The Listerine Dragons were the founders of the short lived 'Spatchcore' movement, which mainly occurred during 1984 in Carlisle. Their sound has variously been described as 'terrifying', 'totally mesmerising, like a fairground on fire' and 'akin to being shot in the elbow by a crying pig'.The legendary but shamefully overlooked three piece consisted of Ed 'Skunk' Templeton (gtr), Simon Cunges (bass, vox) and the deeply religious Jebediah Grundy (flaming drums). They met at Austin Friars St Monicas Roman Catholic Private School in 1981, and immediately bonded over a shared love of not wanting to spend any time in the school buildings whatsoever.
Their initial musical exploits were confined to setting fire to small woodland creatures according to a pre-arranged pattern, much along the lines of the music of John Cage or Steve Reich, but with an added dose of emotion. They quickly gained a cult following among the youth of Carlisle, and took to performing many impromptu performances in local parks and woodland clearings. It was during one of these performances in the summer of 1982 that Templeton discovered a guitar discarded in a hedgerow, and was delighted to discover he could emulate the dying screams of burning mammals with uncanny accuracy. Cunges and Grundy immediately latched onto the idea of forming a 'glower trio', and scoured the nearby countryside in a search for their respective instruments - 12 months later, after some excruciating searching, the line-up was complete.
The Listerine Dragons early concerts were ramshackle and controversial affairs - they were never happy with the idea of losing animal torture from their repertoire, so their minimal 1 chord punk stylings were peppered with bizarre mammalian percussion from Grundy, who was often so hard to control that their concerts were known for lasting for anything up to 5 hours. It was this intensity and unpredictability that gave them a vital edge, but also proved to be their downfall - no one knew more than they did that their music would never translate into recorded format.
Their sole excursion on vinyl came with a version of live favourite "Bumbria", where they list everything they dislike about their home county with startling menace. 5,000 7" singles were pressed, only to be commandeered by Cunges and, rather predictably seeing as this was what they known for, burned in a field. Happily, Cunges recorded the entire bonfire, and the result was the triple gatefold vinyl "Bugger Bumbria (redux)", which was pressed in a limited edition of 27 copies. This garnered a small degree of national press coverage at the time, which was sharply curbed when Cunges told reporters that he'd "planned it all along you cunt". Copies of the album change hands for nearly 2 figures among collectors.
Due to their animosity towards any kind of physical playback mechanism, they are cruelly overlooked when it comes to compiling a list of seminal 80s bands. However, they are probably remembered best for the moving, if slightly controversial anti-war song "Lockheed-Martin Spazzed My Dripper" - a terrifying 2 hour odyssey of wailing, feedback and fluids, relating the story of a US pilot who can only achieve an erection and climax while bombing third world orphans of a different ethnicity to his own. After failing to find a willing partner to release this, or indeed anything further by them, they took to performing their magnum opus in person in various public locations around Carlisle, before splitting up later in the year due to musical differences and personality similarities. No one has come close to replicating their sound since.
No comments:
Post a Comment