ON THIS DAY ... in 1992 - CRUNCH

69 photos from the Rock Garden in 1992

Back in the early 80’s the Rock Garden was actually cool, with promoters who had an eye for talent, but by the early 90’s it was a venue you very rarely visited. Bland bands who somehow got lucky with a slot a the Bull & Gate would actually be regarded as ‘a Rock Garden band’, such was its reputation for hosting the uninspired and unoriginal. It also had a reputation for ripping off bands.

Bands with their thinking heads on knew to avoid it because you hardly ever saw a review from the Rock Garden in the music papers, and shrewd bands targeted the venues where most reviews originated from. That’s not to say the venue didn’t try and this gig was a good example, being one of their Sunday lunchtime experiments.

At the time I was still compiling the gig guide at Melody Maker, before being asked to leave because I was no longer getting work printed there, so wasn’t technically ‘part of the team’. (Not actually my fault as I was delivering as much copy as ever, possibly reviewing more live bands than ever, but I don’t think reviews editor Everett True used a single one of my reviews.)

I always nipped in at 7am every Monday to ensure the gig guide was as up to date as possible before they laid the paper out at the printer, but I broke the back of it by going in on Sunday mornings, where there’d be no distractions, apart from the bastard security men insisting on listening to the Archers’ omnibus, at such a volume it somehow managed to drift up though the stairwells. So when it was announced the Rock Garden was doing these Sunday gigs I could just save the gig guide entries on the computer, stroll over the bridge into Covent Garden and … endure the usual bollocks, basically.

Crunch were a pedestrian rocky band, made bearable by a good drummer and a singer who clearly deserved better. In fact Meg Lee Chin later went on to work with Pigface, before going solo.

I believe the Rock Garden is now an Apple shop? Fitting.

My Goth, Punk and Indie photobooks can be perused here » PHOTOBOOKS LIST

Goth classics (GRBB, Gothic Rock, Hex Files etc) on Kindle can be found here » GOTH KINDLE

Sixty-four more photos from this session follow, for paid subscribers only.

Paid subscribers get access to every post and photo gallery posted since January 2023, while free subscribers can only see what’s been posted during the past two weeks. Photos listed now go into my Substack archive, searchable by paid subscribers, and will never be listed as galleries again.