The Pop Group
| The Pop Group | |
|---|---|
 The Pop Group 2014 |
|
| General information | |
| origin | Bristol , England |
| Genre (s) | Post-punk , experimental |
| founding | 1978, 2010 |
| resolution | 1980 |
| Website | thepopgroup.net |
| Current occupation | |
| Mark Stewart | |
| Gareth Sager | |
| Dan Catsis (since 1980) | |
| Bruce Smith | |
| former members | |
| Simon Underwood (1978-1980) | |
| John Waddington (1978-1980) | |
The Pop Group is a British rock band from Bristol that existed from 1978 to 1980 and reformed in 2010. Post-punk with influences from dub , avant-garde , free jazz and funk as well as political lyrics are characteristic of the band .
history
In the course of the post-punk era, five art students from Bristol's left-wing scene recorded an album with elements of punk , funk , jazz and noise mixed with political slogans after a few singles . The debut album Y was produced by reggae and dub expert Dennis Bovell (who almost simultaneously produced the cut of The Slits , on which drummer Bruce Smith was also active at times). The album is considered a classic and appears in various leaderboards, among others it was included in a selection of the 100 most important albums by the British avant-garde magazine The Wire .
After Underwood and Waddington left, another album was released in 1980 called For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? played in, then the group broke up. As a legacy, We Are Time was released in the same year with some live recordings.
Parts of the band joined the Glaxo Babies , others founded the more jazz-oriented follow-up project Rip Rig & Panic as well as Pigbag and Maximum Joy . Mark Stewart joined the On-U-Sound collective and continued as Mark Stewart & The Maffia, later just as Mark Stewart.
In 2010 The Pop Group first appeared as a band on a club tour of Great Britain. The line-up was unchanged. The group received several invitations to various festivals taking place in 2011.
In 2015 a new studio album called Citizen Zombie was released . The fourth album Honeymoon on Mars followed a year later .
Style and reception
On the occasion of a review of the album Metal Box , the touch-and-go fanzine attested the band to be an "eternal and indelible mirror of the 1980s".
Discography
Studio albums:
- 1979: Y (Radar Records)
- 1980: For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder ( Rough Trade )
- 2015: Citizen Zombie (Freaks R Us)
- 2016: Honeymoon on Mars (Freaks R Us)
Compilations:
- 1980: We Are Time (Rough Trade, Y Records)
- 1998: We Are All Prostitutes (Radar Records)
- 2014: Cabinet of Curiosities (Freaks R Us)
Live albums:
- 2007: Idealists in Distress From Bristol (concerts 1979/80; Vinyl Japan)
- 2016: The Boys Whose Head Exploded (concerts from 1979/80; Freaks R Us)
Singles:
- 1979: She Is Beyond Good and Evil
- 1979: We Are All Prostitutes
- 1980: Where There's a Will There's a Way
- 2015: Citizen Zombie
- 2015: Mad Truth
- 2015: SOPHIA
literature
- Peter Kaemmerer: Radical Crossover. Mark Stewart & The Maffia. In: Behrens / Büsser / Engelmann / Ullmaier (eds.): Testcard 16 "Extremism", pp. 42–47
Web links
- The Pop Group at Discogs (English)
- Mark Stewart / The Pop Group Documentation Trailer on YouTube
- [1] General fansite around The Pop Group (English; exists since approx. 1998)
- [2] "Pop and Politics" - Mark Stewart story in EVOLVER.at
- The power of arrogance - postpunk classic by The Pop Group , by Klaus Walter in Die Tageszeitung , online edition of December 27, 2019
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Wire - 100 Most Important Records Ever Made (1992) on rocklistmusic.co.uk
- ↑ http://formhaben.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/comeback-the-pop-group-enken-zuruck/
- ^ Tesco Vee & Dave Stimson: Touch and Go. The Complete Hardcore Punk Zine '79 -'93 . 3. Edition. Bazillion Points, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-9796163-8-9 , pp. 69 .