The Birthday Party (band)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Birthday Party was an Australian post-punk group, active from 1977 to 1983.
Despite being championed by John Peel, The Birthday Party found little commercial success during their career. But though often indirect, their influence has been far-reaching. They've been called one of "the darkest and most challenging post-punk groups to emerge in the early '80s."
While their early music was sometimes classified as gothic rock, the band disdained the term, and their sound was very different from most goth music, closer to No Wave at the time. However, the Birthday Party did have an influence on deathrock, a genre of music related to gothic rock.
Despite their limited commercial success, the creative core of the Birthday Party have gone on to acclaimed careers: singer and songwriter Nick Cave, multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey and singer, songwriter and guitarist Rowland S. Howard.
Band name
Some sources say the band took its name from the Harold Pinter play The Birthday Party , others (including Ian Johnstone's Cave biography) state it was prompted by Cave mis-remembering or intentionally mis-attributing the name to a non-existent birthday party scene in the very lengthy Dostoevsky novel Crime and Punishment.
