With all the talk of early 90’s industrial labels, I thought I’d dig something fun out of the vault. Back in 1993 or so, Cleopatra put out an industrial compilation called Industrial Revolution. It was supposedly a compilation of bands that helped to define the industrial genre. It actually had a decently diverse traclklisting with representations from Invisible, Fifth Column, Mute, a lot of Wax Trax and of course all the same old Cleopatra bands. Shortly after it was released, Wax Trax was bought by TVT and Cleopatra was forced to recall the compilation. Shortly afterward, it was reissued as a “second edition” with all the Wax Trax bands replaced by yet more of the same old Cleopatra groups. That was later followed by a “thrid edition” with a ton of marginal unreleased mixes.
At the same time as the first compilation, they released a book, also titled “Industrial Revolution”, which served as sort of an encyclopedia of Industrial bands. I grabbed a copy pretty cheap a while back and had a good time reminiscing about the old days. On the other hand, Cleopatra was infamous for incorrect information and typos and this book was no exception. I thought you guys might get a kick out of their article for Ministry. There are quite a few nice pictures (a few of which I’m not sure of the source) and some interesting facts, many of which are totally wrong. A lot of it’s so close to right that it’s impressive that they dug it up, except that they somehow jumbled it up and got it wrong. Enjoy it. I had fun treating it like one of those “what’s wrong with this picture” games. For starters, Paul’s brother Roland was in the Young Scientists, not Paul. Tom Hoffman wasn’t the vocalist for Special Affect and he was replaced by Al, not Frankie. My favorite is that the article mixes up Stephen George with Stevo (the founder of Some Bizarre Records) for the Cold Life single and Twitch, but not for With Sympathy. Anyway, hope you guys enjoy the read.
The third picture here, the one where all the guys are in suits, is it just me or does Al look like he’s sporting a monstrous moustache?
I remember this book well, but as stated in one of the other threads never bought it due to all the glaring errors I found simply while flipping through it. The pictures are cool though, hard to find any of Dave Ogilvie. And I forgot how young and skinny Al looked circa 1986-87.
Typos and factual errors aren’t the only things wrong with that book.
The author is this guy Dave Thompson, who apparently worked for AP Magazine, though how he kept his job is beyond me. He also wrote a lot of awful liner notes for awful Cleopatra compilations.
The guy put some weird stuff in that book. He always uses the word “synthipop” even though everyone else on Earth says “synth-pop”. He’s obsessed with prog-rock bands, and includes lots of them despite their minimal influence on industrial music overall. He thinks Depeche Mode is the most important industrial band ever. He has odd inclusions and exclusions - The Residents are in there, but not Negativland. He praises up and coming bands that nobody’s ever heard of outside that book, and doesn’t include bands that actually became successful.
Chase from Re-Constriction wrote a bit at the end that mostly covered coldwave acts, but of course, those guys didn’t really take off either.
The early photo of Ministry in this article is the earliest one I know of. Paul Taylor is in it…but I’m not. The Goldmine photo would have been taken after the Cold Life session, but prior to early-mid December '81 which is when I started rehearsing with the band.
That one looks to be from the same photo session as the one on the back of the original Cold Life 12", so I’m guessing the others are Al, Stevo, Marty Sorenson, John Davis and Paul Taylor?
That one looks to be from the same photo session as the one on the back of the original Cold Life 12", so I’m guessing the others are Al, Stevo, Marty Sorenson, John Davis and Paul Taylor?
