Brucel The Drummer's site

This band was 80s pop/rock at it's best ... or worst depending on your point of view. A number of bands during this era hid their true rock, or even more risky prog, credentials to attempt to have some modicum of commercial success.
Victorian Kitchen was one of those bands.
We'll never be sure how close we were to success as talk is cheap and there was plenty of that around 1987/88. Victorian Kitchen rehearsed in Pet Sounds studio, just off Maryhill Road in Glasgow. At that time studio owner and band manager, Eliot Davis, had a few bands on the go, one of which was Wet Wet Wet. He showed a kindly interest in our material and asked for more, but nothing ever came of it. He did pass on our tapes, ah the pre-digital analogue time, to some of his record company chummies in London. In fact we got a call for more material from Polydor, the material was sent and that was the end of that.
At a time when fashion seemed paramount in a band's success or failure, maybe we just didn't fit the mould.
Victorian Kitchen played a fair bit live in and around Glasgow.
We got some reasonable press, of the local variety. Single of the year in the Hamilton Advertiser's Pop Page, Not Half.

This band was at the end of a 8 year attempt to try and "make it" in music, whatever that really means.
I'd like to say it was fun, but it wasn't really because we took such a business-like approach, where the goal was all, and the journey was lost, and in itself had no value. When all was said and done, all we had was the journey which I had viewed as worthless at the time.
Looking back now, it was pretty good stuff, but it was a mish mash of styles and a little contrived.
I don't think we had the courage to simply let the "art flow out". We tried to make something that the record business would go for, thinking we knew what they wanted and that those guys knew what they were doing!
Neither case was true. Here's a few tracks from the "Kitchens". If you would want to hear more, we've plenty!
Just drop me a line.

1. Kings Who Weep 2. Out On The Street 3. Testify

Later on we made a video, through some geezer in Manchester, who was later unmasked, by BBC's "That's Life" as some sort of unscrupulous chap, making money from no chance musical wannabees who wanted to have a video done. He actually delivered to us what we wanted, so we've no complaints.
It was all done about 9AM in a semi-derelict Manchester warehouse/mill type building, in the rough side of town. No name plates over the door, in fact no doors.
That video is now digitised and on You Tube, and you can go back in time to the 80s sight and sound, that was Victorian Kitchen.

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