The Birthday Party
After their final school year in 1975 the band decided to continue with friend Tracy Pew picking up the bass. Greatly affected by the punk explosion of 1976 which saw Australian bands The Saints and Radio Birdman making their first recordings and tours, The Boys Next Door, as Harvey's band were now called, began performing fast original New Wave material, with Harvey's guitar style influenced by James Williamson of The Stooges and Paul Weller of The Jam and regularly playing pubs from 1977-1980. Rowland S. Howard joined in 1978, bringing a chaotic feedback guitar style to the band.
After recordings and moderate success in Australia (including hundreds of live performances) they headed for London in 1980, changing their name to The Birthday Party and launching into a period of innovative and aggressive music-making, underpinned by Harvey's concise guitar playing. Harvey also composed a good deal of the band's material in the latter days of their career.
Read more about this topic: Mick Harvey
Famous quotes containing the words birthday and/or party:
“I was supposed to retire when I was seventy-two years old, but I was seventy-seven when I retired. On my seventy-sixth birthday a lady had triplets. It was quite a birthday present.”
—Josephine Riley Matthews (b. 1897)
“Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)