Thug Co-founder Peter Read Passes Away

Peter Read, one of the co-founders of seminal Sydney underground act Thug (alongside Tex Perkins and Lachlan McLeod), has passed away in Melbourne, it has been reported.

According to I-94 Bar, the circumstances of Read's death are not yet confirmed, though the musician is thought to have been in remission following a bout with liver cancer.

Read formed Thug with Perkins and McLeod in 1987 and swiftly earned a reputation for frenetic, visceral and challenging live shows that would often transcend the typical hallmarks of a live music gig to include dancers, theatrics and other visual elements alongside their hypnotic tunes. Their abrasive and downright fucking weird track Fuck Your Dad (also known simply as Dad) — their debut single, released as a 7" along with eponymous track Thug — set the scene for an explosive and implosive tenure that, along with their contemporaries in bands such as Lubricated Goat (who Read even joined for a spell) and Kim Salmon & The Surrealists, helped cement Australia's burgeoning reputation for incubating vital and incendiary indie acts.

The band's enduring mythology has been greatly aided by their being a part of the hyper-experimental Black Eye Records family, which grew out of then-booming Aussie indie label Red Eye Records (which was eventually bought out by Polydor).

Along with being a part of acts such as short-lived pseudo-cabaret outfit Leather Moustache (with Lubricated Goat founder Stu Spasm), Read remained a fixture of the label until as recently as 2004, releasing music under the moniker Chimp, Inc. According to I-94 Bar, he also worked as a lighting operator and sound mixer at gigs.

Read's stint with Thug yielded two albums — 1987's Mechanical Ape/Proud Idiots Parade and 1988 follow-up Electric Woolly Mammoth; both albums saw a little-publicised collective re-release on CD in 1999, under the grammatically questionable title, Everything Is Beautiful In It's Own Way.