Badger (from Deeside) was quite an obscure act of the glorious N.W.O.B.H.M. era. They released two 7" singles, "Rock the Vicar" (as the Badger Bell Band) in 1985 and the more popular "Over the Wall" (as Badger) a year later. However, it all started with a band called Noizegate. Guitarist Roy Baird, aka Bert, explains: " My first band was called Noizegate, that was around 1980. We played 85% of original music which we wrote ourselves but the venues round Chester did not appreciate original material. So Badger Bell, the vocalist, sacked his old band and asked Noizegate to back him and our gigging status turned round from two a month to four a week. Hence we stayed with Badger. We did put some of Noizegate's music in the set, like 'Over The Wall', 'Faceless Gang' and 'Runaway'. Our first single was 'Rock the Vicar' coupled with 'Nothing left'. As we got heavier, the longer we were with the Badger Bell Band, we decided to change the name to Badger as it was a better title than the 'something band'." So this explains the name of the label for the "Rock the Vicar" debut single: Noizegate Records. It was named after the first band Bert was playing with. This is how it all happened: "Noizegate was our own label and this happened because we did not know how to attract a record company. We did not have a bank account but we earned a lot of money at gigs and kept it in a biscuit tin and paid for our records in cash. A part of the band's gigging success was partially Noizegate but the name Badger was getting all the recognition. So we decided to use Noizegate as the name for our record label. Of the two singles, we pressed 1,000 copies each." Behind the song "Rock the Vicar" there's a funny little story: "Badger was ten years older than the rest of us. He always arrived late at rehearsals and the first thing he would say when he walked through the door was 'evening vicar'. So this fuelled us to write a track called 'Evening Vicar'. We found out that where Badger lived there were rumours of a vicar that used to be a flasher. So that's how 'Rock the Viar' came about. Funny story." As a little sidenote, Wally Rumsey of Wolf and Kruizer fame (see the split-album on High Roll