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The Birthday Party was an Australian rock music group, active in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It launched the careers of the internationally renowned singer and songwriter Nick Cave and of the respected musicians and songwriters Mick Harvey and Rowland S. Howard. Their early music found them sometimes classed as goth rock, but they disliked the label, and in retrospect, sound very different from most goth rockers.
Despite being championed by John Peel, the Birthday Party found little success during their career. They've been called one of "the darkest and most challenging post-punk groups to emerge in the early '80s." [1] (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:bx1m967o3ep3~T1) Though often indirect, their influence has been far-reaching.
The band formed in 1977 as the Boys Next Door, with Nick Cave (vocals), Mick Harvey (guitar), Tracy Pew (bassist) and Phill Calvert (drummer), when all four were attending Caulfield Grammar School. Rowland S. Howard (guitar) joined after the others had left school.
The band redubbed themselves The Birthday Party—after Harold Pinter's disturbing play The Birthday Party—just before moving to London, where they resided before relocating to Berlin.
Their sound drew upon punk, rockabilly and the rawest blues, but transcended consise catigorization. Many songs were driven by prominent, repetitive basslines and drumwork that sounded a bit like an unhinged and thoroughly angry Gene Krupa; after two decades, Howard's stinging guitar remains distinctive. The instrumentalists often sounded as if they were on the verge of falling apart, though this only emphasised the mania of Cave's singing.
Above the barely-controlled racket, Cave's vocals ranged from desperate to simply menacing and demented. Critics have written that "neither John Cale nor Alfred Hitchcock was ever this scary." [2] (http://trouserpress.com/entry.php?a=birthday_party)), and that Cave "doesn't so much sing his vocals as expel them from his gut"[3] (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=33:2sj20roal4aj). Though Cave drew on earlier rock and roll shriekers—especially Iggy Pop and Screamin' Jay Hawkins—his singing with the Birthday Party remains powerful.
Calvert was sacked in 1982; he was "unable to nail down the beats for 'Dead Joe' to everyone's satisfaction" [4] (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=33:08jgtq4zzuhp), and Harvey moved to drums. When Pew was jailed for drunk driving, also in 1982, Barry Adamson and several others replaced him on records or live appearances.
The Birthday Party disbanded in 1984, due in part to creative tension between Cave and Howard.
Several groups rose from the Birthday Party's ashes: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (featuring Cave and Harvey), Crime and the City Solution (featuring Harvey and Howard, later just Harvey) and These Immortal Souls (featuring Howard). All of these bands shared a similar aesthetic, though perhaps they showed unequal deftness in expressing it.
Discography
- "Mr Clarinet/Happy Birthday" (7" single, 1980)
- The Birthday Party/Boys Next Door (LP, 1980)
- "Nick the Stripper/Blundertown/Kathys Kisses" (12" single, 1981)
- "Nick the Stripper/Blundertown" (7" single, 1981/82)
- Prayers on Fire (LP, 1981)
- "Release the Bats/Blast Off" (7" single, 1981)
- "Mr Clarinet/Happy Birthday" (7" single, 1981)
- "Drunk on the Pope's Blood" (12" EP, 1982)
- Junkyard (LP, 1982)
- "Dead Joe" (7" flexidisc, 1982)
- "The Bad Seed" (12" EP, 1983)
- "The Birthday Party" (12" EP, 1983)
- "Mutiny! "(12" EP, 1983)
- It's Still Living (LP, 1985)
- Best and Rarest (LP, 1985)
- "The Peel Sessions" (12" EP, 1987)
- "The Peel Sessions" (12" EP, 1988)
- Hits (Double LP, 1992)
- Live 1981–82 (CD, 1999)
External links
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