Garrison

Garrison!
Heavy Metal Heaven

We caught Garrison quite a lot in the late '80's. To be honest they weren't really our type of music, but we were huge music fans and we went to see whatever bands happened to be playing in Kirkcaldy, especially The Skittle (The St Clair Tavern), which was our favorite venue.

We thought there was a little too much jollity going on on stage for our liking. Being huge Velvet Underground fans, we thought a band was supposed to wear dark glasses and turn their backs on the audience, though I only remember Chez from the Crucified Brains having the nerve to do the turn your back on the audience bit for a whole gig. I did have the dark glasses, wore them all through the first gig before they were one of the many things that got nicked that day.

What a stage act these guys had though, they really put their heart into it.

Thanks a lot to my old friend Michael Laing for the photos on this page. Mike is slowly scanning in a huge collection of negatives, so I'm intrigued to see what he will come up with next.

Here are the facts Mike and I can remember about the band:

I don't suppose they were really a 'Kirkcaldy' band, though they did play at The Skittle now and again. I also saw them at the Cuinzie Neuk a couple of times. I think the singer, drummer and one of the guitarists were from the Lochgelly/Cardenden area (I don't know about Glenrothes, but I could be wrong), and the bassist was a guy from Burntisland whose name I can't recall. The other guitarist was Alan Christie from Crossgates, an astoundingly good musician who'd been in Shockwave with me prior to joining Garrison, which was why I started going to Garrison's gigs around that time. Alan didn't stay with them for long; he went away to London and became a session-musician, and I don't know if Garrison kept going but I don't remember hearing of them again after that. The band-members were Kevin Wilson and Alan Christie on guitar, and Tony on vocals. Unfortunately I can't remember the names of the bassist and drummer.