Celebrating 40 years of Avalanche with Jesse Garon - Kevin Buckle

Our latest Amy fronts a band called Naked Actress

I had left it deliberately vague, so it could be anything from releasing a record to putting on a gig to making a T-shirt.

There are now several things in the pipeline and with the anniversary date of June 1 gone by, people were starting to wonder what had happened.

However, I had one thing in particular I wanted to announce to kick off the celebrations and that held things up until yesterday with the release of the Jesse Garon and The Desperadoes four-track, ten-inch vinyl of their Janice Long radio session.

Reissue of the only album released by The Shop Assistants

Released by Precious Recordings of London along with a host of previously unseen images, it was an obvious way to start the Avalanche celebrations as the band includes two former employees of the shop in Andrew Tully, who was a shop manager for many years, and Margarita Vazquez-Ponte, who worked in the shop part time and was our Sunday girl in the early days of the West Nicolson Street shop.

Avalanche stocks all the releases from the label and when the label’s owner, Nick Godfrey was looking for suggestions, Jesse Garon were top of my list and I offered to take the financial risk of releasing it to seal the deal.

While these days there are a group of shops who continually try to gain an advantage over their fellow retailers by having an exclusive version, I took the opposite attitude and wanted to give all shops the same opportunity for a sale, so there is, I’m afraid, no exclusive limited edition.

As it has turned out the timing could not have been better with the release following fast on the heels of the launch of Grant McPhee’s book Postcards From Scotland – Scottish Independent Music 1983-1995 and coinciding with the annual Glas-Goes Pop Weekender, which will celebrate its release.

The Jesse Garon and The Desperadoes four-track, ten-inch vinyl of their Janice Long radio session

As if this wasn’t enough, the release also coincides with the reissue of the only album released by The Shop Assistants who the Desperadoes played with on their first nationwide tour and during which they stopped off at Maida Vale studios to record the Janice Long session in October 1986.

Just to complete the circle it was the Avalanche record label that released the last two Shop Assistants singles and the Desperadoes album Nixon in 1990.

Talking of completing the circle, Andrew was Avalanche’s first employee and our latest Amy also fronts a band called Naked Actress.

With a showcase gig at Glasgow’s King Tut’s on Sunday 4 August I offered to help with the merchandise and was relieved to see that the artwork Amy provided didn’t go for the obvious.

Things are very different now for new bands and while sales are so low for the Scottish chart that it can be easy to get a good chart position, often a band’s total sales in a year will be less than Avalanche would have sold of a big local band in the first week of release.

I will indeed be looking back at some of my favourite local band releases over the years to see if they would like a vinyl and CD release as part of the 40-year celebrations.