General: We're a band from Hull. Less General:
We're a local band of nice lads. We provide a large range of entertainment, from derision to heart warming ukulele ballads - mostly simply churning out our own brand of classic rock influenced noise.
Biography:
The band has a long and interesting history. Chris Dalby (drums and vocals) was in a band called The Jugs, playing the organ. When he met Seán Young (guitar and vocals), who was in a punk outfit called the Jews, playing the bass. When the Jugs split up over musical differences, Dalby talked to the long-haired young man and talked about forming a new group. They recruited John ‘Hammer’ Owens to play guitar and a middle aged policeman called Clive on drums to complete the line-up, with Dalby on Organ and Seán Young on bass. The group was called ‘The Funky Marmalade’ and played doo-wop standards and original material such as ‘Girls Got Funk’, ‘The Funky Banana’ and ‘All aboard the Funk Express (Destination Funksville)’. The band played local pubs but a change was necessary; ‘Well, we moved from doo-wop into rock and rock because there’s more money in it’ Dalby mused, ‘I mean my first love will always be doo-wop, I mean I must be the biggest Turtles fan in Yorkshire, but you know, you can’t make a living playing doo-wop’, Seán adds; ‘Well we experimented, we tried to insert classical influences into the music, but it just didn’t work, doo-wop is like a snowman, when you start sticking things to it, it falls over’.
So Seán and Dalby formed a rock and roll band, called ‘Black Fox’, while playing the same instruments as they did before, they added Tony W. Blackton on guitar, and Ron Terrio on drums. The new line-up didn’t last long; ‘We had a lot of problems with Tony’ recalled Dalby ‘I mean, he was a nice guy, but he just wasn’t right’. Seán recalls it differently; ‘His beard was too long, his trousers were too short, he had earrings, he was like a pirate with short trousers!’ Terrio didn’t last long either; ‘Well Terrio got an offer to go and drum with a Bay City Rollers tribute band’ said Dalby with an uneasy smile ‘and he took it, but he got a massive electric shock off a faulty microphone on stage and died, so we got the last laugh’. Dalby switched to drums when he encountered ‘problems’ with the organ ; ‘Well I kept spilling tea on the organ and then it wouldn’t work and I’d have to buy a new one, so I figured I’d play the drums, I mean, you can spill all the tea you like on drums’. And Seán switched to guitar after an encounter with a maths textbook when he realised, in his own words ‘6 is more than 4, which means the guitar is better than the bass!’.
The duo added Steve Bull on bass, a childhood friend of Dalby, but the relationship was not to last; ‘Fuck! I mean the guy was OBSESSED with Cliff Richard!’ laughs Dalby ‘I mean he started coming to practise in tennis gear and all that, we had to let him go’. Andrew J. Cook was his replacement; ‘Well Cookie’s a good guy’ smiles Seán, ‘the way he plays bass reminds me of a ferret with a fake beard on’. The band advertised the post, but when it came to auditions…’Oh it was a ‘kin nightmare’ groaned Dalby ‘No fucker turned up!! It was just an empty room. This guy wandered in, asking if he could use the toilet, and we just made him the guitar player’. The lavatory-seeking young man was Dom ‘Something’ Rout, a local legend known for playing in the jazz-fusion band ‘The Potatoes’, playing percussion. ‘Well Dom really couldn’t play guitar at first’ adds Seán, ‘I mean he used to try and do all these conga techniques on it, he asked if he could play it flat, but he got the hang of it eventually’.
So then band was starting to take off, however, at the first gig Cookie commented "Who's going to play the words?" being a bassist, he couldn't even play notes; The Fresh was in a pickle.
Luckily local tea girl Hannah Afford volunteered, after being saved from a train. Also, Dom died.
The band is now in its current form, and renamed Armageddon Fresh after something Dalby once saw in a supermarket; ‘Well I was in the Co-op, and I saw this soap called ‘Armageddon Fresh brand soap, so we called the band that’. The band has recently been given strong critical praise, with one journalist dubbing the band 'The gayest band in rock and roll'.
The most recent meneber of 'The Fresh' is Hannah, who originally played the harpsichord. But an injury to her left hand in a car crash made her try her hand at vocals (the non-injured one obviously). She used to play in a thrash metal band called 'The Evil Death', playing piano and the kazoo. She says of being in the Fresh; 'I enjoy it now, it was a little hard to adjust to the casual racism, but I've got used to it now'.
Some critical comments on the band gathered from various reviews etc.;
Sean Young - 'Generally dicks about on the guitar, often while wearing a stupid hat'.
Chris Dalby - 'The nastiest man in rock and roll, and perhaps even Jazz too'
Andrew Cook - 'I'm not sure why he's there, he doesn't seem to be plugged in'
Hannah - 'So little stage presence I forgot she was there for 50 minutes'
Thanks for the add. We're looking to open as a recording studio above the Chocolate Factory rehearsal rooms in Hull around May time. If you'd be interested in recording good quailty track recordings then just get in touch and we'll look to get you straight in when we open for business.
![element [STUDIO]](http://c1.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/78/s_d495398e9f8743d7b4a47b2c448c3d68.jpg)
