Albini “sorta conned” small local label Fever Records into financing the next Big Black EP, bringing in drummer Pat Byrne of Urge Overkill to play on the sessions as accompaniment to the drum machine, which they dubbed “Roland” for album credits. Albini achieved a signature “clanky” sound with his guitar…
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Dean Garcia, half Hawaiian and half Irish, had played in some small bands when he auditioned for Eurythmics . The English-born Toni Halliday met Dave Stewart of Eurythmics after he had read a rock magazine interview with her in which she praised his pre-Eurythmics band, The Tourists . Halliday and…
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Buck-Tick was formed in Gunma Prefecture in 1983. Hisashi Imai had the original idea for the band, despite not being able to play any instruments at the time. He recruited his friend, Yutaka Higuchi , and the two of them began to practice—Imai on guitar and Higuchi on bass. Then,…
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In early 1983 Albini met Naked Raygun singer Jeff Pezzati through mutual friends and convinced him to play bass guitar with Big Black. Pezzati recalled that Albini “knew a heck of a lot about, right from the start, how to release a record and get the word out that you…
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Albini named his new musical project Big Black, calling the moniker “just sort of a reduction of the concept of a large, scary, ominous figure. All the historical images of fear and all the things that kids are afraid of are all big and black, basically.” He used the Lungs…
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Between 1981 and 1985, Wire ceased recording and performing in favour of solo and collaborative projects such as Dome , Cupol, Duet Emmo and several Colin Newman solo efforts.
An early permutation of the band formed in 1981 under the name From Eden. Members included Clint Mansell , Adam Mole, Chris Fradgley, Malcolm Treece and Miles Hunt (Treece and Hunt later formed the Wonder Stuff ). From Eden recruited Graham Crabb from Kit-Form Colossus to replace Hunt on drums…
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Albini began playing in college bands, including a short-lived “arty new wave ” act called Stations that featured a drum machine . Seeing the advantage in a machine that could play incredibly fast without tiring, always kept a steady beat, and would follow commands exactly, he purchased a Roland TR-606…
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Big Black was founded by Steve Albini in 1981 during his second year of college at Northwestern University . Albini had become a fan of punk rock during his high school years in Missoula, Montana , and taught himself to play bass guitar in the fall of 1979, his senior…
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Faster Pussycat was formed in Hollywood by Taime Downe during the glam metal and glam punk boom of the 1980s. The earliest incarnation of the band featured Downe and Greg Steele along with Brent Muscat . The name of the band is derived from the Russ Meyer film Faster, Pussycat!…
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