All small cities have at least one band that always get up, play untuned, drunk and make paying punters leave These days there is about 100 bands in any chosen city who use the word Death either in their song titles, album titles, chosen sub-genre or band name. Plamerston North band Harry Death combined the playing drunk with the latter. I vaguely recall doing a mail interview for my shitty fanzine with frontman, Phil Caswell. By the time I received his reply I had given up on the 'zine and gave the interview to the much better Levin 'zine Brainless Child. I've since lost or thrown out my copy of that particular fanzine. I do remember Phil saying that they started out on the rock and roll busy-ness when the space shuttle exploded. They wrote a song about it. It is not on this album. He was also heavily involved in the Worker's Unemployed Rights Centre and later the setting up of the Sonic Arts Centre in Wellington who put out a few issue of a newsprint zine called CATastrophe in C Minor. The band were influenced by the likes of Joy Division, Pere Ubu and The Fall but weren't anywhere as near as good. Harry Death's Live too, like The Clear's Live Stomach is, in fact, a studio album. Take it for what it is.
Death!
4 comments:
I was bass player in Harry Death for some years (I didn't play on Live Too) and I think your assessment of the band is spot on. Certainly I was very, very drunk through it all. Picture a bunch of semi-rural hicks,individually playing different songs,behind what appeared to be a large shrieking Crunchie bar with a huge mullet, beige flares and wellington boots. Palmy chic indeed. No-one cleared a venue like Harry Death. In fact I recall us being payed by a venue to NOT play. Happy times...
Hey thanks so much for posting. My albums all got stolen or smashed or something, Hi Jeremy.
Ah! Hello! Claire here from The Stomach. I have that album and I am pretty sure it says I played in Harry Death, but I never did. I just stole the band members unintentionally to form Katerpillar Tractor Concept.
Hi Claire, I think I only saw KTC play once and that was a free show in the square. Used to own that Meltdown Town compilation but sadly parted with it years ago.
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