Alice Donut – Biggest Ass
Description
Alice Donut is a punk rock band from New York City formed in 1986. The band released six albums before splitting up in 1996. They reformed in 2001.
History
1986–1996: Formation to split
Alice Donut formed in 1986 after the demise of the Sea Beasts, a band at Columbia University, the name soon trimmed from the initial Alice Donut Liver Henry Moore, a play on “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore“. Ted Houghton, Tomas Antona, Dave Giffen and Tom Meltzer recruited drummer Stephen Moses and quickly found a substantial audience at CBGB. Guitarist Michael Jung soon replaced Meltzer. The band’s first commercial release was the Donut Comes Alive album, released in 1988 on Jello Biafra‘s Alternative Tentacles label, followed in 1989 with Bucketfulls of Sickness and Horror in an Otherwise Meaningless Life.
In August 1990, the band’s debut single, a cover version of “My Boyfriend’s Back“, preceded third album Mule, released the following month, and described by Trouser Press as “challenging and invigorating”. Revenge Fantasies of the Impotent was released in May 1991 (and later included in Andrew Earles’ Gimme Indie Rock: 500 Essential American Underground Rock Albums 1981-1996), and included an instrumental cover of Black Sabbath‘s “War Pigs”. Austrian born Bassist Sissi Schulmeister joined the band before the end of the year, with Richard Marshall also joining on guitar.
The band’s fifth album, The Untidy Suicides of Your Degenerate Children, was released in September 1992; It was described by CD Review as “a peculiar mixture of ornate and wicked little bits about suicide, strippers, and a disgruntled ex-postal worker”. It would be over three years before the bands’s next studio album, Pure Acid Park, although a (mostly) live album, Dry-Humping the Cash Cow, came out in 1994.
The band decided to call it a day after playing their 1,000th show, in London on November 25, 1995, and confirmed the split in February 1996. The band’s many shows between 1988 and 1996 included tours of the United States, Europe, and Japan, including a performance at the Reading Festival in 1993.
Moses went on to briefly join Rasputina, while Antona and Schulmeister got married and relocated to Durham, North Carolina.
