shriekback.

real editor best profile tools real editor best profile tools
How I made my profile:
I used Dave & Jay's amazing myspace editor .
You’re reading this, so you already should know something about this thing called Shriekback. You know Dave Allen left the Gang of Four, you know that Barry Andrews left XTC, and maybe you know that Carl Marsh was a member of a band called Out on Blue Six. So you’re a fan. You must have some curiosity as to why the boys checked out of successful touring acts and eventually found themselves together, each a starter tentacle on the squidy baby leviathan that mortals call Shriekback.
The following is a colorful bio of the band from Island Records that was circulated when “OIL AND GOLD” was released. Most of it is a third-person revision of the Shriekback Blueprint bio that was included with some copies of the “HAND ON MY HEART” 7” single.
ISLANDBIO
Shriekback was originally conceived as a short-term project by Dave Allen after a traumatic departure from the Gang of Four. Through a network of mutual friends he met Barry Andrews, moonlighting from (or rather around) his own group Restaurant For Dogs, and Carl Marsh, stepping from the wreckage of chic squatsters Out On Blue Six. In a lengthy test of endurance, they set about recording the mini-LP “TENCH” in EMI Publishing's demo studio, KPM on Denmark Street. Although originally a six-piece, with drummer Brian Nevill, singer Emma Burnham and singer/manager Linda Neville, the filtering trinity of art and laziness and commitment eventually left the three of them with a Shriekback of enormous potential. At a historic meeting on July 28th, 1982 they coalesced their intentions to raise Shriekback to its next level of life.
Recording 'TENCH' had established certain working methods, with some new filters: the facts (What Is), curiosity (What If) and chance (What The Hell). In practice, this meant building upward from a rhythmic base (tape loops, drum loops, live drums and - most frequently - Linndrums), adding overdubs until a vocal gave line and structure enough for the completion of the track. In conjunction with the enthusiasm of their record label, Dick O’Dell’s Y Records, the dynamic refinement of such structural spontaneity enabled them to write, record and mix their second album 'CARE' in 19 days, still in the 16 track KPM with the spirited support of engineer Ian Caple.
They accelerated through 1983 with the additional catalyst of public performance: from a nervous and private start in a Charing Cross cellar in late '82, the three of them and the formidable rhythmic base of Martyn Barker (drums) and Pedro Ortiz (percussion) put the Shriek on London’s ICA on New Year’s Eve '82. Britain in general, New York in particular, most of Europe, a skinny trail across America to L.A. and back to G.B. by early summer, all shiny and hungry for a new LP.
The resulting artifact was “JAM SCIENCE”, conceived as both a tighter harnessing of and an expansion from the forces that shaped 'CARE', with a leaner end result, less diverse perhaps but clearer and more physical. Shriekback then got management, and a new record company… they even got a drummer – long-term drumboy Martyn Barker took the vows and kicked the day job habit as “HAND ON MY HEART”, polished smooth by Paul “Groucho” Smykle, charmed its way into the charts. “A good thing too” they said, and went out to play.
For this they recruited the mighty Lu (Edmonds), one of the very few men who can be trusted with a high degree of technical skill on the electric guitar. This combination proved very effective, as witnesses to the Shriekback forays towards the end of 1984 will testify – a startlingly energetic display of superior artistic firepower, and that was just the soundcheck.
And after that- since the only way is up- they made the widest, deepest Shriekback record ever: mined, refined, and part divined, they call it “OIL AND GOLD”. It’s produced by Gavin MacKillop.
The Members of Shriekback:
DAVE ALLEN
I have my parents to thank for this! Because, after I was born on December 23rd, 1955, it would seem they looked after me until I could fend for myself a little. And then…
I remember…
When I was four they took me to the sea at Grange Over Sands near where I lived.
When I was five they had to drag me to school, Kendal COE Primary.
In 1964 they bought me an artist's set and taught me how to play Monopoly.
By 1966 (I think?) they must have decided I was a big boy as they let me watch Donald Campbell and Bluebird disappear forever into the depths of Coniston Water with one almighty somersault and backflip. SPLASH!
And when I was fifteen the headmaster of Kendal Grammar School decided enough was enough and said I need not bother coming back after the Easter holidays which seemed quite good at the time…
And so Mr. and Mrs. A. said I could work in their fish and chip shop. Soon after I thought cars are where it’s at and became a mechanic then a carpet weaver then a lithographer to a boot and shoe operative to a lorry driver…
So they probably did not mind too much when in 1977 I moved to Leeds to join the Gang of Four.
And they certainly did not complain when I left the Gang of Four to start Shriekback in the summer of 1981.
THEY COULD NEVER HAVE KNOWN THAT MY BASS WOULD GO “GANK”.
BARRY ANDREWS
I was born in 1956 in the London Borough of Lambeth.
My mother worked in shops and factories.
My father was a bricklayer.
When I was seven, we overspilt to Swindon, Wilts. My maternal Grandfather taught me to play the piano with one finger. When he died he left me his piano and I taught myself to use the other nine fingers.
At school I was very good at lessons except maths. In 1975 I left school. I joined the then only promising dole queue. Then I worked as a trainee bourgeois for Radio Rentals.
I became a professional musician.
In Exeter our band suffered greatly at the hands of the Welsh- then I left. I worked in some factories until I met XTC. We drank a great deal of beer and decided we liked each other. In spring 1979 I left XTC and Swindon both. I came to London and squatted and made some friends and an album with Iggy Pop. I formed a group called League Of Gentlemen with Robert Fripp. That was in 1980. Simultaneously I formed another group called Restaurant For Dogs – the same year I met Dave Allen through our mutual friend Sara Lee. This year was the year of the monkey which is my year so there you go.
Then Fripp sacked everybody and RFDs crashed you might say so when Dave said play with me I have got free studio time, I said yes I will, yes please. I met Viv through Dave as well and I married her and we had a son called Finn. We live in Kentish Town. And still there is much to do. And of course always there is.
MARTYN BARKER
Born Samuel Martyn Barker, on 14th September 1959 in a small council house in Ellesmere Port, Merseyside. The last arrival into a family now at grand total of nine. With four sisters and two brothers to look up too I had a lot to learn.
At about the age of six I remember having the urge to bang on pots, pans and bin lids anytime I heard The Beatles or Dave Clark Five on TV or Radio.
I went to Our Lady’s junior school and had four great years discovering football and becoming team captain and a team member of the town’s football team as well as being a keen Manchester United fan.
Mum and Dad would take us to Rhyl in North Wales for a holiday every year all nine of us in a caravan.
Comprehensive school had lots more in store. I became a country and town gymnastic champion, keen basketball player and athlete in my first two years. But this did not last when Dad bought me my first drumkit. I was thirteen and ready to go! Soon I began to lose interest in sport and began practicing the drums hard.
I left school at sixteen and got an apprenticeship in engineering for a firm in Ellesmere Port which made metal containers.
Playing in small clubs with a couple of bands in and around Liverpool and studying engineering at Eastham College of Technology it was time to do a career one way or the other.
After leaving college I worked in Amsterdam for a while but that did not work out, the call of music was too much. It was time to hit London.
I arrived in London in January, 1981 and joined a small London based band. I got a job in a South London hospital as a maintenance fitter. One night after a gig I met Barry Andrews who recently helped form Shriekback. It then was not long before I was formed into a P Rhythm Shuffling Drummer and joined Shriekback in Spring ’84.
CARL LORIMER MARSH
1959: 36 Effingham Road, London SE12.
8th December, 1959: Cyril Alan and Eileen Anne Marsh begat their first son Carl Lorimer (7lb 12oz)
1971: School
Due process of education make him smarter than average bear: Carl given scholarship to Eltham College SE9 where he got a) very good at English and b) even worse at sports and woodwork than he already am.
1974: Slippery slope
Parents persuaded to buy Carl a Kay “Classical” guitar whilst in Boots, Croydon.
1978: S’cool
Next he get Exhibition in Eng. Lit. to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge: This is all very well, but he find a) guitar go wang! better noise than jolly sportifs and b) it more fun to write than read.
1979: North and South
Rejoins school chums who have quit Manchester University, they a) become Out On Blue Six, b) bite, scratch, play for John Peel, move back to London, squat, make a single, play gigs, split up.
1981: Dave
Met Dave Allen through a) Nick Launay (chum and producer) and b) a telephone. Shriekback happens as of course it must.
This is an unreleased bio that written shortly before 'Oil and Gold' came out.It seems to be Carl's handywork...
This is the story of Shriekback. It is not a pretty story but it has its moments.
‘OUTRAGEOUS DEMANDS’
Shriekback is a pop group; a way of life; an ideal to be striven for; an albatross round the neck; a jet plane; a chain gang. It eats money and time; feeds on imagination and hard work. People go without sleep for it. Get sick because of it. Fight with those closest to them in its defense. It repays them by yelling even more outrageous demands. We suspect that it behaves this way because it is a creature dedicated to the extraordinary and that the extraordinary has its own scale of exactions. Or perhaps it’s just a delicate and highly-strung animal which resents being ridden rough-shod by a bunch of herberts through the mud and thickets of the music industry. It doesn’t really matter. Shrieks they say: ‘here we stand; we can do no other. God help us. Amen.’
‘IN TOO DEEP’
It was Dave Allen’s idea but, back in ’81 he could not have known where it would all lead. Andrews and Marsh thought they were along for the ride but, by the time that they found out was going on, it was too late. Barker realized he was in too deep in spring ’84. It was nobody’s fault. Any of it. Shriekback called the shots.
‘PUTTY’
It put us to work Making Records. Pop Records. Slowly at first, then more quickly, then not at all, then slowly again. It was all the same to Shriekback, we were putty in its big rough hands. We made different sized records: LP’s like ‘Tench’ and ‘Care’, 12” and 7” singles: sexthinkone, My Spine, Lined Up, Working on the Ground.
‘I WANT I WANT’
We worked mostly at night. Thudding digitally, clattering in Real Time. Shriekback said: ‘OK, I want the big engines, I want bones and rocks and sex and death, and some really big animals. I want tanks rolling over buildings, big fishes swimming on the bottom of the sea, the fall of Saigon, tiny little children, wolves tearing up a polar bear, fire, gas, air, blood, beer, curry. Vanishing—appearing. Crash—silence. The voice of God in the guns of the enemy, love that knows no limits, energy that will not be still, the passion that spins us into the next thing, into the dark into where we’re going. My body into your body—Light upon Light. Kyrie Eleison, Roll out the Barrel. Give me faster, weirder, cleverer, stupider. Go Duhklatt Duhklatt DuhDuhDuhDuhKlatt.
‘OUR JOB’
we said: ‘we’ll see what we can do.’ And sure enough we made some of those noises. We were only doing our job.
‘DISTORTED’
we went on tour. Days melted into nights.There were long journeys, cavernous places reeking smoke. Piercing screams. The faces of others, as distorted as ourselves, flickering out of the dark. We splashed in pleasures; rolled in pain. Ran, burnt, rattled, and came home again. Shriekback said: ‘Keep moving’.
‘HONEY AND MUD’
by now we all knew there was no going back. Our small record company Y ran out of money so we found a bigger one with more money called Arista. We made another LP and called it ‘Jam Science’ because Jam Science was something Shriekback had taught us to do. We released a single from this album: ‘Hand on my Heart’. It sounded like honey and mud. Shriekback picked its big snaggy teeth, ‘Not bad,’ it said, ‘do some more of that shit’.
‘COCKY’
We took another song: smoothed it out so it would slide through water like a shark—called it ‘Mercy Dash’ because it was a well-intentioned shark doing good shark deeds. Shriekback said ‘don’t get cocky.’ We got cocky. ‘You asked for it Shriekback’ we said, jamming down on the accelerator and lurching off the road once more into the uncharted terrain of a new album called: ‘Deflected by Weasels’ or “Passionate Intensity (Rope Ladder Now!)’.
‘SPERM EVERYWHERE’
There will be tours—always there are tours—and we will go as far as we possibly can, and take you with us if you want. Till the batteries conk out; till we overflow and until Shriekback says ‘Fed up with that, do something else.’ This is the way we feed the fire; feed ourselves; get sperm everywhere; bury our dead; contact the living; come the heavy statement; maxima incendare; to the elbow and beyond; Shriek without end.