Biography
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Years Active
1978 – present (46 years)
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Founded In
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
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Members
- Peter Milton Walsh (1978 – present)
Forming in 1978, The Apartments were a four-piece band who played around Brisbane, Australia and released the EP 'Return Of The Hypnotist' weeks after the original band split in late 1979. The EP was released by the Able Label, which was formed by Damien Nelson and Grant McLennan.
The first recognised line-up of the group featured Peter Milton Walsh (vocals, guitar), Michael O'Connell (guitar, vocals), Peter Martin (drums) and Peter Whitby (bass). The only known member to carry on a musical career (aside from Walsh) was O'Connell, who joined Zero with future Go-Betweens members Lindy Morrison and John Willsteed and played in a number of other bands in Brisbane and Sydney in the 1980's.
After the demise of the first line-up, Walsh formed Out Of Nowhere in Brisbane - a band which featured a unique clarinet and saxophone horn section and no bass player. One of the band's line-ups featured Peter Milton Walsh (vocals, guitar), Graham Hutchinson (drums), Gary Warner (saxophone) and Tony Forde (clarinet). Other members included Cecily Childs (keyboards), Tony Childs (bass), Jeffrey Wegener (drums) and Joe Borkowski (bass).
A split cassette recording with Pink & Blue was released in 1981, featuring one song, 'The Arrangements' which was the basis of 'End Of Some Fear' a song which appeared on the 1994 Apartments album 'A Life Full Of Farewells'.
Moving to Sydney in 1981, the band released a single on the Prince Melon label 'Remember, Remember/No Resistance', featuring the drumming of Jeffrey Wegener who concurrently performed with Laughing Clowns at that time.
After dissolving Out Of Nowhere (most likely due to the apathy of Sydney audiences), Walsh relocated to New York and joined The Colors - a power-pop band that once featured Numbers bassist and another future Go-Between, Robert Vickers.
With Laughing Clowns in disarray after the Sydney band split in London, Kuepper looked at reforming the band and invited Walsh to join on bass guitar, which he did for approximately 12 months between 1983 and 1984, performing on their album 'Law Of Nature'.
Having jumped ship upon the band's return to Australia, Walsh revived The Apartments and released the single 'All You Wanted' on the Hot label in 1984, with Walsh being the only original member.
A debut album on the UK indie label Rough Trade saw the 1985 release of 'Evening Visits …and Stays For Years' - the title taken from a lyric in the Out Of Nowhere song 'No Resistance'. One of the songs from this album, 'Mr Somewhere' was covered 4AD project This Mortal Coil.
1987 saw the Glass label release the single 'The Shyest Time' - a song which appeared on the soundtrack to the John Hughes teen film, 'Some Kind Of Wonderful'.
Between the first and second album, 1993's 'Drift' - the band briefly performed in Sydney with Ed Kuepper's touring band including Kuepper himself on guitar and Michael Couvret (bass) and Mark Dawson (drums). It was around this time, Walsh performed shows in Sydney with former Go-Between Amanda Brown between1990 and the following year.
A quick succession of albums followed 'Drift', with 1994's A Full Of Farewells', for which the band did a brief tour of France and two years later, the mail-order only release of 'Fête Foraine' and finally, the 1997 album 'Apart' proving to be the band's final album.
In 2007, the Apartments have since reformed and have played a string of shows around the eastern capitals of Australia with its most recent line-up of Walsh, and a selection of members from the band's last four albums: John Willsteed (bass), George Bibikos (keyboards), Eliot Fish (guitar), Jeff Crawley (trumpet) and Gene Maynard (drums).
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