Crazyhead Bio
Crazyhead are an English garage punk band from Leicester, England. Though lumped in with the largely media-created grebo scene, they were more influenced by the garage rock of the late 1960s, as well as bands like The Ramones, The Stooges and Captain Beefheart. They described themselves as an "urban bastard blues band", and their songs ranged in theme from trenchant social commentary to the surreal, but always with an underlying vein of black humor.
Formed in 1986, they signed to the independent record label, Food Records, later that year and their début single, "What Gives You The Idea That You're So Amazing, Baby?", reached number 2 in the UK Indie Chart in March 1987. For the rest of the year they toured extensively, supporting The Cult, then Julian Cope, and also played the Glastonbury Festival. Their second single "Baby Turpentine" reached number 4 in the Indie Chart.
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In mid 1988 Food became part of EMI records and Crazyhead released third single "Time Has Taken Its Toll on You" on the Food/Parlaphone label and reached No. 65 in the UK Singles Chart. The band embarked on another UK tour to promote their début album Desert Orchid, released in October 1988, along with another single, "Rags", and then toured Europe supporting Iggy Pop. They then released the Have Love Will Travel EP (which reached no 68 in the national charts) before embarking on yet another UK tour.
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In 1989, they made two tours of the United States, and appeared at the Reading Festival.
At the behest of the British Council cultural exchange program, they played the international Interchance music festival in Moscow, and in early 1990, along with Skin Games and Jesus Jones were one of the first western bands to tour Communist Russia and post-Nicolae CeauÅŸescu’s Romania. Later that year they also played at the Namibian Independence Day concert to an audience of 50,000 – all three concerts were broadcast across the continents.
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Their second album Some Kind of Fever was released through Revolver Records. In 1992 they gigged across Europe, and in 1993 embarked on a tour of the UK to promote an album of cover versions, Live in Memphis.
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In 1998 they released the compilation album Fucked by Rock which consisted of B sides, demos, out-takes and rehearsals as well as a Radio 1 review featuring David Essex.! 13th Floor was an all new album accompanied by a UK tour with the Mission in 1999.
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Crazyhead reformed in 2017 and played a handful of warm up gigs before playing Indie Daze Festival 4.