The Birthday Party

The J Files Podcast

Australian post-punk group The Birthday Party were loud, raucous and genre-defying.

Forming in 1973 as The Boys Next Door, they found limited audiences on home turf and in 1980 they jetted overseas for a crack at breaking into the London music scene, changing their name in the process.

The Birthday Party's famously raucous live shows were often confronting and disturbing, and their ferocious sound as a band was a potent cocktail of depravity, absurdity, and the primitive—leading them to be dubbed by the press as "one of the most violent bands in Britain".

The group was relatively short-lived, although albums and EPs like Junkyard, Prayers On Fire, Mutiny! and The Bad Seed influenced plenty of bands both in the UK and Australia. The Birthday Party also launched the legendary music careers of Rowland S Howard, Mick Harvey and Nick Cave.

In this episode of The J Files hear archival interviews with the band, sound engineer Tony Cohen, filmmaker Ian White, biographer Mark Mordue as well as fresh reflections from Warren Ellis, Tex Perkins and Party Dozen.