Marine

Formed in Brussels in 1980, Marine played experimental & funk influenced post punk. Their brand of punk-funk was said to have influenced Josef K. The short lived Belgian band reached mild success in 1981 when their single on record label Les Disques du Crepuscule  "Life in Reverse" hit number 6 in the UK on the NME indie top ten charts and captured the attention of John Peel. Having booked a session with Peel in conjunction with label mates and fellow Beligians The Names,  Marine disbanded during the recording of their first Peel Session. Splitting up over creative differences, singer Mark Demarais went on to form La Muerte influenced by The Birthday Party and The Stooges.

THE OFFS

Originally from San Francisco and eventually New York City, The Offs were punk/funk band from the late 70's. The Offs counted among their fans and friends numerous people in the downtown New York art/music scene, including artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, musician and actor Richard Edson, who played trumpet with the band, and Glenn O'Brien, the peripatetic chronicler of the scene for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine. In 1984, David Ferguson's label CD Presents released a full length album for the band called "The Offs First Record", with artwork by Basquiat.


The Offs were major players in the early days of the San Francisco punk rock scene. Their first record was a self-released 7" single featuring a cover of the Slickers' "Johnny Too Bad" with the Billy Hawk-penned "624803" on the B-side. Subsequent releases include the singles "Everyone's a Bigot" (which appeared on the Alternative Tentacles hardcore/art punk compilation Let Them Eat Jellybeans) and "You Fascinate Me." Lead singer Don Vinil was known for his outrageous on-stage behavior. Fellow San Francisco punk group, Dead Kennedys had their first show with the Offs in 1978. They frequently played at San Francisco's famed Mabuhay Gardens.

Family Fodder

From AllMusic.com:


Bio:
Family Fodder was less a band than a never-ending collective of musicians messing with tapes in the basement of a London flat. Begun in 1979 by Alig Pearce, a label called Small Wonder released their first 7" when they still went by the name Te Deum. (Interestingly, the other two singles released concurrently by the label were the first Cure single and Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead.") The band was led by odd splices of tape, dub effects, and Dominique Levillain's chanteuse vocals. Influenced by Syd Barrett, the Kinks, and This Heat, Pearce moved his compositions from psychedelics to drones to proto-electronic music full of cut-up location recordings. The band thought themselves to be very serious musicians but the music takes on a light air due to the splicing and humor throughout. The group toured three times between 1981 and 1982. In 1983, Pearce borrowed some of the band's record advance money from their new label, Fresh, to fund another project's tour. The resulting album, All Styles, came out of these diminished funds and was scratchy, ill planned, and home-recorded. It sold only about 100 copies when released. Pearce went on to be a professional accordionist and in 1989 reformed Family Fodder with Levillain, Hobbs, and Wilson. He also tours under the name Johnny Human. With the 1999 reissue by Dark Beloved Cloud, Family Fodder has found a new audience with avant and new wave enthusiasts.


- Daphne Carr

Medium Medium

Less well known than contemporaries the Gang of Four, Medium Medium was nonetheless an influence on a number of the dance-punk revival bands of the early 2000s. Emerging in 1978 out of punk/rhythm & blues band The Press in Nottingham, England, Medium Medium's second single, "Hungry, So Angry," released in February 1981 on Cherry Red Records, has become a minor classic of post-punk/funk. One of the first records to introduce slap-bass -- a technique borrowed from black funk music -- to a generally white audience, "Hungry, So Angry" reached the #48 spot in Billboard's Disco chart and has appeared on over a dozen compilations over the years.


The band released only one studio album, late-1981’s "The Glitterhouse", but its stark, stripped-down dub and dance rhythms and chiming, funk guitar with occasional saxophone and other sounds failed to ignite a large following. "Guru Maharaji", one of the more interesting tracks on the album, has as its subject matter an Eastern religious movement, Divine Light Mission. The song was inspired by the involvement in the movement of a friend of the band who suffered a subsequent mental breakdown. The recorded version of the song is much slower than the original which had a fast punk sensibility.


Lead singer/sax player John Rees Lewis left at the start of 1982 to form C Cat Trance with original drummer Nigel Stone, who had left shortly before the release of “Hungry, So Angry.” The remaining members, Andy Ryder (guitar/vocals), Alan Turton (bass), Graham Spink (offstage special sounds) and replacement drummer Steve Harvey, continued to tour and were later augmented by, first, Leslie Joachim Barrett (guitar/keyboards), then Julie Wood (keyboards). Forays into a fuller, more produced sound failed to garner the band a new record deal and Medium Medium split up in late 1983.


Inspired by a Cherry Red retrospective CD release in 2001 and the subsequent dance-punk revival, Medium Medium reformed in late 2004 for several live shows, including a showcase at the CMJ Music Marathon in New York. No longer a full-time venture, the band has stated plans to continue to write, record and perform. [Source: WIKIPEDIA]