Deferred listening: Headhunters
One of the great lost records of my 80s music experience is an album by the Headhunters. It was one of those records that we had at the campus radio station, and I played several cuts from it, but I never found a copy for myself. I have a 12" single by them, "Wipe Out the Funk," but not the album. It was a hard album to search for, too, because any search for Headhunters is flooded with Herbie Hancock results (either the album of that name, or records by the band from that album, who recorded sans Herbie as Headhunters). To compound the problem, I didn't remember the title of the album I wanted. But continued Googling paid off last month: there it was (entitled Industrial Warfare, released in 1983) in an archived entry on one of my favorite sharity blogs, Phoenix Hairpins. So now I have a virtual copy, and it's so great to hear it again. The Headhunters were clearly influenced by Killing Joke, and they even do them one better on a couple of tracks, such as the album opener, "Bright and Bloody"--
The Headhunters only released one LP and three singles, which Phoenix Hairpins has collected here. My search for another Killing Joke-inspired band from the 80s, 1919, continues. Killing Joke are, amazingly, still active, though their last album was kind of a mess. With all the 80s revival bands imitating Gang of Four, The Cure, Duran Duran, and Joy Division, surely the field is ripe for a Killing Joke pretender or three. I'm waiting...
