The idea behind The Thrown Ups was to have a band where no one ever practiced and no one ever wrote songs. At their first show opening for Hüsker Dü in February of 1985, the group brought raw oysters to throw at the audience if the reaction was negative. The response turned out to be positive, but the band doused the crowd with the sea creatures anyway. Such practice became commonplace for the group, which began to incorporate visual elements in case the music was horrific. The most famous of The Thrown Ups' lineups included vocalist Ed Fotheringham, guitarist Steve Turner, drummer Mark McLaughlin (aka Mark Arm), and band founder / bassist John Beezer (aka Leighton Beezer). Beezer had met his fellow bandmates at one of his house parties in February of 1984. When they were on-stage, anything could happen. On one such occasion, dubbed "the Bloody Pooper," Fotheringham rigged a bottle of ketchup to a tube that expelled the condiment from the back of his pants. The end result was a terrified audience covered in the substance.
Seattle's Thrown Ups began in the basement of the home occupied by Beezer and original vocalist Steve Mack in 1984. Since the pair had a variety of instruments in the house, they invited anyone who stopped by to sit in on a jam, whether or not the people knew how to play. Friend Mike Faulhaber happened to be hanging out there quite frequently and took up the guitar. Rounded out by a drum machine, The Thrown Ups were born. Mack left by the end of the year and moved to Europe, where he formed That Petrol Emotion with two former members of punk rock band The Undertones. Fotheringham joined as the band's vocalist in the fall of 1984, followed by the group's mutual friend, Scott Schickler, on drums. By October of 1985, Faulhaber had also left The Thrown Ups in order to move to England. Beezer ran into guitarist Steve Turner at the Brookes Brothers store in Seattle. Beezer explained the idea behind his new band to Turner and offered him the guitar spot vacated by Faulhaber. Turner tried to decline, but Beezer persuaded him to join by explaining that Turner would never have to write songs at practice, since the group was based around improvisation. Schickler left The Thrown Ups in 1986, which happened to be around the same time that McLaughlin was leaving the Seattle group Green River. McLaughlin agreed to fill in as The Thrown Ups' drummer.
By this time, the band was gigging at Seattle venues, such as the Vogue and Scoundrel's Lair, opening up for bands like Bundle of Hiss. By mid-year, Turner approached Tom Hazelmeyer, founder of Amphetamine Reptile Records, about releasing some material from the band. At first, Hazelmeyer displayed total disinterest, but after Turner played a snippet of a Thrown Ups practice tape, Hazelmeyer agreed to distribute all of the band's material. Prior to this, Amphetamine Reptile was solely a vehicle to release music by Hazelmeyer's own band, Halo of Flies. The Thrown Ups became the first group that was actually signed to the label. The band booked time at Seattle's Reciprocal Recording and laid down their 'Felch' single with engineer Jack Endino. By early 1987, the record caught the attention of various critics, which included future Matador Records co-owner Gerard Cosloy. Almost everyone who heard the release gave it critical praise. That summer, the band returned to Reciprocal Recording, recorded the 'Smiling Panties' single, and released it late that year. This was followed by the recording of the 'Eat My Dump' 7" in February of 1988. An outtake from that session, titled "You Lost It", appeared on that year's 'Sub Pop 200' compilation of Seattle groups.
By this time, Turner and McLaughlin had started the band Mudhoney with Melvins bassist Matt Lukin and former Bundle of Hiss drummer Dan Peters. That Halloween, Mack returned to Seattle with That Petrol Emotion, who was receiving airplay on MTV. The band was playing a show at the Moore Theater, where The Thrown Ups were opening. During The Thrown Ups' set, they used That Petrol Emotion's amplifiers. The Thrown Ups were playing at such an extreme volume that the roadies from That Petrol Emotion feared The Thrown Ups would blow the gear. Midway through The Thrown Ups' set, That Petrol Emotion's road crew appeared on-stage to turn the volume down. According to Beezer, "Patrick McDonald, the classic big-paper rock critic, panned us as being loud, sloppy, garage-inspired crap." Beezer finished by stating, "[McDonald] was right -apparently he hadn't heard of grunge yet." By 1989, Amphetamine Reptile released their 'Dope, Guns and Fucking in the Streets, Vols. 1-3' compilation, which included a track from The Thrown Ups' 'Felch' session. 1989 also found The Thrown Ups back at Reciprocal with Endino recording their only full-length album, 'Melancholy Girlhole'. It appeared on the Munich, Germany, label Glitterhouse the following year, while it was released in the United States by Amphetamine Reptile as three 7" records.
In the next two years, Turner and McLaughlin began devoting their main attention to Mudhoney. As a result, Beezer kicked everyone out of The Thrown Ups in 1991 and labeled its former members as sellouts. Beezer said this was a convenient excuse to avoid arguments, although the real reason he broke up the band was due to the fact that it had exceeded its lifespan. While Turner and McLaughlin were spending their post-Thrown Ups' days in Mudhoney, Beezer went on to form the bands El Grand Conquistador and Stomach Pump. He also kept busy as a program manager and developer for Microsoft. Fotheringham pursued his career in art, designing album covers for Mudhoney, as well as many jazz labels like Verve. The Thrown Ups' complete discography for Amphetamine Reptile appeared on a single album, titled 'Seven Years Golden', on January 28, 1997. The record also contained three bonus tracks. According to Beezer, one of the previously unavailable songs, called "Bucking Retards", was a prototype for Mudhoney's "Keep It Out of My Face". [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]
Sister Double Happiness formed in San Francisco in 1986 and immediately became the city's favorite concert draw before even releasing their first album of over-the-top, white blues-rock. Gary Floyd and Lynn Perko, who'd played together in the punk group the Dicks, joined with Ben Cohen (from Pop-o-Pies) and Mikey Donaldson on bass. The foursome recorded a self-titled album of hard-driving songs for SST in 1988, the bulk penned by Floyd and Cohen. Owing much to Floyd's Texas roots as a blues / punk belter, the band played a fiery mix of blues-inflected hard rock and punk, the likes of which were incomparable. Subject matter was primarily confined to the human condition and spirituality in the face of AIDS and urban decay. The band's promise earned them a contract with Reprise in 1991 for 'Heart and Mind', but failed to find them a wider audience. That same year the band won a Bammie (Bay Area Music Award) for Outstanding Club Band, and Jeff Palmer replaced Donaldson on bass. A Sub Pop single and two albums for the label's German arm, 1993's 'Uncut' and 1994's 'Horsey Water', followed. Danny Roman was added as a guitarist, and Miles Montalbano replaced Palmer on bass. The video release, 'Greetings from Zurich', is a lasting testament to their live prowess. The band also contributed to a number of tribute albums that were popular in the early '90s paying homage to artists diverse as Roky Erickson, Dead Kennedys and Frank Sinatra. The band broke up in 1995 -none of their recorded work ever quite captured the heat they were capable of live. Floyd immediately formed the Gary Floyd Band and records and tours, mostly in Europe. Perko was in Imperial Teen with Faith No More's Roddy Bottum, and Cohen works as a guitarist. The posthumous 'Stone's Throw from Love: Live and Acoustic at the Great American Music Hall' appeared in 1999. [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]
Royal Depeche were a German post-punk band who released one single in 1987, and were never heard from again. Though it was released much later, there are definitely 81-84 vibes all over this one, especially in The Chameleons-esque guitar lines that can be heard throughout both tracks. There are hooks galore and strong female vocals to bring the tracks home. [SOURCE: SYSTEMS OF ROMANCE]
German experimental electronic post-industrial group. They were formed after P.D. broke up in December 1980. One half of that group became Permutative Distorsion, while the other half became P16.D4. Both groups shared one member: Ralf Wehowsky. [SOURCE: DISCOGS]
Officer! is the brainchild of Londoner Mick Hobbs. His musical roots are in the fecund RIO scene of the late ’70s and early 1980s, initially as guitarist in The Work (alongside Bill Gilonis, Rick Wilson and Henry Cow’s Tim Hodgkinson), and subsequent related groupings The Lowest Note, The Lo Yo Yo, and The Momes. Over the course of the decade he became closely associated with This Heat and their Cold Storage studio in Brixton, working with the likes of Flaming Tunes, Family Fodder, Catherine Jauniaux and Zeena Parkins, to name but a few.
The Officer! project formally surfaced in 1982 with a cassette tape entitled 'Eight New Songs By Mick Hobbs'. It marked the blossoming of a singular writer and improvisor, with a gift for plangent melody, ingenious arrangement and lyrics at once caustic and courtly, playful and profound. The Cold Storage-recorded 'Ossification' LP arrived a year later, followed by 'Cough' (1985) and 'Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes' (1988).
By the start of the 1990s Hobbs had joined Jad Fair’s Half Japanese (he continues to play in that group as well as Strobe Talbot, a trio with Fair and Benb Gallaher). In the early months of ’95, Half Japanese were in Baltimore to record their 'Hot' LP; Hobbs stayed on to cut the bulk of the songs that comprise Officer!’s 'Dead Unique' –songs drawn from a rich store of material written and refined in the seven years since the band’s last outing– with a talented assemblage of local and visiting musicians. Returning to the UK, Hobbs brought the tracks to producer Julia Brightly to mix at her 16-track home studio in Bethnal Green; by the end of the summer, 'Dead Unique' had taken shape.
And then? Nothing. For reasons that no one, least of all Hobbs, can remember, 'Dead Unique' was shelved, all but forgotten about until 2012, when Blackest Ever Black chanced upon it while trawling the Officer! archive maintained for Hobbs by Andrew Jacques. Two years later, the album was made available to the public for the very first time, with a full 2xLP, CD and digital release on BEB. [SOURCE: BLACKEST EVER BLACK]
Noise Unit is a Canadian industrial band, founded by Bill Leeb of Front Line Assembly as a side project. The band has seen several changes in line-up, with Bill Leeb being the only permanent member. The first album, 'Grinding into Emptiness', arose from the collaboration between Leeb and Marc Verhaeghen of Belgian industrial band Klinik. It was released in 1989 through Wax Trax! and Antler-Subway. The 1990 follow-up, 'Response Frequency', was the last release to feature Verhaeghen until 1996 and included Rhys Fulber who would remain with the band for the next three albums. Verhaeghen resumed his collaboration with Noise Unit for the 1996 album 'Drill' which also featured members of German industrial band Haujobb. After an eight-year hiatus Leeb teamed with former Front Line Assembly member Chris Peterson in 2004 to release 'Voyeur' in 2005. [WIKIPEDIA]
Maurizio Bianchi (born 4 December 1955 in Pomponesco in the Province of Mantua) is an Italian pioneer of industrial music, originating from Milan.
Bianchi was inspired by the music of Tangerine Dream, Conrad Schnitzler and Throbbing Gristle. He wrote about music for Italian magazines before beginning to release his own cassettes under the name of Sacher-Pelz in August 1979. He released four cassettes as Sacher-Pelz before switching to his own name or simply "MB" in 1980.
Bianchi corresponded with many of the key players in the industrial music and noise music scenes including Merzbow, GX Jupitter-Larsen, SPK, Nigel Ayers of Nocturnal Emissions and William Bennett of Whitehouse. After this exchange of letters and music, his first LPs were released in 1981.
'Symphony For A Genocide' was released on Nigel Ayers' Sterile Records label after Bianchi had sent Ayers the money to press it. Each track on the LP was named after a Nazi extermination camp. The cover featured photographs of the Auschwitz Orchestra, a group of concentration camp prisoners who were forced to play classical music as people were herded into the gas chambers. The back cover included the text "The moral of this work: the past punishment is the inevitable blindness of the present".
Also in 1981, William Bennett, head of the band Whitehouse and the British Come Org. label, offered Bianchi a record contract, which Bianchi signed unchecked. It was based on a "joke contract" that Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound had sketched. The contract assumed all rights to Bianchi's work. After delivery of the tapes Bennett edited-in speeches by Nazi leaders, and instead of the relatively unsensational name MB, it was published under the alias Leibstandarte SS MB, named after the SS unit that worked as bodyguards to Adolf Hitler.
By 1983 and the release of the 'Plain Truth' LP on U.K. power electronics label Broken Flag, Bianchi had become a Jehovah's Witness. At the end of 1983 Bianchi announced his withdrawal from music, stating "The end is very near, and we have a very short time to recognise our mistakes and to redeem ourselves... I stopped doing music, and now my life is going towards its full awareness".
In 1998, encouraged by Alga Marghen label head Emanuele Carcano, who offered him a label of his own, Maurizio Bianchi resumed making music. The label was EEs'T Records, through which he released new editions of old MB albums and many new recordings.
Bianchi then proceeded to work on over a hundred new projects both solo or in collaboration with other Italian and international artists including Atrax Morgue, Aube, Francisco Lopez, Mauthausen Orchestra, Merzbow, Ryan Martin and Philip Julian / Cheapmachines.
Bianchi has worked with record labels including Dais Records, the Carrboro, North Carolina based Hot Releases and the Italian Menstrual Recordings to re-release some of his out of print material.
On August 19, 2009, for unspecified personal reasons, Maurizio Bianchi decided again to completely stop making music. This decision was soon after reversed; Maurizio Bianchi continued to release new music. [SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA]
Lisfrank (vocals - synthesizers - drums), real name Fulvio Guidarelli, started as a project in January 1980.
In 1982 he founded the Mask Productions label for which he produced his 12” 'Man Mask', and in 1983 the compilation LP 'First Relation' which includes part of the song “Man Without Limits”. In 1983 in the compilation cassette 'The Voice', produced by Vittore Baroni from the Area Condizionata label, Lisfrank released “Ombre”, an experimental track made entirely by voice.
In the subsequent years, except for a few concerts and appearances, Lisfrank collaborated on the production and arrangements of the album by Ivan Cattaneo 'Vietato Ai Minori' (1986), and several years later, under the alias of Bangdito, published a mix of electro-dance (1995).
In 2009 Anna Logue Records released the LP 'Mask Rewind' which collects most of the tracks recorded by Lisfrank between 1980 and 1985, and a new version of the song "Out of Control".
Also in 2009 Lisfrank appears with the track “Identity” in the compilation LP 'Danza Meccanica - Italian Synth Wave 1983-1987', for the label Mannequin-InTheNightTime.
Kommunity FK is an American post-punk / gothic rock band, formed in 1978, by singer Patrick Mata, -influenced by Throbbing Gristle, David Bowie and Joy Division as well as other artistic inspirations like Dadaism, anti-art, noise, musique concrète and the Brion Gysin / William Burroughs cut-up technique-, that helped establish what came to be known as the deathrock scene in Los Angeles.
Though initially named "Kommunity Fuck", after a piece of paste-up art created by Mata, the moniker was soon shortened. Kommunity FK's debut album, 'The Vision and the Voice', was released in 1983 by Independent Project Records, featuring a lineup of Mata, drummer Matt Chaikin and bassist CE CE.
The follow-up, 1985's 'Close One Sad Eye', garnered significant attention when a video clip for the song "Something Inside Me Has Died" received significant play on MTV. By this time, Mata and Chaikin had been joined by bassist Kevin Kipnis and keyboardist Margaret Arana.
After departing the band, Chaikin drummed for an early lineup of Jane's Addiction. Later Kommunity FK lineups included bassists Cam Campbell (A II Z, Sex Gang Children), Eddie Branch (UK Decay, Furyo, Peter Murphy) and Dave Roberts (Sex Gang Children, Carcrash International).
In 2008, Kommunity FK returned with their third effort, the collection '5 Song Free Sampler', issued on the Invisible Records label. Now a duo of Mata and guitarist / keyboardist Sherry Rubber, they followed it up with 'La Santisima Muerte' (2010) on KommunityPM Rekords and 'Thee Image & Thee Myth' (2015) on Crysella Records.
During a Kommunity FK hiatus in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Mata led the band Sativa Luvbox, who released two albums: 'The Bad Sleep Well' (1989, Splat-Co Records) and 'Beloved Satellite' (1993, Gasoline Alley Records). Mata had earlier issued a 1979 single, 'The Queen of Beverly Hills', under his own name. Using the name Texylvania, he also covered songs on several tribute albums. [SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA]
Jamie Wednesday were a British 1980s jangle pop band, formed in Streatham, South London in 1984,that released eight songs on two records between 1985 and 1986. Previously they had been called The Ballpoints, and then they became Peter Pan's Playground, later deciding on the name Jamie Wednesday.
The band consisted of:
James Morrison (acoustic guitar, lead vocals), Fruitbat (bass guitar, backing vocals), Dean Leggett (drums and percussion), Lindsey Lowe (trumpet), and Simon Henry (saxophone). Ray Buckley may also have played drums for Jamie Wednesday, prior to joining British soul band, Buddy Curtess and the Grasshoppers.
Jamie Wednesday recorded and released two EPs, and contributed to two compilations on the Pink Records label, but they never sold well and the band remained virtually unknown. Jamie Wednesday are indirectly responsible for the name of the band Pop Will Eat Itself, when an article about Jamie Wednesday in the NME, written by David Quantick, mentioned that pop music is ever-recycling its ideas and that eventually, 'pop will eat itself'.
Jamie Wednesday split up in 1987 just before a scheduled appearance at an opening gig. James Morrison and Leslie Carter stuck together and filled in for that gig. Thus Carter USM was born, with Morrison and Carter becoming Jim Bob and Fruitbat respectively. Drummer Leggett subsequently joined BOB. [SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA]
