Artist · chart history
Birthday Party
Band Melbourne Active 1980–1983
Birthday Party formed in 1980 in Melbourne and was active until 1983. Birthday Party has 4 chart appearances on 3 radio countdowns from 1 station on RockLists, spanning 1981–1983. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Release The Bats”, which appears on 2 lists with a best position of #19. The station that charted Birthday Party most often is John Peel (BBC Radio 1), with 4 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1983.
Before they were the Birthday Party they were the Boys Next Door, a Melbourne gang built around Nick Cave's lurching vocals and occasional saxophone, Mick Harvey on guitar and keyboards, Rowland S. Howard's barbed-wire guitar, Tracy Pew's bass and Phillip Calvert's drums. In 1980 they decamped to London, where John Peel took up their cause, and the noise got nastier.
This is blues, free jazz and rockabilly dragged backwards through a drainpipe, a bleak, clattering racket for Cave to bellow his tales of violence and depravity over. Prayers on Fire came in 1981, the same year as "Release the Bats", a jittery, ghoulish single that the emerging goth scene clutched to its black heart. Junkyard followed in 1982, and as London wore them down the shows turned more and more violent. They moved on to West Berlin, a string of stand-in bassists and drummers passed through, and the Bad Seed EP, with "Deep in the Woods" and "Sonny's Burning", was the last gasp before the end in 1983.
They never sold much on Missing Link and 4AD, but their shadow stretches a long way, and Cave, Harvey and Howard all went on to acclaimed careers of their own.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Birthday Party on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Release The Bats | 2 | #19 | – | – | |
| 2 | Deep In The Woods | 1 | #43 | – | 1983 | |
| 3 | Sonny's Burning | 1 | #46 | – | 1983 |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Every countdown appearance
| Year | # | Song | Countdown |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1983 | 43 | Deep In The Woods | John Peel's Festive Fifty of 1983 |
| 1983 | 46 | Sonny's Burning | John Peel's Festive Fifty of 1983 |
| 1982 | 28 | Release The Bats | John Peel's All-Time Festive Fifty (1982) |
| 1981 | 19 | Release The Bats | John Peel's All-Time Festive Fifty (1981) |
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