Biography
Quality Drivel was a British punk / New Wave band formed in early 1980 by John Perry (vocals) and Torsten Brose (guitar), two sixth-form classmates at Oxfordshire's Abingdon School (from which Radiohead would spring seven years later....). They roped in John's childhood friend Kevin Wilson on bass. Another schoolmate, Richard Hawes, was drafted in on drums. The band began learning their instruments from scratch and practising together at school.
Within three months they were playing small gigs and had a regular practice venue, an ineptly-soundproofed shed in Hawes' parents' large garden on the outskirts of Oxford. Their first demo, the eight-song Made For Sharing EP, was recorded at an eight-track studio near Bicester, Oxfordshire, in September 1980.
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By the summer of 1981 the band had a decent-sized local following and was playing regular gigs at village and school halls. Brose then left, having grown increasingly frustrated with the band's move away from four-chord punk and into more intricate New Wave. Perry took up guitar duties with great relish and recruited school friend Stuart Allinson as co-guitarist. Before long they had recorded four of Perry's songs over a weekend at a studio in Stevenage, Herts , which became known as the 'Subliminal Cuts EP. Two of these tracks can be heard on the 'Bored Teenagers Vol. 3' compilation LP. It was never a true representation of the band's sound, the guitars being too low in the mix and the over-all feel too light and commercial.
Shortly afterwards, after a series of less-than-successful gigs, it was agreed that Allinson should leave the band but remain it's sound engineer-cum-manager. As a three-piece, with Perry on guitar and vocals, Wilson on bass and backing vocals and Hawes on drums, the band played a handful of well-received gigs during 1982, including two at Oxford's famous Jericho Tavern, and got closer to the guitar-driven pop/punk sound they had always aimed at. They recorded a two-track demo, featuring 'True Blue' and 'No Choices', which in hindsight was probably their best effort. The band split in the summer of 1982, as Perry and Hawes went on to further education.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.