Big Pig were a seven-piece Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n pop/rock band that existed from 1985 to 1991.

Biography

In 1983 Australian drummer Oleh Witer, frustrated over playing in a string of unsuccessful groups, travelled from Australia to London.

Inspired by a performance of Japanese taiko drummer

Taiko

means "drum" in Japanese . Outside Japan, the word is often used to refer to any of the various Japanese drums and to the relatively recent art-form of ensemble taiko drumming...

s, Witer formed Big Pig in London in 1985. This incarnation of Big Pig involved eight or nine drummers, with Witer trying to sing over the poly-rhythmic din. Members of the band came and went. This early version of the band, which included fellow Australian drummer, Nick Disbray, performed a number of shows in London, one of which Sherine Abeyratne (a back-up singer, who had toured and recorded with various bands, including INXS

INXS

INXS are an Australian rock band, formed as The Farriss Brothers in 1977 in Sydney, New South Wales. Mainstays are Garry Gary Beers on bass guitar, Andrew Farriss on guitar/keyboards, Jon Farriss on drums, Tim Farriss on lead guitar and Kirk Pengilly on guitar/sax...

, Jo Jo Zep, and the Rock Party) happened to attend.

Witer, Abeyratne and Tim Rosewarne had originally been in the band "Bang", however, Witer wanted an edgier, more experimental sound that also retained Bang's funky rhythms. When Witer's visa ran out he was forced to return to Melbourne. Later that year, he, Disbray and Abeyratne recruited two more drummers, Adrian Scaglione and Neil Baker, and harpist Tony Antoniades, with Tim Rosewarne on keyboards to complete the new line-up.

Big Pig made its concert debut in February 1986, and almost immediately began planning the release of a self-financed, independently-distributed record. In May, following the release of their independent three-track EP

Extended play

An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...

, for which Witer won an ARIA Award for Best Cover Art for the Big Pig EP at the first ARIA Awards in 1987

ARIA Music Awards of 1987

The First Australian Recording Industry Association Music Awards was held on 2 March 1987 at the Sheraton Wentworth Hotel in Sydney with Elton John as the host. Presenters of the 20 awards included, Slim Dusty, Basia Bonkowski and Donnie Sutherland, the ceremony was not televised...

. and with only five live shows under its belt, every major record and publishing company in the country offered lucrative contracts to the group. Mushroom Records

Mushroom Records

Mushroom Records is an Australian recoJrd company formed by Michael Gudinski and Ray Evans in Melbourne in 1972. After its sale in 1998, it merged into Festival Mushroom Records. From 2005 to 2009, it is one of the record labels operated by Warner Bros...

 became the band's label and re-released their debut EP, with bonus dance mix

Dance mix

Dance mix is a form of music, created by mixing Techno House and Electronica. It reached its peak of popularity in the mid to late 1990s. However, it can also imply manipulating alternative rock and adult contemporary songs that are otherwise not dance songs so that "pop songs" can be more...

es of "Hungry Town" and "Money God". Their first album "Bonk

Bonk (album)

Bonk is the debut studio album by Australian rock band Big Pig. It was released in March 1988 on White Label Records. The album went gold, then platinum in Australia with three top-twenty singles . The album was released in America by A&M Records in 1988, and the music video for "Breakaway" was...

" was recorded at Metropolis Studios in Melbourne, Rhinoceros Studios in Sydney, and Townhouse Studios in London, in 1987, with producer Nick Launay

Nick Launay

Nick Launay is an English record producer and recording engineer. He is currently one of the most sought after producers in the world due to his current success with recent albums by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Arcade Fire, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds...

, and mixed in London later that year. Bonk went gold, then platinum in Australia with three top-twenty singles ("Hungry Town" #14, "Breakaway" #4 and "Big Hotel" #40).

In the U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 the album was released by A&M Records

A&M Records

A&M Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group that operates under the mantle of its Interscope-Geffen-A&M division.-Beginnings:...

 in 1988, with "Breakaway" reaching #60 on the Billboard magazine top 100 pop charts and was used in the opening sequence of the movie Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is a 1989 American science fiction–comedy buddy film and the first film in the Bill & Ted franchise in which two metalhead slackers travel through time to assemble a menagerie of historical figures for their high school history presentation.The film was written by...

.

The group's song "Money God" was well known in the United Kingdom as the theme tune for the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 DEF II

DEF II

DEF II was a programming strand on BBC Two, which aired at 6pm on Mondays and Wednesdays from 9 May 1988 to 23 May 1994, to serve the teenage market. It was produced by Janet Street-Porter, and followed on from her influential youth TV show Network 7, on Channel 4...

 Rough Guides

Rough Guides

Rough Guides Ltd is a travel guidebook and reference publisher, owned by Pearson PLC. Their travel titles cover more than 200 destinations, and are distributed worldwide through the Penguin Group...

 show with Magenta Devine

Magenta Devine

Magenta Devine is a TV presenter and journalist. She is perhaps most known for presenting the youth travel programme, Rough Guide and "Reportage" on BBC2 in the 1990s. Then "Young, Gifted and Broke" for ITV.She began her career working for Queen/Thin Lizzy/Whitesnake publicist, the late Tony...

, whilst many tracks from their first album Bonk

Bonk (album)

Bonk is the debut studio album by Australian rock band Big Pig. It was released in March 1988 on White Label Records. The album went gold, then platinum in Australia with three top-twenty singles . The album was released in America by A&M Records in 1988, and the music video for "Breakaway" was...

were used towards the end of the Miami Vice

Miami Vice

Miami Vice is an American television series produced by Michael Mann for NBC. The series starred Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as two Metro-Dade Police Department detectives working undercover in Miami. It ran for five seasons on NBC from 1984–1989...

TV series in the 1980s. The songs "Hungry Town" and "Boy Wonder" both featured in the 1988 Yahoo Serious

Yahoo Serious

Yahoo Serious , born Greg Pead , is an Australian film actor, director and score composer. He is best known for his 1988 comedy Young Einstein. He also created Reckless Kelly in 1993 and Mr. Accident in 2000...

 movie Young Einstein

Young Einstein

Young Einstein is an Australian comedy film directed by and starring Yahoo Serious, released in 1988.-Plot:Albert Einstein, the son of an apple farmer in Tasmania in the early 1900s, splits a beer atom with a chisel in order to add bubbles to beer, discovers the theory of relativity and travels to...

.

Notable for their dominant use of drums

Drum kit

A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....

, harmonica

Harmonica

The harmonica, also called harp, French harp, blues harp, and mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used primarily in blues and American folk music, jazz, country, and rock and roll. It is played by blowing air into it or drawing air out by placing lips over individual holes or multiple holes...

 and vocals

Singing

Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...

, along with the absence of guitars, the band established a unique place in music. Sounding quite unlike anything else, their signature look was black waterproof aprons, similar to those worn by blacksmith

Blacksmith

A blacksmith is a person who creates objects from wrought iron or steel by forging the metal; that is, by using tools to hammer, bend, and cut...

s, which gave their stage presence a distinctly industrial feel. Shortly after the release of their second album, You Lucky People, in 1990, Big Pig played for the very last time at Melbourne`s Myer Music Bowl in February 1991.

Witer is an accomplished artist whose paintings have been exhibited in galleries across Australia. He also composed the music for the 1996 Australian film, Love and Other Catastrophes

Love and Other Catastrophes

Love and Other Catastrophes is a quirky 1996 Australian romantic comedy film featuring Frances O'Connor, Radha Mitchell, Alice Garner, Matthew Dyktynski, Matt Day and Kym Gyngell...

.

Rosewarne went on to join a successful rock outfit, Chocolate Starfish

Chocolate Starfish

Chocolate Starfish were an Australian rock music group based in Melbourne, Australia, releasing a number of hits in the early '90s, before disbanding in 1998....

, in 1994.

Their 1988 Australian Top 10 hit "Breakaway" enjoyed a revival in the dance charts with a new 2007 cover version by US House Diva Inaya Day

Inaya Day

Inaya Day is an American singer, best known for her vocal work on house music tracks such as "Horny" by Mousse T, and her cover version of "Nasty Girl" by Prince protege Vanity 6.-Early career:...

.

Big Pig's "Hungry Town" featured in the first episode of Channel 9's "Underbelly: The Golden Mile

Underbelly: The Golden Mile

Underbelly: The Golden Mile is a 13-part Australian television mini-series loosely based on real events that stemmed from the nightclub scene of the Sydney suburb of Kings Cross. The timeline of the series is the years between 1988 and 1999. it primarily depicts the running of Kings Cross and the...

" on 12 April 2010.

Members

• Nick Disbray — lead vocals, percussion
• Sherine Abeyratne — lead vocals, percussion
• Oleh Witer — vocals, drums
• Tony Antoniades — vocals, harmonica
• Tim Rosewarne — vocals, keyboard
• Adrian Scaglione — drums
• Neil Baker — drums

Albums

• Bonk
  Bonk (album)
  Bonk is the debut studio album by Australian rock band Big Pig. It was released in March 1988 on White Label Records. The album went gold, then platinum in Australia with three top-twenty singles . The album was released in America by A&M Records in 1988, and the music video for "Breakaway" was...
  
  - White Label (March 1987)
• You Lucky People - White Label (1990)

Singles

• "Hungry Town"/"Hungry Town (Dance Remix) - White Label (K-120) (October 1986) AUS #14
• "Boy Wonder"/"Hellbent Heaven" - White Label (K-251) (April 1987) AUS #59
• "Breakaway"/"Hellbent Heaven" - White Label (K-423) (February 1988) AUS #4, US #60
• "Big Hotel"/"Fine Thing" - White Label (K-570) (June 1988) AUS #40
• "Iron Lung" - White Label (X 13349) (December 1988)
• "Justifier"/"Taste" - White Label (K-10223) (August 1990) AUS #73
• "Hanging Tree" (January 1991)
• "King of Nothing"/"Bound" - White Label (K 10223) (April 1991)
• "Inbetween days" (May 1991)