Peter Read

Peter Read, a founding member of infamous (and great) Sydney band THUG (with Tex Perkins and Lachlan McLeod), also Moist (with Patrick Kavanagh and Ralph Philips), a some time member of Lubricated Goat, Leather Moustache, Bush Oysters and sound person for the early Kim Salmon & The Surrealists, Dirty Three, Toys Went Berserk and many more. Read formed Thug with Perkins and McLeod in 1987 and swiftly earned a reputation for frenetic, visceral and challenging live shows that would often transcend the typical hallmarks of a live music gig to include dancers, theatrics and other visual elements alongside their hypnotic tunes. Their abrasive and downright fucking weird track Fuck Your Dad (also known simply as Dad) — their debut single, released as a 7" along with eponymous track Thug — set the scene for an explosive and implosive tenure that, along with their contemporaries in bands such as Lubricated Goat (who Read even joined for a spell) and Kim Salmon & The Surrealists, helped cement Australia's burgeoning reputation for incubating vital and incendiary indie acts. Read's stint with Thug yielded two albums — 1987's Mechanical Ape/Proud Idiots Parade and 1988 follow-up Electric Woolly Mammoth; both albums saw a little-publicised collective re-release on CD in 1999, under the grammatically questionable title, Everything Is Beautiful In It's Own Way. Peter released a CD in 2004 titled 'Chimp Inc' through Smelly Records. In 2007 he released 'Plumbing the Underbelly' as "Spiney Fleshpot", a collaboration with Patrick Kavanagh (2) through CanaWorms Records, then in 2008 he released his solo CD, 'The Wellington Boot Up Files', also on Canaworms Records. Peter Read died in August 2016.