| Bang Bang Machine | |
|---|---|
| Origin | Evesham, Worcestershire, England |
| Genres | Alternative rock, Indie rock |
| Years active | 1989-1996 |
| Associated acts | Blurt; Psychowrath |
| Past members | |
| Steve Eagles Elizabeth Freeth Stan Lee Lamp |
|
Bang Bang Machine were a cult indie band from Evesham, Worcestershire in England. They formed in 1989 and split up in 1996 after record company troubles.
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The band experimented with different styles of music, for which reason the media found them hard to categorise. Musically they covered alternative rock, Goth, pop, ambient and dance. They were sometimes classed as a Shoegaze band, but musically fell between the Britpop and Grunge camps.
Their most famous song, "Geek Love", was inspired by the book by Katherine Dunn about a family of freaks in a travelling circus. The artist David Hughes, who drew the Geek Love book cover, also illustrated the band's Eternal Happiness album cover. "Geek Love" also uses audio samples from the controversial Tod Browning film Freaks. "Geek Love" on CD regularly sells for £25-£35 on www.ebay.co.uk. In 2007 "Geek Love" was voted number 16 on the cult radio station B92's "Top 20 best singles ever" on www.firerecords.com.
"Geek Love" was championed by BBC Radio One DJ John Peel as a perfect example of a band self-financing their debut single; he famously stated, "Even if they never made another record, they'll have achieved more than most of us do in our entire lives." It was voted number one in his Festive Fifty in 1992. The band also recorded a Peel session, but this has never been released.
The band were known for creating moving songs about unusual topics. Their song "16 Years" was about the Stefan Kiszko case, where an innocent man was jailed for a crime he did not commit.
They appeared on the Channel 4 programme The Word doing a live version of their song "Technologica" in 1993. They were also featured in Deadline comic and Volume magazine. They did cover versions of T. Rex's "Life's a Gas" and Psychic TV's "Godstar."
Steve Eagles now plays with the jazz-psycho-funk-poetic-punk band Blurt and teaches guitar. Lamp is a DJ in Brighton and qualified as a sound engineer. Stan Lee married Elizabeth Freeth in 2005; in 2007 their baby son was born. Stan Lee A.K.A. Marc Angel now plays with Psychowrath, a new incarnation of Wrathchild. In 2007 articles appeared in The Evesham Journal and The Worcester News about possible future one-off gigs.