Biography
Electric Blood was the formative group of a very young Robert Scott (before he was the bassist for The Clean, or formed The Bats):
Long-time family project Electric Blood, which Scott began when he was only 17 in the late 70s. Essentially a collection of friends and neighbors who lived doors away in East Taieri, Electric Blood got together every Christmas and made a record, playing what Scott later described in Yeti as “living room thrash.”
Playing on beaten-up old acoustic guitars and ersatz drum kits made from whatever was close to hand, Electric Blood’s roster included brother Andrew Scott, and a shifting circle of Angus, Graham, Kenneth and Sheila McKerracher, Andrew and Phillip Tomkins, Jim Strang, Jonathan Hughes and several others. Tapes were about the only way anyone could hear Electric Blood. They eventually started playing shows around Dunedin but didn’t make their proper live debut until March 1985.
AudioCulture profile of Every Secret Thing
Electric Blood was originally formed by Robert and Andrew Scott in 1978, but Scott didn’t start producing cassette releases under the Every Secret Thing fanzine / DIY label name until The Clean original broke up in 1983.
The early albums are VERY lo-fi, Scott described the band to BOMB Magazine:
Basically Electric Blood was my first band that I formed in 1978 with me and my brother and some other kids from the neighborhood. It was very, very, very basic. We recorded on a cassette player. We had cardboard boxes for drums, we’d have badly out-of-tune guitars, we’d have the piano in whichever house we were recording in, we’d have people yelling in the background, people playing pots and pans.
And we would just make up a bunch of songs and basically record a whole album onto cassette. So we’ve got about twelve albums, I suppose, and they’re all as crazy as each other. They’re sort of comedy folk-rock, I suppose you could say with a slightly experimental …
Robert Scott – Interview with Clinton Krute (BOMB Magazine)
Members
- Bob Scott (Gina Rocco And The Rockettes, Mr Big Nose, Pink Plastic Gods, The Bats, The Clean, The Magick Heads, The Weeds, Raith Rovers, guitar / vocals / piano / bass)
- Andrew Scott (Raith Rovers, bass / vocals / guitar)
- Graham McKerracher (guitar / vocals)
- Jim Strang (The Magick Heads, drums)
- Angus McKerracher (drums)
- Kenneth McKerrcher (piano / harmonica)
- Phillip Tomkins (vocals / percussion)
- Sheiler McKerracher (vocals)
- Sharon Law (vocals)
- Neil Laing (vocals)
- Andrew Tomkins (percussion)
- Martin Shaw (drums)
- Shane Hawkins (vocals / drums)
- Jonathan Hughes
- Paula Watt (vocals / percussion)
Discography
- In the beginning cassette (1983, Every Secret Thing, EST03)
- Black Bess cassette (1983, Every Secret Thing, EST04)
- Ohio cassette (1983, Every Secret Thing, EST05)
- Mr green and the sea of eternity cassette (1983, Every Secret Thing, EST06)
- Acoustic splendour cassette (1983, Every Secret Thing, EST07)
- Electric easter cassette (1984, Every Secret Thing, EST08)
- Greatest hits live cassette (1985, Every Secret Thing, EST16)
- Pearl of the plain cassette (1984, Every Secret Thing, EST20)
- Actual stuff cassette (1985, Every Secret Thing, EST23)
- The wizard cassette (1986, Every Secret Thing, EST29)
- Hay fever cassette (1987, Every Secret Thing, EST31)
- 31 golden greats cassette (1987, Every Secret Thing, EST32)
- Big red day cassette (1987, Every Secret Thing, EST35)
- Electric Easter (1994 Beehive Rebellion)
- Songs from another time CDr (2007, self-released)
- Central summer CDr (2009, self-released)
- Single 2011 (2011, Spacecase Records, SCR001)