Music like The Bevis Frond

The Bevis Frond is a British musical group whose range covers hard edge to melancholy vintage indie rock to poetic, "classic-rock" songcraft. Nick Saloman is the band's frontman and songwriter. They have recorded many singles and albums on various independent labels.

Saloman was originally in a band known as the Bevis Frond Museum in the late 1960s and in the 1970s whilst at college he played guitar with a duo called Oddsocks, they released one album, Men of the Moment. In 1979 he formed a band called the Von Trap Family, who released the first single on his own Woronzow Records label. The early Von Trap Family recordings, comprising three sessions, were released on the Bevis Frond Bandcamp site for the first time in May 2010. The next release on Woronzow was in 1982, a 12" single by Room 13 with Saloman on guitar and future Bevis Frond drummer Martin Crowley. After Room 13 reached the end of its natural life, Nick Saloman had a bad motorbike accident that left him with a constriction of movement in his left arm. True to form, he had the arm set so that he could continue playing guitar. With the proceeds from a damages claim he bought a 4 track recorder and recorded some music which he decided to press as a limited release of 250 albums, more for the sake of just releasing an album than anything else. He was very surprised when Funhouse records in Kent phoned him up and asked for a couple of hundred copies as they'd been selling the album quite briskly. Saloman's desire was to "record the kind of music I'd like to listen to… I wanted a Hendrix/Wipers/Byrds sound but with a distinctly British feel." Subsequent albums were also recorded in a home studio and released on Woronzow until 1988, when he signed a deal with Reckless Records for the UK and USA. All the early albums were finally re-released on CD and Reckless financed the recording and release of his sixth album, Any Gas Faster, using a professional studio for the first time, reuniting him with Drummer Martin Crowley. This is also the point that he began touring. Another 1990 album, Magic Eye, was a collaboration with Twink of the Pink Fairies. In 1990 he returned to the studio to record his next album, New River Head, which featured guest musicians including Barry Dransfield and David Tibet. The next year he recorded London Stone, but Reckless were less than happy with the album, and in the ensuing friction, Nick decided to release the Album on Woronzow again. All his subsequent albums have appeared on Woronzow.