Biography
As interest in Cave's work intensifies, listeners outside Australia stand a greater chance of encountering the Boys Next Door and the sole album they issued, Door, Door, which appeared in 1979. The lineup at that time consisted of vocalist Nick Cave, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey, bassist Tracy Pew, and drummer Phil Calvert. These four, once restless adolescents from a middle-class Melbourne neighborhood, had absorbed the hard-rocking glam of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band and Alice Cooper, while Cave drew additional inspiration from country figures Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. The group relocated from their suburban upbringing to a decaying district populated by junkies and prostitutes. With punk arriving on Australian shores, the Boys Next Door recognized that the genre aligned with their own unruly impulses, drawing particular guidance from local acts such as the Saints and Radio Birdman.
Their ascent through the local scene was marked by performances that quickly earned a reputation for being loud, disorderly, and aggressive—qualities the musicians would later amplify to extremes. This volatile reputation attracted attention and ultimately secured a contract with the independent Australian label Mushroom. After laying down six tracks, the band crossed paths with Rowland S. Howard, who joined as second guitarist and contributed their best-known song, “Shivers.” Subsequent sessions with the expanded roster captured that number along with three additional pieces. Among Australian punks, “Shivers” took on anthem status and served as a key musical element in the film Dogs in Space, which depicted the grim circumstances of several young residents in a Melbourne slum. When Door, Door was assembled from the two sets of recordings, the musicians themselves found the finished product overly commercial; contrasting it with later efforts such as Prayers on Fire and Junkyard makes the source of their dissatisfaction clear.
By then the group was already altering both its sound and its identity. In 1980 they issued their debut release under the name the Birthday Party before departing Australia for London.
Their ascent through the local scene was marked by performances that quickly earned a reputation for being loud, disorderly, and aggressive—qualities the musicians would later amplify to extremes. This volatile reputation attracted attention and ultimately secured a contract with the independent Australian label Mushroom. After laying down six tracks, the band crossed paths with Rowland S. Howard, who joined as second guitarist and contributed their best-known song, “Shivers.” Subsequent sessions with the expanded roster captured that number along with three additional pieces. Among Australian punks, “Shivers” took on anthem status and served as a key musical element in the film Dogs in Space, which depicted the grim circumstances of several young residents in a Melbourne slum. When Door, Door was assembled from the two sets of recordings, the musicians themselves found the finished product overly commercial; contrasting it with later efforts such as Prayers on Fire and Junkyard makes the source of their dissatisfaction clear.
By then the group was already altering both its sound and its identity. In 1980 they issued their debut release under the name the Birthday Party before departing Australia for London.
Albums
