The Birthday Party (band)
The Birthday Party was a highly influential Australian post punk band, 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 sound combined punk, rockabilly and the rawest form of blues rock presided over by Nick Cave's lead vocals.
The band formed 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 changed its name to The Birthday Party just before moving to London.
When Phill Calvert left in 1982, Mick Harvey moved to drums.
When the Birthday Party broke up several bands rose up out of the ashes. These include 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 they showed unequal deftness in expressing it.
The band is named after the play The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter.
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)
