Bykers wouldn’t be prepared enough are quickly dispelled. From the moment they hit the stage and launch into their opening number, ‘T.V. Cabbage’, it’s apparent that the passage of time hasn’t dulled their passion or stolen their thunder.  Against a synapse snapping video backdrop and dazzling lightshow they proceed to tear through a back-catalogue spanning set, including many old favourites, much to the delight of the crowd. ‘Delirium’ follows hot on the heels of ‘T’V. Cabbage’, whilst the two singles – the Black Sabbath/James Brown funk/soul hybrid ‘Git Down’ and ‘All Hung Up’ from their much maligned debut album, go down particularly well.  It really is time that the Drill Your Own Hole album was given the critical rehabilitation it really deserves!  

The Bykers’ second album, Stewed To The Gills, is often regarded as their best. So it’s hardly surprising that it’s most heavily represented in the set tonight – with the likes of ‘It Is Are You?’, ‘Shoulders’, ‘Better Off Dedd’ and ‘MAD’ all figuring here.  ‘Hot Thing’, the only single from the album is also played, as is its b-side, the thrashtastic American Valley Girl bating ‘Rad Dude’.  Three numbers from Cancer Planet Mission are aired - the highlight being ‘Whatever Happened To Malcolm?’ 

The inclusion of some less obvious choices also provides a pleasant surprise.  The rarely ever played live ‘After Suck There’s Blow’ wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Happy Mondays’ Thrills, Pills & Bellyaches album, despite the Bykers’ original version pre-dating that by four years!  Then there’s ‘S.P.A.C.E.’ the dance-oriented number that was ostensibly the Bykers’ last ever single, even if it was released under the PFX pseudonym.  Their last album Pernicious Nonsense, also released as PFX, is still underrated, and also underrepresented here. But a storming version of the Sister Sledge sampling ‘Disinformation Rise And Shine’ more than makes up for this.  

If anything, the Bykers are now tighter than ever and perform with an urgency and maturity they could never really hoped to have maintained nearly thirty years ago given the excesses of some of their recreational proclivities back then. And even if ‘Everythang’s Groovy’ appears to be a little lacklustre at first (at least to these ears), it soon gets into its stride and reminds us how and where the Bykers’     Rich Deakin 2016

The Beginning

Gaye Bykers On Acid (the name originally inspired by a Ray Lowry cartoon) were formed in late 1984 by Ian Reynolds (Robber Byker) and Ian Hoxley (Mary Byker). They were later joined by guitarist and art student Tony Horsfall (Tony Byker) and drummer Kevin Hyde (Kev Byker). Their first gig was at the Princess Charlotte in Leicester in mid-1985.
Their first releases - the single Everything's Groovy and the Nosedive Karma EP - were both recorded in Leeds with Jon Langford of The Mekons, and released on the InTape label, both reached the indie charts with Nosedive Karma staying at No.1 for 2 weeks.

They then signed to Virgin Records releasing the albums Drill Your Own Hole and Stewed To The Gills. Ray Lowry also helped write the script, and provided artwork for the 1 hour movie of the same name that  accompanied DYOH. The vinyl version of Drill Your Own Hole was pressed without a hole in the centre, so it was necessary to literally drill your own hole in order to play it. The album spent one week at number 95 in the UK Albums Chart in November 1987.They did several tours of the UK and Europe and 2 tours of USA.


They also played gigs (dressed in women's clothing) under the name 'Lesbian Dopeheads on Mopeds', supporting themselves, and thus getting paid twice. They also performed as a fictitious East German thrash punk band "Rektüm" (they claimed to have jumped over the Berlin Wall), recording an LP Sakredanus and an EP Real Horror Show under the name.


However management problems and poor sales meant that they were dropped by Virgin in 1989. They subsequently released the album Cancer Planet Mission on their own record label, Naked Brain. They also recycled and used the band name 'The Purple Fluid Exchange' (PFX) to release their dance cross-over material. It was at this time that Rocket Ronnie joined the band as DJ, sample player and dance advisor.
In 1990 they released Pernicious Nonsense, their last studio album, recorded with Jon Langford at the Stone Room Studios and at Alaska St. Studios with house engineer Chelo Zambelli.

After difficult tours in the U.S. and UK the band broke up, the final blow being when the label Rough Trade, who distributed their Naked Brain recordings, went bankrupt owing them and many other bands considerable amounts of cash.

The group often included samples from other artists or films in their music, usually from cult films such as Repo Man, Taxi Driver, Dune, Barbarella, Clockwork Orange, Star Trek, Videodrome, Apocolypse Now, Bladerunner & Monty Python.



Tony and Kev collaborated in 1993 to form 'Steroid' , releasing one just CD album entitled 'Jism Harvester' on Clay Records , a crazy industrial mish mash of samples and guitar riffs.





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Tony Byker is currently making his own brand of Electro-Cute Vybes in Tokyo, a mixture of electronic and acoustic sounds together with videos and artwork.

All his LINKS are on the CONTACT page



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Robber Byker is a DJ , musician and film-maker. He has recorded several tunes under the name Surfin'Bernard (Robber Byker & Zoe Reynolds) They have released several Wonky Techno tracks on Shed Records, and remixes on Miditone.

They put together a live band "The Nutters" playing 60's Rhythm & Blues , Soul & Garage -Punk numbers , and did a a few gigs around the UK.

Robber left and went to form a new band 'Swamp Delta' and is currently recording some tracks together with Alex 'Porkbeast' Peach and Ian Anderson (Crazyhead)

 

All his LINKS are on the CONTACT page.

 



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Mary Byker has sung in the bands Pigface, Hyperhead, Apollo 440, and Maximum Roach. His current group is called "The Jungle". He also composes music for TV adverts. In 2011 he joined a new incarnation of Pop Will Eat Itself, replacing original member Clint Mansell.

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All his LINKS are on the CONTACT page

 

 

 

 

Kev Byker formed G.R.O.W.T.H, a psychotic trip into metal riffs and drum machines together with Jeff Janitor, Alexis Mitchell and ocassional appearances on drums by Tommo (Bomb Party) They released one CD 'For Lack Of Horses They Saddle Dogs'.

Kev has now been deep undercover for many years somewhere in South UK.




Ron Moreau Morrow (Rockit) went on to open 'Ambient Soho' a vinyl record store in London's West End, and then later releasing records from various artists on his label 'Worm Interface'.

He is currently planning to open a new place ....details coming soon. 

















IRewind. Pause. Stop. Fast Forward The best track from the very first album that I ever bought. The year was 1988 and these local lads were riding on a prismatic wave of kaleidoscopic madness. It's actually hard to believe but at one tiny point in time the Bykers were poised to be maybe the biggest band in the world. It is testimony to the strength and quality of the illicit drug supply that literally every major record company was rushing to sign this gloriously shambolic drug fuelled anarchic mess of a band. The very fact alone that the A&R men at the huge major labels could even dream of this band breaking the charts or even making any profit at all, points to the fact that in the collective madness to sign them hell of a lot of narcotics were being used by the scouts eager to sign the ' next big thing '. It was never going to work out. The Bykers were much too chaotic for the mainstream. The album this track is lifted from " Drill Your Own Hole", came sans hole. You had to follow the albums title instruction which often resulted in off axial aural deviations. Virgin Records spent a fortune manically trying to promote this car crash of an album. Whoever even imagined it's discordant guitar noise, twisted samples and LSD befuddled tomfoolery would be marketable should have been in the psychiatrist chair, not in a marketing position at one of the biggest record companies on earth. Of course at the age of 14 none of that even crossed my mind. The Bykers as they were lovingly known were a massive psychedelic explosion in Thatchers grey Britain. They looked like they had arrived from another dimension. They sounded like nothing else out there. For better or for worse they really were one of a kind. I adored this band. They meant the world to me, and they were an important stepping stone to more left field obscure music. From the Bykers it was easy to reach out and grasp onto Terminal Cheesecake, God, Skullflower and many many more. I was lucky to see them twice which was no easy feat as I was still pretty young 14-16. I remember a chaotic mess of strobes and dry ice. Utter pandemonium and chaos. There are so many great Bykers stories. Their alter ego band ' Lesbian Dopeheads On Mopeds' where they supported themselves as this alter ego band as they wanted to get paid twice. Plus Rektum the fictitious East German Hard core band courted by the press who were the Bykers in disguise. Good times. They are playing again in Sept. I don't normally do nostalgia after a 26 year absence I'm going to give them a go. They never made a dime, the gigs are small events and I think it's purely for the sheer joy of the music that they are playing again. These are the only dates they will do. I doubt this time round there will be hordes of label reps with chequebooks a waving. However stranger things have happened this year. Like Leicester City winning the premier league. Now there's an event even Mary Byker and Co couldn't have predicted during their heaviest chemical session.    

Rich Deakin writes;
"I first saw Gaye Bykers On Acid play in a cold, draughty church hall in Cheltenham. It was January 1987. They'd just started to make a splash in the British music press, thanks to some rave live reviews, and some calculated scene-making particularly on the part of Sounds journalist, and future Loaded magazine editor, James Brown. Having lumped them in with the so-called "grebo" genre along with bands like Crazyhead, Pop Will Eat Itself and Zodiac Mindwarp, Brown now says, “I can't remember how it became a 'genre' but I did help promote it a bit because it seemed there were suddenly a clutch of bands with essentially greasy long hair and a load of noisy rock who weren't metal.” That night in Cheltenham though, the Bykers were playing second fiddle to their mentors and fellow Leicester band, The Janitors. Their first release ‘Everythang’s Groovy’, backed by ‘Space Rape’ and ‘T.V. Cabbage’, had been out for two months and was still riding high in the indie charts. The single had already seared itself into my near perma-frazzled brain, and it was obvious these droogs were earning themselves something of a reputation on the live circuit too. So, suitably soused in Breaker malt liquor and wired on cheap bathtub biker amphetamines, as was often the want in those days, I made it my raggedy-arsed speed-freak duty to see what all the fuss was about for myself. I wasn’t disappointed: they turned out to be pretty much like they were on that single, a monstrous wall of thunderous rama-lama-rifferama and wah-drenched sonic mayhem – an unholy amalgam of the MC5 and Stooges colliding head on with Jimi Hendrix meeting the Sex Pistols and Hawkwind too, if you like! Mary, ever the pretty boy, was putting on his best Iggy moves, pouting and sneering like there was no tomorrow, riling the crowd and coming across like some ADHD or Tourette’s afflicted teenager with his impetuous nineteen to the dozen motor-mouthing. He certainly knew how to polarise an audience then, and those people whose jaws weren’t dropping with dumbstruck incredulity were galvanised into action and “gitting on down” or showering the stage with beer - even the occasional chair made a trajectory in that direction too. Guitarist Tony Horsfall, resplendent in a huge, oversized foam cowboy hat, wrestled his guitar to produce a demented Hendrix grappling with Ron Asheton stylee heavy fuzz distorted psychedelic wah guitar onslaught, whilst bassist Robber and drummer Kev Hyde thundered on and gamely dodged the plastic beer cups. Without wishing to do The Janitors a disservice, I don’t think many of the shell-shocked audience actually stayed to see all of their set afterwards. But just how the hell could anyone follow what we’d just witnessed anyway? Suitably shambolic, but equally mind-blowing and synapse-snapping displays of pure unbridled primal rock ‘n’ roll energy like this came to exemplify the Bykers’ live experience, and some of the recordings here, particularly the earlier ones from the 100 Club, Nottingham and the Felt Forum typify this.The rest of 1987 was a whirlwind of activity for the Bykers: they supported The Cult on tour; released another single in May; signed a deal with Virgin in June; continued to tour

extensively, and somehow even found time to make a movie! They were regularly making the front pages of the music papers too, and by the time they jetted off to New York City in July to play the Felt Forum, Madison Square Gardens, they were fully justifying the hype they were generating. Just check out the version of ‘T.V. Cabbage’ here - the sustained distortion and wah-wah on Tony’s guitar is truly fearsome. That autumn their debut album Drill Your Own Hole was released. Many people at the time, including members of the band, believed the album was overproduced and didn’t capture the true essence of what the Bykers were really about, e.g. the raw visceral immediacy of their live performances. They may have had a point, and the live versions of ‘Motorvate’ and ‘Git Down’, recorded live at The Living Room in Providence, Rhode Island, on their US tour in the spring of 1988 bear testimony to this. By this time the Bykers were also previewing new material, such as ‘Teeth’, a studio version of which would turn up on their next album Stewed To The Gills, released in February 1989. It saw them return to a more stripped down back-to-basics live sound, thanks also to the return of earlier producer Jon Langford. By the summer of 1990 the Bykers had been dropped by Virgin; had recorded and performed under the guise of an East German thrash metal band called Rektum; released a third album (the experimental Cancer Planet Mission, on their own Naked Brain label), and were about to undertake another gruelling tour of North America under their own steam. This, in no small part, contributed to the eventual demise of the band. The Tufnell Park Dome performance recorded in July 1990 shows just how far the Bykers had started to venture down techno and dance-oriented avenues, some of the results of which were also reflected on a fourth and final studio album, Pernicious Nonsense and a 12” indie /dance single under the pseudonym of S-P-A-C-E. By the end of the year though the party was just about over, tour fatigue, along with the attendant drinking and drugging, had taken their toll, and Robber in particular needed a break. Inevitably, musical differences could also have been a factor too, with various members developing other interests and pulling in different directions. The Bykers finally called it a day then, and Tony now recalls, “actually that was a sad time, I wanted to carry on, but it seemed strange to look for replacements, it just wasn't the Bykers anymore. We were who we were simply because of who we were.” Considering they were arguably always a more popular entity live than they were on record it’s amazing that an official live album hasn’t been released until now. So, short of a full-blown reunion, what better way to relive those noisome, heady, intoxicating days than by cranking up the volume and recreating “a big bad beautiful noize” of the Byker’s own making in the fetid surroundings of your own flea-pit."
Rich Deakin October 2012 http://facebook.com/rich.deakin (Rich Deakin is the author of a forthcoming book about Gaye Bykers On Acid and Crazyhead to be published by Headpress - www.worldheadpress.com)​



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