Leisure Class
Formed in Detroit in 1977 as Mr. Unique & the Leisure Suits, the band got their start as the opening act for The Mumps (featuring Lance Loud) and local favorites like Flirt and Destroy All Monsters. In the following years, they managed to amuse, annoy, and antagonize all manner of audiences before finally releasing their four-song EP, Mr. Unique & the Leisure Class in 1983. The record received generally favorable, though puzzled, reviews from Dennis Loren in the Metro Times, who found "something to offend everyone", and Ira Robbins in Trouser Press.
The band moved to New York, making their debut at CBGB in 1984. Venues for the band during this period included CBGB, 8BC, SNAFU, the Henry Street Settlement, the Kitchen, the Gas Station, the Lone Star Roadhouse, Under Acme, Woody's, Beowulf, and Tramps. Their performances featured, at various times, writer Herbert Huncke, impaled goat's heads (causing a trombonist to quit in disgust), and a two-story prison (designed and built by conceptual artist and photographer Misha Gordin.
The iconoclastic band recorded at least three albums' worth of original material, none of which managed to make it to a major label release. At last, 2004 saw the release of 36 songs on the two-CD compilation, Leisure Class Recordings 1979–1994. Since that time, lead singer and lyricist Dimitri Mugianis was the subject of the 2009 documentary film by Michel Negroponte, I'm Dangerous With Love, and Leisure Class was profiled on the National Public Radio show, Day to Day. The 2010 compilation Parents Night at the Leper Colony has been called "a splendid one hour introduction to this criminally overlooked band."
Read more about Leisure Class: Discography
Famous quotes containing the words leisure and/or class:
“... instead of being a help meet to man, in the highest, noblest sense of the term, as a companion, a co-worker, an equal; she has been a mere appendage of his being, an instrument of his convenience and pleasure, the pretty toy with which he wiled [sic] away his leisure moments, or the pet animal whom he humored into playfulness and submission.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)
“For my own part, I had rather suffer any inconvenience from having to work occasionally in chambers and kitchen ... than witness the subservience in which the menial class is held in Europe.”
—Harriet Martineau (1802–1876)