Superfrets

The Superfrets are definitely one of those 'what if...' bands. What if they had got round to finishing their first album?What if they had stayed together in the same town long enough?what if they had had a manager to organise and motivate them?etc etc. Basically a bunch of talented but misguided school friends, the band earned rave reviews early on in it's existence thanks to it's incendary live shows, trend bucking musical diversity and sense of not taking themselves too seriously. They were comprised of three 16 year olds who joined together at the tail end of 1999: singer/songwriter/guitar prodigee chris davies, the 'hardest hitting drummer since john bonham'/singer/songwriter/producer russel clewett and bassist/songwriter adam hart. At the age of sixteen they had already performed a show stealing set at the 100 club in London and were being called, variously, the 'new jimi hendrix experience', a 'younger, better looking dire straits' and 'the missing link between blink-182 and genesis'. Frustratingly though, they would manage only a handful of proper recording sessions together, which would only hint at their promise and would almost always fail to represent the alchemy of their live shows. In their 2001-2003 prime, the band toured all over it's hometown of swindon and beyond, earning a reputation as the loudest most exciting young band around. Unfortunately, as with so many promising young bands, there were all kinds of very rocknroll problems along the way, such as davies deciding to leave the band after initially hating clewett's production of his latest songs; the band being so drunk at one of their gigs they decided to give up mid song and go down the pub; turning up to one show with a broken bass amp and a three stringed bass etc etc. Depite all the upheavals, the band always put on a great show and would undoubtedly have built on this success had it not been distracted by the usual departing for uni/moving apart problems. Still officially together today, the band gives the odd live performance whenever the three members happen to be in the same city, but all three are now primarily working on self written work and other interests. They are, however, hoping to record together again soon. As davies explains: 'we never really cared about fitting into a certain scene or having a look or being hip. When all the other bands of our generation were wearing black nail varnish and trying to 'be punk' we were getting into Genesis and Led Zeppelin!We never had 'a sound' or 'style', we just wrote music that didn't take itself too seriously and however it sounded that was fine. It was always all about the music'.by Richard Seymour 'This is Music'