Gaye Advert

Gaye Advert (born August 29, 1956), a.k.a Gaye Black, is an English punk rock musician, who played bass guitar in the band the Adverts in the late 1970s.

She moved from Bideford, a small coastal town in Devon, to London in 1976. Her and frontman T.V Smith recruited guitarist Howard Pickup (Boak) and drummer Laurie Driver (Muscat), and the Adverts were born. The Roxy, London's first live punk venue,  played a crucial role in the Adverts’ early career. They were one of the pioneering bands who played at the club during its first 100 days. The Adverts played at the club no less than nine times between January and April 1977. In January 1977, after their first gig supporting Generation X, the band impressed Michael Dempsey so much that he became their manager. Their second gig supporting Slaughter & The Dogs was recorded, and their anthem "Bored Teenagers" was included on the 1977 UK Top 30 album The Roxy London WC2. In February, shortly after the band's third gig supporting the Damned, they signed a recording contract with Stiff Records. In March, the band supported the Jam at the Roxy.In April, the Adverts recorded the first of four sessions for John Peel at BBC Radio.  Days later, on 29 April 1977, their debut single "One Chord Wonders" was released by Stiff.

On 19 August 1977, the band released the first of their two UK Top 40 hit singles on Anchor Records. Lyrically, "Gary Gilmore's Eyes" was a controversial song based on the wishes of Gary Gilmore,  an American murderer, that his eyes be donated to medical science after his execution.

The band’s follow-up single, "Safety in Numbers", was released on 28 October and their fourth single, "No Time to Be 21", issued on CBS subsidiary Bright Records on 20 January 1978. Their debut album, Crossing the Red Sea was released by Bright on 17 February 1978. It has since become one of the most highly regarded albums of the punk era. Switching to RCA Records, the Adverts released three additional well-regarded singles, "Television's Over" on 10 November 1978, "My Place" on 1 June 1979 and "Cast of Thousands" on 19 October 1979. Their career stalled after the release of their second album Cast of Thousands, issued by RCA on 12 October 1979. For that album, the lineup was augmented by drummer Rod Latter (replacing Driver) and keyboardist Tim Cross. Pickup and Latter were then replaced by Paul Martinez (guitar) and Rick Martinez (drums). They split up shortly after the accidental death of manager Dempsey. Their last gig was a Slough College on 27 October 1979.



Gaye Advert is now an artist and an art curator.