The Battered Wives

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Battered Wives was a punk rock band from Toronto during the late 1970s.

Battered Wives consisted of Toby Swann, Larry "Jasper" Klassen, John Gibb and Cleave Anderson, and released their first album (eponymous) in 1978. This album was the one from which most of their hits come. Such are 'Suicide,' Lover's Balls,' 'Freedom Fighters,' and perhaps their best-known hit - 'Uganda Stomp (Bomp Idi Bomp)' - that poked fun at Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

Their second album came out in 1979. It was called Cigarettes and apparently also demonstrated that they acquiesced to complaints from the public, because their name was shortened to merely 'Wives' for this album. One song from this album is 'New Wave Robot,' and while this album had some following, it had not nearly as much as the one from the previous year.

They then released Live On Mother's Day in 1980, inserting the 'Battered' back into their name. Then, that would be it for them as a group, for each member would go his own way. Anderson would work with Blue Rodeo, replaced by Patrick Mooney. Upon breakup, Swann would go solo, releasing a cover of the Judy Garland hit 'Over The Rainbow' on his 1981 album Lullabies In Razorland.

Perhaps what made this band 'stand out' were two things:

1. The picture of a woman's lips with a fist imprinted on it as their logo, and
2. The number of groups that kept protesting at concerts as to the band's name and what it apparently advocated.