The Shapes (UK band)
Encyclopedia
The Shapes were an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...

 group that formed in the town of Leamington Spa
Leamington Spa
Royal Leamington Spa, commonly known as Leamington Spa or Leamington or Leam to locals, is a spa town in central Warwickshire, England. Formerly known as Leamington Priors, its expansion began following the popularisation of the medicinal qualities of its water by Dr Kerr in 1784, and by Dr Lambe...

 in 1976. Different in many ways from their peers in the nascent punk subculture
Punk subculture
The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...

, they were known for eschewing the more political stances that were fashionable at the time, instead producing works of a cartoonish and absurdist nature. They were often compared to The Rezillos
The Rezillos
The Rezillos are a punk/new wave band, who formed in Edinburgh in 1976 and still play gigs around the world in a re-formed line-up. Although frequently aligned with the punk movement, the Rezillos' irreverent glam rock image and affection for campy girl-group iconography, set them distinctly apart...

 because of their Gerry Anderson
Gerry Anderson
Gerry Anderson MBE is a British publisher, producer, director and writer, famous for his futuristic television programmes, particularly those involving specially modified marionettes, a process called "Supermarionation"....

-themed work.

History

The band was formed by Seymour Bybuss
Seymour Bybuss
Seymour Bybuss is the stage name of Ben Browton of Leamington Spa, England, during the period when he was the singer for the punk rock band The Shapes. Since that time, he has concentrated on different media such as music, sculpture, gender role performance art with his alter ego "Ben The Wendy"...

 (Ben Browton, vocals) and Brian Helicopter
Brian Helicopter
Brian Helicopter is the stage name of Gareth Holder , an English musician, based in the United States. He is best known for playing bass guitar for the UK punk rock band The Shapes. He also played for many other bands, the most notable being the NWOBHM bands Rogue Male and HellsBelles...

 (Gareth Holder, bass guitar), who recruited Nigel Greenway (guitar), Nick Hadley (guitar), and Charlie Pullen (drums). This line-up played their debut gig at the University of Warwick
University of Warwick
The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...

 supporting The Killjoys
The Killjoys (UK band)
The Killjoys were a punk rock/new wave band from Birmingham, England, formed in 1976, with members including Kevin Rowland and Kevin "Al" Archer, who would later form Dexys Midnight Runners, and Ghislaine 'Gil' Weston who would later join Girlschool...

, and recorded a demo shortly after. They were offered a deal by EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...

, but the record company wanted them to change their name to The Racket and mime to a pre-recorded song; This prompted Hadley to leave the band, and they carried on as The Shapes, with EMI bringing them together with songwriter Nick Brind of Joe Public, but this relationship broke down after Brind insisted on singing on the resulting tracks. Pullen was replaced by Dave Gee and the band returned to live performances and recorded more material before Greenway left the band. The remaining trio put an advert in the NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...

for
new members, recruiting Steve Richards (lead guitar) as a result, and adding Gee's friend Tim Jee on guitar around the same time.

The new line-up recorded four tracks at Woodbine Studios which were released as their vinyl debut in March 1979 as the EP
Extended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...

 Part of the Furniture on their own Sofa label. The début EP was given airplay by John Peel
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...

, who invited the band to record a session for his BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...

 show the following month. The EP sold sufficiently for the band to repress it twice, with total sales of 10,000 copies.

The band's humorous take on punk rock received comparisons to The Rezillos
The Rezillos
The Rezillos are a punk/new wave band, who formed in Edinburgh in 1976 and still play gigs around the world in a re-formed line-up. Although frequently aligned with the punk movement, the Rezillos' irreverent glam rock image and affection for campy girl-group iconography, set them distinctly apart...

. They played support slots with The Fall, The Cure
The Cure
The Cure are an English rock band formed in Crawley, West Sussex in 1976. The band has experienced several line-up changes, with frontman, vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter Robert Smith being the only constant member...

, and The Reaction
Talk Talk
Talk Talk were an English musical group, active from 1981 to 1991. The group had a string of international hit singles including "Today", "Talk Talk", "It's My Life", "Such a Shame", "Dum Dum Girl", "Life's What You Make It" and "Living in Another World"....

, and were picked up by Terri Hooley
Terri Hooley
Terri Hooley, Godfather of the Belfast punk scene and the first person to win the Oh Yeah Legend Award in 2008. Hooley has received many awards throughout the world, his first was The Irish Music Industry Award 1994, Belfast caught up in 2008 when he received several awards in his native city...

's Good Vibrations
Good Vibrations (record label)
Good Vibrations is a Belfast record label and store. Founded by Terri Hooley in the early 1970’s, Good Vibrations started out in a small derelict building on Great Victoria Street, Belfast...

 label for the next single, "Blast Off". Hooley got the band on the bill of a concert by The Saints at the Royal Ulster Hall in Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...

, the band now without Richards. On their return to England they supported The Photos
The Photos
The Photos were a British new wave band fronted by Wendy Wu, who had a top 5 album in the UK in 1980.-History:The Photos were originally a punk band named Satan's Rats that formed in Evesham, Worcestershire in 1977, with the first stable line-up of Paul Rencher , Steve Eagles , Roy Wilkes , and...

 on tour, and recorded an EP for Good Vibrations (featuring "Jennifer the Conifer", "Let's Go (To Planet Skaro)", and "My House is a Satellite") but it was never released. The band split up in the early 1980s, with Holder already splitting his time between The Shapes and another band.

Tim Jee went on to join The Captain Black Solution, while Bybuss made several appearances on Eurotrash
Eurotrash (TV series)
Eurotrash is a 30-minute magazine-format programme in English produced by Rapido Television. It was shown in the United Kingdom on Channel 4 from 1993 and was a late-night comical review of weird and wonderful topics from around the world...

as transvestite nun 'Sister Bendy' and started a new band, The Ambassadors of Plush. Holder remained in the music business, playing and recording with Rogue Male
Rogue Male (band)
-1980s:Rogue Male was the brainchild of Northern Ireland born singer/guitarist Jim Lyttle, who had previously been in the seminal Northern Irish punk band Pretty Boy Floyd and The Gems. Moving to London in the early 1980s he decided to put together a band that would mix punk styles and aggression...

 and Hells Belles before moving to California to work as a professional skydiver. Richards went on to be a horse breeder, while Gee ran a recruitment agency in Northampton. Original guitarist Nigel Greenway left the music business and committed suicide some years later.

Having achieved cult status, their records commanded high prices among collectors. This demand resulted in a belated release of a full length retrospective of all of the singles, B-Sides, radio sessions and demos as the collection Songs for Sensible People on Overground Records in 1998. The independent label Hyped to Death have released Shapes tracks as part of their compilation series from 2002 onwards in the USA. The most recent release being in 2007 on their Messthetics series of releases. Overground Records re-released Songs for Sensible People in its original format in January 2008. In mid 2008, it was announced that The Shapes would reform in their original line-up for a tour of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

to mark the 30 year anniversary of their first single in December 2008.

External links

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