The Adverts Sheffield Top Rank 19th August 1979

Nearly there! So here is a gig from the last days of The Adverts. As you can see, much of the 'Red Sea' material had at this point in time been dropped from the set in favour on material from the soon to be released 'Cast of Thousands' album. In actual fact the release of their second and final studio album pretty much coincided with the break up of the band.

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Interview With The Adverts (New Musical Express 24th September 1977)

It a bit weird, I must admit, being packed off  to see The Adverts.

I always think these angry young things are going to chew me up in small pieces and spit me back out again, and I suspected I'd be happier at home with my Led Zeppelin records than ligging at the Locarno in Coventry.

Not a bit of it. All quiet pleasant. For one thing, a substantial segment of the audience resembled the natives inhabiting my own dimension of space and time, with a mere handful of would-be punkettes more nearly resembling Dusty Springfield circa 1964 than advertisements for Mrs. Howie or McLaren Enterprises.

For another, the band were so subdued in the dressing room I considered tap-dancing on the table to get them going. Gaye kept leaning out of the loo to direct drummer Laurie Driver's listless doodlings on her bass "From the fifth to the third'! Right." - and retreating back.

TV (Tim) Smith sat hunched and withdrawn for about an hour, meditatively coughing and sipping beer. Unlikely looking manager Michael Dempsey, a publisher friend of NME's Miles (who put him onto the band in the first place and is going to help produce their next single), hopped around bubbling in counterpoint to the band's apparent nervousness.

The first and only previous time I’d seen The Adverts was last winter at the Roxy, about two minutes after they got together. Even then I thought they had something, although I would have been hard pressed to say what exactly.

More recently it seems the fashion in some quarters to be patronizing about The Adverts and sneer that they're terrible when they patently aren't.

Laurie's convinced some of the slagging originated in one well-known punk commentator’s failure to have his evil way with Gaye, which brings me to my biggest realisation of the gig - that Gaye's bass playing is far from the hilarious-joke one has been led to believe, since she's graduated from her initially fearful and delicate finger placement to an adequately ballsy attack.

Now, at least three Adverts articles that have passed under my nose at some point in the last two months have made the identical, hackneyed charge that "Gaye is no Jack Bruce".

Give it a rest, guys. The New Wave has yet to yield any bassist with that calibre of musical education and experience. If people are going to start awarding points on a scale of mature musical artistry now, at least apply the same standards to everyone in the show.

Besides, the statement is about as relevant and  informative as saying Rat Scabies is no Chick Webb or Johnny Rotten  is no Barbra Streisand.

The other face of the media gab has the Sun including Gaye in its recent characteristically intellectual analysis of the "saucy pop" girls and the Daily Express electing her the ethereal, enamel-faced  inheritor of Marianne Faithfull's mantle - everyone's fave wasted English rose.

Playing it straight , Gaye just seems to me to be a very nice girl who is nervous, talkative but hard to follow as she shyly swallows words, averts her eyes and skitters away in pained awareness of photographers.

If she's looking more and more like an only partly reluctant donor to her friendly neighbourhood vampire rather than the girl next door ("I’ve had three pieces of toast today" she protested when I accused  her of not eating) she will still cheerfully reflect that the nicest thing about "Gary Gilmore's Eyes" doing so well is that her parents are pleased.

On stage she looks stronger and cooler, but she's very self-conscious, a situation that's been exacerbated by the kind of press she's excited and the occasional cries of "Get 'em off" that still stick in her craw.

Her way of dealing with it is to keep her head down and maintain a steely fascination with her frets .

"People have the totally wrong attitude to me just 'because I’m a female. People are always going on about what you're wearing and how you present yourself. Some musicians have helped  me, but people in general don't. I'm just desperately trying to get a good sound and play right. I.'m not one of Pan's People. I really like the audience, but I'd almost rather stand behind the stage and play where they can't see me."

Why she does it then is, reasonably enough, because she's got a compulsion to. When she couldn't get a job as a graphic designer after leaving art college, Tim encouraged her to act on the fascination with the bass she says she's had ever since she was a kid, buying Beatles and Monkees records, and more so since she was 13 and discovered Zappa. (although hero numero uno is Iggy Iggy Iggy, whose kisser decorates her clothes, her walls and her bass, the thought of supporting him on his forthcoming tour has her in palpitations).

"I just always listened to the bass. When Tim was working and I was at home all day doing nothing I was getting completely confused.

"Then I was seeing The Stranglers every week and I started trying to play like Jean Jacques." I love it – I was a mouse wife until discovered sadisto rock . .. the effect was shattering.

Gaye is kinder about many of her contemporaries than some of them have been about her. "I wouldn't say any of them are bad at playing. At least they've got guts." . .

And she laughs at her propensity to put herself down in comparison to her enthusiasms for other bands.

"When I told Johnny Rotten the Pistols were my favourite band, he said ‘You’re not supposed to say that!’ You should think you're the best’ I suppose he's right."

Tim says he doesn't care what's said about them. It's all so corny anyway; the same thing always happens to new bands, etc.

However, later, when we replay a tape of their airing on John Peel's programme - an excellent performance with the band sounding really confident - he looks up, genuinely puzzled and says, "I don't see why people say we can't play. I’m not sure why we're the band that's been chosen to bear the brunt of the accusations of not being able to play."

 “It could be because we have a female in the group", guitarist Howard Pick-up interjects.

"I object to these accusations because Tim and I have been in bands before, and even if Laurie and Gaye haven't I think we're now as good as any of them."

That's what they all say, honey. But I’ll testify they got 'em going down the Mecca, and I had a dancey time.

"I think we actually try stuff that's technically much more difficult than most of the stuff that's going around on the New Wave or whatever you call it," Tim was eventually pushed into arguing. "We try strange rhythms in the songs ...

"Very strange," Howard howled." . .. and we don't always succeed," Tim finished , "but I believe in songs because that's what comes into your head when you walk down the street, not the band's noise."

But when you've only had one major single released it's sometimes difficult for an audience to discern whether it's hearing a savage, searing indictment of our time or not.

"It's irrelevant discussing what songs mean. Just like asking our opinion on things is setting us up on a pedestal. I just write songs and I had to play them. "

Why? Just another compulsion, I'm led to believe, and screw looking for answers or rewards .

"I would categorically state that I don't care if I get rich, famous or laid, and I think it's crazy when people shout for you and things.

"As far as I'm concerned I’m just an object to do the songs.

“You have to make sure there are certain lines which are going to stick out, even live, so they can catch you emotionally if not intellectually – just little things that make you swoop up when you hear them.

“It’s like that for me performing. I’ll sing a line here or there and suddenly it gets me up.”

What is this anti-hero stuff? No hopes, no dreams, or aspirations, either financial or physical? No political pretensions?

Is this another New Wave line?

“We’re not New Wave. There are no categories. They ought to cut that now.

“Stop calling in punk or New Wave or anything, so it would just be bands again. Politics is just another cliché. It is part of life, inseparable.”

If there is a – you’ll pardon the pretension – recurring theme in some of Tim’s songs I’d say it was that there is no  point in looking to anyone or anything else to make it for you, as in "New Church” or in the next single, " Safety in Numbers".

"It’s the latest thing to be nowhere/ You can blend into the wallpaper/But you know were always there anyway without the New Wave/What about the New Wave?/Did you think it would change things?"

The cynic in me says this kid is disillusioned.  Allowing, however, that he may be in the purer state of being simply without illusions, what then does he want to do?

“I just like to think that people could come along and have a good time. I think it ought to be a very exciting experience coming to see us. I'd get a buzz out of watching it.

"Unfortunately I'm never in a position where I can watch it."

Gaye had said, “I don 't know what I want to happen. All these business people keep talking about what we're wearing and 'is the follow up commercial?'

"I don't really care if it is commercial if I really like it. It 's nice that we have some say in it and know what's going on, otherwise you end up like Abba in two year's time."

Well , but Abba are rich and popular.

Okay, so The Adverts reckon they don't pine for externals. Tim wears a home, made badge that reads:
"Is yours a LIVING room? Is it a HAVEN, do you feel secure and ... "

Security, like riches and fan letters, being another false god, I presume.

“If everything went right, there would be something wrong."  Tim reasoned . "You have to have tension to keep alive . "

Gig Review - The Adverts Coatham Hall, Redcar 23rd July 1978 (Sounds 5th August 1978)

Outnumbered 600 bored teenagers to one bored non-teenager. I felt pretty lonely in
Redcar on a Sunday night witnessing The Adverts emerge from their 'period of transition'.

A new direction bad been promised, but while the show self -evidently fulfilled the hopes of the Teeside itinerants, it failed to throw any further light on the validity of a band whose credibility has always seemed rather marginal. Frankly, this was just more music to pogo to; you didn't have to be an Adverts aficionado fully conversant with the band's method to realise that nothing much has changed.

Nevertheless (having just left Anchor Records with apparent bad feeling, the company no longer interested in further promoting 'Crossing The Red Sea'), The Adverts manage to market themselves effectively. And even though it's all fairly superficial product, not many people here seemed to care.

I suppose the fact the 'Gary Gilmore's Eyes' - still their best song, tasteless as it is - has been promoted to song number two instead of being hoarded for the encore indicates that The Adverts feel they have something better to offer. If they're right, it's probably In the shape of 'Television's Over' and 'I Surrender'. More melodic numbers than standard Adverts, they have a trace of sophistication, even some jangling Byrds chords, which come as relatively interesting relief from T. V. Smith's intensely monotonous verbal batteries - as heavy on the ears as they are on punk images and catch-phrases. T.V. cools it for this newer material, his delivery tones down while he almost motionlessly caresses the mike like some of the new wave vocalists do across the Atlantic.

Up against the wall: TV Smith is floored

(Coatham Hall, Redcar 23rd July 1978)

Then it's business as usual as the band resumes its customary vernacular with numbers like
'We Who Wait', 'New Boys' and 'On Wheels'; 'New Church' expressed in rock and roll for
people who just want to hang loose and replenish their beer supply is straight pretentious liberal fascism. I mean, could you/would you pogo to religious propaganda?

Personnel-wise, The Adverts only have one tangible asset and that’s Gaye Advert. She can’t play to any great extent but at least she looks like she knows it . Guitarist Howard Pickup still ludicrously looks like an academic even though he’s opted for scantier clothing, while T.V., stripping down from something like a safari jacket to an off the shoulder shredded black T-shirt (you’d have thought he’d be one of the first to know better), looks more like Johnny Weismuller than a punk. Moreover, the stage was here a little too vast for him: excelling when he’s cramped, the Coatham Bowl’s commodious dias offered his act none of the required physical constraints.

The band closed the set with ‘Bored Teenagers’, ‘No Time to be 21’ and ‘One Chord Wonders’, and by that time one wondered how many more ‘vogue’ clichés this team is capable of trotting out. If The Adverts really do have musical ambition/aspirations , these are numbers that will have to go. Smith’s over-anxiety to make statements, some of them expedient) like manufacturing anthems for younger kids), others blatantly naive, isn’t the kind of policy to take this band into the future.

Not so much a rock n roll concert as an ecological offence, one left wondering exactly how many votaries had shown up strictly for Gaye.

When Gaye Got To Play With Iggy

Gate Advert makes her feelings known for Iggy (1977)

If there is one thing of which Gaye Advert cannot be accused it is of hiding her love of Iggy and the Stooges. Over two night's (30th September and 1st October 1977) MAM promoters fixed it for the young lady to appear on the same stage as her hero when the Adverts were billed as support for the 'Godfather of Punk' over two nights at the Rainbow Theatre in London. In a career that, I think it is fair to say, never hit the heights that it should of, both Gaye and TV view this occasion as one of the highlights for their band. So much so in fact that TV wrote about it years later in his 'Punk Rock Poem'.

'Punk Rock Poem' by TV Smith

It was strange being in a punk rock band

People gobbed on us, then shook us by the hand

We played every toilet in this green and slimy land

First of all for fifteen quid, then - later on - a grand!

Thirty days of madness touring with the Damned

Turning up to soundcheck to find out we'd been banned

Driving back to London in the mini-van

Didn't get to the U.S.A. as planned

And, looking back, we didn't change the music scene a lot

But we did have one hit single, and supported Iggy Pop

And sometimes people tell me that the Adverts changed their lives

And that's nice

It was great being in a punk rock band.

The Adverts in The New Wave Magazine

The Adverts featured again in another UK based 1977 fanzine ‘The New Wave Magazine’ edited by Nag and Sex Ade (I believe).

'The Adverts are on stage. “This is the real thing” announces T.V. Smith as the band smash their way into ‘One Chord Wonders’. ‘New Boys’ quickly follows as T.V. jumps and cavorts around the stage. Howard, on guitar, looks as though he has just stepped out of a horror movie, a tall, menacing figure relentlessly bludgeoning out the chords. ‘Quick Step’, and Gaye coolly picks out the bass line, content to stand to one side and concentrate on her playing. She plays strange rhythms almost using the bass as a lead. ‘On the Roof’, ‘New Day Dawning’ and all the while Laurie crashes into the drums just as if they were his mother-in-law that he hates. ‘We Who Wait’, ‘Bored Teenagers’ as T.V. screams and spits out his lyrics. There’s so much pain and anger in his voice. An apathetic audience find the time changes to difficult to relate to. ‘Gary Gilmore’s Eyes’ and then ‘Bombsite Boy’ T.V. tells the audience what he thinks of their lack of life. The finale is ‘Great British Mistake’ which ends as a mass of feedback and noise when Laurie kicks the drums all over the stage and microphones are left screaming by the amplifiers. A great gig from them but a cold and lifeless audience. Get to see this band. You’ll love them or hate them. Better find out!'

'T.V. Smith Interview by Nag and Ade (1977).

N/A: What made you choose the name ‘Adverts’?

TV: Well, what do you see in the name?

N/A: It’s the boring thing on television, so you’re an opposite to that?

TV: It’s a question of opposites definitely. I hate the adverts, right, ‘cos they’re selling you something you don’t want. But they’re fucking selling it because… there’s no honesty in the adverts. They’re all fucking lies. They’re telling you what they want to sell because they’ve been paid the money to make the adverts….. all that shit! It can go down the drain for all I care. There’s no point to it. I don’t need to be told what I want to buy. I’ll buy what I want to buy anyway.

N/A: What would you say are your musical influences?

TV: There’s no need to see influences. Influences are a thing of the past. I’ve liked people… Bowie, Iggy, Dolls. Who haven’t I liked, that’s the more important question. I haven’t liked Yes, ELP…. What I don’t like is the big superstar thing – you can’t be in a band unless you’ve played the scales every day. That’s what really stifled music. All you’ve got to do is learn a few chords, try and get a rhythm together, and if you’ve got something in your head then put it out. Who cares whether you can fucking play all the notes! I don’t care. No one cares.

N/A: How would you define the music? What sort of music do you call it?

TV: One thing I hate is categories. A lot of people turned up tonight expecting to see a punk band: 1-2-3-4 blam blam blam blam. It didn’t happen and they were put off. That’s what went wrong tonight. People have got this stereotype of punk music from their music papers. They’ve read NME and Sounds and they think , here it comes, it’s gonna be headbanging time. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe they didn’t like it and it’s going to take a bit longer than that . What group made it on their first ten gigs? Not many, not unless they’ve got a big advert hype going for them, and a lot of money behind them to push their full page ads in the music papers.'

The Adverts Paradiso Amsterdam 10th March 1978

Now finally with their long awaited debut album, 'Crossing The Red Sea With The Adverts', released, the first three months of 1978 saw the band on tour, including a short hop over the Channel for two gigs, one in Brussels and this one at the Paradiso in Amsterdam.

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01. Bored Teenagers
02. Male Assault
03. Quick Step
04. Bombsite Boy
05. On The Roof
06. New Day Dawning
07. On Wheels
08. New Boys
09. Drowning Men
10. New Church
11. No Time To Be 21
12. Gary Gilmore's Eyes
13. The Great British Mistake

The Wonders Don't Care - Just As Well Really..... The Record Reviews

Debut single review by Danny Baker.
Sniffin’ Glue Issue 10 June 1977.

One chord Wonders/Quickstep (STIFF) 

I really like the Adverts, (Gary Gilmore’s Eyes is a classic), as ever the drums and bass are right up front, for a group, (all join in on this cliché) – you either love or hate. Great track, ‘specially the lyrics, but will do lousy as a single, good B side ennall.

Ripped & Torn Fanzine Issue 9 (November 1977) Single Review by Tony Drayton

Safety in Numbers/We Who Wait (Anchor)

This isn’t very good at all. Onstage it’s a fairly good highlight but on the old black vinyl it doesn’t cut it at the first half, and when the chorus comes in it doesn’t lift it like it should, like it could have with a bit of thought. I like the pic sleeve.

Melody Maker 5th November 1977

Safety in Numbers/We Who Wait (Anchor)

Neither have the instantaneous impact of that ghoulish delight that was “Gary Gilmore’s Eyes,” but with a little perseverance they will reward in a different fashion. 

What does strike straight away is how improved Tim Smith is. His larynx has never been more assured and expressive as he lashes out a few home truths about the Blank Generation. 

“Safety in Numbers” includes lines like “It is the latest thing to be nowhere/And turn into wallpaper/And you know you’re always there anyway.” Spite? Sour grapes? No. Just a more balanced and considered outlook.

Producer/journalist (they get everywhere nowadays) Miles has laudably given the distinctive juddering tempo a fine cutting edge. The cover has a wry touch – new wave pin-up Gaye Advert is represented by her bass in its case. No exploitation for these lads.

New Musical Express 21st January 1978

No Time to be 21 (Bright Records)

Their fourth record and The Adverts definitely come of age, settling down and hinting at future consistency. This is a good rock song, an insidious number, a grower, and it borrows healthily. The group, it seems have at last found an instrumental balance, and there is no destruction of that precise, charging Adverts sound. Their smartest single. Will chart, will take time. No-one predicted them for the big break this year, but they don’t care. They have something to say. Juggling with clichés and coming out well on top.

Sounds 18th November 1978

Television’s Over (RCA)

Another outbreak of cathode tube blue-glow poisoning has been reported in TV Smith’s living room. Old thoughts and dull chords make Britain a bad place to dance in. Less entertainment value than the closedown dot on 625 lines.

New Musical Express 27th October 1979

Cast of Thousands (RCA) 

A band that steadfastly refuses to acknowledge its own futility. Their one moment of singles fame came with the help of a song which bore a remarkable resemblance to an old Slade album track. Lacking any such inspiration on this occasion, they strum a sloppy, misconceived song about doom and other important things, and sound about as convinced of the need to make this statement as you are to be of the need to hear it. The unorthodox slant of TV Smith’s lyrics may one day pay off, but not until he writes songs that aren’t as instantly forgettable and finds a band to play them that isn’t instantly hopeless. All five Adverts wear mascara. Somewhere along the line there is a connection.