Avon Ladies

PLAYERS:
Jeff Schmidt - Vocals
Fritz Beer - Guitar, Vocals
Todd Admire - Bass, Vocals
Kevin St. Cin - Drums
also
Scott Beer - Drums
About The Avon Ladies

The Avon Ladies were just another of a million American punk rock bands that took their cues from England. However, being located in the weird Midwestern town of Alton, Illinois - home of the tallest man in the world, Robert Wadlow, home of King's assassin, James Earl Ray, birth place of Miles Davis, home to Phyllis Schlafly and the Piasa Bird -  the Avon Ladies, Alton's first punk rock band, were destined to be interesting and, as it turns out, somewhat influential.

In there home town (Alton), playing Timballo's Palazzo they could do no wrong, and those monthly shows were madness and mayhem. But crossing the river into big St. Louis, that was a different story. Or was it?

The Avon Ladies invaded a club in Mid-Town, the name no one can remember, and began building. By the time their run was finished an Avon Ladies fan had won the contest to rename the place Poor Boys and it was one of the cities best live music venues. The Replacements played there several times. Between that and Billy Goat Hill, all the college gigs and opening for the likes of the Dead Kennedy's and X when they came to town, the Avon Ladies had a pretty good thing going on.

I don't think anyone would say that the Avon Ladies were a great band, even if some nights they were absolutely brilliant. They weren't great players, but they did wanted to nail it, every night, with all their heart. They played covers way over their talent level, but they played them with such force and such confidence that somehow it worked, and they had a batch of crazy originals that were hilarious yet socially and politically poignant. That's why they got the gigs; they were really entertaining, fun, interesting and different. A train wreck really.

FRITZ - I remember these rock band guys would come in - good players, they could play Ted Nugent lick for lick - and they would stand right in front of me and laugh at my playing. I have to admit, I felt a little embarrassed. I knew a few bar chords, that's it. But Schmitty would come over and sing/scream right in those fuckers faces and flip them off and they didn't know what hit 'em. Which made me go "hell yea!" and turn the crappy Peavey up yet another notch and bar chord away!

The Avon Ladies were the forefathers of the whole "Alton" scene and influenced notable bands Dazzling Killmen, Judge Nothing, and Autumn Clock to name a few.
 
The Metro St. Louis Live Music Historical Society wrote:


Over the course of their career together, the band managed to book gigs at clubs in college markets like Carbondale (ABC Liquors), Columbia (Poison Apple), Charleston (Ted’s) and Springfield (Positively Fifth Street) and Macomb (?), Lebanon (McKendree College) while all the while maintaining a hate/hate relationship with the STL new wave cognoscenti at Jet Lag.  More punk than any St. Louis acts, the band always managed to get through plenty of drunken gigs and more than a few altercations with New Wave posers.  The Pylon gig at Lindell Club was especially entertaining with Beer smashing some kid in the head with the neck of his guitar and have to play the last two songs with several  broken strings.   
 
The Avon Ladies recorded several original songs including the following:
 
*Somebody Killed The President
*Runaway
*Silly Little Morons
*Idi Amin
*Yorkshire Ripper
*Wanna Go to Germany
*Runaway
*(Blow ‘em up) IRA
*Jack-in-the-Box
*PersonaliTV