Laughing Clowns

Reign Of Terror, Throne Of Blood
Crown Prince Melon, 1981

After The Saints moved from Brisbane to Britain on the strength of their landmark album (I'm) Stranded, only to find that the punk scene had since been stitched up by a bunch of local brats called The Sex Pistols and that their label EMI was unsympathetic at best and incompetent at worst, they began to fall apart. Songwriters Chris Bailey and Ed Kuepper, who had gone to school and formed the band together, both left. That is, Bailey said that Kuepper left and Kuepper said it was Bailey. The two didn't reunite for more than twenty years, until The Saints were inducted into the ARIA hall of fame. So in 1978, after both of them left the band first (I'm a big believer in balanced reporting), Bailey kept playing with a new version of The Saints and Kuepper went back home to form the Laughing Clowns.

Laughing Clowns sounded more like freeform jazz than punk rock. Kuepper took the swing of last record he would record with The Saints, Prehistoric Sounds, and founded a bizarre post-punk band with gloomy, off-kilter tunes that had as much saxophone as guitar. The group was hurtled along on stage by brilliant and unpredictable drummer Jeffrey Wegener, who had been pestering Kuepper to form a band since he returned home. In 1979 and 1980 they recorded three EPs, two of which were collected and released as an LP called Reign Of Terror, Throne Of Blood on their own label, Crown Prince Melon Records (titled after the nickname they gave to their manager, Ken West, who would later start the Big Day Out).

Reign Of Terror, Throne Of Blood, named as a wry reference to Kuepper's reputation as a control freak, captured the band in their different speeds: long and inventive jazz-punk excursions on 'I Don't Know What I Want', the humorous pop of 'Sometimes (I Just Can't Live With Anyone)' and my favourite, a wonderfully absurd track called 'Mr Ridiculous', in three parts, with a catchy piano-saxophone play-off bridging them. After Wegener's drug use led him to become increasingly erratic, the group split, reformed, split, reformed and gave up in 1985. Wegener went to join Bailey's still-going version of The Saints. Kuepper began his solo career and went back to taking pot-shots at Bailey by founding The Aints.