Martin Newell is an English singer songwriter and poet. a small village in rural Essex. He fronted several hard rock bands through the Seventies, but his story really begins in 1980 when he decided to eschew traditional record production and do it all himself. He started writing and recording his music at home copying up the tapes, distributing them himself and through a system of fanzines and friends. This is all pretty common stuff these days, and we also have the internet to help us, but twenty years ago there were just a few hardcore hometapers.
Martin produced these tapes under the name 'The Cleaners From Venus'; he and his friend Lol, who played drums on those early tapes, worked in a Colchester restaurant as cleaners. These tapes of jangly, melodic, guitar based tunes and daft humorous interludes, managed to pick up a cult following in Germany and other parts of Europe and at one point Martin even made a profit. Yes one night he managed to go out and fund a whole nights boozing on the money he made.
The quality of the music on these tapes was generally a lot higher than the quality of the recording. It was unusual music for the time, they were an underground group, viciously opposed to the usual commercial music business, but ironically their music was often sunny, commercial sounding pop.
Eventually it came to pass that the music industry became interested in the Cleaners, who by this time were Martin Newell and Giles Smith. They decamped from Wivenhoe to a small basement studio in London's Tin Pan Alley. Newell literally lived there for 18 months. They produced a few excellent records and even embarked on an unhappy and aborted tour of Germany but it didn't really work out and they did not become household names as some thought they deserved.
Licking his wounds Martin returned to Wivenhoe where he turned his back on music and set up a gardening round. The music was still in him though and after a while he started making music with his old friend Nelson. They called themselves The Brotherhood Of Lizards and were signed to Captain Sensible's own 'Deltic' label. They made two records, one in the same style as the early home produced tapes, which was just called
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