The Freshies

The Freshies is the name of a band from Manchester, England formed in the mid 1970's. Their first single, The Freshies EP, was released in 1978 on the RAZZ record label. Their biggest selling and best known song is 1980's "I'm In Love With The Girl On The Manchester Virgin Megastore Checkout Desk" renamed as "I'm In Love With The Girl On A Certain Manchester Megastore Checkout Desk" on request from Virgin Records, which reached number 54 in the UK charts in 1981.

The Freshies were led by Chris Sievey, whose alter-ego Frank Sidebottom was also their biggest fan. Others who played with Sievey inluded Martin Jackson (later with Magazine) and Billy Duffy (later with The Cult). The usual line-up, however, was Barry Spencer (guitar), Rick Sarko (bass, ex-The Nosebleeds) and Mike Doherty (drums, ex-The Smirks).

Sievey pre-dated the self-financing ethic of punk when he created his own record label "Razz" in 1974. "Razz" went on to release over 60 titles, including much of The Freshies material. They also produced possibly the first multi-media single by including The Biz, a Sinclair ZX81 game, on the tape version of one of their singles, something which Sievey later did himself as a solo artist with his single "Camouflage".

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