"Rock music has a very narrow emotional range, to be honest," says Gerard Langley, head pilot of The Blue Aeroplanes. "Anyone who writes anything slightly out of the ordinary tends to stick out a bit."

Gerard has never been afraid to stand apart from the crowd. Back when The Blue Aeroplanes first took off from Bristol in 1984, there weren't that many poet-led, turntable-scratching, multiple guitar-toting folk-art-rock bands around. They also had a crazy Polish dancer called Wotjek.

The Aeroplanes broke all the rules right from the start: A large, fluid line-up of musicians ("like a football squad") centred around Gerard and his free verse poetry which he declaimed rather than sang they brought English folk instruments and transatlantic influences to the indie era defined by the NME's famous C86 compilation.

"They've just re-released C86," notes Langley, whose 14th Aeroplanes album, Altitude, is about to be released on EMI. "If you listen to it now there's not one acoustic guitar on it, let alone a banjo. We were using hurdy-gurdys and mandolins."

The band's individuality was such that music paper Melody Maker would eventually run a regular cartoon strip about them, The Adventures of The Blue Aeroplanes, where each week, superhero-like, they saved the world. "I sent them one I drew where we saved the world from a p***** journalist," says Gerard, "but they didn't print it."

By the start of the Nineties, the band had released several arty, guitar-driven pop albums including the early classic Spitting Out Miracles, and had played some riotous gigs including a legendary tour of the UK with long-term admirers REM.

As a result, Gerard and his team found themselves with the backing of a major record company, Chrysalis, for the first time.

Working with Gil Norton who had just produced The Pixies' Doolittle the band recorded the Swagger album at the height of their powers.

Here Gerard's beatnik poetry and spoken delivery was finely strung into the harmonic mesh of the Aeroplanes' three guitarists, who then included the virtuoso riffmaker Angelo Bruschini, later of Massive Attack. The result was quickly recognised as a bona fide modern rock masterpiece.

The record has recently been re-released as the two CD Swagger Deluxe set, after a period of unavailability when The Aeroplanes dipped off the music industry's radar another reason why Gerard has brought them out of the hangar.

"We've never really been away," says Gerard, who besides his Lit series poems by the likes of Louis MacNiece set to out-takes from bands such as Love has been occupying his time teaching classes in lyric-writing in Bristol. A true British beat, he loves the power of words as much as power chords.

"American beat poets were influenced by jazz and they incorporated a lot of jazz rhythms into their work," he says. "It's difficult for English writers to do that: The English accent over squanking jazz doesn't work.

"I've been more influenced by rock music. My poems incorporate the rhythms of rock, which is why they fit over rock tunes."

Starts 8pm, tickets cost £10/£12. Call 01273 605789