Museum Monday: Murder Inc Reissue & Rarities

What a creative few years this was 1989 – 92 : I was in Killing Joke (on hiatus) when I was asked to tour with Ministry on the cage tour. Then ½ way through the cage tour Bill Rieflin and myself started Pigface… Shortly after that, I started Murder Inc. I think, at one point (I might have my dates mixed up), there was a press listening party for Murder Inc in the UK while we were mixing FOOK in the other studio! 

I have credited Jaz for starting Murder Inc,  – a hybrid of Killing Joke and Ministry really, from when the Gulf War broke out while we were on tour with KJ in Europe. I would overhear Jaz on the phone reserving flights back to New Zealand in case things got worse. I was managing the band at the time and asked (fully aware of the budget) what the plan would be for everyone else? Jaz didn’t have one. The tour and the budget only made sense if we completed the (one or two) shows in London at the end. These were the high-paying gigs that took care of everyone’s expenses and wages. Out of desperation, I called up Chris Connelly and asked him if he could learn 14 Killing Joke songs, so in the event that Jaz ditched us with no way of getting home, we could fly Chris out and manage to deliver a performance worthy of the crowd., and sufficient to get paid and complete the tour. It turned out that we didn’t need to do that, but the seed had been sown.

It’s interesting, to me, that I asked Paul Ferguson to join too. It’s not an easy situation to navigate with any two drummers, let alone two ex members of the same band! You need to find a harmony,  not battle with each other – and I think we successfully did that. John Bechdel was really starting to come into his own at this point too: the loops provide a jagged, cyber, off-kilter backdrop to the pounding from me and Big Paul. Raven, magnificent on bass, Geordie, God bless Geordie on guitar, and Steve Albini at the controls providing a runway for Chris Connelly to (I think) deliver some of his most remarkable work during the revelatory sessions at Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. 

We were super fit and on top form right then – all of us had been playing constantly for years and I think it shows. 

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