Biography
By November of 1982 Dunedin underground legends The Clean had conquered New Zealand, but come to a sudden end – not long after supporting The Fall at their Christchurch Town Hall show. The Kilgour brothers eventually started playing and writing music together again – this time with with a quieter, folkier sound, choosing The Great Unwashed as an obviously contrasting band name.
In September 1983 the duo released ‘Clean out of our minds‘ on Flying Nun Records, then quickly expanded the band line-up to include their old compatriot Peter Gutteridge (on bass), plus The Pin Group’s Ross Humphries (on guitar) for a large scale tour of New Zealand and eventually an EP.
The EP ‘Singles’ was released in multiple seperate prints, with one particular edition packaged as a double 7″ in-cased in a shower-curtain, that had been painted in a Jackson Pollock type manner – unfortunately this rare edition is mostly unplayable thanks to the suffocating nature of the packaging material!
However, It’s a wonderful record, particularly thanks to the Peter Gutteridge compositions – ‘Can’t Find Water‘, ‘Boat with No Ocean‘ and (particularly) ‘Born in the Wrong Time‘, an instant classic:
Pretty soon they had again split, only to reform once more as The Clean towards the end of the 80s. A lot of the material from The Great Unwashed period was archived on the cassette compilation ‘Oddities 2‘, with the higher fidelity ‘Collection’ compilation eventually surfacing in 1992.
Peter Gutteridge passed away in September 2014 and Hamish Kilgour passed away in December 2022.
Members
- Peter Gutteridge (The Clean, The Cameras, The Chills, The Cartilage Family, The Puddle, Mr. Big Nose, The Great Unwashed, Alpaca Brothers, The Puddle, Snapper, bass)
- David Kilgour (Pop Art Toasters, Stephen, The Chills, The Great Unwashed, The Jessels, guitar / vocals)
- Hamish Kilgour (Bailter Space, Bill Direen & The HAT, Cloudcraft, Coloring Book, Roya, The Great Unwashed, The Jessels, The Mad Scene, The Moles, The Sundae Painters, drums / vocals)
- Ross Humphries (The Pin Group, Bailter Space, The Great Unwashed, The Terminals, guitar)
Discography
- Clean out of our minds (1983, Flying Nun Records, BIG001)
- Singles compilation (1984, Flying Nun Records, DIRT001)
- Odditties 2 cassette (w/ The Clean, 1988, Flying Nun Records, ODD2)
- Collection compilation (1992, Flying Nun Records, FN203)