My Favourite Tree, A Pop promo

James Agnew has nostalgia fatigue, he has been slowly working his way through bags of old VHS tapes, but it may have been worth it for the following historical video clip gem. It has been Lovingly transferred from VHS and believe it or not, and think you will believe it, it's the only pop promo we made for mark one Roger's trout Farm.

Fraser McAlpine: Bass and Vocals

Fraser was the final piece of the jigsaw. We met at Weston-super-Mare technical college in 1988/89. He was a drummer turned guitarist who we somehow persuaded to play bass.

He took to the instrument swiftly developing fierce, note abundant, nimble figured bass lines. This mixed with James fluent rolling, bombastic drums; my erratic guitar; Steve and Paul's dueling, intertwining saxophone melodies, lighting the blue touch paper, there was no stopping us.

The most important discovery upon Fraser's arrival was the realisation that we didn't need to look for a singer to fit our mold, because now we had five. That was pivotal because we could stop mucking about and start… well mucking about.

I remember being bowled over by Fraser's ability to stand up with a guitar and just start playing songs, I wanted to be that confident and talented and flipping heck he was funny too. His lyrics were different, confident, clever and interesting. His songs catchy and always popular, Genius!

James Agnew: Drums, Percussion, Vocals

Literally no one has asked me how we got together, so bowing to popular non pressure this is how I met the rest of the band, chronologically, with the exception of myself who I have just always known.

I met drummer James Agnew when we were at school in the 1980s. The first thing I said to him was, "You've got the same name as me, you bastard!" I later stole his girlfriend, how on earth we remained friends I'm not sure but I do consider him my best friend.


Against his wishes, yes he put up resistance, I somehow joined the band he was in. I could barely play, I was more of a noise maker. Fortunately for me their much better guitarist, Neil, rarely showed up for rehearsals. From this point on we bounced between increasing awful band names and not actually that many gigs becoming really good friends.

I'm lucky enough to have been in at least three really good bands with him in which he has treated me to his unique drum style, which really is a lot like professionally tuned space hoppers. James could also sing and keep up his frantic 'Animal' from the Muppets drumming style, I cannot impress enough how difficult that is, like simultaneously juggling, sprinting and eating.

He wrote one of my favourite Roger's trout Farm songs, 'All kinds of fruit' and coined the phrase, 'drumming is about hitting hard with skill', genius!