The Escape
Is Nothing Sacred ARC064
Featured Track
The Escape
Track 1
Eden
- Eden
- Twenty Four Hours
- The Retrospect
- I'll Pretend to Kill You
- Nogo
- The Difference Between
- Unknown War
- Desolation
- Truth Drug
- Girl In the Phone Box
- Murder
- Is Nothing Sacred
- Silent Running
THE ESCAPE
Alan Griffiths Vocals/Guitar
Emil Drums
Stuart Morgan Bass
Murder 1982
House of Secrets ARC104
- The Car
- Winter
- The Alternative
- Distractions
- Shot Down
- Broken Glass
- Third Floor
- I'm X
- Poison
- Fact or Fiction
- House of Secrets
- Blank Windscreen
- Time
- Stress Factor
- Cruel System
Apartment - Live in Bristol 1980 ARC338
- Living Like This
- Winter
- The Alternative
- Killer in Town
- Shroud of Turin
- Animal Magnetism
- The Car
- Broken Glass
- House of Secrets
Line-up:
Alan Griffiths: Guitar / lead vocals
Rich White: bass / backing vocals
Emil: Drums
All songs by Alan Griffiths, except Winter, The Alternative, Shroud of Turin (Griffiths/Large) and The Car (Griffiths/Joachim)
Mastered by Steve Street
Thanks to Simon Edwards
Produced and compiled by Dave Massey – a 570561 PRODUCTION
This exhilarating live performance by Bristol three-piece, Apartment, shows a young band from the city’s suburbs stretching its’ wings, a little rough round the edges at times, guilty of the odd miscue, once in a while out of tune or tuning up, but driven by a real will to maximise the possibilities of the music and see the band succeed.
It had been part of a step up in terms of venues over the course of a year for Apartment. They had moved from playing the Stonehouse - a long demolished but much loved venue in central Bristol where the band had performed often and, in the process, set up their own variant of New York’s CBGB’S club; and at the equally long lost Tiffany’s in The Glen near the Downs, to shows in London.
The trio are captured here live on Monday 26th March 1980 at the still thriving Trinity Centre in Bristol’s inner city. It was to become another regular gig venue for the band. The show was recorded straight off the mixing desk and has a high sound quality.
Their set is packed with deep, devastating tunes played with sizzling energy. It is a relevant spirit of the age contrast to the more controlled studio recordings released by the band at the time, and in recent years.
The date and year of the recording can be confirmed as it ties in with gig schedules and the release of the band’s first and only single, but locating the venue of the gig involved some ‘detective’ work cross-referencing those schedules with radio plays!
Simon Edwards, the owner of the local label Heartbeat Records (as well as Riot City) and a pivotal figure in the Bristol music scene of the 70’s and 80’s, had released Apartment’s debut double A side single ‘The Car’ / ‘Winter’, along with ‘The Alternative’, the latter track featured on the massively acclaimed ‘Avon Calling’ compilation of Bristol bands.
‘The Car’ was one of the songs featured on the night and it had got UK national radio airplay that afternoon on the day of the gig! Simon Edwards has a collection of the radio announcements of the airplays and it was from that information that the location of this performance was found!
Three of the other six songs featured on this album have never been released before. This is also the first Apartment collection to finally acknowledge and credit the song-writing contribution of lyrics to what became three key songs in the band’s repertoire, from then Bristol musician Pete Large, who wrote and worked with frontman Alan Griffiths before the latter set up the band in this current format.
As a result of compiling the album a stunning demo of one of those three unreleased songs, ‘Animal Magnetism’, was found which has been added to the digital version of the House of Secrets album by Apartment, originally released through Bristol Archive Records in 2015.
Apartment, followed by The Escape, was a launching pad for the career of the now deceased Griffiths, who, many years later went on to write and produce tracks for Tears For Fears and tour as a member of the band.
The recording of the live show is one of many owned and supplied from his extensive collection of Griffiths’ work to Bristol Archive Records by former Bristol based local and national music journalist, and later London music publishing A&R executive, Dave Massey, who also compiled and produced the ‘Live in 82’ Escape album listed below.
White Hotel ARC120
- Don't Cry
- Things That You Really Are
- The White Hotel
- Wildworld
- Messages
- Think About It All
- Medicine Man
- Trust
- Chance That We Both Take
- Saturday 10th
- Fallen From Grace
- Martha
The Escape 'The Retrospect'
The Escape 'NoGo'
The Escape 'Relapse Collapse' 1982
The Escape 'Casting Vote' 1982
Next: Apartment 1978-1980
