Peter & The Test Tube Babies

Peter & the Test Tube Babies emerged among the first acts on the Brighton U.K. punk scene, distinguished as readily by their caustic wit and blue-collar perspective as by their recordings. The quartet needed several years to settle into a consistent approach, yet once momentum built they ranked among British punk’s longest-running outfits, maintaining a schedule of new releases and live dates more than forty years after their initial shows. Singer Peter Bywaters, guitarist Derek “Strangefish” Greening, bassist Chris “Trapper” Marchant, and drummer Nicholas “Ogs” Loizides formed the band in 1978. Months after their first performances they contributed “Elvis Is Dead” to the Brighton punk compilation Vaultage ’78. Although the members continued playing concerts, they waited until 1982 to re-enter the studio, then compensated with a burst of activity that included the singles “Banned from the Pubs” and “Run Like Hell” plus the album Pissed and Proud. Their follow-up LP, The Mating Sounds of South American Frogs, reached stores only months later in 1983 and unexpectedly topped the U.K. Independent charts. Capitalizing on the breakthrough, the group issued two further albums in 1984—Loud Blaring Punk Rock and Journey to the Centre of Johnny Clarke’s Head. Soberphobia appeared in 1986; Profile Records licensed it for the United States the following year, retitling the package Peter & the Test Tube Babies. After a three-year gap the band resurfaced with the live set Live and Loud!! in 1989 and the studio album The Shit Factory in 1990. Live work remained steady through the 1990s even as studio output tapered to three additional LPs—Cringe, Supermodels, and Alien Pubduction—by the decade’s close. In the 2000s activity slowed further: Greening hosted a radio program and Bywaters taught English as a second language, yet the group still booked regular tours and released records at intervals, among them the 2012 covers collection Piss Ups, whose artwork parodied David Bowie’s Pin Ups. The band returned to the United States in 2017 to promote That Shallot; after Bywaters appeared onstage in a Donald Trump costume, immigration authorities deported him. Several outlets attributed the action to the unflattering impersonation, though U.S. Customs and Border Protection maintained that Bywaters simply held an incorrect visa.