the house. I really liked Blondie. I remember buying ‘Denis’, not least for the picture cover of Debbie Harry in that leopard skin outfit! After that, I got into heavy metal, going to see Rainbow, Motorhead, Hawkwind and [of course] Black Sabbath.”


Although they’d yet to meet, Ramon and Barrett’s respective record collections shared some key common ground during the ’80s. “I was probably getting into The Cure and some Goth stuff,” remembers Russ, “but I went to this club called The Senseteria in Birmingham and that was it: Stooges, MC5, Alice Cooper, Stones, Hendrix, Velvets. Spacemen 3 and The Mighty Lemon Drops played there. A guy called Daz who had a big mop top made me a ’60s garage tape. I was hooked: the Elevators, Count Five, Seeds, The Best Of Pebbles (essential!). Then I got into modern garage bands like The Sick Rose, Stomach Mouths, Cynics and The Chesterfield Kings. Garage-punk was easier to play on guitar than Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Both me and Gary also liked a lot of the mod/R&B faves like The Artwoods, Birds, Smoke, Sorrows, early Small Faces – the more unhinged mod/punk. I collected lots of Pebbles, Nuggets, Back From The Grave, Rubble and Mindrocker comps.”


During and after playing with The Mystery Plane, Gary dabbled with a variety of bedroom-based guises. “In the ’80s, I used to record on a reel-to-reel machine and cassette deck in my parents’ spare bedroom, so it was real basic. I recorded a lot of material with Anthony Clough who was later in the first line-up of Sun Dial. His band was called wer7 which I played on [sic] and mine was Modern Art, which was me, plus anyone else I could rope in. I used Modern Art as a learning curve for writing songs, and used to release DIY cassettes in limited numbers. I started doing stuff when I was 16 and it was just the excitement of being able to record songs.”


For Barrett, the break came courtesy of Santa Claus. “I was given an insane, bright luminous green Telecaster copy for


Park and The Assembly Rooms in Kentish Town. “After that, I was in The Cannibals for about a day then I formed The Bikinis with Sean switching to drums and me to vocals. It was my alter ego trying to be like Iggy Pop, just a way of expressing myself, writing more songs and having a blast. The Bikinis played in Camden at The Falcon, The Dublin Castle and most notably The Camden Palace. Most gigs ended in a riot. The furthest afield was in Holland with Babes In Toyland.”


Ramon, by contrast, had resisted any temptation to step onto a stage with Modern Art, opting instead to


By the end of the decade, Ramon was ready to shelve Modern Art in favour of a new project, although the evolution into Sun Dial was organic. “Modern Art was getting a lot heavier – more psychedelic even – and with two LPs out, I didn’t think it could go any further. Sun Dial was never planned initially, but with the newer music that was being made, it needed a new name. The band didn’t really exist on Other Way Out. Anthony Clough was the only permanent member of the band and we used a variety of drummers for that record. Lee Allen played uncredited on some of it.”


Those keen enough to scour the credits on Other Way Out might have been struck by mention of Third Eye Studios, which suggested some mystical location dedicated to the quest for making psychedelic music. As ever, the truth was less romantic. “That was just the name of a studio that we never had,” admits Gary with a sigh, “but by pooling recording resources with Lee, we set the equipment


up wherever we could – much to the neighbours’ annoyance. In the late ’80s, I’d worked in a voice-over studio and they chucked out an old 8- track which we rescued from a skip. Lee was an electronics expert and repaired it so it worked for a while before blowing up! We recorded the album on that, using an old ’70s desk which resembled something out of Doctor Who’s Tardis!”


Other Way Out slowly came into focus from sessions utilizing their Heath Robinson contraption. “The album was put together over a period of four months,” adds Gary. “In a similar way to Modern Art, we just used whoever was around. Sometimes, we couldn’t play loud or even with electric guitars because the neighbours complained so some songs had to


Slow Motion: Gary Ramon on stage circa 1990.


Christmas,” he reveals. “After learning the Hovis advert and ‘London’s Burning’, I formed a garage band in Birmingham but when I moved to London, I joined The Hurtin’ Kind. They had Liam Watson (who later founded Toe Rag Studios) on guitar – a great guitarist, he had all the old gear even then – and a guy called Sean on vocals who was omniscient in all things ’60s mod and garage. The Hurtin’ Kind played at The Clarendon, New Merlin’s Cave in Farringdon, the infamous Sir George Robey in Finsbury


40


be done acoustically. I had the songs, and Anthony brought in some instruments we’d started to use with wer7.”


Once Ramon & Co had some semblance of an album, they looked around for a


progress from cassette-only endeavours to a couple of bona fide vinyl LPs. “Modern Art was just a front for my solo recordings – a bit like Matt Johnson’s The The – although we used a drummer (Ed Kent) later on,” Gary explains. “The first Modern Art album was a collection of ideas and demos done on a cassette portastudio. The second one (All Aboard The Mind Train) was done with the help of Ed Kent and Lee Allen, who’d got involved in the recording processes.”


deal, eventually plumping for the tiny Tangerine label. “We started playing the tapes to a few people, and [South American record dealer] Hugo Chavez – who owned a record shop in South London – liked it so much that he wanted to release it. The album art was done by a family friend of his: we wanted something dark and psychedelic to fit the music and that was the result. Our inspiration was that we were fed up with being force-fed music that didn’t speak to


Photo courtesy of Gary Ramon


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