The Peace & Freedom Band were a British group, formed in 1986, by two underground poets - Luton-born Paul Rance, and Hartlepool's Andy Bruce.
Basically coming out of Peace & Freedom magazine - which was then a music/poetry fanzine edited by Rance, and later photocopied by Bruce - The Peace & Freedom Band, often called the P&F Band, were to produce seven albums of varying quality. Their last album being the mp3.com CD, Earth, in 2000. In 2008, the band's first new song for 8 years, 'Earth R.I.P. - Or?...' was released as a free download on MySpace. The Peace & Freedom Band began to take shape around 1984 and 1985, when Bruce and Rance planned putting music to their own poetry, and that of Croydon poet and artist Peter Gibbs and Norwich poetess and fanzine editor Hayley Tagg. Nothing really came to fruition, until Bruce and Rance put out a rough demo in 1986 of their own work and acoustic recordings of traditional folk songs.
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The Peace & Freedom Band were a group who were steeped in the punk ethos.
Their first proper album, Life, came out in 1988, and was helped by ex-APF Brigade member Andi Xport joining as an auxiliary member, contributing to Rance's poems, Nature and 30th Century, and doing a lot of the production.
Burnley poet Andrew Savage joined later in 1988, and had gained some national fame by posing nude in a jacuzzi, reciting poetry (with some other poets), which The Daily Mirror published a picture of. Savage inspired the band's next album, Carry On Taping, which was partially produced by Xport later in 1988.
Secret Joinery, released in 1989, was an album, which was a collection of old and new P&F Band songs, including "Hayley's Tum", "Chicken Liberation Song", "Find Myself A Girl", and "Psycho Somatic Song". Is God A Dropout? followed the next year.
The Poll Tax was to inspire the band's next album in 1991. Rance, Bruce, and Savage were fierce critics of this, with Rance being given a summons, and threatened with arrest. Savage suggested a concept album about the poll tax, and so Cedric was born.
Savage became busy with publishing his tape magazine, Super Trouper, which featured music and poetry, and Rance and Bruce continued to work on the Peace & Freedom magazine, including launching another title, 'Eastern Rainbow', and publishing paperback anthologies of poetry. In the mid-1990s Rance dabbled briefly with comedy writing, when dating a writer for The News Huddlines and Week Ending, Fay Dickinson, and later he had some jokey material aired on the Danny Baker-hosted soccer show on Talk Radio, claiming to be an anti-Radiohead, pro-Jefferson Airplane fan.
1997's Universal Love followed.
Around this time Savage married Tracey, and became a father twice over in 1998 and 1999. He alsao appeared on the Channel 4 sports show Under The Moon, with a comedy song about the World Cup.
They released an album through mp3.com, entitled Earth, in 2000. Rance with his The Warden Hills Walkers, and Savage with his Space Dentists, also produced solo CDs through mp3.com.
The band had been quiet for a few years, until the release in 2008 of Earth R.I.P. - Or?..., with Paul Rance (now sometimes known as Sticky Banana) coming to terms with the sudden death of his father, the photographer Peter Rance, and Andrew Savage becoming a teacher, and changing his name to Angelo Gravity. Andy Xport has released a number of new songs in recent years, including the 2008 CD, Still Shakin' The Bush Boss!