The Infra Red and the Ultra Violets are actually two bands; inclusive of The Longtails (but some bloke in Dublin has called himself "Longtails" on MySpace so that name is taken - for MySpace's universe at any rate).
The Longtails were based in a scout hut on Shoreham Hill, Shoreham, Kent in 1980/1.
Ultra Violet and the Infra Reds were based in Marlborough Gardens and Blenheim Gardens, Leeds, in 1981/2.
Clearly there were some art students involved... hence the split across North and South.
The Longtails were formed early in 1980 as an improvisational, Post-Punk/Hippy Days release for those concerned. Originally imagined during a beautiful thunderstorm (green, blue and red tinged lightning going from cloud to cloud!) on Sealchart by Mark Eason (aka Eagu) and Andy MacFarlane as a way of expressing the sardonic sizzling of the lightning and the rumbling thud of the thunderclaps, musically the band ended up somewhere else. Originally, Jam Langdon-Davies was to be the bassist in a jam band featuring Eagu on guitar, and a certain flash double bass drumkit player called Chris. A couple of jams in a house at the bottom of Shoreham Hill in front of assorted sisters and girlfriends were all that this outfit managed. Then came one of Gideon's legendary mini-festivals in the bomb craters on his dad's farm at the top of Shoreham Hill. There Eagu witnessed one of the greatest psychedelic/Post-Punk mesmeria bands that ever existed: Windows Clack, featuring Gus Hutchinson (nowadays known as Angus The Avante-Gardener) on drums and a certain Martyn Barber on bass (who was to turn up and contribute to a Longtails Jam Session later the next year). Typically, Windows Clack immediately split up afterwards saying that it was the worst gig they'd ever played (if I remember rightly - which I don't according to Martyn, it was their next-to-last gig and the Bomb Crater Performance was in August 1979) this was an artistic narcossistic self-destruct button pattern that was to re-assert itself in The Longtails once that band had coelesced out of the mind fragments that were sent out from the bomb crater that night. With Gideon Payne's soprano sax and harmonica subtly enlisted into the ranks, a set or two of old piano strings, the drum kit and assorted Party 7s, pots and pans of Gus Hutchinson, a splendidly weird Revox Quarter Track that could echo for itself as it recorded, a bass guitar bought from an ex-member of Amon Duul and a Firebird from Boogies in Charing X Road - the Far-Out Legion of The Longtails was formed.
The Longtails (named after Gideon's mini-ponytail hairstyle) retreated to Gideon's Scout Hut and started to ferment a random, unspoken madness in musical form. Later, as they Darwinianly regressed (most of them later becoming jewellers working for the quixotic Mr Pye), and having had a chemically altered conversation with a raucous parrot in a local pub, they performed some of the most off-the-planet music ever heard (or beneath the ocean - see "Dream Dawn" in the songs player for a rather flaky tape transfer of part of that night), for a couple of months. They then tried to come up with set pieces that were actually planned in advance, which were never quite as successful as their random improvisations (a lot like Windows Clack). One thing they did do most successfully was to re-enter the Realm of the Psychedelic left behind in 1975 by all and sundry (Pink Floyd, Hawkwind et al, especially Can) and, after the shroomies had worn off, found themselves in a kind of Beefheart Meets The Mekons stark musical cabbage patch of rustic glory peppered with the Post Punk Litter left over and blown out from the more urban areas of the South East after 1979. At the time of the Brixton Riots they did a session with a poet (also) called Martin who was from Hastings (surname unknown, but he had a girlfriend with spiky, bleached hair and long stripey socks, so they shouldn't be difficult to identify).
Unfortunately, The Longtails never did a gig, but their would-be audience did follow them into the Scout Hut on some nights and sit there in bafflement as, somewhat artily, Eagu tried to ignore them (residual Post-Punk Angst), even when they started picking up his guitar and playing it for themselves (the delectable Nicky S). Gus eventually left for his own obscure reasons, then Eagu left to form the Skinbat Scramble (later joined by Andy on drums this time, not bass and Gary of The Limitations, who had been involved on Casio and Synth at some of the later sessions after Gus left) because he wanted to be able to play a "gig" someday, and Gideon then embarked upon his Radagastian Blues Harp Journey.
Meanwhile (and concurrently), briefly in 1980 Art School beckoned and Eagu went to Leeds and there found the infamously awful Leeds Polytechnic Fine Art Department recording studio, demonstrated to him one summer's afternoon by Soft Cell (whose tracks back then were very Post-Tubeway Army and, in my opinion, very good, though I didn't go for their chart-success material at all) before most of the equipment got broken or half-inched by other students. Thereafter came sessions of learning how to make tape loops, fiddle with sound and generally go AWOL on/off the Musical Radar. Of course, The Longtails came to stay for 5 days and there did their most amazing recordings, and later, the Skinbat Scramble followed suit.
That which featured either band was the music of that band, that which didn't became Infra Red and the Ultra Violets. There is so much of it it is amazing... and much of the recorded material is so weird it makes me marvel at what lengths the human imagination will go to when confronted with a small room, a set of piano strings, a razor blade, a cutting block, and 2 Revoxes and a Tandberg and not enough money to constantly be stuck inside The Fenton drinking with the Lechy Lecturers. And then there was the pub in Shoreham and the long, weird walks back up the hill to Gideon's Shack... is it still there?
For anyone who wants to know, Chris Pye is a real person. In fact, he bizarrely bought the wood at the bottom of Eagu's road 17 years ago and regularly tries to pressgang him into working there cutting wood, pulling weeds out of ponds, building pagan stone monuments and avoiding stepping on the wildflowers whilst using a chainsaw (an odd dance indeed). Eagu for his part dropped his neighbour's grass flipping fish into Pye's lake a couple of summer's ago, and even painted it when it was a pond (featuring in the diptych "Morning At The Middle Gates", which later inspired the song "Moonshot" by Nifty Eagu & The Glo-Pilots(!). However, Mr. Pye has no "canteen" down there still. Eagu is currently making a map of the wood for Mr Pye, a map that has miraculously morphed into 5 or 6 more maps without mentioning anything was afoot...
Latest news is that (as of November 2008) besides The Longtails complete recorded works having reached the "mastering stage", also Windows Clack are back in touch with eachother and compiling tapes onto digital media so a MySpace Profile may be in the offing... for the moment you will have to make do with this link:
Pictures Of Shoreham Cats in the Late 70s
We have descendants, see links to:
Nifty Eagu & The Glo-Pilots
Skinbat Scramble
The Ghost Lilacs
Coochie's Bream
The Outer Limits Oddness Off Licence
The Limitations
