False Prophets
| False Prophets | |
|---|---|
| General information | |
| origin | New York (United States) |
| Genre (s) | Punk , hardcore |
| founding | 1980 |
| resolution | 1993 |
| Founding members | |
singing |
Stephan Ielpi |
guitar |
Peter Campbell (until 1985) |
bass |
Steven Wishnia (until 1987) |
| Last occupation | |
singing |
Stephan Ielpi |
guitar |
Debra Adele DeSalvo (from 1986) |
guitar |
Steven Taylor (from 1987) |
bass |
Anthony Sepulveda (from 1988) |
Drums |
Tom Hamilton (from 1988) |
| former members | |
guitar |
George Tabb (1986-1987) |
Drums |
Matt Superty (1980-1982) |
Drums |
Patrick Blank (1982; † 2001) |
Drums |
Donna Baril (1982) |
Drums |
Ned Brewster (1983-1987) |
The False Prophets were a punk band from New York that appeared in the 1980s and had a significant impact on the emerging hardcore scene in the region.
history
The False Prophets were founded in New York in June 1980. It was triggered by an advertisement placed by Steven Wishnia in the weekly Village Voice , to which Stephan Ielpi and Peter Campbell replied. Ielpi's cousin Matt Superty became the first drummer. In the founding phase, the band name changed several times, so the members called themselves Glass Asylum, Severed Vains, Charred Remains and Dyslexic Prophets, before the name False Prophets established itself. The band made a name for themselves in the emerging hardcore scene with regular appearances in the A7 in the East Village . In their early years, the band was also noticed by the striking appearance of their singer Ielpi, who among other things wore a kind of mustache that consisted exclusively of two braids under the nostrils, which, according to Spin magazine, looked like "two encrusted stalactites". In 1981 and 1982 the band released two singles on the label Worn Out Records, which they founded for this purpose; like many New York Hardcore bands , they didn't have the money to record a full album. Also in 1982 the band was represented with two titles on the style-forming sampler New York Thrash . In the same year the first drummer Superty left the band and was replaced by Patrick Blank (ex- The Undead ). In the mid-1980s, Jello Biafra , an avowed fan of the False Prophets, got them a record deal with the Alternative Tentacles label, which he co-founded . The first, self-titled and recorded in 1984 album came out at an inopportune time; Biafra and the Dead Kennedys had been investigated for "distributing harmful material to minors" since April 1986, and the investigation and subsequent trial dragged on to December, so Biafra and Alternative Tentacles added the album paid little attention. In 1986 Campbell left the band to go their own musical way. A replacement was found in the form of George Tabb and Debra Adele DeSalvo, so that from now on the band worked with two guitarists. The second Prophets album Implosion was produced in 1987 by Giorgio Gomelsky . In the same year Wishnia and the current drummer Ned Brewster left the band after differences with Ielpi during a west coast tour. Ielpi and DeSalvo continued the band with new colleagues until 1993 and released an EP before the False Prophets finally split. In 2002 the band reformed to perform at New York's CBGB 's to mark the 20th anniversary of the release of New York Thrash .
Guitarist DeSalvo is a full-time music journalist, has published a standard work on blues music and writes for Rolling Stone and Huffington Post . Steven Wishnia was a part-time writer for the High Times and has published two novels and a non-fiction book on cannabis . In the 1990s, George Tabb released two albums and an EP on Lookout Records with the punk band Furious George, which he founded , writes for the fanzine Maximumrocknroll and has published three novels. Wishnia and Tabb founded the band Iron Prostrate after leaving the Prophets. Singer Ielpi now lives in San Francisco . Patrick Blanck died in a car accident in the Dominican Republic in 2001 .
Style and reception
The False Prophets saw themselves as a political band and were perceived as such by the media; in particular, they were said to be close to libertarianism . One of the hallmarks of their live performances were lengthy political speeches that were sometimes not very popular with the audience. Visually, the band also set itself apart from the NYHC cliché of shaved machos wearing jeans and t-shirts and was more likely to be punk. This polarized the prophets; While, on the one hand, their creativity and impropriety were respected and comparisons were made to the British crustcore band Crass , they were sometimes openly rejected by other visitors and participants in hardcore concerts. Paul “HR” Hudson from the Bad Brains , for example, pelted Stephan Ielpi with a garbage can during a prophet's live set, from the Agnostic Front camp they were stylized as “useless left hippies”. Rob Kabula ( Cause for Alarm ) called the Prophets "the Dead Kennedys of NYHC". During its existence, the band went through many line-up changes, which made it difficult to develop a clear style. The Spin magazine they situate in an intersection of hardcore, metal and pop and evaluated, the band was "to be too offensive to be politically correct and politically correct to trend junkies". Spin author Charles M. Young described the band's music as an "independent, punk-influenced synthesis of wildness, moodiness, showmanship and varied arrangements"; He also certified the 1987 album Implosion as having a "pleasant, all-encompassing 1968 feeling". The blog Vinyl Journey wrote of the live performance by singer Ielpi, it "gave you a picture of what a Communist Party gathering in a Cambodian madhouse would look like". The blog described the band as part of the hardcore scene, but highlighted the occasional use of piano and synthesizer in the music of the Prophets and attested to their closeness to classic British punk, but also to Alice Cooper and the Kinks .
According to ex-bassist Wishnia, the band itself found its inspiration both in the music of first-generation hardcore bands such as Heart Attack , Undead and Reagan Youth, as well as in the music of British post-punk bands such as Joy Division , Public Image or Gang of Four .
Discography
- 1986: False Prophets ( Alternative Tentacles )
- 1987: Implosion (Alternative Tentacles)
- 1990: Invisible People (EP, competition)
- 2000: Blind Roaches and Fat Vultures: Phantasmagoric Beasts of the Reagan Era ( compilation , Alternative Tentacles)
literature
- Steven Taylor: False Prophet: Field Notes from the Punk Underground . Wesleyan University Press, Middletown 2003, ISBN 978-0-8195-6668-3 .
Web links
- False Prophets at Discogs (English)
- False Prophets at Allmusic (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ A b AlternativeTentacles.com: Biography. Retrieved January 26, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c Spin November 1988, p. 69
- ↑ a b c Steven Blush: American Hardcore. A tribal history . 2nd Edition. Feral House, Port Townsend 2010, ISBN 978-0-922915-71-2 , pp. 204 .
- ↑ a b VinylJourney.Blogspot.com: False Prophets: self-titled LB. Retrieved May 24, 2017 .
- ↑ WhataWaytoDie.com: False Prophets at the NY Thrash 20th Anniversary at CBGBs June 2002. Retrieved May 24, 2017 .
- ^ HuffingtonPost.com: Debra Devi. Retrieved May 24, 2017 .
- ↑ StevenWishnia.com: Novels. Retrieved May 24, 2017 .
- ^ Matthias Mader: New York Hardcore Volume 2. The Sound of the Big Apple . IP Verlag Jeske / Mader GbR, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-931624-60-6 , p. 204 .
- ↑ a b Tony Rettman: New York Hardcore 1980–1990 . 2nd Edition. Bazillion Points, New York 2015, ISBN 978-1-935950-12-7 , pp. 61 .
- ↑ George Hurchalla: Going Underground: American Punk 1979-1989 . 2nd Edition. PM Press, Oakland 2016, ISBN 978-1-62963-242-1 , pp. 173 .