Era #1 (1995-2006)

The Veggies began their recording career in 1996, with the debut LP ‘Get Here, Get Kissin’ With…’ (Vegetables At Last). The album was produced and engineered by the excellent Chris Mansell at the now defunct Music City studios in New Cross, London. Although there were a few guests on the LP (John Graves, Dominic Ashworth, Mike Atkin, Geoffrey King etc) the album was largely written and recorded by the  Simmonds/Morris/Reakes line-up. ‘Get Here…’ proved to be the only album recorded to good old fashioned magnetic tape.

Which is one of the main reasons the next album, Imagine Not Drowning, took four years to record – the band had to learn how to use the recording gear they bought for their own studio, The Garden Shed. As many songs were ditched from the project as made it onto it and when the album was finally completed in 2001, it was so disappointing that it wasn’t actually put into production or released.

Alan Cowsill therefore became the follow-up to ‘Get Here…’, released in 2004. A much harder sound, with angrier lyrics, Alan Cowsill largely set the template for all future releases. It was still a fairly painful learning curve however.

The final album from the Simmonds/Morris/Reakes line-up was It Should Have Been Mega. As a direct result of the steep learning curve with recording in their own studio, ‘Mega’ was the ‘anything goes’ album, in terms of production values and the resulting LP featured re-workings of eight of the 11 songs that should have been on Imagine Not Drowning and featured a whopping 25 songs in total. Recording of this release coincided with rehearsals for gigs.

Paul Brown and Phil Duncan were drafted in as additional personnel but Duncan soon left so when Brown announced that the first gig would also be his last because he would be moving to Spain the writing was on the wall. By the time the LP was released Reakes had moved away from London and Simmonds disappeared into the black hole that is fatherhood. Frankly, it looked like the end of the band.

Era #2 (2007-2010)

Except it didn’t really pan out that way. Simon Pickering, goalkeeper for Spartak Red Machine, was invited to play piano on one single song that just didn’t sound like a guitar song (Mouth) and that kick-started his involvement that lasts to this day. Before they knew it The Veggies had cobbled together the fifth LP – N5. It was a bit of an ‘odds n’ sods’ collection, featuring two songs that weren’t written by band members, a few oldies re-visited and a smattering of new songs. Oh, and a cover of the classic Dream a Little Dream of Me. Paul Brown took over bass playing duties and chipped in with a few bits of guitar here and there too. The album was released in 2007.

The next two years were taken up recording FORMULA, the sixth LP by the band and the first to be released under the name POLA NEGRI. Although Simmonds was coaxed out of exile for a couple of recording sessions, it was largely the Pickering/Morris/Brown line-up that recorded the LP, with the former contributing his first song to the catalogue (About The Rain). Definitely a continuation of the ‘Alan Cowsill’ template.  And that was going to be that really.

Except that then Simon sheepishly announced that he’d been writing songs of his own. When he played them to Paul,  the latter wanted to record them. So About The rain, a compilation of ten Pickering originals, was recorded between the second half of 2009 and early 2010 and was released in April of that year. And that was going to be that. The end (for the third time) because Paul moved to Nice.

Era #3 (2011 – present)

For the next four years or so The Veggies were largely dormant following the dispersal of various members. But a freak accident resulted in Paul not being able to walk (or stand up, really) for three months, resulting in a return to picking up guitars. Within a year the seventh LP, Splashing Anger, was completed and released. A melange of Pickering originals, songs that Paul had ‘lying around’ from the past and a handful of newer Morris originals, written across a five year span culminted in the 2015 realease of 15 new recordings. With Paul having moved to Nice, a solution to Paul Brown’s unavailability on bass led to the introduction of Carl Fox as a new member of the band/collective – a relationship that still endures to this day.

And it has been full steam ahead from there on in. Melony Fresh, realeased in mid 2017, was a collection of re-worked songs from previous albums, each featuring a guest vocal from various female singers. Inevitably much ‘poppier’ than previous releases, Melony Fresh proved to be a well received collection, paving the way for Tinsel, the ninth Veggies album, released in July 2018. Tinsel, featuring 11 new songs in addition to releases, finally, for two older Morris compositions, both dating back to the ‘Get Here, Get Kissin’ With…’ era, was also the first Veggies album to make its way onto Spotify and iTunes etc, finally enabling the band to reach an audience beyond their own mates plus a ‘handful’ of others.

Album #10, Mini Album, was written and recorded in just four months and was released in early 2019. Very much a return to the darker material in a similar vein to Alan Cowsill and FORMULA, Mini Album was the first album since the pre-pickering days to feature no piano parts at all and started to move the band towards a more psychedelic sound.

We all know what happened next: Coronavirus. And with it travel restrictions that meant other band members were unable to travel to Nice to lay down contributions to new material so Paul concentrated and remastering older releases for release on the aforementioned distribution outlets as well and finally re-working the previously unreleased Imagine Not Drowning project, originally completed in 2001. Almost 20 years of experience further down the learning curve, that album finally got a release and, in addition, a collection of pre-‘Get Here…’ songs, all of which were written as students in the distant past, called Fairly Good Times in the Cellar was released in early 2021. Four of the songs featured had appeared on various albums since but eight of them were brand new recordings and a bit of a trip down memory lane. It was also the first album from Era #3 to feature contributions from Peter Simmonds, a founding member of the band.

2022’s Winning Apples, by this point the 13th Veggies LP, was the first to feature Gareth Bouch’s electronica, addding another new dimension of extra nuance to the band’s output. It also saw the return of Paul Brown, who contributed new bass parts for the first time in 12 years. An eclectic mix covering much more varitey in terms of approach than the previous regular release (Mini Album), Winning Apples also featured contributions from Moby award winning saxaphone player Binker Golding, a guest vocal from Paul Frederick (Jack Adaptor & The Family Cat), his first for 12 years, plus a host of other guest appearances from the likes of Anne-gaelle Simon (who had also previously appeared on Melony Fresh and Tinsel), Adrian Carr, Jeffrey Hessing and Russell Bathgate. Even David J Reakes, stalwart from Era #1, made his first new contribution since 2009.