Severed Heads was an Australian electronic music group based and founded in Sydney in 1979 as Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign. The original members were Richard Fielding and Andrew Wright, and were soon joined by Tom Ellard. Fielding and Wright eventually left the group, leaving Ellard as a singular talent, the sole continuing member of the group. A variety of people played in Severed Heads, including Garry Bradbury, Paul Deering, and Stephen Jones, but over time the group devolved to Tom Ellard.
In early 2008 Ellard announced that Severed Heads was now defunct and that no further creative output would be released under this name. Since then they have performed a 30th anniversary show on 14 January 2010 as part of the annual Sydney Festival, and in May 2011 the group supported Gary Numan in a tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of Numan's album The Pleasure Principle. In a May, 2011 interview, Tom Ellard explained: "Some people thought it was a bit rude of me to just shut it down without a proper farewell tour and so we decided we would drag it out just one more time and say our toodly-doodly’s.". On 22 October 2011, Severed Heads played their final performance in Australia under the Severed Heads name at The Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre. At BimFEST 2011 in Antwerp, they played their final gig under the Severed Heads name. The final gigs were performed by Ellard with Stewart Lawler, ex Boxcar (band).
Read more about Severed Heads: History, Selected Discography
Famous quotes containing the words severed and/or heads:
“It was your severed image that grew sweeter,
That floated, wing-stiff, focused in the sun
Along uncertainty and gales of shame
Blown out before I slept. Now you are one
I dare not think alive: only a name
That chimes occasionally, as a belief
Long since embedded in the static past.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.”
—Edward Lear (1812–1888)