History
The group was founded by Richard 23 and Luc Van Acker with Al Jourgensen as their producer. According to Jourgensen, the band got their name after a fight in a Chicago bar in 1983. Jourgensen, Richard 23 and Luc Van Acker celebrated the formation of the new band with a few drinks. The evening then ended up in a brawl, with bar stools being thrown through the establishment's windows. As he was throwing the trio out, the owner, a man Jourgensen recalls was named Dess, shouted, "I'm calling the police! You guys are a bunch of revolting cocks! " The trio subsequently decided to use the name for their band.
Their first release was "No Devotion" on Wax Trax records in 1985. The single was quickly followed by an album, Big Sexy Land (1986), featuring a mix of Wax Trax-industrial, hard rock, and EBM with dominating sampling and strong synthesized beats.
Losing Richard 23 due to creative differences, the group's remaining two members were augmented by a rapidly changing set of musicians centered on Chris Connelly (Fini Tribe, later solo work, Murder Inc., and Damage Manual), Paul Barker (The Blackouts, Ministry, later Pink Anvil, U.S.S.A., and Flowering Blight), and Bill Rieflin (The Blackouts, Ministry, later playing with R.E.M. and Robyn Hitchcock), with around twenty others as irregular contributors or guest artists.
The following live album, You Goddamned Son of a Bitch (1988), featured a return to Ministry-like industrial rock - the Big Sexy Land tracks embedded in shouting and noise. This trend continued on Beers, Steers, and Queers (1990), layering sample over sample and pushing ever further into distortion. Linger Ficken' Good (1993) was released by Sire records and is a tamer affair, most tracks returning to the less layered material. Included was a cover of Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?," also released as a single. A tour was planned but cancelled, and the band quietly came to an end.
In 2004, Jourgensen, with former Cock Phildo Owens (Skatenigs, Snow Black), revived the group and released iterations of Prune Tang to disappointing responses from fans. An album titled Purple Head was due in 2004, but was delayed until 2006 with a change in title, Cocked and Loaded. "Caliente (Dark Entries)," a cover of sorts of "Dark Entries" by Bauhaus, with vocalist Gibby Haynes (Butthole Surfers), was featured on the soundtrack to Saw II in 2005.
After assembling a touring line up to open for Ministry on the MasterBaTour of 2006, Jourgensen chose vocalist Josh Bradford (Stayte, Simple Shelter, V.H.S.), keyboardist Clayton Worbeck (Stayte, Simple Shelter), and guitarist Sin Quirin (Society 1, later Ministry and ReVamp) as the new full time members for the Revolting Cocks, now simply being called "RevCo". The group recorded Sex-O Olympic-O, which was originally set to be released in October 2008, but was delayed until the following February, and was officially released on March 3, 2009. Sex-O Olympic-O was followed up by Got Cock?, released on April 13, 2010.
In celebration of Wax Trax! Records, the "Wax Trax! Records Retrospectacle: 33 1/3 Year Anniversary" was held from April 15 to 17, 2011 at Metro Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. As a part of the lineup, Chris Connelly, Paul Barker and Luc Van Acker performed Revolting Cocks songs with various guests. For their performance on the 17th, Richard 23 joined them on stage to sing lead vocals on "No Devotion".
Read more about this topic: Revolting Cocks
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“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)