Monday 3 October 2011

The Auctioneers (Part 1)

The Auctioneers were a band from Southend.
In action from about 1985 - 90.
Featuring Martin Clarke - vocals & guitars, Chris Clarke - bass,
Darrall Knight - Guitars, Martin Temperton - drums.

After moving to London in late 86 I spotted an ad in Melody Maker.
Mainly due to the name and obvious REM connection plus they had management.
I was offered the vacant guitarist job after a meeting and an audition.
I thought their demo was great and still  like the songs all these years on. 






We gigged in all the right places at the time for an unsigned band.
Dingwalls, Marquee, lots of central London pubs.

A couple of memorable trips to Wales for university gigs.
Picked up a few decent reviews and a few not so good ones.
Got quite serious publishing interest from EMI for a while only for them to turn around and say the image was wrong. Music was right but...
Why we just didn't self release something I don't know. A bit of general disdain for the business side if I remember rightly. A downside of having management is that you leave it to them to do it all. Or not enough as it turned out.







Demo tracks Drainaway, Honeypot, and Mystery Girl we're all recorded in Southend and I think had Martin Temperton's brother on guitar as well.
(someone correct me if I'm wrong.)
After I joined things started to go in a slightly more rock direction.
Which with hindsight was inevitable but probably not quite right.
I still like most of the songs I recorded with them.  I was coming up with a lot of music ideas and Martin was writing lyrics to them. But we did lose the pop appeal that I find in these great Martin Clarke written tracks.







If any ones got any Auctioneers press clippings or photos could you please let me know.

DK.





2 comments:

  1. About time too.

    Lets hope this is just the beginning of a series of Auctioneers posts....

    ReplyDelete
  2. Better late than never?
    There will be at least one more Ian. X

    ReplyDelete