The Buzz Club: That Petrol Emotion / The Mighty Lemon Drops

From 1985 until 1993 myself and Danny Hagan put bands on in Surrey and Hampshire (and once in London) as The Buzz Club. Over the years we put on The Stone Roses, Primal Scream, Blur, The Happy Mondays, Suede, Elastica, The Charlatans, Cornershop, Shed 7, Dodgy, Spiritualized and in the early days, lots of the C-86 bands.

I’ll document all the fliers, posters, live recordings and memories I have here. The Buzz Club lasted 7 years, mainly from The West End Centre in Aldershot. It’s taken me about 10 years to gather what I have so far…who knows, maybe more stuff will get sent to me and I’ll keep going! Please do get in touch if you went to any of these Buzz Club gigs, I’d love to hear from you.

This poster is from the first ever one – That Petrol Emotion and The Mighty Lemon Drops at The Agincourt in Camberley, Surrey 17th November 1985. We used to get the posters done by Publicity and Display in Goldalming – we saw that’s where the proper  promoters got theirs made and we always wanted to be ‘proper’. We would paste them up ourselves on closed down shops where all the other venues were pasting theirs, a bucket of wall paper paste and a broom in the back seat of Danny’s Mini.

That Petrol

Myself and Danny were in Go! Service and Bluetrain who released 12″s on Dan Treacy’s (of The TV Personalities) Dreamworld label. We often played gigs at Dan’s Room At The Top club, above The Enterprise pub in Chalk Farm, London.

These gigs proved to be an inspiration to start The Buzz Club (and later, The Green Man Festival). This first Buzz Club featured label mates The Mighty Lemon Drops. I remember being excited that Geoff Travis from Rough Trade was in the audience to see them. That Petrol Emotion headlined the show, Go! Service had supported them a few months before at The Room At The Top..

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I got these photos from that Buzz Club first night relatively recently – sent to me by the lead singer of The Mighty Lemon Drops, Paul Marsh. Thanks Paul! Here’s Damien O’Neil, previously of The Undertones. That Petrol Emotion were Damien and his brother John’s new band when they played The Buzz Club and we were thrilled to have them play. Their debut single, ‘Keen’ had been released on the wonderful Pink label a few months earlier.

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Singer, Steve Mack.

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Damien O’Neil

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The Mighty Lemon Drops, who were just about to release their debut single, the awesome, ‘Like An Angel’ on Dreamworld Records – the label my band, Go! Service was also on.

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Dan Treacy ( The T.V. Personalities / Dreamworld Records) and Iain Baker, later of Jesus Jones.

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Finally, here’s a live recording of That Petrol Emotion singing ‘Good Thing’ from that first Buzz Club.

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