The V.I.P.'s (band)


The V.I.P.'s were a British R&B musical ensemble formed in Carlisle, Cumberland, in late 1963, out of an earlier outfit known as The Ramrods, who had formed in Carlisle in 1960. From a musical reorientation the band changed their name to Art in 1967, and released the album Supernatural Fairy Tales.

Career

The band members at various times were: Mike Harrison ; Greg Ridley ; Frank Kenyon ; Jimmy Henshaw ; Keith Emerson ; Luther Grosvenor ; Walter Johnstone ; and Mike Kellie .
When Emerson left in early 1967 to form The Nice, Harrison, Ridley, Grosvenor and Kellie changed their name to 'Art', and released one album, Supernatural Fairy Tales, produced by Guy Stevens, covering Stephen Stills' "What's That Sound " and Felix Cavaliere's "Come On Up". The band then disbanded, with all four members of the group's final line-up forming Spooky Tooth with American musician Gary Wright later that same year.
They also participated in a psychedelic album entitled Featuring The Human Host And The Heavy Metal Kids by a collective known as Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, formed by Guy Stevens and an influential British graphic design and avant-garde musical partnership between Michael English and Nigel Waymouth. The musicians involved in that project were Mike Harrison on keys and vocals, Luther Grosvenor on guitars, Greg Ridley on bass and Mike Kellie on drums, as well as Stevens, English and Waymouth. It was the first time that the term heavy metal was ever used in music, even though that album had nothing to do with heavy metal music, being closer to psychedelic music. The album was issued in 1967 by Liberty Records and contained only five songs from two minutes to more than 15 minutes of psychedelic and almost meditative state kind of music.

Discography

;Singles
;EPs