Shake Appeal

Shake Appeal is the name of a rock'n'roll group from Oxford, England from 1984-1989.

Shake Appeal was the name of a Stooges song from the album Raw Power. Unsurprisingly, Shake Appeal's primary influences were the Stooges and the MC5 . They picked up on the whole Detroit petrolhead vibe and developed a healthy obsession with American car culture, although few of them actually owned cars. Oxford at the time, like Detroit, had a vast automobile factory at the east end of the city in Cowley where Jaguar cars, minis and Rolls Royce bodies were all on the British Leyland assembly line.

The original group line up was Graham Franklin (vocals), Jimmy Hartridge (guitar) (both previously in the Roadrunners), Adam Franklin (guitar) and Paddy Pulzer (drums) (both previously in Splatter Babies). Original bass player Paul Wilson left to be replaced by Richard Mason before he in turn was replaced by Adi Vines.

Throughout 1986 the band played in Oxford, Brighton and London including one show at a squat in Hackney called the Blue House with an early incarnation of My Bloody Valentine who at the time closed their set with a version of "Shake Appeal".

Shake Appeal recorded a four song demo EP featuring "Amphetamine", "Freedom", "Gimme Fever" and "Train Train" whilst briefly existing as a four piece with Adam Franklin on bass after the departure of Paul Wilson in 1986. A single was released in 1987 on Notown Records coupling a new version of "Gimme Fever" (featuring Vines on bass) with the Black Flag influenced "Mexico City SOS" on the b-side.

In 1988 the band recorded a new version of "Amphetamine" and an MC5-inspired tune called "Take A Ride" which were both featured on the Oxford bands compilation album The Jericho Collection. The band was voted Best Band In Oxford by readers of local music magazine Local Support. Also around this time the band had discovered the new American sounds of the likes of Husker Du, Dinosaur Jr and Sonic Youth. They took these new influences on board and began to evolve a new sound.

By 1989 the band felt it was running on empty, however and after a gig at the Oxford Polytechnic opening for World Domination Enterprises the band decided to split up. Adam Franklin then made home demos of three new songs "Son of Mustang Ford", "Afterglow" and "Volcano Trash" and the band reformed to record full band studio demos of these songs with Adam singing, and Graham shifted to backing vocals. Shortly after the recording, Graham left to pursue electronic music and the band changed their name to Swervedriver.