Music
Listen To The Smiths Before They Were The Smiths
Freak Party featured Johnny Marr and Andy Rourke just prior to The Smiths’ forming in 1982.
According to the Manchester Evening News, the 1981 demos of pre-Smiths band Freak Party previously believed to have been lost have been discovered by the band’s old drummer and are slated for release. The two-track demo was titled Kraak Therapy and features “Firefly”—snippets of which you can hear over here —and “Don’t Push Your Luck”. “Firefly” is out as a limited vinyl release today and available digitally in November through Si Wolstencroft’s Funky Si Records.
Wolstencroft was the drummer for Freak Party, but left the band citing a change in musical direction when Marr asked Morrissey, Rourke and Mike Joyce to form a band with him. Discussing the new band, Wolstencroft opined: “The music wasn’t funk any more, it was songs about the Moors murderers, and that wasn’t for me.” Perhaps not the best creative decision…
Read More: An interview with The Smiths’ Johnny Marr and New Order’s Bernard Sumner
