User:Tubejunkie/Prawns

Prawns With Horns (1991-2005) was a cult band from Perth Western Australia which went through different music styles, toured the globe and was influential in carving out a touring circuit in the country towns of South Western Australia. Prawns With Horns have won plenty of industry accolades and are featured on many surf/skate video soundtracks. They were also unique in the way that the band lasted for 14 years but by the end there were no original members left and Prawns With Horns had become its own entity.

Formation-1991
When first formed as a three piece, PWH consisted of Tim Robb (bass/vox), Pat Brosnan (drums) and Dan Jarvis (guitar/vox). Tim and Pat met Dan when they had moved to Perth from the coastal town of Albany West Australia to attend University. Dan was the primary song writer and the style of those early years was 'guitar driven punky rock'.

PWH started playing at house parties in Perth and because of Tim and Pats ties to the country the band started also going down to Albany to play. At these shows audience participation was always encouraged and it was through this that Marty Hellmann, also from Albany, would join the band on stage in different songs.

At this stage the band was playing a mixture of well known covers and their own originals, a formula that they applied throughout the bands existence. Some of the early original songs included Black Cat, Kaboose and Be Mine.

As the band grew in popularity, Dan made the decision that a good frontman was needed which would allow him to also concentrate more on the guitar. Marty Hellmann had been performing with various cover bands in Albany for a few years and the band approaced him to move to Perth and join them full time.

This became the first core of Prawns With Horns for the first few years.

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1992-1995 - Extremely loud surf rock
''' Prawns With Horns started playing regular gigs in Perth and Albany and although a few people had a hand at managing the band, they remained self managed for most of the time.

Their first release was a 8 track cassette named Prawnado (after tornado) with some of the raw songs on it but also some experimental tracks using samples and drum machines. The cassette didnt do extremely well but helped PWH to establish themselves as one of Perth's resident local bands.

In 1994 Pat's interests were drifting from music and he quit the band to pursue other things. The first replacment was Rob Leech, but the same problems arose and he was let go by the band.

Meanwhile another Perth band, Souls Ajah, were in the throes of splitting up and the Prawns approached their drummer, Alejandro Salazar (Ale'). Ale' was from Costa Rica and was a fantastic drummer who brought a latin flavour to the rockier songs which also led to the first of PWH's latin rythm songs, Langostinos Con Cuernos

Ale' however had married an Australian girl and as the marriage broke down, the pressure came from the authorities for him to leave and despite many efforts and petitions, Ale' had to move back to Costa Rica.

Once back there though, Ale' contacted the Prawns and put forward the idea that if the rest of the band could make it to Costa Rica then he could organise the shows. At the time no bands from Australia had ever really toured in Costa Rica and so Dan, Tim and Marty set about finding the means to go over there.

Each member found money from somewhere and a hugely publicised concert was held at the Orient Hotel in Fremantle to raise funds. The interest in the band grew again and the press praised them for going to Central America as an unsigned, unknown act.

Costa Rica became the first and most bizarre overseas tour for PWH and is still remembered by many Perth musicians. A book was also written (Touring On The Toit) about the tour as a comical guide to touring with no money.

On their return from Costa Rica and spain, Todd "Squiggsy" Davies from Bunbury, Western Australia joined as drummer and played with the band for around five years before handing over the prized role to good friend and former Foe and salsa drummer, Peter "Finkie" Finkle around five years later.

During this time the band experimented with Australian surf rock, 70's progressive influences and salsa, making their genres hard to define, with labels such as "post-grunge-death-salsa", "acid-cabaret" and the "frank zeppelin experience" being the band's comedic attempts to explain what they did.

During this time the band released it's first two independently released CDs - Cisco and his Disco, Ampersand as well as Live at Mojos which track the development of the musical styles during this stage.

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Costa Rica and Spain
''' PWH's first concert in San Jose, Costa Rica was a full house and the band believed that the tour would be successful. However the next 5 shows were not as well attended and the band quickly found itself stranded in Costa Rica with no money and no plane tickets out. They were also squatting in an empty house for accommodation.

The Prawns also had concerts in Spain organised by the Spanish Label, Inner Circle and had to borrow more money to finish the tour in Costa Rica and get to Europe.

Prawns With Horns did leave their mark in CR though and received a lot of fan mail from there for years to come.

1996-2000 Thunderous funk band / Return to Europe
In the late 90's the band morphed from a four piece surf-rock band into an eight piece "thunderous psychedelic funk band" and played multiple tours up both coasts of Australia.

With new drummer Peter Finkle and a constantly refreshing line up of Perth's best young guns from the conservatorium, the band went on to new highs including Zappanale in Germany with a brief cameo from Ike Willis from Frank Zappa and the Mothers of invention, and released it's first releases through MGM distribution.

The lineup during that time from late 90's was:

acoustic drums - Squigs / Peter Finkle electric bass - Tim Robb / Paul " Bod" Bodlovich / Pete "Buzzard" Miller electric guitar - Dan Foss / [?] lead vocals / theremin - Marty Hellman Sax 1 - Suryo Parker / "Transit" Landers / endless stream of the brilliantly talented but soon to be scarred by rock and roll touring players Sax 2 - Damian Denyar / endless stream of the brilliantly talented but soon to be scarred by rock and roll touring players Trumpet / Trombone - Davis McGregor / Sminty / Ricky Supreme / endless stream of the brilliantly talented but soon to be scarred by rock and roll touring players

2001-
Let's go to the beach.