Art Objects played their first gig at the Aston Court Festival (mini-stage) in the summer of 1978. At that point the lineup consisted of poet Gerard Langley, dancer Wojtek Dmochowski, and guitarist Jonathan J. Key (AKA Jonjo) producing a variety of musical and non-musical sounds from his Vox AC-30 and WEM Copicat. They quickly became renowned as the most pretentious band in Bristol - quite a feat in those psilocybic post-punk days - but soon became a local fixture as an opening act (no sound-check or drum set-up required).
The drum-free era ended when Gerard's brother John sat in for three numbers at a show in June of 1979. A week later Bill Stair - that is to say, me - added bass to the same three songs at a Hope Centre gig. Shortly after that Jonjo's brother Robin joined on guitar and we were apparently a band.
As the set developed, songs would be written the night before they were debuted live - having a poet instead of a singer meant we could happily play outside the constraints of traditional song structure, even if it did make it hard to sing along. Some songs would be largely improvised, some would be fairly structured, and the early, three-piece soundscapes would intersperse our set to make sure no one in the audience got too relaxed.
Astoundingly, some people seemed to enjoy it and we recorded our first single - the Hard Objects EP - for Fried Egg Records in early 1980. It shot to number one in the indie chart of the New Music News, a scab music weekly that briefly existed while the NME staff were on strike.
A second single - Showing Off (To Impress The Girls) - was recorded for Heartbeat Records soon after but failed to chart due to the NME being back in production.
In the summer of 1980 we went into Crescent Studios, Bath, and recorded and mixed the album Bagpipe Music in the space of five days - without quite managing to organize a rehearsal beforehand. We continued to gig and, one happy night, were delighted to see audience members with "Art Objects" ironically embroidered on the back of their denim jackets. A spot opening for The Monochrome Set ended with hordes of would-be Wojteks invading the stage. Bizarrely, the Moonlight Club in West Hampstead became one of our regular venues.
Bagpipe Music eventually came out in the summer of 1981 and, after briefly clawing its way to number 19, lurked around the lower end of the NME indie chart for a few weeks, despite having garnered the rare distinction of a five-star review in Sounds. We then did the expected Bristol-band thing and broke up.
Gerard, John and Wojtek recruited some new musicians and played a few more gigs as the Art Objects before re-emerging as the Blue Aeroplanes with the album Bop Art - partly comprised of late Art Objects songs and demos, and featuring contributions from Jonjo, Robin and myself. I continued to guest with them now and again for the next few years when they were short of a bass player or needed someone else on stage. Jonjo and Robin also continued to occasionally play and record with them as they went on to win the hearts of millions the world over.
Art Objects: post-punk, pre-post-prog, arrogant, experimental, often pretentious, occasionally inspired, willfully perverse, and very much a product of their time and place.
And that was pretty much that. Until May 2007 when - unbeknown to most ex-members - Bagpipe Music was re-released by Cherry Red, and is now available on CD for the first time. Blimey. There's a turn-up for the books, eh?
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