The demo will be officially released this month.
A lost demo of the short-lived band Freak Party, which featured The Smiths’ Johnny Marr and Andy Rourke, has been discovered and is set to be released, giving fans a taste of the Mancunian band pre-fame days.
According to the Manchester Evening News, the 1981 studio demo was discovered in a cellar by Freak Party’s drummer Si Wolstencroft. Titled Kraak Therapy it features two songs, ‘Firefly’ and ‘Don’t Push Your Luck’, which Wolstencroft will remaster and release via his own label, Funky Si Records, on digital and vinyl formats.
A snippet of ‘Firefly’, which will be released first, can be heard below featuring vocals from Angie Brown and additional guitar from The Smiths’ collaborator Craig Gannon.
Six months after this demo was recorded, Johnny Marr asked Morrissey to join him in a new band alongside Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce. The Freak Party demo was recorded at Decibelle studio, which now houses the Sankeys nightclub, and when The Smiths returned there for their first recordings Wolstencroft decided to leave. “I said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks, Johnny’,” he told the Evening News. “The music wasn’t funk any more, it was songs about the Moors murderers, and that wasn’t for me.”
Johnny Marr’s autobiography is scheduled to be released this fall, covering his time with The Smiths as well as other bands such as The The and The Pretenders. And even perhaps Freak Party.