Bron Area - Liner Notes

Liner Notes for the CD Reissue of The Trees And The Villages by Bron Area

Martin Packwood

"So Glass Records Redux – re-issue Bron Area album, with bonus tracks!

Dave Glass, the Barker of Chadwell Heath “still sounds as fresh as it ever did boys” - many thanks

Liner Notes – okay – here goes...

Mid-afternoon, talking to Dave on the telephone, standing naked in the hall, 17 years old, my girlfriend, also naked, coming round the corner asking me to come back to bed

Ice cold flat, above a garage where I'd moved in with my mum after she left my dad

Flat roof, big sky, long views, over the town, Nuneaton – between Coventry and Birmingham where locals worked in factory jobs they were proud to have

Here's my idea for the Album's title, 'The Treason of Images' - a picture of a pipe by Rene Magritte, with written underneath it in french 'this is not a pipe' – of course not, it's a picture of a pipe, a representation of the real

Bron Area - 'the trees and the villages' - Dave misheard what I'd said, but it fitted right in, so we went along with it

Went along always with the music, our way in and out, our way to move on

Listening always – the Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, Elton John, The Carpenters, David Bowie

Friday night discos, under-age drinking, girls, Chic – I want your love

Then when the Sex Pistols changed everything, our corner in the pub became the punk-rock play-box – where we routinely took the light-bulb out above us on arrival

Anarchy on EMI, taking 'God Save the Queen' to school, an emblem of revolt in jubilee year, though we went to the street party anyway...

Eddie and the Hot Rods 'do anything you wanna do' - “I know I must be someone, now i'm gonna find out who”

The Special aka. Gangsters - standing outside the Coton conservative club gig listening in

I traded in my little tape machine and bought a red hofner bass guitar for £28 from Junk City, on the Foleshill Road on the way in to Coventry

Plugged the lead in to my record player and played along with records, just like thousands of other kids up and down the country, learning to play

Playing in a band - having to leave a chemistry class once to do a lunchtime gig at 

the local technical college, was okay though 'cos we'd bumped in to it's teacher 

at the Iggy Pop gig the week before

The Nuneaton scene focused on a pub, with a hall in the back, the Nags Head

There, strangely, we gathered around us something of a following, could it be that we were influential?

Not that we gave a shit - we were really only doing it for ourselves

Like friends on the scene, martyn and pete, eyeless in gaza, capturing memories, making it real-time, danger of infection / kodak ghosts run amok / photographs as memories

Plowing the same earth, capturing moments, the mute talking, secret places, found, a story...

They may have been better than us, but we were first!

Fanzines, Alternative Sounds / 0533, networks (pre-internet of course) connections made, friends found, collaborations, aspirations pursued, strangely realised, stepping out, on to a wider canvas

The General Wolfe, the Specials, Woodbine Street recording studios in Leamington Spa, our first sessions, straight after Ghost Town had been recorded there - a sure fire hit in the bag, as we were told...

The band Urge, (thank you Kevin), who supported the Specials had a friend, french, Alain Royer, who joined us for a while on guitar (Steve always was a francofile), he had a 2 CV with deck-chairs for seats!

Welcomed us to a wider buzz, brought 'the european' in to our perspective / sights

Led us to Jean-Pierre Turmel at Sordide-Sentimental Records, just after he released singles by Throbbing Gristle and Joy Division

Visiting his flat in Rouen, a wall of pornographic magazines on shelves, floor to ceiling! The original oil-painting / artwork for 'Atmosphere' above his front-door

We stayed in a flat owned by Alain's uncle in Paris, still only 17. Slept on the floor, taking turns to sleep on the couch. Listening over and over to 'Histoire de Melodie Nelson' by Serge Gainsbourg – those bass lines, so cool

every moment

We had no money, no food, took some pictures (see elsewhere), what we looked like, who we were when we made this music

Hard to recognise ourselves now – thin, hungry, angry even if we didn't realise it then

With 30 years between us now, how shy we were then, and how overcoming of ourselves in wanting to make a sound, leave a trail, to rail against the grating late 70's

How did we get so pastoral? 

Though the ethereal Nick Drake grew up not far away from Nuneaton.

Revisiting those landscapes, I can't help being reminded of pictures by a local painter called George Shaw, who was apparently growing up in Tile Hill in Coventry at the same time as us - he failed to win the Turner Prize in 2011- but don't hold that against him

His brilliant images evoke the times and spirit of the place, and moment when this record, this collection of songs was born, you should maybe look at them when you listen. Now the boys and girls are not alone..."

Steven Parker

As a teenager I used to go to a town called Roanne in France, which was twinned with my home town of Nuneaton.  Roanne was near to a place called Bron and that was where the name Bron Area came from. I played classical piano and had been in a punk band and at the same time Martin played the organ at the local Working Men's Club. It was about 1977 - 78. We had known each other since the late 1960s as we lived in the same street and our friendship developed when we both got into punk.

When Bron Area started we thought about just having two little plastic organs and no other instruments. But then I bought an electric piano and Martin bought a bass guitar so we became a group. To start with we didn’t want any other members and played a few gigs on our own. The tunes were quite melodic - perhaps my classical training and an earlier Elton John influence - although I was more into New York New Wave by then! This was after a visit to the Harry Cover shop in Paris where Ze records started who signed a lot of the New York Bands in the late 1970s. 

Martyn Bates wanted to join us but it didn’t work out and he formed Eyeless in Gaza with Pete Becker who we knew from the local punk scene. Pete was more of a music engineer type and helped us to put on gigs. Not long after that a French guitarist called Alain Royer joined us. When Alain moved to Paris, Martyn Bates paid for us to release a single from the money Eyeless got back from their single Kodak Ghosts Run Amok. We had also released a cassette tape before that called One Year. After Alain left the group we signed to Glass Records and released a single and an album. The single was also released by Posh Boy Records in California.  Martin and I split up in 1982 but got together to record some more songs in 1995.

What are the best memories? The camaraderie, making music while it rained outside, meeting new people, recording in Kevin Harrison’s house, assembling records in a van in Notting Hill to sell to Rough Trade. Being in Bron Area provided experiences that we wouldn’t have had if we hadn’t made music. .